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Updated: May 1, 2025
Windischmann infers from Herodotus, iii, 62, that it appears as a Mazdean belief as early as the sixth century B.C. This is doubtful, but it is reported as a current belief by Theopompus. Its starting-point was doubtless the theory of reincarnation, which, we may suppose, the Iranian Aryans shared with their Indian brethren.
The Persian employment of daeva for 'evil spirit' may be explained as a protest not against Indian gods, but against the deities of their own land; so the Hebrew prophets or their editors apply opprobrious names, "no-god" and other terms, to deities regarded by them as inadequate. The abstractions of the Mazdean system have been referred to above.
+742+. As to the provenance of the Mazdean supreme lord, not a few scholars of the present day hold that he was identical with the Indian Varuna.
In Persia also, since the Mazdean system recognized a considerable number of deities, it cannot be doubted that the people were polytheistic, not to speak of the probability that there were survivals of a lower form of religion which preceded Mazdaism.
+897+. Reputation for magical power appears sometimes to attach to a tribe or other body of persons as the representatives of a religion which is adopted by a lower community. Possibly this is the explanation of the rôle ascribed at an early period to the Mazdean Magi.
The rituals of the Mazdean and Hindu faiths were influenced by the ethical developments of the two, becoming simpler and more humane with the advance toward elevated conceptions of God and man.
However this may be, the Vedic Yama underwent a development in accordance with the changes in the religious ideas of the people, becoming at last an ethical judge of the dead. +737+. Persia. The Mazdean theistic system presents special difficulties.
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