had experienced a period of warfare, when difficulties arose which it was mainly the business of the monarchy and the nobles to settle. The Avesta can tell us of arms and robes as well as of palaces with pillars and turrets; of earthen, iron, silver and golden vessels; of mats, carpets, and adornments of gold,[313] such as are found among noble families; and those hecatombs of horses, cattle, and sheep which the heroes in the Avesta sacrifice to Anahita and Drvaçpa, in order to obtain their favour by victory, are no doubt borrowed from the sacrifices which princes and nobles were wont to offer in cases where the numbers must be enlarged in honour of the heroes. Yet we see that Xerxes orders a thousand oxen to be sacrificed at one time. We have already shown (IV. 390), how important and pre-eminent was the position which the races of the warriors, "the princes," occupied on the Indus and the Ganges, and what respect they commanded among "the free Indians" in the Panjab, even in the fourth century B.C. That a warlike nobility of a similar character, attitude, and position, existed in Eastern Iran, is the less to be doubted, as the order of warriors in the Avesta is denoted by a name (_rathaestar_) which goes back to the chariots of war. The husbandmen, who were settled beside and among them, bear in the Avesta the name of Vaçtrya,[314] but the word Vaeçu is also used for them, which simply repeats the name of the Indian Vaiçyas. Like the Arians of India, the Arians of Iran believed in the power of the correct invocations, prayers, and sacrifice; among them also the sacrifice strengthens the gods and increases their power. In India too, the priests, and minstrels, and sacrificers handed down in their families the knowledge of the effective invocations and ceremonies which exercised compulsion on the gods, and the same was the case in Eastern Iran; priestly families arose at a very early period. They did not here retain the name of supplicators, as in India; but are called Athravas in the Avesta. In the Veda Atharvan kindles the sacrificial fire, and among the Arians of India the incantations of the race of Atharvan passed from the most powerful. In a similar way powerful invocations and sentences were handed down in Iran from father to son in the race of the Athravas. These families preserved the ancient invocations to Mithra, Verethraghna, Anahita, Tistrya, which are preserved to us in the Avesta, though in a modified form. The god Haoma instructs Zarathrustra to praise him, as the other fire-priests had done (p. 124). The reform which bears the name of Zarathrustra cannot have left the condition of the priests unchanged. The doctrine may, as invocations in the Avesta would seem to show, have first found adherents in the race of Haechataçpa, to which Zarathrustra belonged, and to which he first proclaimed his law (131), and next in the race of Jamaçpa and Frashaostra, who are spoken of as Zarathrustra's most zealous followers.