The Vendidad consists of twenty-two Fa;gerds or sections, which treat of cosmogony, and, moreover, may be called the religious and civil code of the old Parsees. The first Fargard relates how Ahura Mazda (now called Ormuzd), the good spirit, created the several countries and places—sixteen are named—excellent and perfect in their kind, but that Angro-Mainga (now called Ahriman), the evil or black spirit, created in opposition all the evils which infest these worlds. In the second Fargard, Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) bids Vilna anuounce to mankind the sacred law he had taught him ; but Vilna refuses compliance with this behest. He then bids him enlarge the worlds and make them prosperous. This time Vilna obeys, and carries out the orders given him by Ahura-Mazda. The third Fargard enumerates first the five things which are the most agreeable, then the five things which are the most disagreeable, and after wards the five things which convey the greatest satisfaction, to this world. It concludes with questions and injunctions of a kindred sort. The fourth Fargard may be termed the criminal code of the Avesta. It enumerates, in the first instance, various offences which are con sidered to be so grave as to affect not only the person who commits them but aLsu his relatives ; and then proceeds to define the punish ments incurred by the offender. The eight following Fargards contain injunctions in reference to impurities caused by dead bodies. The thirteenth Fargard begins with the description of two kinds of dogs,— the one created by Ahura-Mazda, the other by Angro-Mainyu,—the kill ing of the former being a:criminal, that of the latter a meritorious, act ; and the remaining part of the book is devoted to the proper treatment of dogs in general, a subject of much importance in a country apparently much infested by wolves, and continued in the fourteenth Fargard, which enumerates also the penalties for injuring dogs. The treatment of young dogs is likewise the eubjeet.matter of the latter part of the fifteenth Fargard, which in its first sections treats of sexual offences, and the bringing up of illegitimate children. The eixteenth Fargard teaches how to treat women in their menses, or when otherwise elected with impurities. Impurities caused by the cutting of hairs and trini ming of nails, are the subject-matter of the seventeenth Fargard. The next Fargard is more of a mixed character ; it treats of various cere monies, such, for instance, as are to be practised during the night and at sunrise ; and gives injunctions on cleanliness, decency, and moral conduct. The nineteenth Fargard relates how Angro-Mainyu endea voured to kill Zarathustra, but how the latter successfully defended himself with the weapons given him by Ahura-Mazda. The evil spirit, it continues, being aware that it had no material power over Zarathustra, then resorted to temptations ; but these too were defeated by the prophet, who now resolved to conquer the evil spirit, and for this purpose addressed to Ahura-Mazda various questions on the rites of purification and the condition of souls after death. The twentieth Fargard contains some information about the first man who understood curing disease. The twenty-first Fargard is devoted to the phenomena of the sky and the luminous bodies ; it comprises invocations of the clouds, the sun, the moon, and the stars. The last Fargard relates that Angra-Mainyu having engendered diseases, Ahura-Mazda is compelled to devise remedies against them. In the first place lie has recourse to Manthra-dpenta, the sacred word, but it ie powerless. He then sends Nairyo-sangha to Airyama with the command to produce several useful animals and things for this purpose, and the Fargard, evidently a fragment, concludes with relating that Airyama produced nine kinds of male horses, nine kinds of male camels, nine kinds of oxen, nine kinds of small cattle, and nice kinds of pasture ground.
The form of all these Fargards is nearly always that of a dialogue between Ahura-Mazda and Zarathustra, and the same foita is now and then also observed in the two other portions of the Avesta, which differ materially in their contents from those of the Veudid.ad.
Vispered and Yas'na bear prominently a liturgical character. They
are invocations of nature, of the deities who are believed to govern its course, of time, seasons, and other objects connected with acts of pious veneration; they also contain views of creation of a speculative kind; in short, they are chiefly the religious and liturgical code of the old Parsee religion, whereas the Vendidad, as observed, is chiefly—though not ex clusively—concerned with the regulation of social and daily life.
The religious belief taught in the Avesta rests on the dualism of the two great principles., Ahura-Masi/a, or "the good," and .4 ttgro-Ma i ytt, or " the evil principle." The genii subordinate to the former are the reesActsipentax, six of whom are named in the Yas'na, namely: Volim mama, who protects living beings; Asha-vahiata, or the genius of fire ; Kshathra-vairya, or the genius of metals ; S'penta-armaiti, or the (ft male) genius of earth ; Itaurvat', or the genius of water ; and .Ainerede, or the genius of trees. They are severally opposed by the Poeta?, or demons, subordinate to Angro-Mainym—by Akoinana, Ander, S'iturva, NdongLaithi, Taunt, and Zairicha. Other demuns oceur in the tenth Fargard of the Vendidad. Both these principles— which in the more philosophical language of the second part of the Yas'na (the CAthAs) are also conceived of as the principles of existence and non-existence, of life and death, of good and evil—pervade creation and are in permanent strife. The worshippers of fire belong to Alium Mazda, whereas the worshippers of the Daevas are possessed by Augr6 Mainyu, the spirit of evil.
It is the latter class of deities which throws a strong light on the obscure antiquity of the sacred books of Zoroaster. The Dacvas are in substance and name the Devas of the Hindus. To the latter, how ever. they are the good and friendly gods, protectors of men, and worshipped by them in sacrificial acts. The religion of Zoroaster assumes, therefore, the character of being antagonistic to the Hindu creed ; and, in accordance with this view, we find that Indm, one of the principal Vaidik gods, and one of the principal Hindu gods of the later literature, is in the Avesta the Dacca Ander ; that the Nelaat gas, or As'wins of the Hindus, are the Daeva Nangbaithi ; and S'arva, a later manic of Siva, is the Daeva S'aurva. It would seem, therefore, that & roaster belonged to a period of antiquity when great religious dissensions had already separated, or begun to separate, the two sister nations of the Ilindes and Parsees ; but it would be hazardous to extend this inference to any allegatit n of date, or even to that Zoroaster pre ceded the Vaidik songs of the Rigveda poetry ; for though a belief has been recently expressed that the word faradathti, in a Wigveda hymn, is the Sanskrit form for the name Zarathustra, this bold conjecture is ;lowers warranted, neither by a sound comparison of both words nor by the context in which faradashti occurs ; whereas, on the contrary, there are circumstances which seem to indicate that Zoroaster inveighed against that form of Hindu worship which belongs to a period posterior to that of the Iffigveda hymns. It is remarkable, for instance, that thi.ligh there is a manifest tendency in the Avesta to invert the cha racter of the friendly deities of the Hindus, the Zend Ahura, which emphatically occurs as a propitious name in Ahura-Mazda, corresponds in meaning and form with the word A aura of the Ingveda; whereas this same word Antra means a demon in the literature of the Hindus subsequent to the Vaidik poetry, and then only is the counterpart of the Avesta word.
The worship taught by Zoroaster seems to have been of the simplest kind, the adoration of fire by means of hymns and offerings, chiefly, if not exclusively, taken from the vegetable kingdom. An essential con comitant of the sacrifice is the juice of the Haoma, or the Soma plant, which occupies an important part also in the Vaitlik rites. [Won.] This worship however must not be confounded with the complicated ritual of later periods of the Parsee creed, which assumed a similar development to that based by the Hindus on the Itigveda text, and is indicated by several portions of the Avesta, which cannot be looked upon as its earliest part.