30. Then was I near him, as a master builder: And I was his delight continually, Sporting before him at all times; 31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth, And my delight was with the sons of men. Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaîti, genius of the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gâtha Ahunavaiti, 7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaîti came with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one, created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like Wisdom, Armaîti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired," by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas, ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder, and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gâtha: "Wisdom hath builded her house, She hath hewn out her seven pillars." Like Wisdom, Armaîti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In an ancient Pâli MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in heaven, with Armaîti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck, and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaîti has joy in the "habitable part" of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendîdâd, also the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within." Armaîti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano, "Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and is reached by, heaven, and Armaîti thus becomes a personification of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men, such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the children of Armaîti, and she finds delight among them. Even the rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaîti the (demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyám: "I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered, 'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"