We have tested and established the incontrovertible fact:

That in the year 1903 before Alexander, consequently B. C. 2234, a Median dynasty sat on the throne of Babylon, which it retained for more than two centuries, and that the first of these rulers bore the name of Zoroaster in the Babylonian annals.

At that time, therefore, the seat of Zoroastrianism was no longer in Bactria but in Media. It had already, indeed, taken a different shape from what we find in the old Zoroastrian records. Chaldee Magism certainly dates from the Median dynasty at Babylon. For in the Gâthâs of Yasna the work of Zoroaster is called Maga, and those who promote it Magava. But this "greatness," or this "great work," was really not the application of charmed formulæ and invocations, but it is embodied in the great precept; "the Trinity is thought, word, and deed.273 What a difference between this and the Magism in vogue at Babylon B. C. 2234, and which afterwards doubtless was mixed up with old Semitic traditions!

Thus, if so early as twenty-three centuries before our era Zoroastrianism occupied such a very different position, none but those who pay no attention to what has taken place, and who see nothing in the great reality of history but empty phrases and formula, will find it an unreasonable assumption that the date of the foundation of the Zoroastrian doctrine reaches back between 4000 and 3000 years. True it is they may set up the absurd chronology which has grown out of rabbinical misunderstanding of the Bible against every other trustworthy tradition, and even against the Bible itself.

At all events we do not want any theory of a mi

273 Haug in Ewald's Jahrbuch of 1853, and in his "Zoroaster," in the Zeitsch. der Deutschen Morg. Gesell. 1855.

gration from India back to Bactria; so far from it, it would lead us into inexplicable difficulties and contradictions.

The Arian epochs therefore, upon the whole, will bear this relation to the chronology of Egypt:

I. The emigration from Sogd to Bactria and beyond it, after they separated from the rest of the Arian people who shaped their course westward, took place before B. c. 5000, consequently before the time of Menes.

II. The immigration into the Indus country, about 4000 B. C.

III. Zoroaster's reform in Bactria, about the time of Menes, or half a century later.

But as to any connexion between the Arian times and those of Egypt, we cannot assume that any such existed at all. Not only has Egypt nothing to do with the Arian movement, but the latter exercised no influence whatever over the Semitic mind in a religious or political sense before 2234. Moreover, the Iranian development, after the immigration into India, did not come into contact with the Indian. Lastly, the reform introduced by Zoroaster produced no schism among the Iranian Arians, still less had it any connexion with the migration which terminated in the Punjab. No reaction indeed took place from India upon Bactria.

The Vedic language is stereotyped Bactrian. The Zend is the continuation of this Old-Bactrian tongue in Bactria and Media, with two phases of which we are acquainted; one of them the language of the Zend books, the other that of the cuneiform inscriptions from Cyrus and Darius down to Artaxerxes II.

The Sanskrit, lastly, is the weakened prose form of the Old-Bactrian, the poetical form of which exists in the hymns of the Rigveda. These hymns were transmitted orally. Literature proper only commences with the

Sanskrit, and that, indeed, after it had become a learned language. Both Vedic and Sanskrit were, in the first instance, living languages spoken by the people, and Sanskrit only became the sacred language at the beginning of the fourth age, or about the year 1000 B.C.

This is the outline which has been gradually obtained, and in which the epochs of Ario-Indian development will take the following shape.

SECTION IV.

HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE EPOCHS OF ARIAN DEVELOPMENT, AND OF THE RESULTS OF THIS INQUIRY.

A.

EPOCHS OF ARIAN DEVELOPMENT.

I.

THE DEVELOPMENT IN IRAN.

A. THE date of the Arian emigration from the northeast of the primitive land. Age of the end of the great Plutonic disturbances of the earth, and climatic changes. Formation of the stem of the Arian language in its most general sense B. C. 10000 to 8000

B. The date of the gradual separation of the Arian races (Germans, Slaves, Pelasgians) 8000 to 5000

C. The date of the gradual extension of the IranoArian race in Central Asia

5000 to 4000

D. The immigration into the Indus country

E. Zoroaster's Reform

II.

THE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA.

FIRST ERA.

Life in the country of the Five Rivers, 4000 to 3000.

I. THE DATE OF THE OLDEST VEDIC HYMNS.

CONQUERORS live as conquistadores, as equals among

equals, as free-settlers (vaisya), in small districts. Here, in consequence of Haug's researches and the foregoing inquiry, we shall have to distinguish two epochs at least.

1. Agni- and Váruna- Worship.

a. There are many hymns extant in which Agni is extolled as the supreme God, or as the sacred symbol of the highest God, and in which the existence of fireworship is implied. About a fifth of all the hymns of the Rigveda refer to him exclusively, and most of the ten books open with hymns addressed to Agni. Here we find glimpses of those elements which were developed in later times: by the side of the Agni of the earth, the Agni of heaven (Mitra, sun), and the Agni of the clouds (lightning) or water. The sacrifice to Agni consisted in melting pure butter in the fire.

b. Concurrent with this was the worship of the Vault of Heaven as a special deity, Váruna (Ouranos). In the most ancient times human sacrifices were offered to him, subsequently no especial sacrifice. Váruna, at a later date, was viewed rather in a moral sense. He is the eternal government of the world, physical as well as moral. He tries the heart and judges man. It may, however, be a question whether we have here two consecutive epochs, or merely two concurring elements.

2. The Adoration of Ether as Indra (Zeus).

There is no doubt that this belongs to a later time. It also has its own peculiar sacred symbol-the sacrifice of Soma, an intoxicating potion, consisting of fermented juice of plants mixed with milk. It is, however, a symbol also of human inspiration, and in so far the symbol of God as spirit. In this form, however, it reminds us of the Turanian Shamanism, the product of ecstatic excitement.