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Thus he made his "Commentaire sur le Yasna" a marvellous and unparalleled model of critical insight and steady good sense, equally opposed to the narrowness of mind which clings to matters of fact without rising to their cause and connecting them with the series of associated phenomena, and to the wild and uncontrolled spirit of comparison, which, by comparing everything, confounds everything.
Then he began the ancient chant of the Yasna, and the voices of his companions joined in the beautiful hymn to Ahura-Mazda: We worship the Spirit Divine, all wisdom and goodness possessing, Surrounded by Holy Immortals, the givers of bounty and blessing, We joy in the works of His hands, His truth and His power confessing.
The very first notices of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda, even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism, therefore, was of later growth.
It can hardly be doubted that the ancestors of the Indians and Iranians once practised almost identical forms of religion and had even a common ritual. The chief features of the fire cult and of the Soma or Haoma sacrifice appear in both. The sacrifice is called Yajña in the Veda, Yasna in the Avesta: the Hotri priest is Zaotar, Atharvan is Athravan, Mitra is Mithra.
The oldest is the Yasna, a collection of liturgies, which admit and indeed invite comparison with those of early Christianity: along with these are found the Gathas or hymns, the only part of the Avesta composed in verse, and written in an older dialect.
Then he began the ancient chant of the Yasna, and the voices of his companions joined in the beautiful hymn to Ahura-Mazda: We worship the Spirit Divine, all wisdom and goodness possessing, Surrounded by Holy Immortals, the givers of bounty and blessing, We joy in the works of His hands, His truth and His power confessing.
"Perhaps we shall have a campaign against that dog-brother Lucifer, and Saint Michael and Saint Wenceslaus will lead us under the Lord Jesus; and our Lady of Yasna Gora will look on when we come back victorious!" And so they talked on until it was time to set the old man down, and Stanislaus mounted again to catch up with his party, which had gone ahead. "With God!" cried the old man.
Burnouf, laying aside tradition as found in Anquetil's translation, consulted it as found in a much older and purer form, in a Sanscrit translation of the Yasna made in the fifteenth century by the Parsi Neriosengh in accordance with the old Pahlavi version.
Then he began the ancient chant of the Yasna, and the voices of his companions joined in the hymn to Ahura-Mazda: We worship the Spirit Divine, all wisdom and goodness possessing, Surrounded by Holy Immortals, the givers of bounty and blessing; We joy in the work of His hands, His truth and His power confessing.
"But after the death of Shahryar, in 825-26, Maziyar Ibn Qaren contested the kingdom with his son Shapur and in alliance with the Moslems invaded Mount Sherwin, captured the sons of Shahryar and put them to death. "As regards the Avesta expression Ragha Zarathushtrish in the Yasna 9, 18, it refers to political conditions of a much anterior age not yet reached by our historical investigations."