Like the Arians of India, the Arians of Iran believed in the power of the correct invocations, prayers, and sacrifice; among them also the sacrifice strengthens the gods and increases their power. In India too, the priests, and minstrels, and sacrificers handed down in their families the knowledge of the effective invocations and ceremonies which exercised compulsion on the gods, and the same was the case in Eastern Iran; priestly families arose at a very early period. They did not here retain the name of supplicators, as in India; but are called Athravas in the Avesta. In the Veda Atharvan kindles the sacrificial fire, and among the Arians of India the incantations of the race of Atharvan passed from the most powerful. In a similar way powerful invocations and sentences were handed down in Iran from father to son in the race of the Athravas. These families preserved the ancient invocations to Mithra, Verethraghna, Anahita, Tistrya, which are preserved to us in the Avesta, though in a modified form. The god Haoma instructs Zarathrustra to praise him, as the other fire-priests had done (p. 124). The reform which bears the name of Zarathrustra cannot have left the condition of the priests unchanged. The doctrine may, as invocations in the Avesta would seem to show, have first found adherents in the race of Haechataçpa, to which Zarathrustra belonged, and to which he first proclaimed his law (131), and next in the race of Jamaçpa and Frashaostra, who are spoken of as Zarathrustra's most zealous followers. According to the creed of the Parsees the good law also came to Aderbat Mahresfant by family descent (p. 62). These new races of priests, who knew the sayings, invocations, and prayers of Zarathrustra, would then be joined by those among the races of the old fire-priests who approved of the reform, and the priesthood thus formed would be further strengthened by those who, deeply impressed by the new doctrine, sought and found reception as pupils into a family of the priests, thus entering into their circle, and becoming members of their families. United by a new doctrine and settled tenets, the priests who represented the reform would become united together more firmly than the priestly families of the old time.