History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 15

by Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla

 

CHAPTER XV.

 

PROMULGATION OF THE FAITH OF ZARATHUSHTRA

 

The Avestan people. The races that formed the Zoroastrian fold were the Bactrians, the Medes, and the Persians, who successively rose to political independence in Ancient Iran. The Bactrians of the Northeast, the Medians of the Northwest, and the Persians of the Southwest, were politically welded into one Persian nation, under the Achaemenian empire. This process of blending these different peoples into one homogeneous nation under the creed of Zoroaster was completed by the time of the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great.

Zoroastrianism takes its root in Eastern Iran. The Later Avestan texts speak of King Vishtaspa as the very arm and pillar of Zoroastrianism, the defender of the Faith, who gave an impetus to the religion, which until then had experienced only an extremely chequered career, and who made the faith known and renowned throughout the world.^[1] With all the zeal and fire characteristic of converts Zarathushtra's followers worked actively for the promulgation of the faith. The authors of the Younger Avestan period depict Zarathushtra as saying that he will exhort the people of house and clan, town and country to embrace the Mazdayasnian religion and teach them to practise it faithfully in their thoughts, their words, and their deeds.^[2] The zealous priests invoke Chisti, the heavenly associate of Daena, or religion, to grant them a good memory and strength for their body.^[3]

Athravans, the Zoroastrian priests of Eastern Iran. The generic name for priest in the Avestan texts is āthravan, derived from ātar, 'fire.' It corresponds to the Skt. ātharvan, the fire-priest of the Indo-Iranian period. The atharvan, it is said, twirled Agni or fire and, like Prometheus, brought it from the sky to the earth.^[4] Nature hails Zarathushtra at his birth as an athravan.^[5] He is the very first and foremost of the athravans.^[6] Even Ahura Mazda himself takes this term to define one of his own innumerable names.^[7] Like their Vedic bretheren, the Avestan people divided their society into different professional groups; and the athravans formed the first of them. Fire was their special charge, and it was their special duty to tend the sacred flame in the shrines, and also to go abroad preaching the religion of Mazda.^[8]

The Medes and Persians of Western Iran. We have already seen that the Aryan race had established their settlements in Northwestern Iran from about 2000 b.c. and that the Kassites and Mitannis had ruled over considerable tracts between 1700 b.c. and 1400 b.c. The other two peoples of the same race that successively rose to great power during the first millennium before the Christian era were the Medes and the Persians. So close was their racial affinity that the Biblical and classical writers generally use their names as alternative terms. The Medes or Mada are first mentioned by their names in the Assyrian inscriptions in the ninth century b.c. They overthrew the Assyrian empire in about 708 b.c., thus replacing the Semitic domination in Western Iran by the Aryan.

The earliest mention of the Persians is made in the Assyrian inscriptions where it is said that the Assyrian King Shalmaneser II led a campaign against the people of Parsua in the Zagros in the ninth century b.c. These people were probably identical with the Persians who rose to power later in the further east. They lived in Pars, known in its Greek form as Persis, and were a tributary subject people under the Medes. Their ruling house was known after the name of Hakhamanish, the head of the royal house, known in history in its Greek form, Achaemenes. Cyrus wrested the royal sceptre from the Medes and founded the Persian empire in about 558 b.c.

Not long after the death of Vishtaspa, the royal patron of Zarathushtra, the Kingly Glory left the eastern line of the Iranian kings and thus flew to the west. With the shifting of the political sphere of influence, the centre of religious authority gravitated towards the west. Ragha, hereafter, became the pontifical seat of the descendants of the prophet. The temporal and spiritual power here was vested in the chief pontiff of the Zoroastrian world.^[9] Religious influence radiated from this ecclesiastical centre, and the Magian neighbours, who formed the priestly caste among the Medo-Persians, were probably the first to imbibe the new ideas and gradually to spread them among the peoples of Western Iran.

