CHAPTER XXI
PERSIA
The Aryans who entered India to become its dominant race came from Central Asia, and left behind them there other tribes of Aryan culture. These tribes remained in what is called Iran, in the lands, that is to say, between the Indus, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and the Persian Gulf. It is from this region, a part of which bore in ancient times the name of Ariana, that the word "Aryan" is derived. The languages of this territory are akin to Sanscrit; and there is ample evidence that before the Indian invasion the progenitors of the Indians and those of the Iranians dwelt together there, and enjoyed a common civilisation. If the civilisation was the same the religion also was the same. How the Indo-Iranian religion was developed in India, we have seen. At first a worship of active and militant deities, it became by degrees a religion of a passive type, in which a suffering, acquiescent, and brooding humanity presented to heaven its needs and problems, and received a corresponding answer. The Aryans who remained in Iran retained their active and practical disposition. While by no means wanting in sensitiveness and flexibility of mind, they were less given to speculation and more to a robust morality than their Indian kinsmen. It has to be noted that while the religion of India has not influenced Europe in any manifest degree until the present century, that of Persia has contributed in a marked way to form the world of thought in which we dwell.
Sources.—The views generally current about the ancient religion of Persia are derived from late Greek writers, whose accounts will be noticed at the end of this chapter. A truer knowledge is now possible, since the sacred books of the religion are now open to the world. They were only obtained from the Parsis, who keep up their ancient religion on the soil of India, during last century, and the study of them has been very laborious and difficult, and has given rise to great controversies which are not yet settled. These ancient books are furnished with Eastern translations and commentaries. Is the Western scholar to place himself under the guidance of these, which no doubt are part of the historical tradition of the religion, or may he claim that he is himself in as good a position as the Oriental commentator for understanding the original meaning of the texts; and will he best interpret them by comparing them with the Vedas? What is their age; in which of the lands of Iran were they written; was any part of them written by Zoroaster, or is Zoroaster to be regarded as an historical personage at all? On all these questions and on many others, scholars are not yet agreed; and while so much is uncertain about the books, there must also be great uncertainty about the history and the very nature of the religion. In what follows we are guided mainly by the scholars who have taken charge of the volumes connected with Persia in the Sacred Books of the East.1 In the last of these volumes (xxxi.) a new clue is given to the subject, of which we shall gladly avail ourselves.
1 Zend-Avesta, S. B. E., vols. iv., xxiii., xxxi.
The sacred books of Persia are known by the name of "Zend-Avesta," which is an incorrect expression; we ought to say Avesta and Zend. "Avesta," like the kindred word "Veda," signifies knowledge, and the word "Zend" denotes here not the language of that name, but the "commentary" afterwards added to the original knowledge or text. The commentary is not written in the Zend language, but in Pahlavi or Persian. The Avesta, which is written in the older Zend, the sacred language of Persia, is, like other Bibles, a collection of books written in different ages, and even, it may be, in different lands. The books were brought together into one only at some period after the Christian era. The later legends as to the supernatural communication to Zoroaster of the earlier books need not detain us; we must notice, however, that the preserved books of Persian religion are held to be no more than the scanty ruins of an extensive literature. The Avesta consisted originally of 21 Nosks or books, and most of these were destroyed by Alexander when he invaded the East; only one Nosk was preserved entire. As we have it, the Avesta is a liturgical work, it contains some legends and some ancient hymns, as well as a good deal of law, but its prevailing character is that of a service-book, and it is to this that its partial preservation both at the invasion of Alexander, and at that of the Mohammedans in a later century, is probably due. It consists of three parts. The oldest is the Yasna, a collection of liturgies, which admit and indeed invite comparison with those of early Christianity: along with these are found the Gathas or hymns, the only part of the Avesta composed in verse, and written in an older dialect. The Visperad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice; and the Vendidad is a code of early law, but contains also various religious legends. Besides these works, which constitute the Avesta proper, there is the Khorda (or small) Avesta containing devotions for various times of the day, for the days of the month, and for the religious year; these are for the use not of the priests alone but of all the faithful, and many of them are still so used.
The Contents of the Zend-Avesta are Composite.—In these works the student soon observes that he has before him not one religious system only but several. In one place we find a worship of one god, as if there were no others to be considered; some of the litanies on the other hand contain lengthy and elaborate lists of objects of worship. In some parts the religion is personal and immediate; in others it is priestly. Parsism is often called fire-worship, and the elements of earth and water also obtain extreme sanctity in it, but of this also there is in the oldest books little trace. The variety in the literature no doubt reflects a variety in the religion of Iran. Iran in fact had not one religion but several, and thus the problem is to trace how these successively entered into contact with Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism, which is the religion most native to Iran, and were embodied in it. The different religions belonged to a certain extent to different provinces. We know that Persia, the conqueror of Media, was conquered in turn by the Median religion; we also know that the religion of the Persian kings as read in their inscriptions2 does not correspond to any of the religious positions held in the Avesta. The Magi, from whom also the religion as a whole derives one of its names, belonged to Media and passed from there to greater power in Iran as a whole. From the Scythians on the north and from Babylonia on the south, ideas and practices were imported; and in these and other ways, forms of religion arose as different from the faith of Zoroaster as later forms of Christianity from the simplicity of Christ, yet looking to him as their founder and the giver of their law.
