2 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. yol. 61. 



the north, and the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean in the south, 

 surrounded on all sides by high mountain ranges, with a great salt 

 desert in the center. 



There are few authentic data about Zoroaster and his life. Con- 

 cei-ning the age in which he lived there is wide diversity. Greek 

 writers assigned him dates ranging between 6,500 B. C. and 2,000 

 B. C, while some native sources and many modern scholars place him 

 in the seventh century B. C. But the fact that by the sixth century 

 B. C. Zoroastrianism had taken root in Persia, where it did not 

 originate, as evidenced from the Behistun inscription of Darius 

 Hystaspis (521-i85 B. C), which show him a worshiper of Ahura- 

 Mazda, the supreme god of the Zoroastrian faith, and that it was 

 well known to the classical authors from the sixth century on as the 

 established religion at least of Media, would seem to accord best with 

 the date of about 1,000 B. C, assumed by some scholars. The ques- 

 tion of the birthplace of Zoroaster is also a subject of dispute, but 

 western Iran, probably Atropatene, the mountainous district of 

 ancient Media, corresponding nearly to the modern province of 

 Azerbaijan in Persia, is commonly believed to be the region in which 

 he arose. Tradition is quite in accord that Bactria in Eastern Iran, 

 about the modern district of Balkh in Afghanistan, was the stage of 

 Zoroaster's life and work. 



Legend made of Zoroaster, as of other great religious teachers, a 

 glorified and supernatural man. He was born in a miraculous way 

 by immaculate conception, his soul having been kept in the sacred 

 Haoma plant, till God's glory had purified his mother's body. At 

 his birth all creation laughed with joy, while the evil demons fled 

 aghast. When grown he was conducted by an archangel into the 

 presence of God and in glory unutterable received divine revelations. 

 After seven visions he was tempted by Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman), 

 the Evil One, who, foreseeing the discomfiture he and his creatures 

 were to suffer at Zoroaster's hands, first sent demon emissaries to 

 kill him, but Zoroaster routed him by reciting the confession of faith, 

 not to speak of rocks as big as houses that he had ready to pelt the 

 devils with, defiantly declaring his purpose to destroy the fiends' 

 creation. Angra-Mainyu thereupon offered him vast possessions and 

 earthly dominion if he renounced the good religion {daena). But 

 Zoroaster rejects the offer and declares that he will put the devils 

 to flight with the apparatus of vv-orship and the holy words. There- 

 upon the whole host, with cries of terror, precipitately flee down to 

 the world of darkness. 



What with some plausibility can be gathered from Zoroaster's own 

 words and the earliest parts of the Zoroastrian scriptures, is that 

 he was a man of good birth, belonging to the noble family of Spitama, 



