good animals and plants. The kine's soul receives
sacrifice, and not only the kine's soul which we have met before, but
the souls of "just men and holy women," the Fravashis or spirits not
only of the departed but of the living also, the service of which
continues and increases henceforward in Persian religion. These are
invented deities and have a shadowy character; but gods of more
substance, and more historical reality also came into view at this
point. Zarathustra becomes a god, the hymns themselves are adored;
the Homa-offering reappears, Mithra is often coupled with Ahura,
other old gods creep back and are mentioned along with the moral
abstractions, which also increase in number; in one passage there are
said to be thirty-three objects of worship, a number which also
occurs in India.

[Footnote 3: Yasna Haptanghaiti, _S. B. E._ xxxi. p. 218, _sqq._, and
others following.]

Organisation of the Heavenly Beings.--With all this multiplication
there is, as we shall see, no compromise of the supreme claims of
Ahura. In some of the hymns, all beings, all attributes, all places,
and all times of a sacred nature are heaped indiscriminately
together, in interminable catalogues. But this apparent confusion is
corrected by a remarkable tendency to organisation. The Persian
religion ultimately came to have a very simple and very striking
theology; and that theology was made up by transforming the
abstractions in which the founder dealt, into persons, and arranging
them after the pattern of Oriental society. In the later Yasnas
(liturgies) a figure rises into view which the Gathas do not mention;
that of Angra Mainyu, later Ahriman, the Bad Spirit. In this
counterpart of Spenta Mainyu, the Good Spirit (who is not at first
identified with Ahura, but proceeds from him), the demons obtain a
personal head, and the dualism which appears in all nature and all
human society is thus brought to a personal expression. Ahura and
Ahriman confront each other as the good power and the evil. Both
alike had part in making the world what it is. In every part of the
world, and in all that is felt and done they are at strife. Ahura, to
quote Mr. Darmesteter, is all light, truth, goodness, and knowledge;
Angra Mainyu is all darkness, falsehood, wickedness, and ignorance.
Whatever the good spirit makes, the evil spirit mars; he opposes
every creation of Ahura's with a plague of his own, it is he who
mixed poison with plants, smoke with fire, s