2 Records of the Past, i. 107.
Zoroaster.—We begin with the teaching of Zoroaster. Dr. E. Meyer in his Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. i., and Mr. Darmesteter in his admirable introduction to the Avesta (S. B. E. vol. iv.) both treat Zoroaster as a mythical personage, a figure-head of the official class of the religion, who give currency to their edicts under his name. Weighty authorities may, however, be quoted for the historical reality of Zoroaster, and what appears to us most important of all, the editor of the Gathas, in the S. B. E. vol. xxxi., departing from his collaborateur, Mr. Darmesteter, has treated these hymns, which give an account of the founder's acts and experiences when first proclaiming the true doctrine, in such a way as to produce on the mind of the reader the strongest impression of the historical reality of the prophet and of his mission. They introduce us to a religious movement actually in progress in the poet's time, a movement in which a pure and lofty faith is struggling to establish itself against prevailing superstitions. The doctrine placed in the mouth of the reformer is that which is most central in Persian religion; and only by such deep earnestness and devotion as is here ascribed to him, could it have attained that position. We start, then, with Zoroaster and his work; and first of all we ask what was his date, where did he live, and what kind of religion did he find existing in his country?
The date of Zoroaster or Zarathustra—the former is the Greek, the latter the old Iranian form of the name, contracted in Persian to Zardusht—can only be fixed very approximately. He stands at the very beginning of the Avesta literature, and the developments in religion to which that literature testifies must have occupied a long period. On the other hand no one proposes to place Zarathustra before the departure of the Indian Aryans from the Indo-Iranian stock. From such vague data he may be assigned perhaps to somewhere about 1400 B.C. As to his province, there is considerable agreement among scholars that his doctrine spread from the east of Iran westwards; and though tradition gives him a birthplace in Media, his mission lay nearer to India, in Bactria.
Primitive Religion of Iran.—He did not preach to men unacquainted with religion. Many of the religious ideas and figures of the Vedas occur also in Persia, and by the study of these it is possible to form certain inferences as to the mental history of Persia before Zarathustra. Mithra the sun-god belongs to Persia as well as India. The heaven-god known in India as Varuna grew into the principal deity of Persia. A fire-god, wind- and rain-gods, and the serpent hostile to man, on whom these made war, are common to both countries. The institution of sacrifice, in which the deities are served with offerings and with hymns, is markedly alike in both countries. In both alike sacrifice is at first the affair not of a priesthood but of laymen, especially of princes, and is not confined to temples but is performed in the open air, on a spot judged to be suitable. The most imposing sacrifice is that of the horse, and an offering of constant occurrence is that of the intoxicating liquor, in India Soma, in Persia by a recognised transliteration Homa, which is itself viewed as a cosmic principle of life, and addressed as a deity. And in both countries alike the view of sacrifice prevails in early times, that the gods come to it to take their part in a banquet which their worshippers share with them, and that they are strengthened and encouraged by it.
These similarities, and others which might be mentioned, show that the religion of India and that of Persia started from a common stock of ideas and usages. A further circumstance of great importance shows not only the original identity of the two systems, but also perhaps how they came to diverge from each other. Two generic titles for deities occur in India. The first of these—deva, is said to signify the bright or shining one, the second—asura, the living one. Now these titles are also found in Persia; but the use of the terms is different in the two countries. In India both are at first titles for deity, but by degrees, while "deva" continues to denote the gods who are worshipped, "asura" assumes a less favourable meaning, until at length it comes to stand for a second order of beings, inferior to the devas, and including such powers as are malignant and hostile. In Persia the fortunes of the two words are reversed. Ahura becomes the god par excellence, the supreme god; while "deva," the title which in India remained in honour, is in the Avesta that of evil gods who are not to be worshipped. In this some scholars consider that we may hear the watchwords of the conflict which led to the separation of the two religions; there was a schism between the followers of the Ahuras and those of the Devas, which led to the entire separation of the two parties. This is the latest form of the old view which makes Zoroastrianism the outcome of a religious conflict, of a reaction against the gods afterwards worshipped in India. There is no direct evidence of such a conflict, and the difference we have described may be due to the natural development of the Indo-Iranian religion in different sets of circumstances and among different peoples. Zarathustra in the Gathas finds the antithesis fully formed between the good and the evil deities; he appeals to his countrymen on that matter as one which he does not need to teach them, but with which they have long been familiar. In speaking of his date this has to be remembered.
We proceed now to describe from the Gathas the work and teaching of Zarathustra. The Gathas are poems written in metres which occur also in the Vedas, and intended, like the Indian hymns, to be used in worship. The account which they furnish of the mission and the teaching of the sage are thus clothed in a poetical dress, and do not narrate bare facts as they occurred, but the facts as interpreted and treated for religious use. They are in the mouth of Zarathustra himself; he writes them for use at sacrifice, and remembering how they are to be rendered, he sometimes puts in the mouth of the celebrants the words, "Zarathustra and we." These words do not prove that the hymns are not by him. As explained by Dr. Mills, the hymns are seen to be very fully charged with meaning and with sentiment. Uncouth and inartistic in expression, and demanding an immense amount of patience and ingenuity to trace their connection of thought, they surprise the reader when once he seizes their meaning, by the depth and spirituality of their contents, and force him to acknowledge that they are a worthy document of the birth of a great religion.
