e movement closely resembles the struggle of the Hebrew
prophets against the worship of the Canaanite Baals and other foreign
gods. In both cases there is evidence going to show that popular cults
continued after the leaders of the reform had thrown off the offensive
elements of the old system: the Hebrew people continued to worship
foreign gods long after the great prophets had pronounced against them;
and the official recognition of Ahura Mazda in the Achaemenian
inscriptions[1290] by no means proves that lower forms of worship were
not practiced in Persia by the people.[1291]

+741+. If we ask for the grounds of this recoil from the old gods, we
must doubtless hold that ethical feeling was a powerful motive in the
reform, though economic and other considerations were, doubtless, not
without influence.

Since Ahura Mazda is ethically good and his worship ethically pure,
there is clearly in its origin hostility to low modes of worship and to
materialistic ideas. Possibly also we have here a struggle of a clan for
the recognition of its own god, as among the Israelites the Yahweh party
represented exclusive devotion to the old national god. If there was
such a clan or party in Persia, it is obvious that it produced men of
high intelligence and great moral and organizing power, and all that we
know of the religious history leads us to suppose that the establishment
of the supremacy of Ahura Mazda was the result of a long development.

+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. It is in favor of this identification that the qualities of the
two deities are the same, and there is also the noteworthy fact that
Ahura Mazda is coupled with Mithra as Varuna is coupled with Mitra;
according to this view the Mazdean deity was originally the god of the
sky, by whose side naturally stands the sun. In a case like this,
involving a general agreement between two systems of thought, there are
two possible explanations of the relation between them: it may be
supposed that one borrowed from the other (in the present case the
borrowing would be on the part of the Persians); or the explanation may
be that the two communities developed original material along the same
general lines, though with local differences. In the absence of
historical data it is perhaps impossible to say which of these
explanations is to be preferred. There is, h