he coming of
a messiah, his own son, Coshyos--the delayed fruit of an immaculate
hymen that is not to be fecund until the end of time--but who, at the
consummation of the ages, will rejuvenate the world, affranchise it
from death, vanquish Ahriman, terminate the struggle between good and
evil, purify hell and fill it full with glory. Then the dead shall
rise and immortality be universal.[11]

[Footnote 11: Zamyad Yasht. xix. 89 _sq._]

Zoroaster is obviously mythical. The Buddha is also. But precisely as
the Buddhist scriptures exist, so also do the Zoroastrian. They do
more. Frequently they enlighten, occasionally they exalt. Written in
gold on perfumed leather, the original edition, limited to two copies,
was so sacred that it was sullied if seen. Burned with the palace of
Persepolis--which Alexander, the Great Sinner, in a drunken orgy,
destroyed--only fragments of the fargards remain. These tell of
creation, effected in six epochs, and of a _pairi-daeza_.

Delitzsch voluminously asked: _Wo lag das Paradies?_ There it is.
There is the primal paradise. In it Ormuzd put Mashya, the first man,
and Mashyana, the first woman, whom Ahriman, in the form of a serpent,
seduced. Thereafter ensued the struggle in which all have or will
participate, one that, extending beyond the limits of the visible
world, arrays seasons and spirits and the senses of man in a conflict
of good and evil that can end only when, from the depths of the dawn,
radiant in the vermillion sky, Coshyos, hero of the resurrection,
triumphantly appears.

The parallel between this romance and subsequent poetry is curious. In
Chaldea, before the fargards were, the story of Creation, of Eden, and
of the fall had been told. In Egypt, before the _Avesta_ was written,
the resurrection and the life were known. Similar legends and
prospects may or may not represent an autonomous development of
Iranian thought. The successors of the problematic Zarathrustra, the
line of magi who wrote and taught in his name, may have gathered the
tales and theories elsewhere. In the creed which they instituted there
is a trinity. India had one, Egypt another, Babylonia a third.
Babylonia had even three of them. But in Mithra, Iran had a redeemer
that no other creed possessed. In Coshyos was a saviour, virgin born,
who nowhere else was imagined. In Mara, Buddhism had a Satan. The
Persian Ahriman is Satan himself. Babylon had angels and cherubs. In
Iran there were guardian angels