BABYLON AND PERSIA

38 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.kind from which wc might gather indications con¬cerning their mode of life and thought, their concep¬tions of the worid they lived in, and the powersthat rule it. But we have a collection of a littleover a thousand prayers or liymns, preserved by theAryan conquerors of India. This collection is thefamous Rig-Veda, one of the Hindus' four sacredbooks. It is the most andent of the four; and assuch, of the greatest value to us. A goodlyportionof the hymns are very old indee'd, and take us backto the eariiest times of Aryan occupation in thenorthwestern part of India, named from the riverIndus and its principal affluents, " the land of theSeven Rivers," now PenjAb, atimc probably not verymuch anterior to Zoroaster and the Gathas. As thesehymns beyond doubt embody no new ideas, butthose which the settlers had brought from their morenorthern homes, it is not difficult to reconstruct fromthem the simple creed of the Indo-Eranians, if notof the Aryas themselves, the creed from which tworeligions were to spring: Hindu Brahmanism andEranian Mazdeism, religions than which none candiffer more widely in scope and character, yet bearmore palpable signs of an original common source.7. At the very eariiest stage of their spiritual lifeat which we can reach them, the Aryas already ap¬pear far superior to the Turanians, as represented bythose eariy Shumiro-Accads, who have left suchample records of themselves. This is partly to beascribed to the difference of time, since Aryan an¬tiquity has nothing to show at all like the prodigiousdatesas high as 4000 B.C.authentically established