d underwent a terrible ordeal of purification,
during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured
into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal
did he receive from the hands of Ahura-mazda the Book of the Law, the
Avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious
burden. At that time, Vishtaspa, son of Aurvataspa, was reigning over
Bactria. For ten years Zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin
Maidhyoi-Maonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one
after the other, the two sons of Hvogva, the grand vizir Jamaspa, who
afterwards married the prophet's daughter, and Frashaoshtra, whose
daughter Hvogvi he himself espoused; the queen, Hutaosa, was the next
convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vishtaspa
himself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened by
the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men
of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their
captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right
hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace
from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of
their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the Avesta before
them. The legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people
round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his
saintly life. According to some accounts, he was stricken dead by
lightning,* while others say he was killed by a Turanian soldier,
Bratrok-resh, in a war against the Hyaonas.

* This is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred
by Western historians of the post-classical period.

The question has often been asked whether Zoroaster belongs to
the domain of legend or of history. The only certain thing we know
concerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, or
religious fiction. Classical writers attributed to him the composition
or editing of all the writings comprised in Persian literature: the
whole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which had
been expounded and analysed by Hermippus in his commentaries on the
secret doctrines of the Magi. The Iranians themselves averred that he
had given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _Nasks_ of the
Avesta,* which the Supreme Deity had created from the twenty-one words
of the Magian profession of faith, the _