BABYLON AND PERSIA

92 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.greatest', best, and finest kinds on this earth ; there he brought theseeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kindson this earth ; there he brought the seeds of every kind of tree, ofthe greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth ; there he broughtthe seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest ofodor. All those seeds he brought, two of every kind, to be keptinexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara.And there was no humpbacked, none bulged forward there ; no im¬potent, no lunatic, no poverty, no lying, no meanness, no jealousy ;no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined, nor any of the brandswith which Angra-Mainyu stamps the bodies of mortals. . . .Every fortieth year, to every couple two are born, a male and afemale. And thus it is for every sort of cattle, and the men in theVara, which Yima made live the happiest life. . . ."Some commentators say they live there 1 50 years,others, that they never die. The latter come near¬est to the mythical truth of the story, as there canbe no doubt that Yima's Vara originally answered toYama's seat of bliss, and its inhabitants to the Pitrissouls of the departed. The Avesta narrativeadds,evidently a late appendage to the old myth,a wonderful bird brought the Law of Mazdainto the Vara and preached it there. The mythical-legends of India know of several such wise andspeech-endowed birds.27. There is another version of the end of Yima'srule, a, more human and very tragical one, which hasbeen adopted in the Heroic Epos of Eran. It is alsomentioned in the Avesta. There came a day whenYima fell and sinned. He " began to find delight inwords of falsehood and untruth." In fact, it isstated plainly, that he told a lie. But what the liewas the Avesta does not inform us. Epic traditionhowever does. Seeing both men and daevas subject