In such a territory, when the tribes had once become settled in the more favoured regions, amid such struggles against nature and the plundering neighbours, it is clear that the conception of the contrast between good and evil spirits must become more widely developed and sharply pointed--that it should indeed form the hinge of all religious ideas. The good spirits had given fruit and increase to many excellent lands; but the evil spirits destroyed these blessings with their storms of sand and snow, their cold and heat, their beasts of prey and serpents. Wherever the herds throve and the fields were fruitful, there the good spirits were gracious; where the pastures withered, and the fields were covered with sand, the wicked spirits had maliciously rendered of no avail the labours of men. In the valleys of Bactria and Sogdiana there was labour, industry, increase and fruit; beyond, in the steppe, all was barren; the storms went whirling round, and wild hordes of robbers roamed to and fro. Thus in these regions the conception of the struggle of the good spirits, and the evil, which injure, torment, punish and murder men, was most lively, the religious feeling of these conceptions most completely penetrated and governed the minds of men. All creatures were oppressed by the evil spirits, so the Avesta told us (p. 129); and therefore Auramazda determines to teach Zarathrustra "the wise sayings." No new belief or new forms of worship are to be introduced; the means of protection against the evil ones were to be multiplied and strengthened. We know what importance the Arians in India ascribed to the correct prayer and invocation, what power over the spirits and indeed over the deities themselves they ascribed to the correct words, what a defensive power they attributed to the sayings of the Atharvan. The same ideas were current among the Arians of Iran. The heaven of the good god and holy spirits is, in the Avesta, the "dwelling of invocations" (Garonmana). Hence the first point in the reform was that new formulæ and prayers should be added to the old prayers and incantations. The fire that slays demons is to burn day and night on the hearth, and must always be tended with hard, dry, well-hewn wood; the spirits of light, the great Mithra, the sun, the stars, are to be earnestly invoked along with the victorious Verethraghna, and Çraosha the slayer of demons, the life-giving god, to whom Haoma is to be offered; and the libation of Haoma is to be frequently offered to the spirits of light. If men prayed constantly to the good spirits, and cursed the evil, if they made use of the holy sayings when they observed that the evil beings came, then wicked creatures would certainly remain far from house, and farm, and field. According to the Avesta, Zarathrustra first uttered the Ahuna vairya, and Angromainyu says that though the deities have not been able to drive him from the earth, Zarathrustra will smite him with the Ahuna vairya.[225] In the minds of