Page:Avesta, the Bible of Zoroaster.djvu/11

 kind, to be preserved. Chapter 3 is filled with the praises of agriculture; while chapter 4 is legal in its tone and several of its passages would find parallels in Leviticus and Numbers. From Vd. 5 to Vd. 12, the treatment of the dead is the main subject considered; it is in these chapters that we see the sources of many of the peculiar customs to-day followed by the Parsis, especially the origin of the 'Towers of Silence.' The three following chapters (Vd. 13-15) devoted to dogs and their treatment are of such character as to call forth the ridicule of Sir William Jones when the Avesta was first discovered and he disbelieved its authenticity. Happily to-day, criticism has led us to a better understanding of such material, and has enabled us to place it in its proper light, when forming judgment on the customs and beliefs of antiquity. Chapters 15-17, and partly 18, are devoted to purifications of several sorts of uncleanness. Parallels to Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are again not far to seek. In Fargard 19 is found a fragment relating to the temptation of Zoroaster by Ahriman, and an announcement of the revelation. The closing sections (chapters 20-22) are chiefly medical.

6. Besides the above books there are a number of frag-ments from lost portions of the Nasks or 'books' of the original Avesta. Some of them are full of interest as they relate to the fate of the soul after death. Here, for example, from the missing Varshtmansar Nask (cf. Dinkart 46. 1) is preserved an old metrical fragment (Frag. 4. 1-3) in praise of the Airyama Ishya Prayer (Ys. 51. 4). The words of the Airyama Prayer shall be intoned by the Saoshyant 'Saviour,' and his glorious attendants at the great day of judgment as a sort of last trump whose notes shall raise the dead again to life; shall banish the Devil, Ahriman, from the earth; and shall restore the world. Ormazd himself says to Zoroaster (Frag. 4- 1-3):


 * 1.
 * The Airyama Ishya, I tell thee
 * Upright, holy Zoroaster,
 * Is the greatest of all prayers.
 * Verily among all prayers
 * It is this one which I gifted
 * With revivifying powers.