The Arctic Home in the Vedas c14.4

c14.4

The first Fargard of the Vendidad is devoted to the enumeration of sixteen lands created by Ahura Mazda, the Supreme God of the Iranians. As soon as each land was created Angra Mainyu, the evil spirit of the Avesta, created different evils and plagues to invade the land and made it unfit for human habitation. There were thus sixteen creations of Ahura Mazda, and sixteen counter-creations of Angra Mainyu; and the first Fargard of the Vendidad contains a description of all these creations, and counter-creations, stating in detail how each good land was created by Ahura Mazda and how Angra Mainyu rendered it unfit for human residence by creating some evil or plague therein. The Fargard is too long to be quoted here in full; and I, therefore, borrow Muir's abstract of the same prepared from the versions of Spiegel and Haug, inserting in some places Darmesteter's renderings with the aid of his translation of the Vendidad in the Sacred Books of the East Series. The paragraphs are marked first according to Darmesteter, and then according to Spiegel by figures within brackets.