The Achaemenian empire was made up of various nationalities of diverse faiths, and the rulers were always tolerant towards the religions of these subject races. Guided by political expediency, they often built or restored the temples of alien peoples, and occasionally even honoured the Jewish, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek divinities.^[10] Cyrus ordered the restoration of the temple at Jerusalem,^[11] and Darius, the devout worshipper of Auramazda, favoured its rebuilding as decreed by Cyrus.^[12] According to the Babylonian inscriptions, Cyrus restored the gods of Sumer and Akkad to their former temples, from which they had been brought out by Nabuna'id, the last native ruler of Babylon. He returned the captive gods of Kutu to their home and rebuilt their temples.^[13] Cyrus was the shepherd and the anointed of Yahweh in Judea,^[14] he was the chosen of Marduk in Babylon. Darius is called the son of the goddess Neit of Sais in an Egyptian inscription at Tell el-Maskhutah.^[15] Cambyses, according to an Egyptian inscription on a naophoric statue preserved in the Vatican, ordered the purification of the desecrated temple of Neit at Sais, and paid homage to the goddess.^[16] In a Greek inscription Darius reproved his satrap Gadatas for neglecting the reverential attitude toward Apollo.^[17]

The religion of the Achaemenians. Zarathushtra's new religion took time to penetrate into Western Iran, and, in absence of any data, we are not in a position to say how far Cyrus and his people were influenced by it. It is safe to surmise that they practised some form of Indo-Iranian religion, with Mithra, who was steadily rising in influence, as perhaps the regnant divine power. Darius and his successors were ardent Mazda-worshippers. These Achaemenian kings most devoutly ascribe all their greatness and success to Auramazda, Av. Ahura Mazda. The Old Persian Inscriptions speak of him as the greatest of the divinities.^[18] Darius says with fervent piety that Auramazda made him king and enabled him to hold his vast kingdom firm. Everything that the king did or every glory that he achieved was by the will of Auramazda. Every battle that he won and every army of the enemy that he routed was by the grace of Auramazda.^[19] Xerxes zealously imitates his illustrious father and attributes everything of his to Auramazda, and invokes his protection for himself and his empire.^[20] It is again Auramazda who brought the kingdom to Artaxerxes III.^[21] Though Auramazda is thus the supreme God of the Achaemenians, it seems there were lesser divinities who received their homage. Without using their names, Darius and Xerxes are seen expressing their wish that other gods besides Auramazda may protect their country.^[22] It is Artaxerxes who speaks of Mithra and Anahita.^[23] Herodotus tells us that the Persians did not set up images to gods.^[24] During the later period, however, Artaxerxes Mnemon first introduced images of gods. He set up the statue of Anahita in Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Damascus, and Sardis.^[25] Arshtā, Av. Arshtāt, which personifies Rectitude is yet another heavenly being discovered by Foy in the inscriptions and confirmed by Jackson by close examination on the rock.^[26] Darius says here that he walks according to arshtām or rectitude. With the emphasis that Zarathushtra lays in the Gathas upon Druj, Lie, Wickedness, Darius speaks of drauga, Lie, as the embodiment of all evil. It is the Lie that incites his enemies to revolt from him.^[27] He advises his successor to protect himself from Lie and punish those that lie.^[28] It was because he did not lie that Auramazda and other gods bore him aid.^[29] Herodotus informs us that the Persians considered lying as most disgraceful.^[30] The Gathas and the Later Avesta speak of the Path of Righteousness as the only true path,^[31] or the truest path,^[32] and Darius exhorts in the same vein not to leave pathim tyām rāstām, 'The Path of Truth,' not to slight the commandments of Auramazda and not to sin.^[33] Closely parallel to Ys. 37. 1, which enumerates Ahura Mazda's earthly creation, and which formula is recited by devout Zoroastrians as grace before meals, the Old Persian Inscriptions state that Auramazda has created this earth, yonder heaven, man, and peace for man.^[34]

The Persians, says Herodotus, sacrificed unto the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds.^[35] The Magus, we are told, adorned his head-dress with a garland of myrtle and took the sacrificial animal to the highest peak of the mountain. He cut the animal, seethed its flesh, spread it out on a carpet of the tenderest herbage and consecrated it by chanting sacred texts.^[36] The Yasht dedicated to Ardvi Sura Anahita depicts Iranian kings and heroes sacrificing her a hundred stallions, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand sheep. Herodotus attests to the fact that when Xerxes arrived at Hellespont in his expedition against Greece, he sacrificed a thousand oxen to Athene of Ilium, by which he evidently means Anahita.^[37] The sculpture on the Tomb of Darius depicts the king reverentially facing fire on the stone altar, and the sun above.

