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 the remaining portion of the Yaçna, on a much later stage of the growing creed. So many new divinities, or at any rate, objects of reverential addresses, now enter upon the scene, that we almost lose sight of Ahura-Mazda in the throng of his attendants. We seem to be some ages away from the days when Zarathustra bade his hearers choose between the one true God and the multitude of false gods worshiped by his enemies. Ahura-Mazda is safely enthroned, and Zarathustra shines out gloriously as his prophet; but Zarathustra's creed is overloaded with elements of which he himself knew nothing. The first chapter of the Yaçna, a liturgical prayer, brings these elements conspicuously before us. It is an invocation and celebration of a great variety of powers belonging to what is termed the good creation, or the world of virtuous beings and good things, as opposed to the malicious beings and bad things who form the realm of evil. Thus it opens:—

"I invoke and I celebrate the creator Ahura-Mazda, luminous, resplendent, very great and very good, very perfect and very energetic, very intelligent and very beautiful, eminent in purity, who possesses the excellent knowledge, the source of pleasure; him who has created us, who has formed us, who has nourished us, the most accomplished of intelligent beings."

Every verse, until we approach the end, commences with the same formula:—"I invoke and I celebrate;" or, as Spiegel translates it, "I invite and announce it;" the sole difference is in the beings invoked. Many of these are powers of more or less eminence in the Parsee spiritual hierarchy, but it would be going beyond our object here to enumerate their names and specify their attributes, To a large proportion of them the epithets "pure, lord of purity," are added, while some are dignified with