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The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns, prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated by Sir William Jones.
"He therefore is a holy man," says Ormuzd in the Zend-avesta, "who has built a dwelling on the earth, in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and herds; he who makes the earth produce barley, he who cultivates the fruits of the soil, cultivates purity; he advances the law of Ahura Mazda as much as if he had offered a hundred sacrifices."
A Mohammedan must have rejected the law of Moses, and a disciple of Zoroaster would have turned from all, to the teaching of his Zend-Avesta. The universal law of nature, which the authors of the old charges have properly called the moral, is therefore the only law suited in every respect to be adopted as the Masonic code. Mackeys' Textbook, Masonic Jurisprudence.
To use his own words: 'My mind had no rest, and my heart felt itself drawn to the sages of Mongolia or to the hermits on Lebanon; I longed for interviews with the Llámas of Tibet or with the pádris of Portugal, and I would gladly sit with the priests of the Pársís and the learned of the Zend-ávestá. I was sick of the learned of my own land.
It is in the Zend-Avesta, primal Japhetic utterance. It vivified that subtile Egyptian symbolism. The early Greeks and the Mystics of Alexandria knew it.
For the first time in the history of Europe, Christian people have the knowledge by which they can correct their ideas about the Bible, in what may be called a comparative science of Bibliolatry. Any one can examine for himself the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta and the other Bibles of humanity. Every one can readily form a just judgment of these Bibles.
I: Yes, they are if compared with certain minor poets, but they are not great if compared with the popular poetry of India or Greece. Mahabarata, the Koran, and Zend-Avesta, and the Bible, are products of collective efforts therefore they are superior to every personal effort. He: Do you not appreciate the great economists and what they did for the household, and common-wealth in general?
"May the good and heroic and bountiful souls of the saints come here," reads "A Prayer for a Dwelling," from the ZEND-AVESTA, fastened on one of the hermitage doors, "and may they go hand in hand with us, giving the healing virtues of their blessed gifts as widespread as the earth, as far-flung as the rivers, as high-reaching as the sun, for the furtherance of better men, for the increase of abundance and glory.
But for that very cause, the Scriptures were not left inaccessible to the mass of mankind, like the old Pehlevi liturgies of the Zend-avesta, or the old Sanscrit Vedas, in an obsolete and hieratic tongue, but were translated into, and continued in, the then all but world-wide Hellenic speech, which was to the ancient world what French is to the modern.
Compare also the hints in Münsterberg's Grundzüge der Psychologie, chap, xv; those in my own Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W. McDougall's Physiological Psychology, chap. vii. Compare Zend-Avesta, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165 ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; Die Tagesansicht, etc., chap, v, § 6; and chap. xv.
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