Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war . Vendidad, which is entirely composed ofincantations and exorcisms to repel the evil influ-ence from the house, the fire, the earth, the tree, thecow, the faithful man and woman, etc., gives a longlist of fiends whose names have not )-et been identi-fied or explained. Mere, as there, too, the Northis the fateful region ; in the north lies Mount Are-zura, the meeting-place of the daevas, with its gate(if hell opening from the west. 27. The excessi\X reverence s
Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war . Vendidad, which is entirely composed ofincantations and exorcisms to repel the evil influ-ence from the house, the fire, the earth, the tree, thecow, the faithful man and woman, etc., gives a longlist of fiends whose names have not )-et been identi-fied or explained. Mere, as there, too, the Northis the fateful region ; in the north lies Mount Are-zura, the meeting-place of the daevas, with its gate(if hell opening from the west. 27. The excessi\X reverence shown to Fire andexpressed in observances so strict and ritualistic asto have gained fi>r the Zoroastrians the name of Fire-worshippers from superficial observers, alsoappears to have been a later development. Theword Atiiravan ( Keeper of the Fire ), whichdesignates the priest throughout the later Avesta,does not occur once in the Gathas. The priest isthere designated by a descriptive periphrase—suchas Master of Wisdom, Messenger of the the worship of the elements is a well-known * See Slory of Chaldea, pp. 155, ^E^r* — ,—*._ -^ S r* .OR,-^^- — ^^.V^^yv- 151 16. RIIN OF ATKSII-GAII AT FIROZABAD. 152 MEDIA, AXn PERSIA. Turanian feature, and as rccjartls specially that ofl-irc, it is (luitc likil} that the Ilranians alreadyfound it in full force in the region bordering on theCaspian Sea from the west. That maze of moun-tains and valleys, uniting the foot of the Caucasianrange and the head of the Zagros, abounds in under-ground springs and reservoirs of naphtha—a perfectlyinexhaustible wealth of fuel, which a very little la-bor could bring to the surface by means of pipes, andutilize for entertaining quenchless fires. Thus theinstitution of sacred fires is absolutely suggestedby the nature of the country, and is accordinglyintimately associated with that country even in itsname—Atropatcne = Aderbeidjan—to our own day.(See p. 144.) Some few
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