The Call of Zarathustra.—The hymns give a vivid picture of that early world in which the prophet lived. It was a world distracted with conflict. On one side there is an agricultural community bent on industry, and, like the Hindus, even at this day, valuing as most sacred the cattle which form their chief substance. On the other hand, there are men who dwell on the outskirts between the tilled land and the wilderness, who are constantly making raids on the farms, driving off and killing the cattle for sacrifice and for food, and ruining the fields by destroying the irrigating works on which their fertility depends. And there is a religious difference as well as a difference in culture between these two sets of people. The agriculturists are worshippers of Ahura; the contemners of the cattle worship beings called in the Gathas "daevas." This schism was not of Zarathustra's making, he found it going on, and being a priest was entitled to come forward and seek to guide others with regard to it. Such is the situation which the hymns present to us. We will try to state the substance of some of those hymns. The naked words of them, even when we are sure of the correctness of the translation, are barely intelligible without lengthy commentary; and on the other hand, no short statement in modern terms can convey the force and solemnity of these struggling utterances. As we are dealing with the original revelation of Zarathustra, the source of the Persian religion, we shall give the story with some degree of detail.
The first hymn in the arrangement presented to us in S. B. E. deals with what we may term the call of Zarathustra. It sums up in a poetic and dramatic form the religious result of the movement which led him to come forward.
The "Soul of the Kine" first speaks; it is the impersonation of the agricultural community, to whom their cattle are most sacred. She raises a complaint to Ahura and Asha (the righteousness which is an attribute of Ahura, and like his other attributes often appears as an independent person) of the insolence and highhanded devastation and robbery she has to suffer. "For whom did ye fashion me," she says; "wherefore was I made?" She appeals to the Immortals for instruction in tillage with a view to security and welfare.
Ahura then speaks and asks Asha what guardian has been appointed for the kine to lead and to defend her; and Asha answers that no one, himself free from passion and violence, could be found who was capable of being an adequate guardian. The causes of these evils lie at the roots of the constitution of things, and therefore those seeking success in any enterprise must approach Ahura himself and not any subordinate being.
Zarathustra speaks, and confirms the utterances of Asha; it is in Ahura himself that he and the kine place their confidence; to his will they submit themselves; the doubts and questions arising from their outward insecurity, they refer to him.
Ahura speaks and answers his own question. It is true that no lord of the kine is to be found, who in himself is quite equal to that position, but he appoints Zarathustra as head to the agricultural community.
A chorus speaks, consisting of a company of the faithful supposed to be present, or of the Ameshospends, the personified attributes of Ahura, and praise the Lord for his bounty and for the wisdom he makes known; but asks whom he has endowed with the Good Mind, or, as we might say, the Holy Spirit, to make known to mortals his doctrine. The call of Zarathustra, intimated in the foregoing verse, is overlooked, as if it were impossible that such a one as he could undertake the office. Ahura replies, repeating his commission to Zarathustra, here called also by his family name of Spitama, and promising to establish him and make him successful in his work.
The Soul of the Kine speaks, lamenting still that no adequate lord has been assigned her. Zarathustra is a feeble and pusillanimous man, not one of royal state who is able to bring his purpose to effect. The Ameshospends join in the cry for the true lord to appear.
Zarathustra then speaks, accepting the mission in an address to Ahura, whom he entreats to send his blessings of peace and happiness, since none but he can give them, and to set up in the minds of the disciples of the cause that joy and that kingdom which, though it first comes inwardly, yet brings with it also all outward blessings. For himself also he prays that the Good Mind and the Sovereign Power (another of the attributes) of the Lord may hasten to come to him and strengthen him for his mission.
This poetical rendering of the call of Zarathustra is free both from miraculous embellishment and from undue exaltation of the person of the prophet, and forms a great contrast to later statements in the Avesta, where the prophet is placed in secret conclave with Ahura, asking him questions and receiving detailed replies which at once rank as revelation. In the Gathas, allowing for the theological and poetic form, everything is human and natural. We are strongly reminded of the accounts of the calls of prophets in the Old Testament—there is the same choice by the deity of an apparently weak instrument to accomplish a work urgently called for by the times, the same sense of insufficiency on the part of the prophet, but the same absolute confidence on his part in the power of the deity, and hence the same absolute assurance, once the mission is accepted, that the cause which he has been called to carry forward must succeed. In many of the following Gathas the same parallel is strongly impressed on the mind of the reader. The sense of weakness is expressed again and again—the prophet has no victorious career, but is exposed to much gainsaying, which he feels acutely. Yet he never doubts that his god is with him, and is working for him. To him he commits his doubts and fears, of his goodness he is joyfully assured, and his aid he expects with confidence. He is entirely devoted to Ahura and his cause, and offers himself up with his whole powers to work out the divine will. He will teach, he says, as long as he is able, till he has brought all the living to believe. He is conscious of a divine power working in him. Nothing in himself, he is strong by the divine grace which Ahura sends him: his words have efficacy to keep the fiends at a distance, and to advance in men's minds the divine kingdom; like St. Paul he feels his message to be to some a savour of life unto life, to others a savour of death unto death.
