THE REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON MITHKAISM. 265 



performed* in reality, as there is reason for believing had 

 formerly beenf customary. The doctrine of metempsychosis 

 was inculcated, and the neophytes were taught their kinship 

 with the lower animals,t in which dwelt spirits that had once 

 perhaps inhabited human bodies and might do so again. Here 

 we are forcibly reminded of the Hindu doctrine as taught, e.g., 

 by Manu§ in his Dliarmamstra. Of the three classes into 

 which the Mithraic hierophants were divided, the highest 

 abstained altogether on this account from killing and eating 

 animals, the second class ate animal food but would not slay 

 any tame animal, while the third class abstained from certain 

 kinds of fleshj] 



Jeromeli informs us that the initiate was at first admitted to 

 the lowest of seven** grades or orders, that of corax (Kopa^), 

 From that he passed to the order called cryphius {Kpv(f)Lo^) and 

 then successively became a miles, a leo, a Ferses, a Heliodromus 



* Lampridius, Commodus, cap. ix. : " Sacra Mithriaca homicidio vero 

 polluit, quum ilh'c aliquid ad speciem timoris vel dici vel fingi 

 soleat." 



t Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, p. 161. 

 Is it possible to derive this Mithraic habit of human sacrifice from an 

 old Persian legend (afterwards revived by Mant, though repudiated by 

 the Zoroastrians) ? We find the legend in Sikand Gumdnik Vijdr, 

 cap. xvi, 10-20 (translated in Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiv, 

 pp. 243, 244), where it is said that Mant taught that " the sky is from the 

 skin, the earth from the fiesh, the mountains from the bones, and the 

 trees from the hair of the demon Kunt " [probably the Kuiida of Vend, xi, 

 28, 36 : xix, 138, the Kundak of BAnd. xxviii, 42] . . . "And Kunt 

 is the commander of the army of Aharman, who, to be liberated hy his 

 nails from the divinity Adharmazd, in the first conflict swallowed the 

 light ; and in the second conflict the demon Kunt was captured by them, 

 together with many demons. And it is in binding the demon Kunt on 

 the [celestial] sphere that he is killed, and these magnificent creatures are 

 preserved from him and formed." The first part of this story reminds us of 

 the Hindd myth of the slaughter of Purusha and the Norse account of 

 the killing of the giant Ymir. But much the same story is found in 

 China about Pwan K'li, and in ancient Babylonia it was told regarding 

 Ti^mat {vide the " Creation Tablets"). 



X Porphyry, De Abstinentia, Lib. iv, cap. 16, quoted in note t, p. 262, 

 supra. 



§ Especially in Dharmasdstra, Book xii. 



II Porphyry, Be Ahstinentia, Lib. iv, cap. 16. 



IT Jerome, Ep. 107, § 2. 



It is to the ceremonies introductory to admissions to these that 

 Modern Mythologists refer when they speak of "seven Mithraic 

 sacraments" 



S 2 



