History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 16

by Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla

CHAPTER XVI

 

ZARATHUSHTRA IN THE YOUNGER AVESTA

 

Zarathushtra is the chief of mankind as Tishtrya is of the stars. On the banks of the river Darej lived Pourushaspa of the family of the Spitamas in a small house.^[1] A boy babe was born unto him. In consultation with the elders of the clan, the child was named Zarathushtra. Nature donned a festive garb, the sun shone with a brighter glory, trees strewed flowers on the ground, roses bloomed in luxuriant profusion, flowers and leaves and grass scented the air with sweet fragrance, creepers climbed the hedges in riotous luxuriance, the birds carolled in the air, myriads of tiny drops of the morning dew shone like pearls upon the leaves and branches of the trees, the clouds floated merrily in heaven, the winds made music in the lofty trees, joy filled the air, and the trees with their leafy tongues and the blades of grass and the grains of sand and birds and beasts and men and everything everywhere joyously sang: "Hail, for to us is born the Athravan, Spitama Zarathushtra."^[2] He is said to have been renowned in Airyana Vaejah.^[3] Here did he commune with Ahura Mazda and other heavenly beings.^[4] Ahura Mazda made him the lord and overseer over mankind as he has established Tishtrya the leader of the stars.^[5] He was the embodiment of goodness and righteousness on earth. He was the first and best follower of the divine law.^[6] He tells Ahura Mazda that he will lead mankind according to the thoughts, words, and deeds of the religion which is of Ahura Mazda and Zarathushtra.^[7] Ardvi Sura speaks of him as the wise, clever Athravan, who has mastered the revealed law and who is himself the word incarnate.^[8] He is the holiest, the most ruling, the most bright, the most glorious, and the most victorious among men.^[9] Haoma speaks of him as the most strong, the most firm, the most clever, the most swift, and the most victorious.^[10] He is the chief of the material world, the head of the two-footed race.^[11] He is the first bearer of the law among peoples.^[12] He is the foremost in thinking good thoughts, speaking good words, and doing good deeds. He exemplifies best in himself the virtues of the priest, the warrior, the husbandman and furthers righteousness as never done before.^[13] The Amesha Spentas longed for his advent as the lord and the master of the world.^[14] He is himself invoked as the wisest, the best-ruling, the brightest, the most glorious, the most worthy of sacrifice, prayer, propitiation, and glorification.^[15] Homage is paid unto him.^[16] The Kingly Glory that belongs to the Aryan nations is also his.^[17]

Zarathushtra invokes the Yazatas for various boons. Ahura Mazda asks Zarathushtra to sacrifice unto Ardvi Sura.^[18] Zarathushtra thereupon offered a sacrifice unto her and begged of her a boon that he might win over king Vishtaspa to his faith and lead him to think and speak and do according to the law.^[19] Ardvi Sura granted him the boon.^[20] When assailed by the demon Buiti, he offered sacrifices unto the waters of the river Daitya.^[21] Unto Drvaspa he offered sacrifice for the boon that he might succeed in bringing over Hutaosa to think, speak, and do according to his religion and to make his religion known to others.^[22] And the boon was granted unto him by Drvaspa.^[23] He asks for the same boon from Ashi Vanghuhi and it is given him.^[24] He invokes the Fravashis of the faithful to his help whenever he finds himself in danger.^[25] From Verethraghna does he ask victorious thinking, speaking, and doing, questioning and answering, which the angel of victory vouchsafes unto him.^[26] Unto Chisti, the genius of wisdom, he offers a sacrifice praying for righteousness of thought, word, and deed, agility, soundness of body, keen hearing, and eyesight.^[27] He invokes Ashi Vanghuhi with the voice that the female genius declares to be the sweetest of all that invoked her.^[28]

