[310] _Vendîdâd_ (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. iv), Farg. iv. 47. [311] _Ibid._ Farg. iii. 33. [312] _Ibid._ Farg. iv. 49. [313] “Aryan morality came down from the heavens in a ray of light” (_Selected Essays of James Darmesteter_, ed. Morris Jastrow, p. 304). [314] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. ii. 29. [315] _Ibid._ Farg. iv. 49 (bis)-55. [316] _Mihir Yasht_, i. 2. [317] _Ibid._ xxix. 116, 117. [318] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., pp. 71 ff. It is significant that the sacred standard of the early Persians was the apron of a blacksmith. [319] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. iii. 31. [320] _Ibid._ Farg. iii. 4. [321] _Laws of Manu_, x. 84. [322] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. iii. 38, 39. [323] The king who reigned in Persia at the time of Nero, going from Asia to Italy, traveled by land along the shore instead of going by ship, “because the Magi are forbidden to defile the sea” (James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, p. xl). But the anxious observance by the Persians of the requirements of the code is best disclosed in the disposition which they made of their dead. Since corpses could neither be burned nor buried nor thrown into the water without defiling a sacred element, they were exposed on the summits of mountains or on the top of low towers (dakhmas), the so-called “Towers of Silence,” that the flesh might be eaten by birds of prey. [324] _Zend-Avesta_, pt. ii, Yasht xxii (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii, pp. 314 ff.). [325] Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi, “Introduction,” p. xx. [326] “Their [the servitors of Mithra] dualistic system was particularly adapted to fostering individual effort and to developing human energy.”--CUMONT, _The Mysteries of Mithra_ (1903), p. 141. [327] _Herod._ i. 139. We quote Rawlinson’s version. [328] _Herod._ i. 136. [329] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, vol. i, p. 214, n. 10. We omit the references. [330] Cf. _Herod._ ix. 109. [331] Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies_ (1871), vol. iii, p. 170. The exception was the case of the Barcæans. Cf. _Herod._ iv. 201. [332] The modern Persians, who have exchanged the truth-impelling creed of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, seem to have lost this ancestral virtue. It is noteworthy, however, that the Indian Parsees, the inheritors and preservers of the faith of ancient Persia, are noted for their uprightness and veracity. [333] “They [the Parsees] form one of the most esteemed, wealthy, and philanthropic communities on the west coast of India, notably in the city of Bombay.”--BLOOMFIELD, _The Religion of the Veda_ (1908), p. 15. [334] “The whole history of the religion of Israel is a history of the development of the moral consciousness, and consequently of the deepening and widening of the opposition between that _which ought to be_ and that _which is_.”--EDWARD CAIRD, _The Evolution of Religion_ (1894), vol. ii, p. 92.