90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



spoken of as a king rich in herds and a man of renown in Air- 

 yana-Vaejo, the Eden of the race. It was this exalted personage 

 whom Ahuramazda is said to have first chosen to be the promul- 

 gator of the true faith. But Yima, the son of Vivanghant (a 

 name derived perhaps from vangli, 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 in- 

 close 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 "cut- 

 ting the cow"; and in the Vedic hymns the phrase "cut the 

 cow " is equivalent to " make fertile the earth." " The soul of the 

 cow " (geush urvd) means the spirit of the earth or the animating 

 energy of Nature. In the Pahlavi translation of this passage 

 s'ufra is rendered by suldk-homand, " having holes " or " sieve," 

 and might therefore correspond to the Sanskrit s'urpa 3 " winnow- 

 ing tray." The Pahlavi for plowshare is sulak, and the close re- 

 semblance of this word to sulak, " hole," modern Persian suldkJi 

 and surdkh, 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, accord- 

 ing 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 



