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Azar Kaivan and his disciples. The author of the Dabistan gives us an elaborate account of the Zoroastrian mystics whom he met in Patna, in Kashmir, and in Lahore during the seventeenth century.^[1] The most illustrious of these mystic teachers was Dastur Azar Kaivan who came from Persia and settled in Patna,^[2] and lived for years in seclusion far from the public gaze.^[3] Some of the most prominent disciples of this recluse sage were the Mobads Farzan Bahram of Shiraz, Hushiyyar of Surat, Sarosh, and Khuda Jui. They extravagantly trace their lineage back to Mahabad, to Sam, Godrej, Rustam, Jamasp, Zoroaster, and Noshirvan. Let us now pass on to a brief notice of the literary activity of these hermit priests.

Mystic literature during the period. These Parsi mystics composed several treatises in Persian, which, as we have already seen, was the literary medium of this period. Among the more important works that have thus come down to us are Jam-i Kaikhusru, Makashefat-i Kaivani, Khishtab, Zaredasht Afshar, and Zindah Rud. The author of the last three allege that their works are translations into Persian from the original Pahlavi books written in the days of the Sasanian kings Hormazd and Khusru Parviz. A search through the literary content of these writings, however, shows that their philosophical dissertations mostly reproduce the teachings of Greek philosophy, current in India in the seventeenth century through its Arabic version. For instance, the Khishtab opens with the prophet Mahabad's descriptions of the four generative principles of things, which are nothing else but the material, formal, efficient, and final causes of Aristotle. The authors fantastically credit the legendary and real kings and princes of Persia with the philosophical ideas, which on very little examination can easily be traced to their original Greek sources. These royal personages are styled prophets or seers and depicted as advancing some original argument for the proof of the existence of God, his eternal attributes, and regarding other kindred subjects. Even the warrior heroes Zal and Rustam seem occasionally to have proclaimed a truce to warfare, and to have devoutly sat down in more peaceful pursuit of metaphysical investigations; for some of the philosophical disquisitions stand in their names too.