Darius asks the reader of his inscriptions to make them known and not to conceal them. Upon him that carries out his wishes, he invokes his blessings that Auramazda may be his friend, may there be a large family unto him, may he live long, and may all his actions be crowned with success. Whoso, however, acts against the royal wish and keeps back the achievements of the king from the knowledge of the people, unto him, says Darius, Auramazda may not be a friend, he may not be blessed with a large family and long life and fulfilment of his wishes.^[38] The Later Avesta names the demon of drought Duzhyāirya,^[39] and Darius invokes Auramazda and his associates to protect his country from Dushiyār.^[40] The inscriptions do not mention Angra Mainyu. We have, however, seen that Darius uses Drauga, Lie, with the emphasis that the Later Avesta puts on Angra Mainyu, and in thus seeing all evil in Drauga instead of in Angra Mainyu, Darius is more faithful to the spirit of the Gathas than the Later Avesta is. It is true that the inscriptions never mention Zarathushtra by name, but they undoubtedly breathe the spirit of his teachings. The royal house of the Achaemenians is a devout Mazda-worshipper at its rise, it imbibes the Zoroastrian cult gradually and is fully Mazdayasnian Zarathushtrian by the time of its downfall.

Magi, the Zoroastrian priesthood of Western Iran. Herodotus tells us that the Magi formed one of the six tribes into which the Medes were divided and constituted their sacerdotal class.^[41] They wore the white robe and covered the head with the woolen tiara with long flaps on each side to cover the mouth.^[42] The Median empire was short-lived. Cyrus overthrew Astyages, the last Median king, in 550 b.c. and laid the foundation of the great Achaemenian empire. The Persians thus conquered the earthly possessions of the Medes and the Magi, their priests; but they were in turn conquered by the latter in spirit. The Magian victory in the spiritual domain more than made amends for the loss of their temporal power. The racial jealousy and antagonism between the conquerors and the subdued races, however, continued for a considerable time owing to the Median attempts to regain their ascendency. When Cambyses heard of the Magian priest Gaumata's revolt to overthrow the Persian empire, he exhorted the people never to let their kingdom fall into the hands of the Medes and the Magi.^[43] Gaumata had destroyed the structures called āyadanā, which the Babylonian version explains as the houses of gods. Darius restored these temples.^[44] The anniversary of the day of the Magian usurper's fall, known as Magophonia, was observed by the Persians as a great festival, and Herodotus informs us that the Magi kept within their houses on that day.^[45] With the lapse of time, however, the Medes and the Persians became more reconciled to each other. The Magi were the priests of the Medes; they now became the priests of the Persians. This strengthened their position. The classical writers held their names in ancient times as synonymous with the wisdom of the East. Magic and magician are the words reminiscent of their fame. No sacrifices were offered without them.^[46] They accompanied the armies with the sacred fire, kept it burning on the battlefield, and invoked divine help for the victory of the king. Herodotus tells us that the holy chariot drawn by eight white horses followed the armies of Xerxes. The Magi made sacrificial offerings at various stages on the march and prayed for the triumph of the Persian arms, in which the king and the Persian soldiers in the army participated.^[47] They were held in great esteem, and their exalted position at the court of the kings ensured them a considerable influence over the people. They were looked upon as the wise mediators between man and God. They officiated at the ceremonies, chanted the hymns, sacrificed at the altar, explained omens, practised divination, expounded dreams, and ministered to the various religious wants of the people.^[48]

It seems that the Magi took a long time to supplant the religious practices of the Persians by their own. The two races differed very widely on some of the main religious observances. For example, the Magi held the elements of nature sacred. The earth was to be kept pure from defilement. Hence they exposed the corpses of the dead to be devoured by birds; though the Persians, on the contrary, enclosed the corpses in wax, and interred them in the earth.^[49] We gather from Arrian that Alexander sent the body of Darius to be interred in the royal mausoleum by the side of the remains of the departed ones of the royal family of Persia.^[50] The Persians continued this practice for a considerable time, until finally with the complete fusion of the two races they seem to have exchanged burial for the exposure of the corpses.