The Doctrine.—And what is the message he proclaims? It is a philosophy of the origin of the world, but a philosophy the acceptance of which involves immediate and strenuous action. The distracted condition of the world before him requires to be explained, so that a remedy for it may be found; and Zarathustra prays, when he is about to bring forward his doctrine, that Ahura would help him to explain how the material world arose. The explanation when it appears is not quite new, it has been shaping itself already in the mind of his people, but he sets it forth as a dogma, and draws from it at once all its practical consequences. In the third hymn of the first Gatha he solemnly brings forward his doctrine before the people, and appeals to them, not as a people, but as individuals, each for himself, with a full sense of his responsibility, to consider it, and adopt it, and act upon it. It is the doctrine of dualism, not in the fully developed later form in which two personal potentates divide the universe between them from the first, but as yet in a form more speculative and vague. There are two primeval principles, spirits, things, as is well known—the expression is indefinite—the counterparts of each other, independent in their action, a better and a worse, and Zarathustra calls on his audience to choose between them, and not to choose as do the evildoers. The world, as it is, was made by the joint action of the two principles, and they also fixed the alternative fates of men, for the wicked, Hell—the worst life; and for the holy, Heaven—the best mental state. After the creation was accomplished, the two principles drew off from each other, the evil one making choice of evil and of evil works, and the bounteous spirit choosing righteousness, making his strong seat in heaven, and taking for his own those who do good and who believe in him. The Daevas and their followers are incapable of making a just choice between the good and the evil; they have surrendered themselves from the outset to the "Worst Mind," the demon of fury, and to all evil works. (There are vague suggestions here of a temptation and a fall, but only of the evil spirits and their followers.) From this point onwards the world is filled with a great struggle. On the one side is Ahura, the only god worshipped by name in the Gathas. Ahura is a heaven-god, he is, in fact, the bright heaven, and then the good and beneficent being who dwells in brightness. In the hymns he is losing his definite character and becoming an abstraction, a god of dogmatics rather than of history. He is the good principle personified, and as becomes a god of such transcendent character, he does not act directly, but through his satellites. His attributes personified, do his bidding, aid the saints in spiritual ways, and prepare for the better order of things. On the other hand are the Daevas with the demon of wrath, who propagate everywhere lies and mischief, and heap up vengeance for themselves against the final judgment. For the good there is nothing better than to aid,—for they can aid, in bringing on the renovation, dwelling with Ahura even now, and by his attributes which work in them as well as in him, reinforcing the righteous order, and preparing themselves to dwell where wisdom has her home. In the end the Demon of the Lie will be rendered harmless and delivered up to Righteousness as a captive.
Inconsistencies.—As it happens in every such reform, the new teaching is not quite consistent with itself; old views are taken up into the new teaching, although they do not harmonise with it; the spiritual way of looking at things alternates with a more worldly way. The following are some examples of this:—The great doctrine of Heaven and Hell as inner states, as being simply the best and the worst state of mind, is clearly announced; but the traditional view of future abodes of happiness and misery also appears. The Kinvat-bridge is mentioned several times in the Gathas, over which Iran conceived that the individual had to pass after death. If he was righteous the bridge bore him safely over to the sacred mountain, where the good lived again; if he was wicked, he fell off the bridge and found himself in the place of torment. It is another inconsistency that Zarathustra expects, on the one hand, to convert the world by his preaching, while on the other hand his sense of the antagonism between the good and the evil spirits and their followers often hurries him into violent methods. One hymn concludes with a summons to his adherents to fall on the unbelievers with the halberd, and he is constantly predicting their sudden overthrow. Along with this, we may mention that he sought to ally himself with powerful families for the sake of the support they would bring the cause. The name of Vishtaspa, king we know not of what realm, is always associated with the prophet as that of his royal patron; other influential friends are also mentioned. Another point, in which we notice accommodation to existing usage, is that of sacrifice. The Gathas have several noble passages describing the true sacrifice man has to offer to God for his goodness, as consisting simply in the offering of self, in the devotion to the deity of all a man is, and all he can do. At the same time Zarathustra has not a word to say in disparagement of the sacrifice of victims. He prays for guidance in this part of religious duty; he desires to have everything connected with sacrifice done in the best way and with the most effective hymns. Thus the spiritual life is not left to stand alone. There is a personal walk with God, our piety is said to be God's daughter in us, his righteousness is working in us and moulding us for his purposes; both will and deed of the good man are attributed to him, and the processes are described with true insight by which the soul is sanctified and wedded to her task and her true destiny; but at the same time there is an intent looking to that sacred Fire which is an outward representative of deity; there is the offering of victims, even of horses, when the prophet's mind is bent on war (the Homa-offering does not occur, and we may suppose the prophet rejected this service of the deity by intoxication); there is the smiting of the demons with prayer, and imprecations, similar to those in the Psalms, against adversaries of the cause.
It is no proof of unspirituality that the welfare of the Kine, with whose wail the call of the prophet began, is steadily kept in view during his mission. The agriculturists are on the side of the righteous being, good and ever-better tillage is a means of pleasing him; it is his will that the kine should be freed from alarms and should prosper; and he may be appealed to to give lessons with a view to that end. The doctrine passes far beyond its first occasion; yet the occasion which called for it is never lost sight of.
The Gathas, taken alone, tell us hardly anything of the religion in which Zarathustra's fellow-countrymen believed. They believed undoubtedly in many gods; in those parts of the Avesta which come next to the hymns in time, polytheism is in full force. That Zarathustra only speaks of one god, Ahura (though he also speaks of "the Immortals" generally), may be due to the limited extent and special purpose of the hymns, but it may also be taken as an indication that the prophet did not needlessly interfere with the beliefs of his people: content to preach the doctrine with which he was charged, and which was to him the sum and substance of all religion, he, like several other religious founders, stirred up no strife he could avoid. The doctrine he preached was not unprepared for in the mind of his country, and continued to be the leading feature of Persian religion in subsequent periods.
