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C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Angel of Divine Obedience

By The Avesta (c. Sixth Century B.C.)

Yasna lvii. 27–29: Translation of Lawrence Heyworth Mills

WE worship Sraosha [Obedience] the blessed, whom four racers draw in harness, white and shining, beautiful and (27) powerful, quick to learn and fleet, obeying before speech, heeding orders from the mind, with their hoofs of horn gold-covered, (28) fleeter than [our] horses, swifter than the winds, more rapid than the rain [-drops as they fall]; yea, fleeter than the clouds, or well-winged birds, or the well-shot arrow as it flies, (29) which overtake these swift ones all, as they fly after them pursuing, but which are never overtaken when they flee, which plunge away from both the weapons [hurled on this side and on that] and draw Sraosha with them, the good Sraosha and the blessed; which from both the weapons [those on this side and on that] bear the good Obedience the blessed, plunging forward in their zeal, when he takes his course from India on the East and when he lights down in the West.