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in an earlier form the Fravardîn. spond to a Sanskrit word pravartin, which, however, does not occur in Sanskrit. Pravartin might mean what moves forward or sets in motion, like pravartaka, a promoter, but it is explained in Zend as meaning protector. The Persian name Phraortes is probably a Greek corruption of Pravarti,

It is curious that the name of Pitaras should not occur in the Avesta, nor that of Pravartin in the Veda, though the two were clearly meant at first for exactly the same thing.

Wider meaning of Fravashi,

The Fravashis, however, are not restricted to the departed, though their Fravashis are most frequently invoked. Every being, whether living or dead, has its Fravashi, its unseen agent, which is joined to the body at the time of birth, and leaves it again at the time of death. The Fravashis remind us of the Greek Daimones and the Roman Genii. The Fravashis belong to the spiritual, the body to the material creation. Not only men, but the gods also, Ormazd, the sacred word, the sky, the water, the plants, all have their Fravashis. We may call the Fravashi the genius of anything. Dr. Haug, however, goes further and identifies the Fravashis with the ideas of Plato, which is going too far, for the Fravashis are always selfconscious, if not personal beings. Thus we read in the Fravardin Yasht1:

'Ahuramazda spake to Spitama Zarathushtra: To thee alone I shall tell the power and strength, glory, usefulness, and happiness of the holy guardian angels, 1 Haug, p. 207.

the strong and victorious, O righteous Spitama Zarathushtra! how they come to help me. By means of their splendour and glory I uphold the sky, which is shining so beautifully and which touches and surrounds this earth; it resembles a bird which is ordered by God to stand still there; it is high as a tree, wide-stretched, iron-bodied, having its own. light in the three worlds. Ahuramazda, together with Mithra, Rashnu, and Spenta Armaiti, puts on a garment decked with stars, and made by God in such a way that nobody can see the ends of its parts. By means of the splendour and glory of the Fravashis, I uphold the high strong Anâhita (the celestial water) with bridges, the salutary, who drives away the demons, who has the true faith and is to be worshipped in the world. ....

12. If the strong guardian-angels of the righteous should not give me assistance, then cattle and men, the two last of the hundred classes of beings, would no longer exist for me; then would commence the devil's power, the devil's origin, the whole living creation would belong to the devil.

16. By means of their splendour and glory, the ingenuous man Zarathushtra, who spoke such good words, who was the source of wisdom, who was born before Gotama, had such intercourse with God. By means of their splendour and glory, the sun goes on his path; by means of their splendour and glory, the moon goes on her path; by means of their splendour and glory, the stars go on their path.'

Thus we see that almost everything that Ahuramazda does is done by him with the assistance of the Fravashis, originally the spirits of the departed, after

wards the spirits of almost everything in nature. But that they were originally, like the Vedic Pitaras, the spirits of the departed, we see from such passages as:

'I praise, I invoke, and extol the good, strong, beneficent guardian angels of the righteous. We praise those who are in the houses, those who are in the countries, those who are in the Zoroastrian communities, those of the present, those of the past, those of the future, righteous, all those invoked in countries where invocation is practised.

'Who uphold heaven, who uphold water, who uphold earth, who uphold nature, &c.

"We worship the good and beneficent guardian angels of the departed, who come to the village in the season called Hamaspathmaêda. Then they roam about there ten nights, wishing to learn what assistance they might obtain, saying, "Who will praise us? who will worship us? who will adore us? who will pray to us? who will satisfy us with milk and clothes in his hand and with a prayer for righteousness? whom of us will he call here? whose soul is to worship you? To whom of us will he give that offering in order to enjoy imperishable food for ever and ever?""

Nowhere perhaps can the process by which the spirits of the departed were raised to the rank of gods be perceived more clearly than in the case of the Persian Fravashis, but nowhere again is there stronger evidence for what I hold against Mr. Herbert Spencer, namely that this deification of the departed spirits presupposes a belief in gods to whose rank these spirits could be raised.

LECTURE VII.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

B

Plato's Authority.

EFORE I proceed to explain to you more in detail the ideas of the later Hindu philosophers on the fate of the soul after death, it may be useful, if only to refresh our memory, to devote one lecture to a consideration of the best and highest thoughts which the same problem has elicited in Greece. If we should find hereafter that there are certain similarities between the thoughts of Plato and the thoughts of the poets and prophets of the Upanishads and the Avesta, such similarities are no doubt interesting, and perhaps all the more so because, as I pointed out before, we cannot ascribe them either to the community of language or to historical tradition. We can only account for them by that common human nature which seems to frame these ideas by some inward necessity, though without any tangible evidence in support of any of them. You will not be surprised if I turn at once to Plato.

Plato, though called a philosopher only, speaks of the fate of the soul after death with authority, with the same authority at least as the authors of the Upanishads. Both Plato, however, and the

authors of the Upanishads were far too deeply impressed with the real truth of their teaching to claim for it any adventitious or miraculous sanction. Unfortunately they could not prevent their less inspired and less convinced followers from ascribing to their utterances an inspired, a sacred, nay a miraculous character.

Plato's Mythological Language.

It cannot be denied that the similarity between Plato's language and that of the Upanishads is sometimes very startling. Plato, as you know, likes to clothe his views on the soul in mythological phraseology, just as the authors of the Upanishads do, nor can I see what other language was open to them. It is an absurd anachronism, if some would-be critics of ancient religions and ancient philosophies fasten with an air of intellectual superiority on this mythological phraseology, and speak contemptuously of the childish fables of Plato and other ancient sages as unworthy of the serious consideration of our age. Who could ever have believed, they say, that a soul could grow wings, or lose her wings. Who could have believed that there was a bridge between earth and heaven, and that a beautiful maiden was standing at the end of it to receive the soul of the departed? Should we not rather say, Who can be so obtuse as not to see that those who used such language were trying to express a deep truth, namely, that the soul would be lifted up by noble thoughts and noble deeds, as if by wings, and that the highest judge to judge the soul after death would be a man's own conscience, standing before him in all its beauty and innocence, like the most beautiful and innocent maiden of fifteen