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the Pahlavi books that we have to turn to ascertain the specific duration of this period, for the millennial doctrine is recognized but not described in the Avestan writings that we possess to-day. It is worked out in full detail in the Pahlavi works. This fact might even suggest that the idea originated with the Pahlavists but such is not the case, for we know from Plutarch that Theopompus, who flourished in the fourth century B.C., or a little before the close of the Avestan period, was well acquainted with this doctrine of the Zoroastrians, and wrote about it in his works.^[1]

The Later Avestan texts speak of the future judgment, the rising of the dead, the renovation, but it is the Pahlavi works that acquaint us with the method of the administration of justice in the heavenly tribunal and the final restoration of the universe.

The texts of the Younger Avesta, as noted above, speak of different heavens and hells, but the Pahlavi works locate them, and give a detailed description of the area they cover, the boundaries that divide them from one another, and the conditions that prevail in them.

The trend of the religious thought of the Pahlavi period. We have described the change from the Gathic to the Avestan texts as a retrograde step; the Pahlavi texts are still farther removed from the Gathas. The Gathic ideal lingers and continues to be admired, but it has ceased to influence. It evokes praise from the Pahlavi writers, but fails to inspire them with its abstract tone.

Zoroaster is a historical personage in the Gathas. In the Later Avesta he becomes super-human; but in the Pahlavi works his personality is enshrouded by miracles, and he is transformed into a myth. The fascination for marvels in religion is an unmistakable sign of the times. Christian bishops, who, as we shall see in the further stage of our inquiry, carried on inveterate disputes with the Zoroastrian clergy in Persia, based the claim of the greatness of their own religion on miracles. Perhaps in consequence the life-story of Zoroaster, as told by the writers of the Pahlavi period, is similarly stamped with the mark of the miraculous. The Gathas and the Younger Avesta speak of the prophet's conferences with the Amshaspands, or archangels, and his communing with them. The Pahlavi texts, as we have seen, state