worshippers; and if his operations are successful he may then be given permission to practise among the faithful, but if his tests prove fatal he is to be disqualified forever.[1] In regard to acts of worship, moreover, those misguided sacrificers who bring libations unto Ardvi Sura after sunset are classed among the worshippers of the Daevas, for the libations brought after the sun has set reach the demons.[2]
Zoroastrianism is anti-daeva, or against the demons. In the hymn of the Confession of Faith that the faithful recites from the time when he as a child is invested with the sacred cord, and which he thereafter repeats throughout his life at the opening of each daily prayer, he proclaims himself a worshipper of Mazda and a foe to the demons.[3] In this antagonistic attitude to all that is evil, he abjures everything relating to the demons and all that may accrue from them, exactly as the prophet Zarathushtra did.[4] One of the Nasks, or books of the Avesta, moreover, derives its name from this very expression and is called, accordingly, the Vendidad, more correctly 'Vidaeva-dāta,' or 'law against the demons.'
Aka Manah
The demon of Evil Mind. Angra Mainyu has created Aka Manah, or Evil Mind, as a counterpoise to the Good Mind of Vohu Manah. The fiend occupies, after his father, Angra Mainyu, the second place among the whole host of demons. In spite of this, he figures very rarely in the Younger Avesta and we do not hear so much of his activity as in the Pahlavi works. Aka Manah, in the scene of the temptation of the prophet, joins in the stratagem of the demon Buiti to assail Zarathushtra, and as an impersonation of the baser side of the human mind he practises his wiles by guileful words of seduction for the sainted leader to abandon the course of righteousness, but the holy prophet baffles the fiend in his attempt.[5] This evil being, moreover, takes part unsuccessfully in the contest between the powers of the Good Spirit and the Evil Spirit to seize the Divine Glory.[6] The ethics of Zoroastrianism naturally demands that Aka Manah's power shall be ultimately destroyed, and accordingly he
