of the Daevas and Arejataçpa, and prepares a way for the new doctrine. Among the heroes of the ancient time and the spirits of the pious who are invoked in the prayers of the Avesta, the immortal part of King Vistaçpa is repeatedly invoked besides Zarathrustra and Frashaostra. We have already shown in what a contrast the Bactrians and Sogdiani stood to the nations of the steppes of the Oxus, and what a position is allotted to King Vistaçpa as repelling the Iranians. In thus celebrating him as the protector of Zarathrustra, the Avesta plainly puts Zarathrustra himself in Bactria. If we may assume the fact that the reform of the religion must have proceeded from Bactria and Sogdiana in the north-east of Iran, the next question to be decided is, whether it is possible to determine the meaning and import of this reform. The forms and views, which are found to agree in the Avesta and Rigveda, we have already established, with complete certainty, to be the ancient possession of the Arians of Iran. The elements of the religious conception, and several very definite forms and traits in the belief and worship, were the same in the Panjab and Iran. The leading principle was the contrast of the bright beneficent powers who give life and increase and the evil spirits of darkness, drought, and death. This possession was therefore in existence before the reform. This principle must have become more prominent among the Arians of Iran owing to the nature of their country. The fertile land and the desert were in far greater proximity there than in the Panjab. The centre of Iran was filled with a vast desert; wide and barren table-lands spread out on north and south; the most favoured regions were almost like oases. Closely adjacent to the most fruitful valleys and slopes lay endless steppes; blooming plains, shaded by thick groups of trees, were surrounded by hot deserts of sand. If the alpine districts of the north possessed the most splendid forests and luxuriant pastures, yet the snow fell early, and the winter was severe; if vegetation ran riot on the fringe of the Caspian, fever and reptiles infested the marshy plains. Close beside abundant productiveness lay drought and desert, bare flats of rock, deserts of sand, and fields of snow. The inhabitants of Iran had not only to suffer from the heat of summer but also from the cold of winter, from the scorching winds of the desert as well as from the snow-storms which came from the table-lands of the north. On the one hand, pastures and fields were covered for many weeks with snow; on the other, sand-storms from the desert ruined the tillage; in one district camels succumbed to the cold of the lofty terraces, or slipped from the icy slopes down the precipices; in another, the desert wind dried up fountains and springs. Here the winter, "which flies past to slay the herds, and is full of snow," as the Avesta says, was "of endless duration;" it was "on the water, the