That victory over evil, the Parsis to-day regard as the capital event in the history of the world. It was the immediate prelude to the revelation of the Law which Ormuzd vouchsafed to his prophet. The revelation occurred on a mountain, in the course of conversations, during which Zarathrustra questioned and Ormuzd, in the voice of heaven, replied. So was the Law proclaimed in India. There Mithra and Varuna sang it through the sky.[10] The expression is notable, for the song of the sky is thunder and the theophany that of Sinai. There is another _rapprochement_ in Babylonian lore and a third in the _Eddas_, where it is related that to Sigurd the secret of the runes was sung. [Footnote 10: Rig-Veda, i. 151.] Meanwhile, the revelation completed and proclaimed, Zarathrustra died as miraculously as he was born, foretelling, as he went, the coming of a messiah, his own son, Coshyos--the delayed fruit of an immaculate hymen that is not to be fecund until the end of time--but who, at the consummation of the ages, will rejuvenate the world, affranchise it from death, vanquish Ahriman, terminate the struggle between good and evil, purify hell and fill it full with glory. Then the dead shall rise and immortality be universal.[11] [Footnote 11: Zamyad Yasht. xix. 89 _sq._] Zoroaster is obviously mythical. The Buddha is also. But precisely as the Buddhist scriptures exist, so also do the Zoroastrian. They do more. Frequently they enlighten, occasionally they exalt. Written in gold on perfumed leather, the original edition, limited to two copies, was so sacred that it was sullied if seen. Burned with the palace of Persepolis--which Alexander, the Great Sinner, in a drunken orgy, destroyed--only fragments of the fargards remain. These tell of creation, effected in six epochs, and of a _pairi-daeza_. Delitzsch voluminously asked: _Wo lag das Paradies?_ There it is. There is the primal paradise. In it Ormuzd put Mashya, the first man, and Mashyana, the first woman, whom Ahriman, in the form of a serpent, seduced. Thereafter ensued the struggle in which all have or will participate, one that, extending beyond the limits of the visible world, arrays seasons and spirits and the senses of man in a conflict of good and evil that can end only when, from the depths of the dawn, radiant in the vermillion sky, Coshyos, hero of the resurrection, triumphantly appears.