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The data of information. The materials that we gather for the preparation of the history of the religion that Zarathushtra preached in Ancient Iran come from varied sources. The earliest native records are embodied in the sacred texts in which the prophet and his immediate disciples propounded the new religion. These are furnished by the Avestan literature, which is followed by the Pahlavi and Pazend works and finally by the writings in Modern Persian down to the end of the eighteenth century.

Peoples of diverse faiths and nationalities have, likewise, written about Zoroaster and his teachings from the earliest to the modern times. Greeks and Romans and Christians in the Occident and Indians, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, and Chinese in the Orient have contributed to the fund of information on the subject. Zarathushtra has founded a new religion and we shall begin with the consideration of the materials used in the foundation, which are to be gleaned from the Avesta, the earliest literature produced by Iran.

The Avestan Nasks. Tradition credits Zarathushtra with having written profusely. Pliny states that the great philosopher Hermippus, who flourished in the early part of the third century before the Christian era, had studied some 2,000,000 verses composed by Zoroaster. The Arabic historians Tabari and Masudi state that the Zoroastrian texts were copied on 12,000 cowhides. Parsi tradition speaks of twenty-one Nasks or volumes written by Zarathushtra. These, we are informed, dealt with religion, philosophy, ethics, medicine, and various sciences. King Vishtaspa ordered two archetype copies of these sacred texts and