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THE HERITAGE OF ARYAN PEOPLES 147 The ancient bards of the Gaels and Kymry were the brethren of the Rishis, to whom we trace the hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns, for countless generations before they were written down, had been handed down orally in the families of those wandering bands of warriors and herdsmen who at a later date spread their domain to the south-east and south-west by conquest of the indigenous races around them.
In the Zend Avesta we may read how Zarathrusta, who lived some 6,000 years before Christ, asks the Divine Ahura Mazda, creator of the world of living things, “to whom among men were given the first teachings of the Ahurian faith ?" Ahura Mazda replies that it was to Yima the Fortunate, who undertook to protect and defend the people of Ahura, and to extend their boundaries by conquest. Directing his course by the stars, Yima (the first name in history) led the people towards the south, towards the way of the South, and founded the great Aryan empire by successive emigrations from the cold and mountainous country, whence they originally descended. At the time of the earliest emigration, both those whom Yima led southwards and those that remained, spoke the same language. It follows that the Vedic hymns and the Zend Avesta were the products
