of themselves and of their families
cause this liberation: all the rest must return to Dutsakh."22
Rhode thinks this was a part of the old Persian faith, and the
source of

18 Ibid. s. 127.

19 Ibid. ss. 248-252. Vendidad, Fargard XIX.

20 Kleuker, band i. ss. xxxi. xxxv.

21 Spiegel, Vendidad, ss. 207, 229, 233, 250.

22 Kleuker, band ii. s. 173.

the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.23 But, whether so or
not, it is certain that the Zoroastrians regarded the whole
residence of the departed souls in hell as temporary.

The duration of the present order of the world was fixed at twelve
thousand years, divided into four equal epochs. In the first three
thousand years, Ormuzd creates and reigns triumphantly over his
empire. Through the next cycle, Ahriman is constructing and
carrying on his hostile works. The third epoch is occupied with a
drawn battle between the upper and lower kings and their
adherents. During the fourth period, Ahriman is to be victorious,
and a state of things inconceivably dreadful is to prevail. The
brightness of all clear things will be shrouded, the happiness of
all joyful creatures be destroyed, innocence disappear, religion
be scoffed from the world, and crime, horror, and war be rampant.
Famine will spread, pests and plagues stalk over the earth, and
showers of black rain fall. But at last Ormuzd will rise in his
might and put an end to these awful scenes. He will send on earth
a savior. Sosiosch, to deliver mankind, to wind up the final
period of time, and to bring the arch enemy to judgment. At the
sound of the voice of Sosiosch the dead will come forth. Good,
bad, indifferent, all alike will rise, each in his order.
Kaiomorts, the original single ancestor of men, will be the
firstling. Next, Meschia and Meschiane, the primal parent pair,
will appear. And then the whole multitudinous family of mankind
will throng up. The genii of the elements will render up the
sacred materials intrusted to them, and rebuild the decomposed
bodies. Each soul will recognise, and hasten to reoccupy, its old
tenement of flesh, now renewed, improved, immortalized. Former
acquaintances will then know each other. "Behold, my father! my
mother! my brother! my wife! they shall exclaim." 24

In this exposition we have following the guidance of Du Perron,
Foucher, Kleuker, J. G. Muller, and other early scholars in this
field attributed the doctrine of a general and bodily resurrection
of the dead to