The Ideas of the Persians as to a Future Life. 193 our study will comprise two or three different types, it is because during the whole of that period such teachings, and the prescrip- tions consequent upon them, had not yet acquired absolute mastery over the minds of the nation at large, as was afterwards the case in the reign of the Sassanidae. Their rigorous observance was still restricted to the priest-caste of the Magi recruited in Media;' the laity, as we should say, took matters more easily. This, Greek historians have recorded, and their testimony is borne out by that of the monuments. Herodotus' informs us that Cambyses, during his expedition in Egypt, roused the indignation of the Persians because he gave the body of Amasis to be burnt " Of a truth,*' he says^ " the Persians regard fire in the light of a god, and their laws, like those of the Egyptians, forbid the burning of the dead. With the former, the prohibition rests on the notion that it is unseemly for a god to feed upon a mortal." No funereal pyre, then, was ever lighted in Media or Persia ; nevertheless it would appear that, in the latter country in especial, the practice of burying the dead was fairiy general. After having tried to describe the manners and customs of the Persians, the historian adds : " This I can say of the Persians, because I know it on the best authority ; as to the mode of burying their dead, it was told me as a secret, but I find some difficulty in believing it : the body of a Persian, they say, is not buried until the flesh has been torn off it by dogs and birds of prey. This is certainly true of the Magi, who carry out the practice openly. In any case the dead bodies are first completi U- covered with a coating of wax and then deposited in the ground." * If we have cited the whole of this remarkable passage it is because we incidentally learn what pains the historian took to collect evidence in the countries he visited, and to put down nothing but what he sincerely believed to be the truth. Then, too, in spite of timid and seemingly contradictory statements, we get a pretty fair insight into the real state of funereal usages current among a people he wished to bring to the knowledge of his countrymen. We have said tluit, as time went on, the logical development of dualism assumed a fixed and positive shape, when the Magi came ' DaRMESTETER, Introduction^ xlv.
- iiL 16. Cteslas (Frag. 57, extract by Phottnt) and Strabo (XV. UL 14) atte«t
that to bum a corpse was a capital oftnoe. ' Herodotus, i. 140. o L.i^u,^cci by Google
