n for the assaults of
the Evil One.9 Ahriman, the enemy of all life, determined to slay
him, and at last accomplished his object; but, as Kaiomorts fell,
from his seed, through the power of Ormuzd, originated Meschia and
Meschiane, male and female, the first human pair, from whom all
our race have descended. They would never have died,10 but
Ahriman, in the guise of a serpent, seduced them, and they sinned
and fell. This account is partly drawn from that later treatise,
the Bundehesh, whose mythological cosmogony reminds us of the
Scandinavian Ymer. But we conceive it to be strictly reliable as a
representation of the Zoroastrian faith in its essential
doctrines; for the earlier documents, the Yasna, the Yeshts, and
the Vendidad, contain the same things in obscure and undeveloped
expressions. They, too, make repeated mention of the mysterious
bull, and of Kaiomorts.11 They invariably represent death as
resulting

9 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band i. anhang 1, s. 263.

10 Ibid. band i. s. 27.

11 Yasna, 24th IIa.

from the hostility of Ahriman. The earliest Avestan account of the
earthly condition of men describes them as living in a garden
which Yima or Jemschid had enclosed at the command of Ormuzd.12
During the golden age of his reign they were free from heat and
cold, sickness and death. "In the garden which Yima made they led
a most beautiful life, and they bore none of the marks which
Ahriman has since made upon men." But Ahriman's envy and hatred
knew no rest until he and his devs had, by their wiles, broken
into this paradise, betrayed Yima and his people into falsehood,
and so, by introducing corruption into their hearts, put an end to
their glorious earthly immortality. This view is set forth in the
opening fargards of the Vendidad; and it has been clearly
illustrated in an elaborate contribution upon the "Old Iranian
Mythology" by Professor Westergaard.13 Death, like all other
evils, was an after effect, thrust into the purely good creation
of Ormuzd by the cunning malice of Ahriman. The Vendidad, at its
commencement, recounts the various products of Ormuzd's beneficent
power, and adds, after each particular, "Thereupon Ahriman, who is
full of death, made an opposition to the same."

According to the Zoroastrian modes of thought, what would have
been the fate of man had Ahriman not existed or not interfered?
Plainly, mankind would have lived on forever in innocence and joy.
They would have been blessed w