[27] India is for us the country of the Vedas, the Brahmans, and Buddha.  We know the religion of the Hindoos, but of their political history we are ignorant.

CHAPTER VI

THE PERSIANS

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER

=Iran.=—­Between the Tigris and the Indus, the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf rises the land of Iran, five times as great as France,[28] but partly sterile.  It is composed of deserts of burning sand and of icy plateaux cut by deep and wooded valleys.  Mountains surround it preventing the escape of the rivers which must lose themselves in the sands or in the salt lakes.  The climate is harsh, very uneven, torrid in summer, frigid in winter; in certain quarters one passes from 104 deg. above zero to 40 deg. below, from the cold of Siberia to the heat of Senegal.  Violent winds blow which “cut like a sword.”  But in the valleys along the rivers the soil is fertile.  Here the peach and cherry are indigenous; the country is a land of fruits and pastures.

=The Iranians.=—­Aryan tribes inhabited Iran.  Like all the Aryans, they were a race of shepherds, but well armed and warlike.  The Iranians fought on horseback, drew the bow, and, to protect themselves from the biting wind of their country, wore garments of skin sewed on the body.

=Zoroaster.=—­Like the ancient Aryans, they first adored the forces of nature, especially the sun (Mithra).  Between the tenth and seventh[29] centuries before our era their religion was reformed by a sage, Zarathustra (Zoroaster).  We know nothing certainly about him except his name.

=The Zend-Avesta.=—­No writing from the hand of Zoroaster is preserved to us; but his doctrine, reduced to writing long after his death, is conserved in the Zend-Avesta (law and reform), the sacred books of the Persians.  It was a compilation written in an ancient language (the Zend) which the faithful themselves no longer understood.  It was divided into twenty-one books, inscribed on 12,000 cow skins, bound by golden cords.  The Mohammedans destroyed it when they invaded Persia.  But some Persian families, faithful to the teaching of Zoroaster, fled into India.  Their posterity, whom we call Parsees, have there maintained the old religion.  An entire book of the Zend-Avesta and fragments of two others have been found among them.

=Ormuzd and Ahriman.=—­The Zend-Avesta is the sacred book of the religion of Zoroaster.  According to these writings Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), “the omniscient sovereign,” created the world.  He is addressed in prayer in the following language:  “I invoke and celebrate the creator, Ahura Mazda, luminous, glorious, most intelligent and beautiful, eminent in purity, who possessest the good knowledge, source of joy, who hast treated us, hast fashioned us, and hast nourished us.”  Since he is perfect in his goodness, he can create only that which is good.  Everything bad in the world has been created by an evil deity, Angra Manyou, (Ahriman), the “spirit of anguish.”