192 



MRS. WALTER MAUNDER, ON ASTRONOMICAL 



when these are below the horizon. The heavens move in one 

 piece, and Haptok-ring, above the horizon always, is an index 

 to the revolution of the whole sphere. 



But I beg you to bear in mind these Iranian ideas that, not 

 only the primeval " best land of all " with its " enclosure," but 

 also heaven and hell are both in the extreme north, and that 

 the seven Plough stars rule there in the heavens above. 



The proverb lias it : " There is more life in a single grain of 

 wheat than in a whole bushel of chaff " ; and though my grain 

 of wheat is very small, it has real life in it. And the reality is 

 this : sometime in the long past a hero of the Japhetic branch of 

 the human family did establish his encampment somewhere 

 within the polar regions, and so described the peculiar polar con- 

 ditions of summer and winter, of day and night, that it pre- 

 cludes their being the product of imagination. From that 

 encampment in the far north the Indian and Iranian branches 

 (not yet separated) of the Japhetic family came south, but the 

 memory of the lost good land in the far north remained with 

 the Iranians, and gave rise to their peculiar and inconsistent 

 ideas of the location of heaven and hell. 



And these traditions are Japhetic, and Japhetic only. When 

 Zarathustra, or someone in Zarathustra's name, sang the Far- 

 gards, he was neither inventing his tale nor borrowing it from 

 Assyria, Babylon, Israel, or Egypt. These traditions came 

 through the family of Japhet, not from those of Sliem or Ham. 

 Neither of these two great families has traditions that I know 

 of, which point back to a home within the polar regions. 



There is yet another tradition of a particular latitude in that 

 trek from the far north before the Iranians entered known 

 lands. In the XXVth chapter of the Bundahi-s it says : 



" The summer day is as much as two of the shortest winter days, 

 and the winter night is as much as two of the shortest summer 

 nights. The summer day is twelve Hasars, the night six Hasars, 

 the winter night is twelve Hasars, the day six; a Hasar being a, 

 measure of time and, in like manner, of land." 



This relation of day to night at the solstices defines the latitude 

 with some particularity, but it is a latitude farther north than 

 any Iranian land, farther north than Sogdiana, the second of 

 the "good lands." The man who recorded this astronomical 

 relation must have lived as far north as 49° latitude ; he must 

 have lived before the Iranian trek had reached Sogdiana ; 

 perhaps it may represent the southern limit of Yim's migrations. 

 But this tradition of the relation of day to night in north lati- 



