It is here necessary to remark, that their meaning is not, that the identical spirits of _Abad_, _Kaiomors_, _Siáymak_ and _Húshang_ shall be imparted to the identical material bodies long since abandoned, or that the scattered members of the body shall be reassembled and reunited: such sentiments, according to them, are absurd and extravagant: their real belief is this, that forms similar to those which have passed away, and bodies resembling the primitive ones, their counterpart in figure, property and shape, shall appear, speaking and acting exactly in the same manner. How could the exalted spirits of the perfect, which are united with angels, return back? They also maintain that men do not arise from their own species, without father or mother: but they affirm that, as a man and woman were left at the commencement of the past cycle, so there shall two remain in the present cycle, for the continuance of the human race. For although the heavens are the sires of the three natural kingdoms or productive principles, and the elements their mother, yet this much only has been imparted to us, that man is born of man, and is not produced after any other fashion. The followers of the ancient faith call one revolution of the regent Saturn, a day; thirty such days, one month; twelve such months, one year; a million of such years, one _fard_;[232] a million _fard_, one _vard_; a million _vard_, one _mard_; a million _mard_, one _jád_; three thousand _jád_, one _vád_; and two thousand _vád_, one _zád_.[232]――According to this mode of computation, the happiness and splendor of the Máhábádian dynasty lasted one hundred zád of years. They believe it impossible to ascertain the commencement of human existence; and that it is not to be comprehended by human science: because there is no epoch of identical persons, so that it is absolutely impossible to form any definite ideas on the subject, which resembles an arithmetical infinite series. Such a belief also agrees with the philosophy and opinions of the Grecian sages.