It is a momentous step in religious progress, which the prophet of Iran calls on his countrymen to take. We notice the main features of the advance.
1. Man is Called to Judge between the Gods.—Zarathustra, like Elijah, puts before his people the choice between two worships. Various distinctions between the two cases might be drawn. In the Scripture case Baal is not a bad god, but simply the wrong god for Israel to worship. In the case of our reformer the difference between the two worships is a deeper one. The individual is to choose his god, he is to declare of his own motion that one god is better than others, and that no worship whatever is to be paid to these others. This was a new departure in antiquity; the early world loved to think of many gods, all alike divine and worshipful, each race or clan having its god whom it naturally served, or each part of the earth being portioned out to a divine lord of its own. Neither Greece nor Rome ever thought of making the individual man the arbiter among the unseen beings whom he knew, and requiring him to decide which of them he should consider divine, and which he should disown. In the case before us, moreover, the choice is to be made on moral grounds. Men are called to judge of the character of the beings who are called gods, they are told that there is no necessity to acknowledge those of whom they disapprove, they are emancipated from the fear of hurtful and evil beings. There is war in heaven, and men are encouraged to take part in that war, and to cast off allegiance to such powers as do not make for righteousness. How there came to be such strife among the gods, and how it became necessary that men should judge of it, we have no clear information; we only know that the momentous step was called for and was taken.
The belief, however, remains even after the decision that there are unseen evil beings, who had influence in forming the constitution of things, and who have influence still over the government of the world. The position taken up is not monotheism. The good god is not sole creator or sole governor of the world, he is a limited being; from the outset he has only in part got his own way, and he has adversaries in the very constitution of things, whom he cannot get rid of. Persian thought is dualistic; the conception of an Evil Creator and Governor co-ordinate with the good one differentiates it from the thought of India, which always tends to a principle of unity.
2. In the second place, this religion is essentially intolerant and persecuting. Having chosen his side in the great war which divides the universe, man can only prosecute that war with all his force; he must regard the Daevas and their followers as his enemies, and try to weaken and extinguish them. The general feeling of the ancient world about differences in religion was that all religions were equally legitimate, each on its own soil. The Jews, we know, shocked the Greeks and Romans greatly by denying this, and maintaining that there was only one true religion, namely, their own, and that all the others were worships of gods false and vain. But the Persians came before the Jews in this; the Gathas preach persecution, and the insults offered by Persian kings in later times to the religions of Egypt and Greece were no doubt justified by their convictions. In Persia, as in Israel, religion had come to entertain the notion of false gods. And a religion which entertains that notion must be exclusive. Those who have refused to worship beings hitherto deemed gods, on the ground that they ought not to be worshipped and are not truly gods, cannot but desire to bring the worship of such beings entirely to an end, and to make the worship of the true God prevail instead, by rude or by gentle means, as the stage of civilisation may in each case suggest.
Growth of Mazdeism.—After the Gathas proper we have other hymns written in the Gathic dialect, from which the history of the religion after its foundation may be to some extent inferred.3 These show that the Zarathustrian religion was regarded, after the departure of the founder, as a great divine institution, and was worked out on the lines he had laid down. The forms of it became of course more fixed. The god it serves is now called "Ahura Mazda," the "All-Knowing Lord" (the name is afterwards contracted into the Greek Oromazdes, the Persian Hormazd; and the religion is called from it Mazdeism); he is still implored for spiritual blessings both for this and for the future life, and for furtherance in agriculture. There is, however, a tendency to address prayer not only to Ahura himself but to beings connected with him. As if the mind wearied of dwelling on the one supreme, the Bountiful Immortals are associated with him, the parts of his holy creation are invoked, the fire which is most closely identified with him, the stars which are his body, the waters, the earth, all good animals and plants. The kine's soul receives sacrifice, and not only the kine's soul which we have met before, but the souls of "just men and holy women," the Fravashis or spirits not only of the departed but of the living also, the service of which continues and increases henceforward in Persian religion. These are invented deities and have a shadowy character; but gods of more substance, and more historical reality also came into view at this point. Zarathustra becomes a god, the hymns themselves are adored; the Homa-offering reappears, Mithra is often coupled with Ahura, other old gods creep back and are mentioned along with the moral abstractions, which also increase in number; in one passage there are said to be thirty-three objects of worship, a number which also occurs in India.
3 Yasna Haptanghaiti, S. B. E. xxxi. p. 218, sqq., and others following.
Organisation of the Heavenly Beings.—With all this multiplication there is, as we shall see, no compromise of the supreme claims of Ahura. In some of the hymns, all beings, all attributes, all places, and all times of a sacred nature are heaped indiscriminately together, in interminable catalogues. But this apparent confusion is corrected by a remarkable tendency to organisation. The Persian religion ultimately came to have a very simple and very striking theology; and that theology was made up by transforming the abstractions in which the founder dealt, into persons, and arranging them after the pattern of Oriental society. In the later Yasnas (liturgies) a figure rises into view which the Gathas do not mention; that of Angra Mainyu, later Ahriman, the Bad Spirit. In this counterpart of Spenta Mainyu, the Good Spirit (who is not at first identified with Ahura, but proceeds from him), the demons obtain a personal head, and the dualism which appears in all nature and all human society is thus brought to a personal expression. Ahura and Ahriman confront each other as the good power and the evil. Both alike had part in making the world what it is. In every part of the world, and in all that is felt and done they are at strife. Ahura, to quote Mr. Darmesteter, is all light, truth, goodness, and knowledge; Angra Mainyu is all darkness, falsehood, wickedness, and ignorance. Whatever the good spirit makes, the evil spirit mars; he opposes every creation of Ahura's with a plague of his own, it is he who mixed poison with plants, smoke with fire, sin with man, and death with life.
