yet came to terms.
Mazdeism is not originally a markedly priestly religion; it is
thought that it became so when planted in Media. No doubt there were
germs in the early Iranian religion of a priestly system. Zarathustra
himself was a priest and was favourable to due religious observances.
But it is quite contrary to his spirit that life should be governed
entirely by ritual law. It was in Media that this came to be the
case. The name of Magi, originally perhaps that of a tribe, became in
Media the name of the priesthood, and so furnished an additional
title for Mazdeism. It is to this stage of the religion that the
priestly legislation of the Vendidad, with all its puritanical
regulation of life, is to be ascribed. (The practice of exposing the
bodies of the dead to be devoured by birds of prey is probably of
Scythian origin.) In this period also, remote from the origin of the
religion, we find a new view of Zarathustra himself and of his
revelation. In the earlier sources Zarathustra composes his hymns in
a natural manner; he is not an absolute lawgiver, but depends on
princes for the carrying out of his views. In the later works the
revelation takes place in a series of private interviews between
Ahura and Zarathustra; the prophet puts questions to the god, and the
god dictates in reply sentences which are at once promulgated as
sacred laws. Mazdeism, like other religions, has its wooden age, its
verbal inspiration, and its priestly code.

To trace the lines by which the influence of the religion of Persia
asserted itself in the wider world would be a large enterprise: only
a few indications can be given here. One great service which that
religion did to the world was undoubtedly that it had sympathy with
the Jews, and enabled Jewish monotheism to take a fresh start on its
way to become a religion for mankind. Mazdeism itself had a tinge of
universalism; Zarathustra expected his religion to spread beyond his
own land, and it did spread over all the provinces of Iran. It never
became a world-religion, but it might have done so had it not become
swathed and choked in Magism or had any new movement arisen in it to
assert the supremacy of its purely human over its artificial
elements. But Ahura himself, perhaps, was too abstract and
philosophic a god to inspire missionary ardour; it needed a being
more firmly rooted in history, a god who had done more to prove the
energy and intensity of his nature, and, further, a god