There is no doubt, however, that the roots of Mithras-worship went very far down into the Persian religion. In the Yashts or hymns which are the earliest evidence of primitive Iranian beliefs, Mithra—to use the Avestic spelling of his name—frequently appears, not indeed as the material sun, but as the “genius of the heavenly light” which lightens the whole universe[797] and is the most beneficent among the powers of Nature. Mithras is not here, however, the Supreme Being, nor even the highest among the gods benevolent to man. This last place is occupied in the Zend Avesta by Ahura Mazda, “the omniscient lord,” who appears to be the Persian form of Varuna, the god of the sky whom we have seen associated with Mitra in the Vedas[798]. Nor is Mithras in the Zend Avesta one of the six Amshaspands, the deified abstractions or personified attributes of Ahura Mazda, who, in the later developments of the Persian religion, occupy towards him much the same position that the “Roots” of Simon Magus and the Aeons of the Pleroma among the Gnostics do towards the Boundless Power or the Ineffable Bythos[799]. In the later Avestic literature, he appears as the chief of the Izeds or Yazatas, a race of genii created by Ahura Mazda, who are the protectors of his universe and the helpers of mankind in their warfare against the powers of darkness[800]. In the latest as in the earliest Persian view of the personality of Mithras, therefore, it is plain that he occupies an intermediate position between the Creator and man. It is not, however, in the religion associated with the name of Zoroaster that we must look for the origin of Mithraism. The date of the sacred books of Mazdeism and the historical existence of Zoroaster himself have recently been brought down to as late as the VIIth century B.C.[801] and the appearance in Asia of the Persian tribes as conquerors, whereas Mithras was, as we have seen, worshipped in Asia Minor nearly a millennium earlier. Moreover, the strict dualism which set Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil, in eternal and perhaps equal opposition to Ormuzd, the god of light and goodness, seems to have been unknown before the Sassanid reform in 226 A.D., by which time the worship of Mithras in Europe was at its apogee[802]. M. Cumont is, therefore, doubtless right when he thinks that Mithraism was derived not from Mazdeism, but from Magism or the religion of the Magi, the tribe of Medes whose domination was put an end to by Darius the son of Hystaspes, and whose name was afterwards given to a priestly caste and has passed into our own language as the root of the word “magic.”