Avesta as "Fragments Tahmuras"; and the "Hadokht Nask" "volume of the scriptures" with two fragments of eschatological significance. Only texts preserved in the Avestan language count as scripture and are part of the Avesta. Several other secondary works are nonetheless crucial to Zoroastrian theology and scholarship. The most notable among the Middle Persian texts are the "Dēnkard" ("Acts of Religion"), dating from the ninth century; the "Bundahishn" ("Primordial Creation"), finished in the eleventh or twelfth century, but containing older material; the "Mainog-i-Khirad" ("Spirit of Wisdom"), a religious conference on questions of faith; and the "Book of Arda Viraf", which is especially
Sacred but of complementarity, as the profane is viewed as a hierophany. French sociologist Émile Durkheim considered the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to "sacred things", that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." In Durkheim's theory, the sacred represented the interests of the group, especially unity, which were embodied in sacred group symbols, or totems. The profane, on the other hand, involved mundane individual concerns. Durkheim explicitly stated that the dichotomy sacred/profane was not equivalent to good/evil. The sacred could