gs. Theirs was a nature worship,
but a nature worship of a very peculiar kind. They did not place gods
over the different parts of nature, like the Greeks; they did not
even personify the powers of nature, like the Hindoos; they paid their
devotion to the actual material things themselves. Fire, as the most
subtle and ethereal principle, and again as the most powerful agent,
attracted their highest regards; and on their fire-altars the sacred
flame, generally said to have been kindled from heaven, was kept burning
uninterruptedly from year to year and from age to age by bands of
priests, whose special duty it was to see that the sacred spark was
never extinguished. To defile the altar by blowing the flame with one's
breath was a capital offence; and to burn a corpse was regarded as an
act equally odious. When victims were offered to fire, nothing but a
small portion of the fat was consumed in the flame. Next to fire, water
was reverenced. Sacrifice was offered to rivers, lakes, and fountains,
the victim being brought near to them and then slain, while great care
was taken that no drop of their blood should touch the water and pollute
it. No refuse was allowed to be cast into a river, nor was it even
lawful to wash one's hands in one. Reverence for earth was shown by
sacrifice, and by abstention from the usual mode of burying the dead.

[Illustration: PLATE VI.]

The Magian religion was of a highly sacerdotal type. No worshipper could
perform any religious act except by the intervention of a priest, or
Magus, who stood between him and the divinity as a Mediator. The Magus
prepared the victim and slew it, chanted the mystic strain which gave
the sacrifice all its force, poured on the ground the propitiatory
libation of oil, milk, and honey, held the bundle of thin tamarisk
twigs--the Zendic barsom (baregma)--the employment of which was
essential to every sacrificial ceremony. The Magi were a priest-caste,
apparently holding their office by hereditary succession. They claimed
to possess, not only a sacred and mediatorial character, but also
supernatural prophetic powers. They explained omens, expounded dreams,
and by means of a certain mysterious manipulation of the barsom, or
bundle of twigs, arrived at a knowledge of future events, which they
communicated to the pious inquirer.

With such pretensions it was natural that the caste should assume a
lofty air, a stately dress, and an entourage of ceremonial magnificence.