The religions of the ancient world Author:George Rawlinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT IRANIANS. 1)1ri Svo Kar' avroi1; ilvai ipaf, uyaQuv fiaifiova Kai Kukov Sat/iova. — Dioo. Lacrt. Proem, p. 2. ... more »The Iranians were in ancient times the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and the great Mesopo- tamian valley upon the other. Intermixed in portions of the tract with a Cushite or Nigritic, and in others with a Turanian element, they possessed, nevertheless, upon the whole, a decided preponderance ; and the tract itself has been known as " Ariana," or " Iran," at any rate from the time of Alexander the Great to the present day ! ' The region is one in which extremes are brought into sharp contrast, and forced on human observation, the summers being intensely hot, and the winters piercingly cold, themore favoured portions luxuriantly fertile, the remainder an arid and frightful desert. If, as seems to be now generally thought by the best informed and deepest investigators,1 the light of primeval relation very early faded away in Asia, and religions there were in the main elaborated out of the working upon the circumstances of his environment, of that "religious faculty" wherewith God had endowed mankind, we might expect that in this peculiar region a peculiar religion should develop itself—a religion of strong antitheses and sharp contrasts, unlike that of such homogeneous tracts as the Nile valley and the Mesopotamian plain, where climate was almost uniform, and a monotonous fertility spread around universal abundance. The fact answers to our natural anticipation. At a time which it is difficult to date, but which those best skilled in Iranian antiquities are inclined to place before the birth of Moses,2 there grew up, in the region whereof we...« less