The small work known as the Book of Ardâ Vîrâf is a document of priceless worth to the student of Mazdean eschatology, and it is also of the greatest interest in its relation to ideas about animals. If printed in a convenient form, every humane person would carry it in his pocket. Like the vision of the Seer of Patmos this work is purely religious; it attempts no criticism of life and man such as that embodied in the “Divina Commedia,” but in spite of this difference in aim, there is an astonishing resemblance between its general plan and that of the poem of Dante. Without going into this subject, I may say that I cannot feel convinced that with the geographical, astronomical, and other knowledge of the East which is believed to have reached Dante by means of conversations with merchants, pilgrims and perhaps craftsmen (for that Italian artists worked in India at an early date the Madonna-like groups in many a remote Hindu temple bear almost certain testimony), there did not come to him also some report of the travels of the Persian visitant to the next world. The author of the Persian vision was a pious Mazdean whose whole desire was to revive religious feeling amid growing indifference. He is supposed to have lived not earlier than 500, and not later than 700 A.D. The former is the likelier date. Had the assault of Islam begun, the book must have borne traces of the struggle with invaders who threatened to annihilate the faith. The author states that the work was intended as an antidote in the first place to atheism and in the second to “the religions of many kinds” that were springing up. This probably contains a reference to Christian sects, but it is not the way that allusion would have been made to propagandists with a sword in their hands. Christian sects managed to recover from the first persecution in 344 A.D., after which they were more often than not tolerated, though the Zoroastrian priesthood feared a Church that possessed an organisation so much like their own. They were accused, moreover, as at Rome, of being anti-national: everywhere the sentiment against the Christians took a form closely resembling the anti-Semiticism of our days. Such accusations can hardly fail to create, to some extent, the thing they predicate, and it is no great wonder if in the end the Persian Christians received the Moslem invaders with favour. Though the essence of Mazdeism is peace to men of good-will, it is to be feared that the Zoroastrian priests (like others) were less tolerant than their creed, and that the harassing of the Christians generally originated with them. They are known to have counselled this policy to Homizd IV., who gave them the memorable answer that his royal throne could not stand on its front legs alone, but needed the support of the Christians and other sectaries as well as of the faithful. It was one of the wisest sayings that ever fell from the lips of a king and more Mazdean than all the bigotry of Zoroastrian clericalism.