The Attributes of Ahura.—Each of these beings has his retinue. That of Ahura was formed first; it consists of his attributes. Even in the hymns the attributes are regarded as persons, inseparable companions of Ahura; appeals are made to one or another of them, according as the worshipper seeks help from one side or the other of the divine being. By a process which frequently occurs in religious thought, they afterwards come to be more formally arranged and defined; there are six of them, and each is charged with a province of the divine economy. They are as follows:
Vohu Mano (Bahman) Good Mind; he is the head and the guardian of the living creation of Ahura.
Asha Vahista (Ardibehesht), Excellent Holiness; he is the genius of fire.
Kshathra Vairya (Shahrevar), Perfect Sovereignty; he is the lord of metals.
Spenta Armaiti (Spendarmat) divine piety, conceived as female, the goddess of the earth.
Haurvatat (Khordat) health.
Ameretat (Amerdat) immortality.
The last two are a pair, and have charge conjointly of waters and of trees.
Ahura is himself one of these spirits; thus there are seven supreme spirits.
Retinue of Ahriman.—Angra Mainyu on his part comes to have a corresponding retinue of six daevas, each being the evil counterpart of one of the good spirits. Evil Mind, Sickness, and Decay are the names of some of them. The whole spiritual world is ranged on the side of the good or of the evil deity. The Izatas (Izeds) or angels consist of gods of immemorial worship in Iran, some of whom are the same as gods worshipped in India; but the title also applies to gods, heavenly and earthly, of later creation, so that the class is a very wide and elastic one. It comprises some beings who have been reduced by the operation of the new ideas from the first to the second rank of deities, such as Verethragna, who corresponds to the Vedic Indra, and Mithra, the sun-god. These now appear in the same rank as gods of the newer style, such as Sraosha, Obedience, and survivals of early superstition, such as the "Curse of the wise," a very powerful Ized. Zarathustra himself belongs to this class of deities, a miscellaneous one indeed. Another class of sacred beings of world-wide extent is that of the Fravashis spoken of above. If the good spirits are many and various, so are the evil. Of these are the great demon-serpent Azhi who plays a great part in Persian mythology, as Vrittra does in Indian. Aeshma, later Asmodeus, may be named; he is one of the Drvants, or storm-fiends. Gahi, an unfaithful goddess, has fallen to a demon of unchastity; the Pairikas (Peris) are female tempters; the Yatu are demons connected with sorcery.
The firm organisation of these hosts of spiritual beings, and the sense of a great conflict in which they are all engaged from the greatest to the least of them, preserve Mazdeism from the weakness and absurdity which are apt to creep over religion when the population of the upper and the nether regions is unduly multiplied. The faithful never forget Ahura in favour of the minor deities, nor do they forget that morals and industry are the chief ends of religion, and that in cultivating these they hasten the coming of the kingdom. The following is the formula, the "Praise of Holiness," with which every act of worship begins in the Yasts4 (liturgies of the Izeds):
May Ahura Mazda be rejoiced!
Holiness is the best of all good!
I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a follower of Zarathustra, one who hates the daevas and obeys the laws of Ahura.
4 S. B. E. vol. xxiii.
Ancient Testimonies to the Persian Religion.—It is at this stage, while it is still in a state of vigour, that we hear of the Persian religion from various quarters in ancient records. The chapters in the latter half of Isaiah, which so vigorously denounce idolatry, hail the approach of Cyrus towards Babylon, and claim unity of religion between him and the Jews (Isaiah xliv. 28 sq.). He is the shepherd who is to lead Jehovah's people back to their own land, and to cause their temple to be rebuilt. And this claim that the Jewish and the Persian religions were the same, that the Jews and the Persians were alike worshippers of the one true God, while all the surrounding nations were polytheists and idolaters, was admitted on the side of Persia. After his conquest of Babylon, Cyrus at once permitted the exiles to return to their own land. The Persian monarchs of the following century, Darius and Artaxerxes, continued to take a friendly interest in the worship of Jehovah, whom they apparently regarded as a form of their own god, "the God of heaven," Hormazd (Ezra vii. 21). They accordingly took measures for the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, and for the introduction there of the new religious constitution which had been prepared at Babylon. This could not have happened if the religion of the Persian kings had not been a pure service of one god,5 and the other information we have on the subject shows that the Mazdeism of Persia at this period was a very elevated form of the religion. The inscriptions of Darius do not mention the spread of the worships of Mitra and Anahita, which, however, make their appearance in the later inscriptions of Artaxerxes; in none of them is Ahriman spoken of. This, of course, does not prove that he was not believed in; when the Jewish prophet proclaims that Jehovah makes both light and darkness, that he both wounds and heals, there may be a reference to Persian dualism. Yet Mazdeism was capable of appearing, and did appear to the foreigner, as a lofty worship of a god of light and goodness. The same impression is produced by the descriptions of the Greek writers. Herodotus (i. 131, 132) writes as follows; he is a contemporary of Ezra: "The following statements as to