The period of this separation of the Iranian and Hindoo races must be very remote, for the Rig-Veda is probably at least 4,000 years old, and the divergence between its form of Sanskrit and the Gata dialect of the Zend is already as great as that between two kindred European languages such as Greek and Latin. The divergence of religious ideas is also evidently of very early date. In the Hindoo, and all other races of the primitive Aryan stock, the word used for gods and good spirits is taken from the root ‘div,’ to shine. Thus, Daeva in Sanskrit, Zeus and Theos in Greek, Deus in Latin, Tius in German, Diews in Lutheranism, Dia in Irish, Dew in Kymric, all mean the bright or shining one represented by the vault of heaven. But in Iranian the word has an opposite sense, and the ‘deevs’ correspond to our ‘devils.’ The primitive Aryan religions were evidently all derived from a contemplation of the powers and phenomena of nature. The sky, with its flood of light and vault of ethereal blue, was considered to be the highest manifestation of a Supreme Power; while the sun and moon, the stars and planets, the winds and clouds, the earth and waters, were personified, either as symbols of the Deity or as subordinate gods. The original simple faith was thus apt to degenerate into a system of polytheism, and, as the gods came to be represented by visible forms, into idolatry. Zoroaster appears to us, like Mahomet at a later age and among a ruder people, as a prophet or reformer who abolished these abuses and restored the ancient faith in a loftier and more intellectual form, adapted to the use of an advanced and civilised society. The records of his life and teaching have fortunately been preserved in so authentic a form, that distant as he is from us we can form a singularly accurate idea of who he was and what he taught. Some 3,200 years ago a sight might have been seen in the ancient city of Balkh—the famous capital of Bactria, the ‘Mother of Cities’—very like that witnessed some fourteen centuries later at our own Canterbury. The king and his chief nobles and courtiers were assembled to hear the discourse of a preacher who proposed to teach them a better religion. Gushtasp listened to Zoroaster, as Ethelbert listened to Augustine, and in each case reason and eloquence carried conviction, and the nation became converts to the new doctrine. This conversion was effected without miracles, for it is expressly stated in the celebrated speech of the prophet, preserved in the 30th chapter of the Yasna, that he relied solely on persuasion and argument. Ferdousi, the Persian Homer, thus describes the first interview between Zoroaster and Gushtasp: ‘Learn,’ he said, ‘the rites and doctrines of the religion of excellence. For without religion there cannot be any worth in a king. When the mighty monarch heard him speak of the excellent religion, he accepted from him the excellent rites and doctrines.’