“He who having destroyed Ahi (Vritra, Typhon,) set free the seven rivers, who, recovered the cows, (the clouds,) detained by Bal; who generated fire in the clouds; who is invincible in battle—­he, men, is Indra.”

In the first part of the “Vendidad,” first chapter, the author gives an account of the beautiful land, the Aryana Vaejo, which was a land of delights, created by Ahura Mazda (Ormaz).  Then “an evil being, Angra-Manyus, (Ahriman,) pill of death, created a mighty serpent, and winter, the work of the Devas.”

“Ten months of winter are there, and two months of summer.”

[1.  Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 330.

2.  Ibid.]

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Then follows this statement: 

“Seven months of summer are there; five months of winter were there. 
The latter are cold as to water, cold as to earth, cold as to trees. 
There is the heart of winter; then all around falls deep snow. 
There is the worst of evils.”

This signifies that once the people dwelled in a fair and pleasant land.  The evil-one sent a mighty serpent; the serpent brought a great winter; there were but two months of summer; gradually this ameliorated, until the winter was five months long and the summer seven months long.  The climate is still severe, cold and wet; deep snows fell everywhere.  It is an evil time.

The demonology of the Hindoos turns on the battles between the Asuras, the irrational demons of the air, the comets, and the gods: 

“They dwell beneath the three-pronged root of the world-mountain, occupying the nadir, while their great enemy Indra,” (the sun;) “the highest Buddhist god, sits upon the pinnacle of the mountain, in the zenith.  The Meru, which stands between the earth and the heavens, around which the heavenly bodies revolve, is the battlefield of the Asuras and the Devas."[1]

That is to say, the land Meru—­the same as the island Mero of the ancient Egyptians, from which Egypt was first colonized; the Merou of the Greeks, on which the Meropes, the first men, dwelt—­was the scene where this battle between the fiends of the air on one side, and the heavenly bodies and earth on the other, was fought.

The Asuras are painted as “gigantic opponents of the gods, terrible ogres, with bloody tongues and long tusks, eager to devour human flesh and blood."[2]

And we find the same thoughts underlying the myths

[1.  “American Cyclopædia,” vol. v, p. 793.

2.  Ibid.]

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of nations the most remote from these great peoples of antiquity.

The Esquimaux of Greenland have this myth: 

“In the beginning were two brothers, one of whom said, ’There shall be night and there shall be day, and men shall die, one after another.’  But the second said, ’There shall be no day, but only night all the time, and men shall live for ever.’  They had a long struggle, but here once more he who loved darkness rather than light was worsted, and the day triumphed.”