the customs of the Persians is to be relied on. They do not fashion images of the gods, nor build temples, nor altars—they consider it wrong to do so, and count it a proof of folly; their reason for this being, as I think, that they do not believe the gods to be beings of the same nature with men as the Greeks do. They are accustomed to offer sacrifices to Zeus on the summits of mountains; they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus. They sacrifice also to the sun, and the moon, and the earth, and to fire, and to water, and to the winds. These are the ancient parts of their ritual, but they have added the worship of the Queen of heaven, Aphrodite; it was from the Assyrians and the Arabs that they acquired this. The Assyrian name for Aphrodite is Mylitta, the Arabs call her Alilat, the Persians, Anahita.6 Such being their gods the Persians sacrifice to them on this wise. They have no altar, and do not use fire in sacrifice, nor do they have libations nor flutes, nor wreaths nor barley. He who wishes to sacrifice takes his victim to a clean spot and there calls on the deity, his turban wreathed, as a rule, with myrtle. He does not think of praying for benefits for himself individually in connection with his sacrifice; he prays for the welfare of the Persian people and king; he himself is one of the Persian people. He then cuts up the victim, boils the pieces and spreads them out on the softest grass he can find—if possible, on clover. This done, one of the Magians who has come to assist, sings a theogony,7 as they call the accompanying hymn; no sacrifice is allowed to be offered without one of the Magi being present. After a short pause the sacrificer takes up the pieces of flesh and does with them whatever he likes."
5 These two religions, Kuenen says, were more like each other than any other two religions of antiquity.—Religion of Israel, iii. 33.
6 Herodotus says Mitra; but this is a mistake, whether of the father of history or of a transcriber.
7 One of the Yashts in praise of the particular deity.
In other passages Herodotus tells us of the extreme sanctity attributed by the Persians to waters, to fire, and to the sun. He also tells us that they regarded lying as the worst possible offence, and next to it falling into debt, since the debtor is tempted to tell lies.
Plutarch writes as follows, quoting from an earlier Greek writer of the third century B.C.: "Zoroaster the Magician,8 who was 5000 years before the war of Troy, named the good god Oromazes and the other Arimonius ... Oromazes is engendered of the clearest and purest light, Arimonius of deep darkness; and they war one upon another. The former of these created six other gods (here follow the Amshaspands), but the latter produceth as many other in number, of adverse operation to the former.... There will come a time when this Arimonius, who brings into the world plague and famine, shall of necessity be rooted out and utterly destroyed for ever ... then shall men be all in happy estate, they shall need no more food, nor cast any shadow from them; and that god who hath effected all this shall repose himself for a time, and rest in quiet."
8 Holland's translation.
The Vendidad: Laws of Parity.—These extracts show the growth of certain ideas which we have not noticed before. The dualism is being worked out more in detail, other gods are coming in, and the doctrine of the sanctity of the elements has made its appearance. That doctrine is the basis of a new set of ideas and practices which we have now to consider, those namely which are contained in the Vendidad, one of the later works of the Persian canon. To pass from the Gathas to the Vendidad is like passing from Isaiah to Leviticus, and the laws of purity of Persian religion bear a strong analogy to those of Judaism. The Vendidad9 is composed principally of laws and rules designed to direct the faithful in the great task of maintaining their ritual purity. The whole of life is dominated in this work by the ideas of purity and defilement; the great business of life is to avoid impurity, and when it is contracted to remove it in the correct manner as quickly as possible. Purity here is not primarily sanitary or even moral; though such considerations were no doubt indirectly present. Impure is what belongs to the bad spirit, whether because he created it, as he did certain noxious animals, or because he has established a hold on it as he does on men at death. A man is impure, not because he has exposed himself to the infection of disease, not because he has contracted a stain on his conscience, but because he has touched something of which a Daeva has possession, and so has come under the influence of that Daeva. Purification, therefore, and the act of healing consist of exorcisms of various kinds. This notion of purity plays a great part in other old religions also; it is here that we see its original meaning most clearly. Another great feature of the doctrine of purity in the Vendidad is that the elements, fire, earth, and water, are holy, and to defile them in any way is the most grievous of sins. As everything which leaves the body is unclean, a man must not blow up a fire with his breath, and bathing with a view to cleanliness is not to be thought of. The disposal of the dead was a matter of immense difficulty, since corpses, being unclean, could be committed neither to Fire nor to the Earth. They are ordered to be exposed naked on a building constructed for that purpose on high ground, so that birds of prey may devour them; and a great part of the Vendidad is taken up with directions for purification, after a death has taken place, of the persons who were in the house, of the house itself, of those who carried the corpse, and of the road they travelled, etc.
