Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/202

Rh Bodily purity contributes to righteousness. Next to life the second best good for man is purity. This is the dictum of the Gathas, and it is most consistently developed throughout the entire subsequent literature. It is the favourite theme on which the Zoroastrian theologians are never tired of expatiating. Purity of body is the most salient feature in the life of a Zoroastrian. It is rated higher than anything else. The problem of cleanness and uncleanness, purity and impurity, has evoked an extensive literature. The tenets of the faith in this respect have been worked out into a science of health. Bodily purity is indispensable to purity of mind. Cleanliness of body is an essential requisite for saintliness. The clean in body find it easy to be pure in mind, and the pure in heart have just a step to take to be holy in spirit.

Asha Vahishta comes to be regarded as the healing spirit of bodily diseases. As the many kinds of healers restore bodily health by herbs and drugs, and remove the tumours and cancers by knife and implements, so there are healers that heal through righteousness or by the holy spell. We shall speak later on, in its proper place, of the art of healing by means of the holy spell. The Yasht which receives its name after Asha Vahishta is in fact mostly consecrated to Asha Vahishta's associate Airyaman, the guardian genius of human health. Of all the healers, the Avestan texts announce, the spiritual healer is the best one; it is he that heals the faithful through his own righteousness by means of the utterance of the holy spell.

Asha Vahishta's relation to fire. We have seen in the Gathas Asha's dual association with the universal order prevailing everywhere and fire. We find these early Zoroastrian conceptions reflected in the writings of the Greek philosophers of the period. Heraclitus, who flourished at Ephesus, near the end of the sixth century, postulates fire as the first principle from which everything that exists has come. It is working as reason or Logos and reveals the stable, divine law in the eternal flow of things in the universe. Heraclitus left a deep impression on Greek philosophy and his conceptions appear in later thinkers.

In the Avestan liturgy Asha Vahishta is invoked together