Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/102

90 spoken of as a king rich in herds and a man of renown in Airyana-Vaêjô, the Eden of the race. It was this exalted personage whom Ahuramazda is said to have first chosen to be the promulgator of the true faith. But Yima, the son of Vivanghañt (a name derived perhaps from vangh, to dwell or abide, and meaning settler or dweller in fixed habitations), excused himself, on the plea of unfitness for the prophetic office. He may have been, like Moses, a man of deeds rather than of words, "slow of speech and of a slow tongue." Then said Ahuramazda, "If thou wilt not be the bearer and herald of the faith, then shalt thou inclose my habitations and become the protector and preserver of my settlements." Thereupon he gave him a golden plowshare and a goad decorated with gold as insignia of his royal office. [The word s'ufra I prefer to translate "plowshare" rather than "sword" with Haug, or "lance" with Spiegel. It means literally a cutting instrument. In the Avesta, plowing is called "cutting the cow"; and in the Vedic hymns the phrase "cut the cow" is equivalent to "make fertile the earth." "The soul of the cow" (gêush urvâ) means the spirit of the earth or the animating energy of Nature. In the Pahlavi translation of this passage s'ufra is rendered by sûlâk-homand, "having holes" or "sieve," and might therefore correspond to the Sanskrit s'ûrpa, "winnowing tray." The Pahlavi for plowshare is sûlâk, and the close resemblance of this word to sûlâk, "hole," modern Persian sûlâkh and sûrâkh, may have led to a confusion and interchange of terms, both of which involve the idea of piercing or perforating.]

And Yima bore sway three hundred years; and the land "was filled with cattle, oxen, men, dogs, birds, and red blazing fires," until there was no more room for them therein. Then Yima went southward (literally, "toward the stars on the noonday path of the sun"), and, invoking the bounteous Armaiti, touched the earth with the golden plowshare and pierced it with the goad; and, in obedience to his behest, the earth expanded and became one third larger than before. This process he repeated, according to the Zand, after six hundred years and again after nine hundred years, with a constantly increasing extension of the earth, which finally became about thrice its original size, and thus afforded ample space for men and kine.

It is not difficult to discover the meaning of this legend. It is the mythical statement of the effect of agriculture in practically enlarging the surface of the earth by increasing its capacity for supporting animal life, and thus rendering it possible for a greater number of persons to subsist on the products of the same area of soil. A tract of country which would furnish precarious food for a single hunter, or pasturage for a score of herdsmen, would, even under rude tillage, easily supply sustenance for a