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MRS. WALTER MAUNDER, ON ASTRONOMICAL 



polar regions, no record has come down to us ; but there he was 

 most assuredly, some thousands of years ago, at a date before 

 the Iranian people split off from their Indian brothers. From 

 that far northern spot, he migrated south, and the record of the 

 peculiar astronomical conditions of his home in the far north 

 were embodied in the first two Fargards of the Vendidad, which 

 took its present form probably about the time of Darius 

 Hystaspis. The southern limit of his migrations was probably 

 to the north of Sogdiana, which lies between the Sir and Amu 

 Darias, rivers Mowing westward into the Aral Sea. 



Forgive me if I labour this point, for it is of the utmost 

 importance. We have in these two Fargards two independent 

 astronomical conditions recorded, conditions that hold good 

 only for the polar regions, conditions which, in that early state 

 of society, it was not possible for the rude dwellers in temperate 

 and tropical zones to have inferred from their own experiences. 

 Here we have preserved in these Fargards something that was by 

 no means mythical ; actual men must have penetrated far towards 

 the pole, and have for themselves observed the two months 

 summer and the ten months winter, the six months day and 

 the six months night, which prevailed there and nowhere else, 

 and have handed them down to their posterity. No doubt, as 

 the tradition was handed down from generation to generation, 

 it received elaboration and ornament, but its nucleus was an 

 actual fact of experience by real men, and was preserved 

 unaltered. But by Zarathirstra's time, upon the actual Iran- 

 Yeg, " the best of the good lands," not one alone but two or 

 more thousands of tierce, foul winters had fallen : it was buried 

 under snow and ice ; no danger now that " the whole living 

 world would invade the Airyana Yae^/o.' : Nevertheless, men 

 remembered that it was in the direction of Ataropatakan, that 

 is, towards the north. Yim's enclosure was the abode of t lie 

 righteous, and since obviously the righteous in the flesh were 

 not living there, they must be the righteous dead. Yim's 

 enclosure became a heaven ; it was in the heavens, — in the 

 northern heavens. 



Xow the Magi would not, of themselves, have conceived that 

 the northern heavens were the abode of the righteous, for the 

 north, to them, was essentially evil, the home of the wicked 

 Daevas, in other words, hell. One of the later writers, 

 Manuskihar, is very explicit : 



"Three places, collectively, are called hell, which is northerly, 

 descending, and underneath this earth, even unto the utmost 



