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No less than twenty-two messengers had left India during this period with questions pertaining to ritual observances, ceremonial ablutions, purificatory rites, forms of worship, rules of adoption and marriage and other miscellaneous subjects. These collections of traditions, customs, and rites, arranged in the form of questions and answers, are composed in Persia, which became the literary language of the Parsi scholars under the influence of the Moslem rule in Gujarat. These compilations are called Rivayats, and provide a wealth of information on liturgical and social matters.^[1] Side by side with a score of important subjects, the disquisitions sometimes fall to the level of barren theological disputations. Among such discussions, for example, were points like these: Whether the Avestan texts could be copied with ink prepared by a non-Zoroastrian, whether the faithful be polluted by conversing with the non-Zoroastrians while they are carrying a dead body, whether a Mobad who has eaten clarified butter prepared by a non-Zoroastrian can ever regain bodily purity by means of ceremonial ablutions.

Theology of the period. Bundahishn and Sad Dar, Jamaspi and Arda Viraf Namah inspired the clergy and laity in their conduct of life at this period rather than did the Gathas and other Avestan works. The formal rather than the spiritual, the concrete rather than the abstract, seem to be the prominent feature of the beliefs that we can glean from the Rivayats. The hope of the joys of a materialized heaven and the fear of the sufferings of a physical hell guide and control man's life upon earth. Man's soul and his Farohar are taken, in the Rivayats, for one and the same. The souls and not the Farohars are believed to come down on earth on their monthly or yearly anniversaries. The souls of the righteous persons descend on the earth and remain here for full ten days of the Farohar festival, but the souls of the wicked ones are given only five days' leave of absence from hell to visit their earthly homes. If the souls are properly propitiated, they rejoice and bless; if not, they complain and curse. It came to be believed that the Yasna sacrifices