THE ZO ROAST R TAN CONCEPTION OF A FUTURE LIFE. 243 



That Mazdah is to "judge the world in righteousness " is 

 what we should expect Zarathushtra to teach ; nor is it less in 

 keeping that he is himself to plead before the Judge, the 

 advocate of his faithful followers, and accuser of those who 

 wronged them. A vivid anthropomorphic figure pictures the 

 Judge as pointing to each man his destiny : 



Of thy Fire, 0 Ahura, that is mighty through Righteousness, 

 promised and powerful, we desire that it may be for the 

 faithful man with manifested delight, but for the enemy 

 with visible torment, according to the pointings of the 

 hand.* 



The Fire — that is, in this context, the Molten Metal — is to 

 follow the sentence, as the first element in the execution of 

 Mazdah's decree. Or, as suggested above, it may be a figure 

 describing the supreme test, independent of the Weighing, and 

 associated with the " pointings of the hand " as the declaration 

 of its result. 



There is one curious sequel of the Weighing which has been 

 proved to go back to Zarathushtra himself. The soul was 

 adjudged righteous or wicked according to the balance of merits 

 and demerits in thought, word and action. Pahlavi theology 

 insisted very strongly on the nicety of the balance : the 

 estimation of a hair — to be more exact, an eyelash — was 

 enough to determine the issue of heaven or hell. But what if 

 the scales exactly balanced ? For this case a limbo was pro- 

 vided, called Hamislakan, in the Later Avesta misva gdfM, " the 

 place of the mixed." Here, they said, in a place located between 

 earth and the first heaven, souls would feel the alternations of 

 cold and heat due to the seasons, until the Eenovation brought 

 their dubious position to an end. There are two stanzas in the 

 Gathas which allude to this middle state, but without naming 

 or defining it. The idea has been taken up in the Koran 

 (Sur. 7), and (for once) decidedly improved upon. If we knew 

 more of Zarathushtra's own system, we might be able to say 

 that he had not only recognised the biggest of all problems of 

 the Future, but even done something towards its solution. But 

 if he did, posterity ignored his contribution. No one who 

 knows Zarathushtra's sign manual will find it on the Parsee 

 Hamistakan. 



One other dogma of later Parseeism, partially rooted in the 



* Tama 34 4 . 



