Originally--and this is at present one of the points most solidly established by science--originally in those legends common to Oriental Aryans before their separation into two branches, the first man was the personage that the Iranians call Yima, and the Indians Yama. A son of Heaven and not of man, Yima united the characteristics that Genesis divides between Adam and Noah, fathers both, the one of antediluvian, the other of postdiluvian humanity. Later, he appears as merely the first king of the Iranians, but a king whose existence, as well as that of his subjects, is passed in the midst of Edenic beatitude in the paradise of Airyana-Vædja,[53] the dwelling-place of the earliest men. But after a time when life was pure and spotless, Yima committed the sin which weighs on his descendants, and in consequence of that sin, lost his power, was cast out of Paradise, and given up to the dominion of the serpent, the evil spirit Angromainyus,[54] who finally brought about Yima's death by horrible torments.[55] It is an echo of the tradition about the loss of Paradise ensuing upon a transgression prompted by the Evil Spirit that we find in what is incontestably one of the oldest portions of the Sacred Scriptures of Zoroastrianism.[56] "I created the first and the best of dwelling-places. I who am Ahuramazda: the Airyana-Vædja is of excellent nature. But against it Angromainyus, the murderer, created a thing inimical, the serpent out of the river and the winter, the work of the Doevas."[57] And it is this scourge, caused by the power of the serpent, which occasions the departure for ever from the paradisiacal region.