BABYLON AND PERSIA

THE VENDIDAD. THE LESSER AVESTA. 147numerous concessions to the local, already long es¬tablished, religions. No new religion, however su¬perior, ever supplants an older one without suchconcessions ; in making them, it grows familiarwith the lower standard, and such is the innatepropensity of things to deterioration inevitably be¬comes tainted with the very beliefs and practiceswhich it is its loftier mission to abolish. Thus wesaw the rudimentary goblin-worship of Shumir andAccad with all its train of degrading superstitions(conjuring, divining, spell-casting, etc.) incorporatedinto the far higher and nobler religious system ofSemitic Babylonia.'^'^Moreover, the Eranians we'renotoriously fond of novelty and prompt to imitate.26. This question of Turanian influences trace^able in the Avesta, a question so important for thecomprehension of what we might call the geological "stratification of the religion that grew out- of theGathic revelation, has been made the object of ex¬haustive research by Mgr. C. de Hariez, the Frenchtranslator of the Avesta.f We can do no betterthan follow his conclusions, point by point, as faras the peculiar character of a popular work willallow.1st. "The incantations, of which the Vendidad supplies a fewspecimens, assuredly have their origin in Shumir and TuranianMedia. Such long and monolonous enumerations as the followingrecall the Accadian formulas : ' To thee, O Sickness, I say avaunt !to thee, O Death, I say avaunt ! to thee, O Pain, I say avaunt ! to-thee, O Fever, I say avaunt ! to Uiee, O Disease, I say avaunt I* See " Story of Chaldea," pp. 235-237-f "Les Origines du Zoroastrisme." See also the same writer'smonumental " Inlroductiou " to his translation of the Avesta.