the priests of the Avesta, this prayer is itself a mighty being to which worship is to be offered, just as in the Vedas the holy prayers and some parts of the ritual--nay even the verse-measure of the hymns--are treated as divine powers. It was an old Arian conception, which we have observed widely spread on the Ganges, that filth and pollution and contact with what is impure and dead gave the evil spirit power over those who had contracted such defilement. This uncleanness must be removed, and its operation checked. The reform, which bears the name of Zarathrustra, must have extended and increased in Iran the rules for purification and the removal of uncleanness. These regulations, carried out in long and wearisome detail on the basis of this new movement, are before us in the Vendidad. The Avesta says: Zarathrustra was the first who praised the Asha Vahista (_i.e._ the best truthfulness which is at the same time the highest purity) and represents Angromainyu as exclaiming; "that Zarathrustra made him as hot by the Ashi Vahista as metal is made in the melting."[226] Whatever gave increase and life, water and trees and good soil, and the animals which were useful to men, were the work of the good spirits, the good creation; the steppes, the desert, the heat, the fierce cold, the beasts of prey, these were the work of the evil ones, the bad creation. Did not a man increase life and growth if he industriously cultivated his field, watered it well, and extended it towards the desert, if he destroyed the animals and insects which did harm to the fields and trees, if he gave room to fruitfulness against unfertility? Did he not extend and sustain the good creation, and lessen the evil, if he planted and watered, and diminished the harmful animals, the serpents, the worms, and beasts of prey? By such work a man took the side of the good spirits against the evil, and fought with them. It was in the will and power of man by the act of his hands, by labour and effort, to strengthen the good creation. The importance which the Avesta ascribes to the cultivation of the land, we may regard as a prominent trait of the reform, as an essential part of its ethical importance. Beside warriors and priests the Avesta knows only the agricultural class.