Mr. MELLO.-All the Cresswell implements were Palæolithic.

Mr. CALLARD.—You showed us or referred to certain specimens of bone

implements.

Mr. MELLO.-You get a similar form in the breccia, which I think is identical with the others.

Mr. CALLARD.-My point is established if the breccia was found above. the implements, and the extinct mammalia in the breccia, which shows that the extinct mammalia must have lived after the men who made those implements.

Mr. MELLO. With them. We got them in the breccia in a part of the same deposit.

Mr. CALLARD.-Professor Boyd Dawkins is rather particular in calling attention to the stalagmite above, and the remains below. He says, in his paper at the Conference of May 22, 1877, after describing the bone awls, needles, sketch of horse's head, and associated mammalian remains of the cave-earth, “above the strata containing these remains was a layer of stalagmite, ranging from 1 foot to a few inches in thickness." The breccia is equivalent to the upper cave-earth, and the upper cave-earth will always be found to come above those implements that have been mentioned. If it be not so, I shall be happy to withdraw this part of my paper. Does Mr. Mello say that these implements are never found below the breccia in which the extinct mammalia are found?

Mr. MELLO. Some are and some are not.

Mr. CALLARD.-If any of them are, my point is gained, namely, that some men lived with and some before that mammalia, and made these bone implements.

Mr. MELLO.-The same man lived during the breccia period and the cave-earth period. We had on the left-hand side the cave-earth on which the breccia had been gradually thickening, and on the other side the caveearth and no breccia, the cave-earth being three times as thick as it was underneath the breccia.

Mr. CALLARD.—Do you claim for the implements so found that they are Paleolithic ?

Mr. MELLO.-Yes; they are Palæolithic.

Mr. CALLARD.- That is where I differ from Mr.Mello. Sir John Lubbock, when dividing these periods, speaks of the first, or Palæolithic, age as that of the drift when men shared Europe with the mammoth, and so on; and when we come to the Neolithic age it is one characterised by beautiful weapons and instruments, made of flint and other kinds of stone, in which we find no trace of any metal except gold. Mr. Alfred Wallace, at the geological section of the British Association in Glasgow, in 1876, traces the periods the other way, and says, as we go back, metals soon disappear, and we find only tools of stone and bone. The stone weapons get ruder and ruder; pottery and then the bone implements cease to occur; and in the earlier stage we find only chipped flints of rude design." Now, if these definitions are accepted, then these chipped flints of rude design belong to the period of

the drift, and further back than the period of bone implements. If, therefore, we can find bone implements, we are not in Paleolithic times. (Hear, hear.) Reference has been made to instances on the Continent of Palæolithic engraved figures. I simply dispute their being Paleolithic for the reason that the definition given of the term "Palæolithic" does not answer to them. We ought when we reach the Paleolithic period to have got further back than the age of bone implements; but they are found in the Cresswell caves, and very distinctly in Kent's Cavern, and also at Dordogne. When we have bone needles, bodkins, and other things all of bone, I cannot see how we can associate them with the Paleolithic age. But give it what name you like-call it Palæolithic if you please,-I would merely say it is such a Palæolithic age as Dr. Fisher refers to when he speaks of one man being older than another, and not such a Palæolithic age as has been defined by geologists. With regard to the question of iron implements in Creswell caves Mr. Mello is right. The term does imply more than the evidence warrants. I should have said ironstone implements. I was justified in saying that they were wrought to approved forms. Professor Boyd Dawkins says of the Cresswell cave implements :-"Some of those of quartzite and ironstone were of precisely the same form as those of the river gravels of Brandon, Bedford, and Hoxne. They are identical with those found in France from St. Acheul, near Amiens." Does not this imply that they were manufactured into forms of approved types? I quite agree with Mr. Mello as to the desirability of getting our facts together rather than paying too much attention to theories; but it must be borne in mind that I did not create the theory of the "Antiquity of Man." (Hear.) It was created for me, and I have come here to combat it. I have now to thank you all very much for the kind way in which you have received my paper. I can only hope it may result in a further consideration of the subject, and if in anything I have been inaccurate I shall be thankful to be corrected. At present, however, I feel strong in the position I took when I read my paper. (Applause.)

The Chairman congratulated the meeting on the very interesting discussion that had taken place.

The meeting was then adjourned.

ORDINARY MEETING, APRIL 21, 1879.

H. CADMAN JONES, ESQ., M.A., IN THE CHAIR.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed, and the following elections were announced :

HONORARY LOCAL SECRETARIES :-Rev. N. Hurt, M.A., Wakefield; Rev. J. M. Mello, M.A., F.G.S., Brampton, Chesterfield.

MEMBER :--T. R. Gill, Esq., New Cross.

ASSOCIATES :-E. Beales, Esq., M.A., London; A. M. Chance, Esq., Birmingham.

Also the presentation of the following Works for the Library :

"Biblical Psychology."

"Eruvin."

Antiquity of Man." By Professor T. Rupert Jones. "Testimony of the Stars." By Mrs. F. Rolleston.

From L. Biden Esq. From J W. Lea, Esq.

The following paper was then read by the Author :

From the Author,
Ditto.

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH ARCHAIC

By R. BROWN, Esq., F.S.A.

ONE

MONOTHEISM.

