places. Herodotus attests that a Persian does not pray for himself, but for the whole nation and his king.[1]
The faithful may infer from the spirit that runs through the Zoroastrian scriptures that there are no breaks in the life story of humanity. Each individual is a unit in the long line of countless generations between the first and the last man. He realizes his individuality in his own age and place. Each generation is the product of the past and parent of the future. It finds itself placed in the midst of religious, social, economical, and political institutions of the past and inherits the accumulated heritage of the wisdom and civilization of the collective humanity that has lived before it. The past has made the present in body, mind, and spirit; and the present has to make the future physically, mentally, and spiritually. No generation can live exclusively by itself and for itself. To the past it owes a deep debt of gratitude, to the future it is bound by parental duty. A wise parent instinctively works for the good of his children, and no age can be regardless of the material and spiritual welfare of those that are to follow it in time. Each age has its righteous persons by the million, who further the human progress. The Fravashis of such only are commemorated. Those that have wilfully chosen to tread the path of wickedness and hamper the onward march of humanity towards perfection do not share this honour, the highest that collective humanity confers upon its dutiful children of all ages and places. The Pneuma, likewise, in the New Testament is not associated with unrighteous persons.
Dual nature of the Zoroastrian ancestor-worship. The commemoration of the Fravashis of the dead represents but one phase of ancestor- worship. As we have already seen, the spiritual prototype of man is something apart from and above his soul. It is the soul that constitutes the individuality of his person, and it is natural for the survivors to feel that they should look to the soul of the dead for the continuity of communication with them. The sacrifices and prayers offered to the Fravashis are primarily for soliciting their help and favour. Those offered to the soul of the dead on the anniversaries soon take a vicarious form and rest on the central idea that the performance of rites by the descendants enables the soul of the dead to progress from a lower to a higher place in the next world. Thus man's
- ↑ Herod. 1. 132.
