ommunity was required to be agricultural; and either as
proprietor, as farmer, or as laboring man, each Zoroastrian was bound to
"further the works of life" by advancing tillage.

The purity which was required of the Zoroastrian was of two kinds, moral
and legal, Moral purity comprised all that Christianity includes
under it--truth, justice, chastity, and general sinlessness. It was
coextensive with the whole sphere of human activity, embracing not only
words and acts, but even the secret thoughts of the heart. Legal purity
was to be obtained only by the observance of a multitude of trifling
ceremonies and the abstinence from ten thousand acts in their nature
wholly indifferent. Especially, everything was to be avoided which
could be thought to pollute the four elements--all of them sacred to the
Zoroastrian of Sassanian times--fire, water, earth, and air.

Man's struggle after holiness and purity was sustained in the
Zoroastrian system by the confident hope of a futurity of happiness.
It was taught that the soul of man was immortal, and would continue to
possess for ever a separate conscious existence. Immediately after death
the spirits of both good and bad had to proceed along an appointed path
to "the bridge of the gatherer" (_chinvat peretu_). This was a narrow
road conducting to heaven or paradise, over which the souls of the pious
alone could pass, while the wicked fell from it into the gulf below,
where they found themselves in the place of punishment. The steps of
the good were guided and supported by the angel Serosh--the "happy,
well-formed, swift, tall Serosh"--who conducted them across the
difficult passage into the heavenly region. There Bahman, rising from
his throne, greeted them on their entrance with the salutation, "Happy
thou who art come here to us from the mortality to the immortality!"
Then they proceeded joyfully onward to the presence of Ormazd, to the
immortal saints, to the golden throne, to paradise. As for the wicked,
when they fell into the gulf, they found themselves in outer darkness,
in the kingdom of Ahriman, where they were forced to remain and to feed
on poisoned banquets.

The priests of the Zoroastrians, from a time not long subsequent to
Darius Hystaspis, were the Magi. This tribe, or caste, originally
perhaps external to Zoroastrianism, had come to be recognized as a true
priestly order; and was intrusted by the Sassanian princes with the
whole control and direction of the relig