BABYLON AND PERSIA

124 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.in form and substance. Every set of definitions, ofqueries and answers, is exactly matched by its cor¬responding opposite set. So, after ascertaining fromAhura-Mazda what are the places where the Earthfeels most happy, Zarathushtra proceeds to inquirewhat are the places where she feels sorest grief, andreceives, among others, the following replies : ". . .It is the place wherein most corpses of dogs and menhe buried. . . . It is the place wfiereon standmost of those Dakhmas, whereon corpses of menare deposited. ..."The Dakhmaalso called by the modern Parsis"the Tower of Silence" the burying-place, orrather, the cemetery, for the name of " burial " wouldill become the singular and, to us, revolting way inwhich the Mazdayasnians of Northern Eran disposedof their dead, religiously followed therein by theirParsi descendants. This brings us to the contempla¬tion of the most extraordinary refinement of logicalconsistency ever achieved by human brains.9. Given the two absolute premises: ist, that theelements are pure and holy and must not be defiled ;2d, that the essence of all impurity is death, as thework of the Angra-Mainyu, " the Spirit who is alldeath," and who takes undisputed possession of thehuman body the moment that the breath of life, thegift of Ahura-Mazda, has left it, the question," What is to be done with the dead .? " becomes anexceedingly complicated and difficult one. Thepresence of a corpse pollutes the air ; to bury it inthe earth or sink it into the water were equally sacri¬legious ; to burn it in the fire, after the manner of