The earliest Greek writer to acquaint the Western world with the history of the nations of Ancient Iran is Herodotus, who wrote about a century and a quarter before the fall of the Achaemenian empire. Writing at a period when the Persians were in the zenith of their power in Western Iran, and when the Magi were the recognized class, he, with the other writers that followed him, acquainted the West with the Magi. The athravans, the real custodians of the Avesta and the guardians of the Zoroastrian symbol of fire, are unknown to these writers This may be due to the fact that Eastern Iran, which was the home of the athravans, had politically declined, and the writers are mainly concerned with the Persians of the west, and their immediate predecessors, the Medes.

The Avestan texts do not recognize the Magi. The forms derived from the term maga, 'great' occurring in the Gathas and the Later Avesta do not represent this priestly class. We find a solitary passage, presumably a late interpolation, which pronounces a curse upon those who ill-treat the Magi.^[51] We may add a passage in which Ahura Mazda tells Zarathushtra that he prefers a man who has a wife to one who lives as a magus, that is, lives in continence.^[52] The class designation of the priests in the Avestan text is persistently athravan. The disposal of the dead by the exposure to the light of the sun, the reverence for the elements, fire, water, and earth, the stringent laws for bodily cleanliness, the active crusade against noxious creatures, are some of the salient features of the religious practices and beliefs of the Magi that we glean from the writings of the Greek authors. These form the cardinal tenets of the Vendidad and are all associated with the athravans, who make up the official priesthood of the Avestan people. It is not a Magus who cleanses the defiled by ablution ceremonials, heals the sick by the recital of the holy spells, and moves about with a penom over his mouth, and a khrafstraghna in his hand; but it is an athravan who exercises all these powers and more. The sacerdotal class is known by the title of athravan throughout the texts. It is the only privileged priestly class that the Avesta recognizes.

Spread of Zoroastrianism in remote lands. The Zoroastrian missionaries travelled to distant lands for the purpose of promulgating the religion, and their homeward return from their sacred missions is celebrated by the faithful.^[53] The promulgating zeal on the part of the Zoroastrian priests seems to have provoked opposition from non-believers. Keresani, a powerful ruler of a foreign land, we are informed, prevented the fire-priests of Iran from visiting his country to preach the Zoroastrian doctrines.^[54] In spite of all such obstacles thrown in their way, the Zoroastrian missionaries gradually succeeded in planting the banner of their national faith both near and afar. They wished eagerly to spread abroad between heaven and earth the Ahuna Vairya, or the most sacred formula of the Iranian faith, together with the other holy prayers.^[55] Attention has already been called to the fact that the Gathas celebrated the conversion of Fryana the Turanian and his descendants. The Avestan texts include some more Turanian names in the canonical list of sainted persons.^[56] The most illustrious of these Turanian Zoroastrians was Yoisht-i Fryana, who sacrificed unto Ardvi Sura and begged of her a boon that he might be able to answer the riddles that the malicious wizard Akhtya put to him.^[57] The boon was granted him,^[58] and the later Pahlavi treatise which bears the name of the Turanian saint adds that Yoisht-i Fryana solved the enigmas put forth by the wizard who was killing all those who were unable to answer his questions. The saint, in his turn, proposed to Akhtya three riddles, which the wizard was unable to answer. The saint, thereupon, put the sorcerer to death.^[59] The Fravardin Yasht^[60] commemorates the Fravashi of Saena, an illustrious convert to Zoroastrianism. We learn from the Pahlavi works that this apostle of the faith left behind him one hundred disciples who preached the Mazdayasnian faith in the land of Seistan.^[61] Armenia came under the Zoroastrian influence at a very early date, and a corrupt form of Zoroastrianism prevailed in the country for several centuries.^[62] Cappadocia, Lydia, and Lycia were the scene of an active Zoroastrian propaganda. The Aramaic inscriptions recently discovered in Cappadocia mention Daena, the female genius of the Mazdayasnian religion, conjointly with the native God Bel.^[63] India and China witnessed the spread of the gospel of Iran.^[64]

The proselytizing work on the part of the Zoroastrian ministers of the faith was thus carried on with a considerable amount of success, though we are not in a position to form any idea regarding the numbers of the followers of the religion of Mazda at this period.

