136 



MRS. WALTER MAUNDER, ON ASTRONOMICAL 



and the Bundahis elaborates the same proportion of the seasons 

 in its XXVth chapter. But this proportion of the winter to 

 summer does hold good for the region within the Arctic Circle ; 

 the records of ISTansen and Peary will bear me out here. And 

 the Persians, as I hope I have made clear, could neither guess 

 nor calculate the climatic conditions of regions so far removed 

 from them in latitude. Since then, they could neither imagine 

 nor calculate the conditions of the polar regions : because they 

 had themselves no experience of them : it must be a true record 

 that has been handed down to them from their remote ancestors, 

 and Iran-Ve*?, the first and best of the good lands of Ahura 

 Mazda, was a real land, placed somewhere between the latitudes 

 of 67° and 90° north. 



But this is not the only information that we are given in the 

 Venclidacl about Iran-Ve^. In the Second Fargard, Zarathustra 

 asked Ahura Mazda : — 



" Who was the first mortal before myself, Zarathustra, with 

 whom thou, Ahura Mazda, didst converse 1 And Ahura Mazda 

 answered : 



" The fair Yima, the great Shepherd .... unto him, 0 

 Zarathustra, I, Ahura Mazda, spake, saying : ' Well, fair Yima, 

 son of Vivanghat, be thou the preacher and the bearer of my 

 law ! ' " 



This Yima is the Yama of the Yedas ; his name and parentage 

 are the same ; he himself therefore dates from before the fission 

 of the Japheticf race into Iranian and Indian ; he is among 

 the common ancestors of both. His father's name is Vivanghat 



* This is the form in which the name of this great teacher is given in 

 the Avesta, and scholars interpret it as meaning "old white camel. 1 ' 

 The Greeks wrote the name Zoroaster, and explained it as meaning 

 " living star." The later Persian writers contract it to Zaratust or 

 Zirdaust. I am not concerned in this paper with the tenets of 

 Zoroastrianisin, and where these differed from the Magianisin which 

 preceded his mission. Therefore when I speak of Magian doctrines, I 

 am using the term loosely, not as distinguishing between the doctrine of 

 Zoroaster and that which preceded it. I refer to the Magi, originally 

 a Median tribe, as representing the priestly caste, just as we speak of 

 the Chaldeans, sometimes as a distinct nation, sometimes as the priestly 

 caste of Babylon. Just as Zaratust is a later form of Zarathustra, so 

 lran-Ve^/ is a later form of the Avestan Airyano Vae^o. 



t Throughout this paper, I use the terms "Japhetic," "Semitic" and 

 " Hamitic," simply as a rough ethnological division. I am debarred 

 from using the term "Aryan " in any wide sense, since this is the very 

 name that the ancient Persians arrogated to their own race peculiarly. 