Temptation of Zarathushtra. Temptations of the prophets of God by the Evil One are recorded in the lives of the great prophets. Buddha, the enlightened one, is thus tempted by Mara and promised universal dominion if he desisted from imparting his illumination to mankind.^[29] Satan shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and their glory and offers them all to him if he gave up God and came over to him. Several centuries before both Buddha and Jesus, the prophet of Iran is tempted by Angra Mainyu. At the command of the arch-fiend, the demon Buiti came rushing to cause Zarathushtra's death. Zarathushtra saw through insight that the wicked, evil-doing demons were taking counsel together for his death. He chanted the Ahuna Vairya and frustrated the foul attempt of the Druj on his life. Foiled in his mission, Buiti rushed away dismayed and spoke unto Angra Mainyu that so great was the glory of holy Zarathushtra that he could see no way of killing him.^[30] Angra Mainyu tells Zarathushtra that he was a mere man, born of human parents, and could not therefore withstand his onslaughts. Moreover, if he renounced the Mazdayasnian religion, he would award him untold riches. Unto him the prophet of Mazda retorted that neither for the love of his body or life, nor if his breath were torn away would he desist from the good Mazda-worshipping religion. With the sacred formulas as his weapons, he adds, he would strike and repel the evil brood of Angra Mainyu.^[31] Up to the end of time, up to the time that the victorious Saviour came, Zarathushtra tells Angra Mainyu that he would smite his evil.^[32] Thus was he first in the material world to proclaim the word for the destruction of the demons.^[33] The demons fled headlong, weeping and wailing, at his sight and their malice was extinguished.^[34] He chanted the Ahuna Vairya and drove back the demons beneath the earth.^[35] Haoma says that Zarathushtra drove back beneath the earth the daevas that were stalking the earth in the shape of human beings.^[36] He was the first among mortals who brought the demons to nought, who first proclaimed the word that worked their destruction, and who first denounced their creation as unworthy of sacrifice and prayer.^[37] Angra Mainyu, the wicked and deadly, howled in impotent rage that Zarathushtra alone succeeded in routing and smiting him where all the Yazatas failed to encompass his defeat.^[38] He bewails that Zarathushtra smote him with the Ahuna Vairya, the deadly weapon, which was as a stone as high as a house,^[39] that he burnt him with righteousness as if it were molten metal, and that he, the prophet of Mazda, was the only one who made it better for him to leave the earth.^[40]

King Vishtaspa helps Zarathushtra in establishing his religion. Bactria sheltered Zarathushtra when his own native place had cast him out. King Vishtaspa embraced his faith and he thought and spoke and did according to the law. He became the arm and support of the new religion. He gave movement to the religion, say the sacred texts, which stood motionless for a long time. He helped its promulgation all around and made it prosper.^[41] Ragha, we are told, became the seat of the prophet's ministry and here he was both the spiritual and temporal chief.^[42] The royal example evidently influenced many people to give ear to his teachings. People now warmly welcomed him and heard him with bated breath. His countenance radiated light among them and they felt that their souls had awakened to new life. The faithful undertake to tread in his footsteps, conform themselves to his likeness, live his life, and walk in his light.^[43] Zarathushtra thus triumphed in lighting a beacon to illumine the path for mankind to tread.

