igious standpoint the motive is clear. But though the
Persian forces could not uphold their light in Greece, higher forces
projected it far beyond, to the remote north, to a south that was
still remoter.

Originally the light was Vedic. It was identical with that of Agni, of
Indra and of Varuna. But while these, without subsidence, passed,
absorbed by Brahm, the light of Iran, deflecting, persisted, and so
potently that it lit the Teutonic sky, glows still in Christendom,
after refracting perhaps in Inca temples. Its revelation is due to
Zarathrustra.

Zarathrustra, commonly written Zoroaster, is a name translatable into
"star of gold" and also into "keeper of old camels." Probably it was
first employed to designate an imaginary prophet, and then a series of
spiritual though actual successors by whom, in the course of
centuries, the _Avesta_ was evolved. Otherwise Zarathrustra and Gotama
are brothers in Brahmanaspati. Both had virgin mothers. In the lives
of both miracles are common. The advent of Zarathrustra was accounted
the ruin of demons. When he was born he laughed aloud. As a child he
slept in flames. As a man he walked on water. Before prodigies such as
these fiends fell like autumn leaves. Hence, on the part of the devil,
an attempt to seduce him from the divine. Mairya, the demon of death,
offered him, as Mara offered Gotama, as Satan offered Jesus, the
empire of the earth. Zarathrustra rebuked the devil first with stones,
then with pious words. From him, as from the Buddha and the Christ,
abashed the tempter retreated.[9]

[Footnote 9: Darmestetter: Ormazd et Ahriman.]

That victory over evil, the Parsis to-day regard as the capital event
in the history of the world. It was the immediate prelude to the
revelation of the Law which Ormuzd vouchsafed to his prophet.

The revelation occurred on a mountain, in the course of conversations,
during which Zarathrustra questioned and Ormuzd, in the voice of
heaven, replied. So was the Law proclaimed in India. There Mithra and
Varuna sang it through the sky.[10] The expression is notable, for the
song of the sky is thunder and the theophany that of Sinai. There is
another _rapprochement_ in Babylonian lore and a third in the _Eddas_,
where it is related that to Sigurd the secret of the runes was sung.

[Footnote 10: Rig-Veda, i. 151.]

Meanwhile, the revelation completed and proclaimed, Zarathrustra died
as miraculously as he was born, foretelling, as he went, t