496 
CAVES OF MARAGA, 
winding passages diverging from it, and running towards other 
excavated chambers, the arched roofs of which seemed to have 
fallen in. He remarked two elevated altars in the first cavern, 
in shape not unlike those of Priapus in the Indian temples. 
They stood at the head and on one side of the cave. These 
subterraneous sanctuaries are found in the very part of the 
Persian empire set down by historians as the native country of 
Zerdusht or Zoroaster; Ouroomia claiming the distinction of his 
birth, and Azerbijan, the province in which it lies, the honour of 
first promulgating his restored tenets of the Mithratic religion. 
Its peculiar rites had long been overwhelmed by crowds of 
stranger gods; its moral principles, as far as they contained any 
virtue, had suffered from the same cause, when Zoroaster con¬ 
ceived the scheme to recover both. It appears very evident 
from tradition, and certain doctrines mingled with his idolatry, 
that he had been a disciple of some one of the great Jewish 
teachers in the captivity, and, in like manner with his successor 
Mahomed, borrowed amply from their stores. When the idea 
struck him, to appropriate all this to the restoration of the Magi, 
and to place himself at their head, he retired to deserts, and 
into caves, where he abode many years, perfecting the plan of 
his future proceedings. 
These secluded places, we are told, were not merely the ha¬ 
bitations of himself and his Magi, but were used as temples j 
and traces of their dedication to these purposes are yet to be 
found, not only in the caves of the mountains near his native 
lake, but in similar caverns all over the empire, wherever he car¬ 
ried the mysteries of his new Mithratic rites. It does not appear 
from Persian history, that such obscure places were consecrated to 
the god of light, until the time of Zoroaster. Before the Sabian 
