Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/99

Rh of a higher law of social life and a superior form of civilization was genetically connected—namely, the sacred duty of fostering and gladdening the spirit of the earth (personified as the goddess or angel Armaiti), by tilling the soil and making it fruitful. Husbandry is holiness to the Lord. In the third fargard of the Vendidâd this conception of agriculture as a sacred calling is particularly enlarged upon and enforced. The earth is there compared to a beautiful woman, who fails to fulfill her noblest functions so long as she remains virgin and barren. "He who cultivates barley cultivates righteousness, and extends the Mazdayasnian religion as much as though he resisted a thousand demons, made a thousand offerings, or recited a thousand prayers." Indeed, the best way to fight evil spirits is to redeem the waste places which they are supposed to inhabit. The spade and the plow are more effective than magic spells and incantations as means of exorcism. An old Avestan verse, which is quoted in inculcation and encouragement of tillage, and may have been sung by Iranian husbandmen as they sowed the seed and reaped the harvest, celebrates the influence and efficacy of their toil in discomfiting and driving out devils:

 The demons hiss when the barley's green, The demons moan at the thrashing's sound; The demons roar as the grist is ground, The demons flee when the flour is seen."

[These lines have also in the original a sort of rude rhyme or assonance peculiar to ancient poetry:

 Yadh yavô dayât âat daeva gîs'en, Yadh s'udhus dayât âat daêva tus'en; Yadh pistro dayât âat daêva uruthen, Yadh gundô dayât âat daêva perethen." Vendidâd, iii, 105-108, Spiegel's ed.]

If the Mazdayasnian religion, as revealed in the Avesta, illustrated in a remarkable manner the Benedictine maxim laborare est orare, it had no sympathy with the melancholy salutation memento mori, with which the Trappist greets the members of his silent brotherhood. As taught by the Iranian prophet and still practiced by the modern Parsis, it is pre-eminently a religion of thrift, and enjoins as a sacred duty the honest accumulation and hearty enjoyment of wealth. Poverty and asceticism have no place in its list of virtues. Voluntary abstinence from the pleasurable things of the good creation is an act of base ingratitude and treason toward the bountiful giver of them. He who despises them is a contemner of Ahuramazda and an ally of the devas, and contributes thus far to the triumph of evil in the world. The righteous man should not dwell upon the idea of