deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the Daêvas [demons], and the clouds cannot reach up to it.’ At the foot of the mountain was a vast sea, a _mar del essere_, in the midst of which grew the White Haôma (Indian _Soma_), the Tree of Life. ‘The waters stand there boiling, boiling up in the heart of the sea Pûitika, and when cleansed therein they run back from the sea Pûitika to the tree _boura-kasha_, towards the well-watered tree, whereon grow the seeds of my plants of every kind.’[57] A godlike bird sits on that tree; when he flies off a thousand branches grow out of it, and when he alights upon it he breaks off a thousand branches.[58] Of this mystical bird, the Bundehesh, one of the later of the sacred books, says, ‘The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens; were he living on the earth, he would be the king of birds. He brought the Religion into the Var of Yima, and recites the Avesta in the language of birds.’[59] With this we may compare the angel described in Rev. xiv. 6 as an _angel di Dio_, flying ‘in the midst of Heaven, bearing the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth.’ Distinct from the Elysium of the Gods, and from the abode of the dead, is Yima’s Heaven of Light, a _Vara_, or _hortus conclusus_, which is a reduplication of the realm over which he presided in the Golden Age, before this world was created.[60] The Vara was constructed by ‘the fair Yima, the good shepherd,’ at the command of ‘the Maker, Ahura Mazda,’ in view of the destruction that was to come upon the material world, which had become corrupt, so that he might preserve therein the seeds of men and all other living beings, of plants, ‘and of red blazing fires,’ in order that the earth might be replenished. Within this Vara Yima made a reservoir, the banks of which furnished an unfailing supply of food, and were the haunt of birds. To this happy region, as we have seen, the mystical bird Karshipta brought the Avesta, and preached it to the denizens, whose life was one of perpetual mirth and gladness, exempt from heat and cold, sickness, old age, and death; ‘and there [was] no hump-backed, none bulged forward, there; no impotent, no lunatic; no one malicious, no liar; no one spiteful, none jealous; no one with decayed tooth, no leprous to be pent up, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainya stamps the bodies of mortals.’[61] It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance which this passage bears to chapter 35 of the _Fis Adamnáin_. This resemblance must be purely accidental, but it is none the less worthy to be noted; for there is reason to suspect that a careful record of the similitudes and coincidences which so frequently occur where imitation or direct derivation is impossible, might tend to discourage the arbitrary assumption that derivation must needs exist, in cases where it may be possible, but is not proved.