of the only five Yazatas that have a month-name dedication. Additionally, Adar is the name of the ninth day of the month in the Zoroastrian religious calendar, and the ninth month of the year of the civil Iranian calendar of 1925 (modern Persian: Azar) which has month-names derived from those used by the Zoroastrian calendar. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, Adar was the seventh of the seven creations of the material universe. It is only with Adar's assistance, who serves as the life-force, that the other six creations begin their work (Bundahishn 3.7–8; more logically explained in Zatspram 3.77–83). The cult of fire Although Zoroastrians revere fire in any form, the temple fire is not literally for the reverence of fire, but together with clean water (see Aban), is an agent of ritual purity. Clean, white "ash for the purification ceremonies [is] regarded as the basis of ritual life", which "are essentially the rites proper to the tending of a domestic fire, for the temple cult is that of the hearth fire raised to a new solemnity" (Boyce, 1975:455). For, "the man who sacrifices unto fire with fuel in his hand, with the Baresman in his hand, with milk in his hand, with the mortar for crushing the branches of the sacred Haoma in his hand, is given happiness" (Yasna 62.1; Nyashes 5.7) The Zoroastrian cult of fire is apparently much younger than Zoroastrianism itself and appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult, first evident in the 4th century BCE (roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of Adar as a divinity). There is no allusion to a temple cult of fire in the Avesta proper, nor is there any old Persian language word for one. Moreover, Boyce suggests that the temple cult of fire was instituted in opposition to the image/shrine cult and "no actual ruins of a fire temple have been identified from before the Parthian period" (Boyce, 1975:454). That the cult of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is still evident in the later Atash Nyash: in the oldest passages of that liturgy, it is the hearth fire that speaks to "all those for whom it cooks the evening and morning meal", which Boyce observes is not consistent with sanctified fire. The temple cult is an even later development: From Herodotus it is known that in the mid-5th century BCE the Zoroastrians worshipped to