hristian era.*** The text
is composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by no
means equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it with
sufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult of
Iran, such as they were under the Achaemenids, and perhaps even under the
hegemony of the Medes.

* Tradition speaks simply of a King Valkash, without
specifying which of the four kings named Vologesus is
intended. James Darmesteter has given good reasons for
believing that this Valkash is Vologesus I. (50-75 A.D.),
the contemporary of Nero.

** This is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the
Dinkart.

*** Darmesteter declares that ancient Zoroastrianism is, in
its main lines, the religion of the Median Magi, even though
he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of
the Avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it
Greek, Jewish, and Christian elements.

It is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period of
development. The doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship,
loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by laws
prescribing minute details of ritual,* which were only put in practice
by priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of the
faithful.

* Renan defined the Avesta as "the Code of a very small
religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and
strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the
great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters,
professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law
so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred
book of this description, the Greeks must have mentioned
it."

The primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly:
but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of
natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the
ancient nations of Western Asia--the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun,
water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow
and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent
or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and
reduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of a
powerful priesthood. Families consecrated to the service of the altar
had