the bosom of a maiden of
noble race, named Dughdova, whom Purushaspa shortly afterwards espoused.

* The Fravashi (for _fravarti_, from _fra-var_, "to support,
nourish"), or the _frohar (feruer)_, is, properly speaking,
the nurse, the genius who nurtures. Many of the practices
relating to the conception and cult of the Fravashis seem to
me to go back to the primitive period of the Iranian
religions.

** The haoma is an _Asclepias Sarcostema Viminalis_.

*** The name signifies "He who has many horses."

Zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the Frohar with the
celestial ray. The evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened,
endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched
one of his agents, named Bouiti, from the country of the far north to
oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula
with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: "The will of
the Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honour
of the river Dareja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment
before, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which puts
evil spirits to flight." Bouiti fled aghast, but his master set to work
upon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to
complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles
propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands
full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity
supplied him. The mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they
regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, "How
shall we succeed in destroying him? For he is the weapon which strikes
down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings." His infancy
and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever
assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each
attack. When he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, Vohumano,
appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of Ahura-mazda,
the Supreme Being. When invited to question the deity, Zoroaster asked,
"Which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?" The
answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his
fellows. He next desired to know the names and functions of the angels,
and the nature and attributes of evil. His instruction ended, he crossed
a mountain of flames, an