them, because they bring destruction and death to the settlements of the faithful.[1]
Rituals and sacrifices. Gods required to be propitiated that they might extend their favour to men. When men began to lead settled agricultural life, they began to offer the first fruits of the harvest and produce of the cattle as thanksgiving offerings to them. With growing prosperity they prepared rich repasts of sumptuous food and wine and invoked them to alight on the hallowed place where ceremonial rites were performed, or kindled fire to despatch the sacrifices to heaven on its flaming tongues. Thus were the gods as well as the ancestral dead treated at sacrificial repasts everywhere. The Indo-Iranians were not behind other peoples and their sacrificial offerings consisted of milk and melted butter, grain and vegetables, flesh of goats and sheep, bulls and horses, and the exhilarating Soma-Haoma beverage. Elaborate rituals were performed and sacrifices offered to obtain coveted boons, to gain the remission of sins, and to stave off the terrors of hell. The consecrated food was partaken of by the sacrificers to reap the merit. The altars were reeking with the blood of animals that were sacrificed to innumerable gods. Zarathushtra does away with such sacrifices and purifies rituals.
Ritual is not religion; but it is a powerful aid to religious life. It feeds the emotional nature of man which plays the most prominent part in religious life. It inspires devotional fervour and purity of thoughts. Zarathushtra presumably utilized this formal side of religion to stimulate religious emotion and inspire righteous conduct. Tradition ascribes the division of society into priests, warriors, husbandmen, and artisans to the initiative of King Yima of the Golden Age of Iran. Zarathushtra does not recognize this fourfold professional order of society in the Gathas. He does not mention āthravan, 'the protector of fire' or priest. The Later Avesta speaks of the sacerdotal class by the title of the āthravan. The Pahlavi texts continue to employ this priestly designation, and in addition speak of it as magopat, or magpat, corresponding to the Greek form Magi or Magus. Zarathushtra uses the forms derived from maga, 'great,' but it cannot be said that he uses them in reference to the priestly class. A threefold division of society appears in the Gathas, and Zarathushtra gives each one altogether different names. They are
- ↑ Ys. 31. 18.
