Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 4.djvu/108

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Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, and he counter-created Winter, a work of the Daêvas. 21 (81). There are still other lands and countries, beautiful and deep, longing and asking for the good, and bright.

This Fargard may be divided into two parts.

First part (1-20). Ahura Mazda proposes to Yima, the son of Vîvanghat, to receive the law from him and to bring it to men. On his refusal, he bids him keep his creatures and make them prosper. Yima accordingly makes them thrive and increase, keeps death and disease away from them, and three times enlarges the earth, which had become too narrow for its inhabitants.

Second part (21 to the end). On the approach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature, Yima, being advised by Ahura, builds a Vara to keep there the finest representatives of every kind of animals and plants, and they live there a life of perfect happiness.

It is difficult not to acknowledge in the latter legend a Zoroastrian adaptation of the deluge, whether it was borrowed from the Bible or from the Chaldaean mythology. The similitude is so striking that it did not escape the Musulmans, and Maçoudi states that certain authors place the date of the deluge in the time of Gamshêd. There are essential and necessary differences between the two legends, the chief one being that in the monotheistic narration the