Zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the Frohar with the celestial ray. The evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened, endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched one of his agents, named Bouiti, from the country of the far north to oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: "The will of the Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honour of the river Dareja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment before, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which puts evil spirits to flight." Bouiti fled aghast, but his master set to work upon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity supplied him. The mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, "How shall we succeed in destroying him? For he is the weapon which strikes down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings." His infancy and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each attack. When he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, Vohumano, appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of Ahura-mazda, the Supreme Being. When invited to question the deity, Zoroaster asked, "Which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?" The answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his fellows. He next desired to know the names and functions of the angels, and the nature and attributes of evil. His instruction ended, he crossed a mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification, during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal did he receive from the hands of Ahura-mazda the Book of the Law, the Avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious burden. At that time, Vishtaspa, son of Aurvataspa, was reigning over Bactria. For ten years Zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin Maidhyoi-Maonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one after the other, the two sons of Hvogva, the grand vizir Jamaspa, who afterwards married the prophet's daughter, and Frashaoshtra, whose daughter Hvogvi he himself espoused; the queen, Hutaosa, was the next convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vishtaspa himself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened by the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their