are more Zoroastrians in India than
in Persia and the Persian sect of Shiite Mohammedans is powerful and
conspicuous there. In former times it is probable that there was often
not more difference between Indian and Iranian religion than between
different Indian sects.

Yet the religious temperaments of India and Iran are not the same.
Zoroastrianism has little sympathy for pantheism or asceticism: it
does not teach metempsychosis or the sinfulness of taking life. Images
are not used in worship,[1144] God and his angels being thought of as
pure and shining spirits. The foundation of the system is an
uncompromising dualism of good and evil, purity and impurity, light
and darkness. Good and evil are different in origin and duality will
be abolished only by the ultimate and complete victory of the good. In
the next world the distinction between heaven and hell is equally
sharp but hell is not eternal.[1145]

The pantheon and even the ritual of the early Iranians resembled those
of the Veda and we can only suppose that the two peoples once lived
and worshipped together. Subsequently came the reform of Zoroaster
which substituted theism and dualism for this nature worship. For
about two centuries, from 530 B.C. onwards, Gandhara and other parts
of north-western India were a Persian province. Between the time of
Zoroaster (whatever that may be) and this period we cannot say what
were the relations of Indian and Iranian religions, but after the
seventh century they must have flourished in the same region.
Aristobulus,[1146] speaking of Taxila in the time of Alexander the
Great, describes a marriage market and how the dead were devoured by
vultures. These are Babylonian and Persian customs, and doubtless were
accompanied by many others less striking to a foreign tourist. Some
hold that the Zoroastrian scriptures allude to disputes with
Buddhists.[1147]

Experts on the whole agree that the most ancient Indian architecture
which has been preserved--that of the Maurya dynasty--has no known
antecedents in India, but both in structure (especially the pillars)
and in decoration is reminiscent of Persepolis, just as Asoka's habit
of lecturing his subjects in stone sermons and the very turns of his
phrases recall the inscriptions of Darius.[1148] And though the king's
creed is in some respects--such as his tenderness for animal
life--thoroughly Indian, yet this cannot be said of his style and
choice of themes as a whole. His marked