ZARATIIUSTRA SPITAMA, tho Zoroaster of Europe. According to Chevalier Bunsen, lie appeared in the reign of Vistaspa, a Bactrian king, towards the year 3000 u.c. Firdusi, in the Shah Ntunah, gi‘w his ern as (luring the reign of Guslitaspi. Another author makes him a contem porary of Moses. Spitama was a Shoaliyanto or tiro priest, the aon of Purushapa, and was born in Bactria. which he cabs in his writings Berekdlia Armaiti. Ragha, DOW Rai, near Teheran, has been fixed on as his birthplace, but for no other reason than that it WELS a city governed by the riests alone The only one of his children men P • . . .
tioned in his writings is his daughter Purudusta.
He was a Zarathustra or high-priest, and hence was knoWn to the Greeks as Zarastrades and Zoroas tres, whence the Latin and English Zoroaster. The modern Parsees call him Zarodusht. He declared that he had a divine mission to expel all idolaters and promote the practice of agricul ture, and he foundedwhat is known as the Allude yasna or Parsee religion, which is simply the old faith of the primitive Aryan, reformed by his hymns and writings. He laid the foundation of that Zend literature which, Dr. Haug shows, required centuries for its growth, and was com plete B.C. 400. He is expressly called 'the cele brated in Airyana Vaejo,' or Aryan home. To the supreme deity, whom his predecessors, the Shoshyanto sect, had worshipped as the Ahura or the living ones, who were opposed to the Deva of the idolaters, he applies the term Ahuro-Mazdao, that Ahura who is called Mazda° or almighty.'
This name denotes a conception of the deity , almost identical with the antediluvian Elohim or Jehovah. The word appears in the cuneiform inscriptions as Ahuramazada, in the times of the Sassanian kings as Ahurmazd, and in modern Persian as Ortnnzd; and this one God. not only rewards the righteous, but punishes the wicked. A separate evil spirit of equal power with Ahura mazda, and always opposed to him, is entirely strange to Zarathustra's theology, though the existence of such an opinion among the ancient Zoroastrians can be gathered from some later books, such as the Vendidad. Spentomainyus has created the light of the day, and Ang,romainyus the darkness of the night ; the former awakens men to their duties, the latter lulls them into sleep. Life is produced by Spentomainyus, but extinguished by Angromainyus, whose bands, by releasing the soul from the fetters of the body, enable her to go up to inamortality and everlasting life.' In course of time Spentomainyus was taken as a name of Ahuramazda himself ; then of course, Angromainyus, by becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda, was regarded as the 'constant adversary of Ahuramazda, and thus the dualism, God and Devil, was called forth.'