And since they propound the
very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to
our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some
possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them,
and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those
hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about
which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we
listen to what they have to tell us about them.
To show that the above is not a solitary instance, but that the Avesta
contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph
which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than
the one just given. Let the Parsi reader turn to Yasna, chapter 26, and
read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows:--
We praise the life (ahum), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas),
soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the
first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who
were the protectors of purity here (in this world).
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