 

1. Yt. 13. 99, 100.
2. Ys. 8. 7.
3. Yt. 16. 17.
4. RV. 6. 16. 13.
5. Yt. 13. 94.
6. Yt. 13. 88, 89.
7. Yt. 1. 12.
8. Ys. 42. 6.
9. Ys. 19. 18.
10. Cf. Gray, Achaemenians, in ERE. 1, 69-73.
11. Ezra 1. 1-11; 3. 7, 4. 3; Is. 44. 28; 2. Chron. 36. 22, 23.
12. Ezra 6. 1-15.
13. Cylinder Inscription, 32-35.
14. Is. 44. 28; 45. 1.
15. Golenischeff, Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie, 13. 106, 107.
16. Petrie, A History of Egypt from the Nineteenth to the Thirtieth Dynasties 3. 361, 362. London, 1905.
17. Cousin and Deschamps, Lettre de Darius, fils d'Hystaspes in Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, vol. 13. p. 529-542.
18. Dar. Pers. d. 1; Xerx. Elv. 1, Xerx Van. 1.
19. Bh. 1. 5-9, 13, 14, 18, 19; 2. 20, 25-31, 33, 35; 3. 36, 38, 41, 42, 45, 46; 4. 50, 52, 54, 56-59, 62, 63; 5. 72, 75; Pers. d. 1-3; e. 2, Nr. a. 1, 3-5; b. 1, Elv. 1, Sz. c. 1.
20. Pers. a. 1. 3, 4; b. 1. 3; c. 1. 3; d. 1. 3; Elv. 1; Van 1. 3.
21. Pers. a. 1.
22. Bh. 4. 12, 13; Dar. Pers. d. 3; Xerx. Pers. b. 3; c. 3; d. 3.
23. Art. Pers. a. 4, Art. Sus. a; Art. Ham. 1.
24. Herod. 1. 131.
25. Berosus, cited by Clemens Alexandrinus, Propreptica, V. 65. 3; cf. Cumont, Anahita, in ERE. 1. 414, 415.
26. Bh. 4. 64; see Jackson, JAOS XXIV. 90-92.
27. Bh. 4. 4.
28. Bh. 4. 5.
29. Bh. 4. 13.
30. Herod. 1. 138.
31. Ys. 51. 13; 72. 11; Vd. 4. 43.
32. Yt. 10. 3.
33. Nr. a. 6.
34. Dar. Pers. g. 1; Nr. a. 1; Elv. 1; Sz. c. 1; Xerx. Pers. a. 1; b. 1; c. 1; d. 1; Elv. 1, Van. 1, Art. Och. Pers. 1.
35. Herod. 1. 131.
36. Herod. 1. 132.
37. Herod. 7. 43, 53, 54.
38. Bh. 4. 10, 11, 16, 17.
39. Yt. 8. 50-55.
40. Pers. d. 3.
41. Herod. 1. 101; see Carnoy, Le Nom des Mages in Le Muséon, 9. 121-158; Moulton, The Magi in Early Zoroastrianism, p. 182-253; Moore, The Persian Origin of the Magi in Hoshang Memorial Volume, p. 306-310.
42. Strabo, 15. 3. 15.
43. Herod. 3. 65.
44. Bh. 1. 64.
45. Herod. 3. 79; cf. Ctesias, Pers., § 15.
46. Herod. 1. 132.
47. Herod. 7. 43, 53, 113, 114, 180, 191.
48. Herod. 1. 107, 108; 7. 19, 37.
49. Herod. 1. 140.
50. Anabasis, 3. 22. 1; and cf. ShN. 6. 56.
51. Ys. 65. 7.
52. Vd. 4. 47.
53. Ys. 42. 6.
54. Ys. 9. 24.
55. Ys. 61. 1.
56. Yt. 13. 113, 120, 123.
57. Yt. 5. 81, 82.
58. Ib., 83.
59. Cf. West and Haug, Yosht-i Fryan in Aida Virfa, p. 247-266, London, 1872.
60. Yt. 13. 97.
61. Modi, The Wonders of Sagastān in Aiyādgar-i Zarirān, p. 126, 127, Bombay, 1899; for further references see Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 137, n. 6.
62. Cf. Ananikian, Armenia (Zoroastrian), in ERE. 1, 794-802.
63. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik, vol. 1, p. 67 f., Giessen, 1902.
64. ShN. 1. 76, 77; For references regarding the Zoroastrian propaganda in China see Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 278-280.