9 S. B. E. vol. iv.
How this Doctrine Entered Mazdeism.—This system was not in force in the time of Darius and Artaxerxes (when the dead were buried or, as in the case of Croesus, burned) though the ideas were appearing at that period on which it is founded; and it is plain that it has no necessary or vital connection with the religion of Zarathustra. But in later Mazdeism there are many such importations. This religion, in its course from east to west, came in contact with beliefs and usages with which, though foreign to its own nature, it yet came to terms. Mazdeism is not originally a markedly priestly religion; it is thought that it became so when planted in Media. No doubt there were germs in the early Iranian religion of a priestly system. Zarathustra himself was a priest and was favourable to due religious observances. But it is quite contrary to his spirit that life should be governed entirely by ritual law. It was in Media that this came to be the case. The name of Magi, originally perhaps that of a tribe, became in Media the name of the priesthood, and so furnished an additional title for Mazdeism. It is to this stage of the religion that the priestly legislation of the Vendidad, with all its puritanical regulation of life, is to be ascribed. (The practice of exposing the bodies of the dead to be devoured by birds of prey is probably of Scythian origin.) In this period also, remote from the origin of the religion, we find a new view of Zarathustra himself and of his revelation. In the earlier sources Zarathustra composes his hymns in a natural manner; he is not an absolute lawgiver, but depends on princes for the carrying out of his views. In the later works the revelation takes place in a series of private interviews between Ahura and Zarathustra; the prophet puts questions to the god, and the god dictates in reply sentences which are at once promulgated as sacred laws. Mazdeism, like other religions, has its wooden age, its verbal inspiration, and its priestly code.
To trace the lines by which the influence of the religion of Persia asserted itself in the wider world would be a large enterprise: only a few indications can be given here. One great service which that religion did to the world was undoubtedly that it had sympathy with the Jews, and enabled Jewish monotheism to take a fresh start on its way to become a religion for mankind. Mazdeism itself had a tinge of universalism; Zarathustra expected his religion to spread beyond his own land, and it did spread over all the provinces of Iran. It never became a world-religion, but it might have done so had it not become swathed and choked in Magism or had any new movement arisen in it to assert the supremacy of its purely human over its artificial elements. But Ahura himself, perhaps, was too abstract and philosophic a god to inspire missionary ardour; it needed a being more firmly rooted in history, a god who had done more to prove the energy and intensity of his nature, and, further, a god more undoubtedly omnipotent than Ahura, to establish a universal rule.
The interesting inquiry remains, how far the Jewish religion was modified by its contact with the Persian. The laws of purity in the Jewish priestly code find a close parallel in the Vendidad; but with the Israelites the notion of religious purity existed, and was worked out in considerable detail, as we see from Deuteronomy, before the exile, and therefore long before the period of the Vendidad. The belief in the resurrection, found among the Jews after the exile, and not before it, has been maintained by many to be a loan from Persia, where the belief in future reward and punishment was a settled thing from the time of Zarathustra. But the Jews do not appear to have grasped this belief all at once or fully formed. They arrived at it gradually, many Old Testament scholars affirm, and by spiritual inferences timidly put forth at first, from their own religious consciousness. A belief which the Jewish religion was capable of producing of itself need not, without clearer evidence than we possess, be regarded as borrowed. We are not on much surer ground when we come to ask whether the angels and demons of Judaism are connected with those of Persia. This belief also arises naturally in Judaism, where God came to be thought of as very high and very inaccessible, and intermediate beings were therefore needed. Some of the figures of the Jewish spirit-world are, no doubt, due to Persia; the Ashmodeus of the book of Tobit is a Persian figure. Later Judaism is like Parsism in arranging the heavenly beings in a hierarchy, and assigning to the chief angels special functions in the administration of God's kingdom, and still more so when the upper hierarchy is confronted by a lower one with a great adversary and father of lies at its head. But this takes place long after the Persian contact.
The Persian deities had, as a rule, too little legend to enable them to be received in other countries. Ahura does not travel. Anaitis is thought to have passed into Greece, changing her name to Aphrodite, but also to the severer Artemis; but she is perhaps not original in Persia. The Persian god best known in other lands was Mithra, the sun-god and god of wisdom. He was a favourite with the Roman armies in the early empire, and representations of him as a hero in the act of slaying a bull in a cave have been found in many lands. There were also mysteries connected with him, in which the candidates had to pass through a great series of trials and hardships. Persia influenced Europe and the west of Asia at the same period in another way. Manicheism, a system which was one of the three great universal religions of that time, and had a worship and a priesthood and a sacred literature of its own, was founded by a native of Persia. He laboured at a distance from his own country, and the doctrines he propounded came more from Chaldea than from Persia, and consisted of great histories, like those of the Gnostics, of the doings and sufferings of cosmic and other persons; a great struggle between the powers of light and those of darkness was one of its principal features. The worship of this church was spiritual; its morals were in theory of the purest and most ascetic kind, being founded on a principle of dualism in the material world, and requiring much self-denial and long fasts. The higher virtue of the system was not, however, required of the ordinary member. Later Parsism, both in Iran and in India, has shown a disposition to cast off dualism, and to become, both philosophically and practically, a monistic system.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
S. B. E. vols. iv., xxiii. (Darmesteter); xxxi. (Mills). The Zendavesta, vols. v., xviii., xxiv., xxxvii., xlvii. Pahlavi Texts (E. W. West).
The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and Ed. Meyer.
Haug's Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis. Second Edition, 1878,
F. Windischmann, Zoroastr. Studien, 1863.
Geldner, "Zoroaster," in Encyclopædia Britannica; "Zoroastrianism," in Encyclopædia Bibl.
Mills, A Study of the Five Zarathustrian Gathas, 1892-94.
Lehmann, in De la Saussaye.
Dadhabai Naoroji, The Parsee Religion.
On Mithraism, Dieterich Eine Mithras-liturgie.
Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 1903.
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