94 M. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Manchester, 1984), pp. 8-9. R. Drews, The Coming of the Greeks, pp. 182-83 writes: "It has usually been assumed...that the Aryans came overland, somehow, to India, taking either a northern route through Afghanistan and across the Hindu Kush to the Punjab, or possibly a dreadful and southern route, through Baluchistan, across the Kirthar range, and into the lower Indus Valley (the one ancient army known to have traveled this route was Alexander's, which barely made it through). However, if the Aryans started on their journey from Armenia, an infinitely easier route for them to have taken to the Indus Delta would have been through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, and then through the gulf to the Indian Ocean. The sea route through the gulf and along the coast of the Indian Ocean had been used, in the early second millennium, by Mesopotamian merchants in their occasional traffic with the cities of India." It is noteworthy that the earliest appearance of the "Vedic" gods Indra, Mitra, Varuna and the Nasatya twins is found in a mid-fourteenth century B.C. treaty between Matiwaza of Mitanni and Suppiluliumas of Hatti from central Asia Minor. Drews accepts Kammenhuber's conclusions about the Aryan glosses in this treaty that "the words came from a developmental stage of Aryan earlier than the bifurcation of Indian and Iranian, and they came from the dialect ancestral to Sanskrit (rather than the Proto-Avestan dialect). Now, if the language of the Aryan speakers of Mitanni was ancestral to the language of the conquerors of northwest India, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Aryan speakers who went to India went by way of Mesopotamia." See also K. D. Irani, "The Socioeconomic Implications of the Conflict of the Gods in Indo-Iranian Mythology," Ancient Economy in Mythology, pp. 60, 63.

95 A. A. Jafarey, "Avestan Myths and Economy," Ancient Economy in Mythology, pp. 35-4; Boyce, Textual Sources, pp. 10-11.

96 G. M. Bongard-Levin, The Origin of the Aryans (New Delhi, 1980), pp. 47-67 describes the Indian and Iranian traditions about the northern mountains, comparing High Hara with a putative Rhip mountain in the Rig Veda, mount Meru in the later Mahabharata, and the Rhipaean mountains of Greek mythology.

97 A. J. Carnoy, "Iranian Mythology," pp. 277-78, 280 [Note: Carnoy's study is available on another page of this website, Iranian Mythology]; Boyce, Textual Sources, pp. 11, 16-17.

98 G. M. Bongard-Levin, Origin, pp. 48-49, 67, 99-101, 115.

99 A. J. Carnoy, "Iranian Mythology," pp. 299-300. Metal imagery pervades the Avesta. According to the Bundahishn xxiv.1 when the first human, Gaya Maretan ("Human Life") died, his body became molten brass, while the metals gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, quick-silver and adamant arose from his limbs. "Gold was Gaya's seed, which was entrusted to the earth and carefully preserved by Spenta Armaiti, the guardian of earth. After forty years it brought forth the first human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi," Carnoy, p. 294; A flood of molten metal will burn up evil at the end of time, ibid., p. 262; K. D. Irani, "Socioeconomic Implications," p. 68 writes: "Metallurgy, though a technology, was in its early days associated with sacred lore and the invocation of occult forces. Its techniques, particularly the manufacture of steel arms, were for obvious reasons protected by shrouds of secrecy. Some of the technology, requiring the use of furnaces, became the speciality of fire-priests in temples that maintained fire-altars—particularly the techniques of generating fires of varying intensities".

100 A. J. Carnoy, p. 302.

101 G. M. Bongard-Levin, Origin, pp. 102-111, 117.

102 G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's Time and Homeland (Naples, 1980); Boyce, p. 8.

103 A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster the Prophet of Ancient Iran (New York, 1899), Appendix IV, pp. 182-225; J. Darmesteter, Le Zend Avesta (Paris, 1892-93) ii, pp. 5-6 identified Airyanem Vaejah with Arran, the modern Karabagh; A. J. Carnoy, pp. 307, 364 n. 15; L. H. Gray, "Blest, Abode of the (Persian)," Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, v. 2 pp. 702- 4; K. D. Irani, "Socioeconomic Implications," pp. 60, 63.

104 Jackson, Zoroaster, pp. 40-47. Jackson (pp. 220-21) also accepted the identification of the Hyaonians with the Chionites, placed west of the Caspian Sea by Spiegel, de Lagarde, and Wilhelm. Allen associated the Hyaonians with Aia, see note 16 above.

105 A. A. MacDonnell, Vedic Mythology (N.Y. 1974; repr. of 1897 ed), p. 29. Rasa is mentioned in Rig Veda 10.121; Jackson, Zoroaster, pp. 40-41.

106 Jackson, Zoroaster, pp. 196-97 considered Daitya to be the Sped or Safed Rud (Kizil Uzen) in Azerbaijan, though Justi and Darmesteter thought it was the Kur or Arax. Boyce preferred the Jaxartes, Markwart, the Volga. See Gnoli, Zoroaster's Time and Homeland, pp. 53-57.

107 G. Widengren, "The Mithraic Mysteries in the Graeco-Roman World with Special Regard to their Iranian background," La Persia e il mondo grecoromano Accad. Naz. dei Lincei 76(1966), pp. 444-45; I. M. Diakonoff, Phyrgian (Delmar, N.Y., 1985), p. xv suggests that the western Mithra might have originally been the Urartian Haldi.

108 A. J. Carnoy, pp. 287-88.

109 Gnoli, p. 26.

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