ord of purity!"

"Ushahina, pure, lord of purity!"

"To Havani, Shavanghi and Vishya, the pure, the lords of purity
most glorious, be honour and prayer and fulfilment and praise."

"To the days, and the nights, and the hours, the months and the
years and the feasts of years, be honour and prayer and
fulfilment and praise before Auramazda, the All-Wise, for ever
and ever and ever."_[11]

[Footnote 10: Ahura, Jupiter. Tistrya, Sirius.]

[Footnote 11: Partly a translation, partly a close imitation in
a condensed form of Yashna I.]

As the white-robed priests shouted the verses of the long hymn, their
eyes flashed and their bodies moved rhythmically from side to side with
an ever-increasing motion. From time to time, the golden goblets were
filled with the sweet Haoma juice, and passed rapidly from hand to hand
along the line, and as each priest drank more freely of the subtle
fermented liquor, his eyes gained a new and more unnatural light, and
his gestures grew more wild, while the whole body of voices rose
together from an even and dignified chant to an indistinguishable
discord of deafening yells.

Ever more and more they drank, repeating the verses of the hymn without
order or sequence. One man repeated a verse over and over again in
ear-piercing shrieks, swaying his body to and fro till he dropped
forward upon the ground, foaming at the mouth, his features distorted
with a wild convulsion, and his limbs as rigid as stone. Here, a band of
five locked their arms together, and, back to back, whirled madly round,
screaming out the names of the archangels, in an indiscriminate rage of
sound and broken syllables. One, less enduring than the rest, relaxed
his hold upon his fellow's arm and fell headlong on the pavement, while
the remaining four were carried on by the force of their whirling, and
fell together against others who steadied themselves against the wall,
swaying their heads and arms from side to side. Overthrown by the fall
of their companions, these in their turn fell forward upon the others,
and in a few moments, the whole company of priests lay grovelling one
upon the other, foaming at the mouth, but still howling out detached
verses of their hymn--a mass of raging, convulsed humanity, tearing each
other in the frenzy of drunkenness, rolling over and over each otter in
the twisted contortions of frenzied maniacs. The air grew thick with the
smoke of the fire and of th