248 THE EEV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL^ D.D.^ ON MITHEAISM. 



saitli : ' May Auramazda and the god Mithra protect me 

 and this province.' " Artaxerxes Mnemon associates Anahita 

 (Anahata) with the other two deities, and prays thus: " May* 

 Auramazda, Anahata, and Mithra protect me." This is the 

 earliest inscription known to us in which Anahita takes her 

 place beside Mithra. In the much more fully developed 

 polytlieism of most of the Avesta, many other deities are 

 worsliipped with him. It was easy therefore for Mithraism to 

 associate with this god the deities of the lands to which it 

 afterwards spread towards the West. 



Here, however, we must notice one of the great differencesf 

 between Avestic and Western Mithraism. Zoroastrianism 

 taught that between the Good and the Evil Principle (Ahura 

 Mazda and Anro Mainyus) there raged a life and death struggle, 

 that tlie latter should at all costs be opposed, that neither 

 AhrimanI nor any of his evil daevas should be worshipped. 



baga patuv uta imam daiiyum (Spiegel, Die Altpersisclien Keilinschriften 



* Auramazda Anahata uta Mithra mam patuv (restored, op. cit.., p. 68). 



t The differences seem to have been many and great, so much so that 

 we can accept only with much hesitation the teaching of the Avesta as 

 representing in any way what was heki by Western Mithraists. For 

 example, regarding Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas, the Bull, 

 the kind of sacrifices used, the state of the spirits of the dead, the disposal 

 of dead bodies, eschatology, sexual morality, Ahriman and his allies, and 

 many other subjects, the divergence of Western Mithraism from the 

 teaching of the Avesta must have been great and wide. 



Professor Hermann Oldenberg {Die Iranische Religion, p. 85 of Die 

 Orientalischen Religionen, 1906) says : " Wenn durch die Weiten des 

 romischen Keichs der Mysterienkuit, der sich an den Namen des Mithra 

 knii])fte, wenn Manis tiefsinnige Lelire von der Lauterung des Lichts 

 aus dem Kerker der Finsternis in Orient und Okzident unberechenbaren 

 Erfolgen nah zu kommen schien, so sind das nicht mehr Siege des 

 Mazdaglaubens gewesen. Die volkerbezwingende Genialitat der Welt- 

 religionen war diesen nicht eigen." That is to say, the religion had to 

 admit much lower and debasing elements to enter it before it could enter 

 on the conquest of the world. 



X It may be well to give the various forms which the names of the 

 ■Grood and Evil Principles assumed in course of time and in different 

 languages. 



The Good. The Evil. 



Avesta ... ... Ahura Mazda ... ... Anro Mainyus. 



Achaemenian Inscr. Auramazda ... ... (not found). 



Pahlavl ... ... Ailharmazd ... ... Aharman. 



■Old Pers H6rmazd... Ahriman. 



Mod. Pers. ... Ormazd ... ... ... Ahraman, Ahriman 



Ahran, etc. 



Oreek ... ... 'Qpojucit^^]<s ... ... ' Apeijudvio^. 