1. The Classics on the Date of Zoroaster.

NE of the greatest, yet at the same time most shadowy, figures in the history of the earlier religion of the world, is that of Zoroaster the Magian, to whom aftertimes have united in ascribing high and mysterious doctrine in combination with occult and wondrous lore. His actual historical existence was not doubted by the Greek and Latin writers, but the time when he lived was only conjectured. Thus, Agathias, writing about A.D. 576, observes that the Persians in his day stated that Zoroaster lived in the time of Hystaspes, who, by a not unnatural error, was regarded as identical with the father

of the first Darius; and the historian adds that whenever he lived he was the Persian prophet and "master of the magic rites."* Pliny has preserved several traditional incidents. connected with Zoroaster, such as praise of a mysterious stone called Astriotes, "the Star-like;"+ that he laughed on the day of his birth,‡ a circumstance which those who connect him with natural phenomena would probably regard as indicating the joyousness of the bright heaven or the dread exultation of the thunder-god;§ and that he lived on cheese with great austerity for twenty years, || a statement which reminds us of the traditional and mythical austerities of Hindu saints. and divinities. After referring to the general consent of authorities that he was the inventor of magic, which Pliny judiciously observes was doubtless originally connected with the healing art, the Roman writer states that Eudoxos and Aristotle placed Zoroaster 6,000 years before the time of Plato; whilst Hermippos the philosopher, B.C. 250, who, of all the Greeks, most deeply studied Zoroastrianism, and who wrote a work upon it, now lost, entitled Peri Magón, placed the age of Zoroaster 5,000 years before the Trojan War. With this date Plutarch, in, perhaps, his most valuable tractate, agrees when referring to "Zoroastris the Magian."** Masudi, the Arabian historian, A.D. 950, assigns Zoroaster a date about B.C. 600, a computation probably connected with the view that places him in the period of the later Hystaspes. From these different opinions. we gain at least one important fact, that in comparatively late times the people of the country in or near which he was said to have lived still connected him with an Hystaspes (Vishtaspa), who, in reality, was the Kavâ Vishtâspa, a friend of Zoroaster, who is mentioned in the Gathas.

2. The name "Magian."

The name "magian," whence magic and magician, occurs in both our Testaments. In the Old, the Rab-mag, or chief magian, is mentioned amongst the Babylonian princes of Nebuchadnezzar at Jerusalem;++ whilst in the New it is recorded that magians (μayo) came to worship the infant Jesus.‡‡ In both cases the term implies not merely "wise men," but special experts belonging to a particular country. What, then, is the derivation and meaning of the word, which

Cf. Shelley, The Cloud: "I laugh as I pass in thunder."

Hist. Nat. xi. 96. tt Jeremiah xxxix. 3.

T Ibid. xxx. 1, 2.

Ibid. vii. 15.

** Peri Is. kai Os. xlvi. St. Matthew ii. 1.

is certainly not Semitic? The Aryan and Turanian families of language have both claimed it. Thus, according to Haug and others, the term " magava" signifies one possessed of maga, or power, i.e., spiritual or occult power; and the Magavas were the earliest followers of Zoroaster. Maghavan, "the possessor of riches," is a common epithet of the Vedic Indra, and is also occasionally applied to Agni, the igneous principle. On the other hand, Sir H. C. Rawlinson and M. Lenormant regard Magism as non-Aryan in origin, but engrafted with an Aryan religion.* In this case the word must be Proto-Medic or Scythic, i.e. Turanian; and I should be inclined to connect it with the Akkadian mach, "very high," "supreme." Thus, in an Akkadian hymn,† translated by M. Lenormant, we read ana zae mach men, God, thou art very high." Whether, therefore, the term be of Aryan or Turanian origin, it signifies almost equally one exalted by the possession of wealth, of knowledge, or of power.

3. Is Zoroaster an Historical Personage? His Name.

According to Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Zoroaster was "the personification of the old heresionym of the Scythic race."S Zara-thushtra or thustra, the Persian and Parsi Zardosht, the Greek Zarastrades, Zoroastres or Zoroastris, in his theory is Zera-ishtar, or "the seed of Istaru," the celebrated Assyrian goddess of love, war, and the planet Venus, the zodiacal Virgo, and whose two phases, Istar of Nineveh and Istar of Arbela, reappear together in the Phenician (plural) divinity Ashtaroth, the Greek Astarte. M. Darmesteter, who regards Zoroaster as one of the many bright powers of heaven who fight in an almost endless strife against the powers of darkness and evil, observes, "The meaning of the name of Zarathustra is unknown. It is no fault of etymologies; one can count a score, and here is a twenty-first." And he proceeds to trace it to a form zarat-vat, corresponding to the Vedic harit-vat, which signifies "He-who-has-the-red (horses)," i.c. the sun. Zarat-vat would thus mean mean "red," or gold

* Vide Canon Rawlinson, Herodotus, i. 346, et seq.; Ancient Monarchies ii. 348; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 218.

+ Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, iv. 60.

Etude sur quelques parties des Syllabaires Cuneiformes, 12.

§ Notes on the Early History of Babylonia, 41; vide also Canon Rawlinson, Herodotus, i. 350.

|| Assyrian, Ziru; Heb. y.

Istaru means

Genesis, 58).

goddess" (vide Geo. Smith, Chaldean Account of