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over mankind, he says, and heals diseases with drugs, but besides this, as the genius who presides at the ordeal by fire, distinguishes a truth-speaking man from a liar.^[1] We have already seen that by the end of the Pahlavi period the sharp distinction between man's soul and his Farohar was forgotten, and both were regarded as one and the same. Commenting upon the observance of the Fravardigan festival, or the days set apart for the propitiation of the Farohars, in his own time, al-Biruni says that the Zoroastrians believed that the souls of the dead, both righteous and wicked, descended to the earth during these ten days. They, therefore, fumigated the house with juniper, and put dishes of food and drink on the roofs of their houses, in the pious expectation that the souls would inhale their savour and receive nourishment and comfort. The pious souls, moreover, assumed invisible forms, dwelt among their relatives, and took part in their affairs.^[2] Spandarmad, he observes, is the guardian of the earth and of chaste women who are devoted to their husbands. On the fifth day of the twelfth month, both of which take their names after this archangel, the author says people write a charm on three pieces of paper to scare away the noxious creatures and fix them on three walls of their house.^[3] The custom lingers in some Parsi families in India up to this day. People get a Pahlavi incantation written by the priests, preferably in red, and stick it to the front door of their houses. Zoroastrianism never enjoined days of fast, and we have already seen from the Pahlavi works that fasting was regarded a sin. The injunction not to fast seems to have been faithfully followed. for al-Biruni attests that he who observed a fast was compelled to feed some needy persons by way of expiation for his sin.^[4] Zoroastrians were generally called fire-worshippers. Firdausi admonishes his coreligionists on the point and asks them not to speak of the Zoroastrians as fire-worshippers because they were the worshippers of one holy God. Kazwini, writing about A.D. 1263, says that Zoroaster made the fire a Kibla and not a god.^[5]

We have already seen that the religious dissensions during the Parthian and Sasanian periods had racked the Zoroastrian