Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/315

Rh The recital of the sacred formulas on the deathbed of man helps his soul when it leaves the tenement of the body. Life ends in death and dust. It sleeps on earth to wake in heaven. Bodily death liberates the soul for a higher life. This period of the separation of the body and soul is momentous; it is full of fear and distress. In its utter bewilderment the soul seeks help. The recital of a single Ashem Vohu, pronounced by a man at the last moments of his life, we are told, is worth the entire zone inhabited by man, and does him incalculable good.

From this world to that which is beyond. The twofold Gathic division of the universe into the astvant, 'corporeal,' and manahya, 'spiritual,' is maintained throughout all the Younger Avestan texts. One frequently meets with the expressions, 'both the worlds,' 'this and the next world,' 'this world which is corporeal, and the next which is spiritual,' 'the perishable and the imperishable,' and the like. Man stands on the borderland between the material and spiritual worlds. In the world of the living he lives a short span of life. Here he either works for the realization of the great ideals that Ahura Mazda has set up for him, and triumphs; or he falls away from them, and fails. In the world of the dead, Ahura Mazda rewards men for having kept his commands, but visits with retribution all those that have disregarded his bidding.

Heaven and hell are in the Younger Avesta no longer conditions of man's being, as they were in the Gathas, but are actual places located in space. The process reaches its consummation in the Pahlavi works, but the beginning is already made.

All souls dwell three nights on earth after death. At the dissolution of the body, the soul is freed from its bodily prison. The journey towards the next world does not, however, begin immediately after death, for the separation of the soul from the body takes place by slow degrees. It requires full three days and nights before the last vestige of the earthly bondage perishes. The Jews likewise believed that the soul fluttered in the neighbourhood of the body for three days. The past flashes upon the soul and it recounts the acts done during its life. It takes its seat near the spot where the head of the deceased rested before the corpse was removed to the Tower of Silence. If the soul