Allusions to Zarathushtra in classical literature. In absence of any authentic Iranian data regarding the age and place of Zarathushtra's birth, we eagerly turn to the testimony of the classical writers who have written up to the time of the close of the Avestan period.^[44] The information, however, that we derive from them is fragmentary and mostly legendary. The cycle of legends has formed around him and he is undiscernibly remote from the writers. His name is given variously as Zaras, Zaratas, Zaratus and Zoroaster.^[45] Diogenes Laertius says that Xanthus of Lydia (fifth century b.c.) mentioned Zoroaster by name.^[46] The earliest authentic allusion to him, however, is found in the Platonic Alcibiades.^[47] Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23–79) says that Zoroaster was the only human being that laughed when he was born and adds that his brain pulsated so forcibly that it repelled the hand put over it. Tradition, has it, he says, that Zoroaster lived in a desert upon cheese for twenty years.^[48] Diogenes of Laerte (second century a.d.) quotes Dino (about 340 b.c.) as saying that Zoroaster meant one who sacrificed to the stars and adds that Hermodorus, a disciple of Plato, agreed with this.^[49] He is spoken of as Chaldaean by Hippolytus (a.d. 236),^[50] or as an Assyrian,^[51] or generally as a Magian or Bactrian. He is called the king of Bactria who fought with Ninus and Semiramis and was defeated.^[52] The Avestan texts are silent over the question of the age in which he was born. The classical writers speak upon the subject, but their testimony is not reliable. Pliny says on the authority of Eudoxus (368 b.c.), Aristotle (350 b.c.), and Hermippus (250 b.c.) that Zoroaster lived 6000 years before the death of Plato or 5000 years before the Trojan war, and Diogenes of Laerte quotes Hermodorus and Xanthus to the same effect.^[53] Pliny quotes Hermippus as saying that Zoroaster composed two million lines of verse.^[54] Polyhistor (about first century b.c.), Plutarch (a.d. 46–120), Apuleius of Madaura (a.d. 124–170), Clement of Alexandria (a.d. 150–211) and Hippolytus say on the authority of Diodorus of Eretria (60 b.c.), and Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, that Pythagoras was a pupil of Zoroaster.^[55] He is generally designated the discoverer of magic.^[56] Dio Chrysostom (a.d. 40–120) says that according to the account given by the Persians, Zoroaster withdrew from the society of men to live in a mountain. A great fire fell from heaven and kept the mountain burning, but that Zoroaster came out of it unscathed.^[57] Clement of Alexandria speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Armenius and adds that he was killed in war. He quotes Plato as saying that after lying on the pyre for twelve days he came back to life.^[58] Pliny states that it is not certain whether there was only one Zoroaster or others also bearing his name.^[59]

 

1. Vd. 19. 4.
2. Yt. 13. 93, 94; 17. 18.
3. Ys. 9. 14.
4. Vd. 19. 11.
5. Yt. 8. 44.
6. Yt. 13. 148.
7. Ys. 8. 7.
8. Yt. 5. 91.
9. Yt. 19. 79.
10. Ys. 9. 15.
11. Yt. 5. 89; 13. 41, 91, 92.
12. Yt. 13. 90.
13. Yt. 13. 88, 89, 91.
14. Yt. 13. 92.
15. Yt. 13. 152.
16. Yt. 17. 5.
17. Yt. 19. 56 f.
18. Yt. 5. 1.
19. Yt. 5. 104, 105.
20. Yt. 5. 106.
21. Vd. 19. 2.
22. Yt. 9. 25, 26.
23. Yt. 9. 27.
24. Yt. 17. 45-47.
25. Yt. 19. 41.
26. Yt. 14. 28-33.
27. Yt. 16. 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13.
28. Yt. 17. 17.
29. See Nariman, Some Buddhistic Parallels, in The Religion of the Iranian Peoples by Tiele, p. 148-162.
30. Vd. 19. 1-3.
31. Vd. 19. 4-9.
32. Vd. 19. 5.
33. Yt. 13. 90.
34. Yt. 19. 80.
35. Yt. 19. 81.
36. Ys. 9. 15.
37. Yt. 13. 89, 90.
38. Yt. 17. 19, 20.
39. Vd. 19. 4.
40. Yt. 17. 20.
41. Yt. 13. 99, 100; 19. 84-86.
42. Ys. 19. 18.
43. Ys. 12. 7.
44. See Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 150–54, 169, 170, 182, 186–91; Fox and Pemberton, Passages in Greek and Latin Literature relating to Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism, translated into English, p. 1-82.
45. Fox and Pemberton, Ib., p. 28, 44, 46, 54, 73, 82.
46. Proem, 2.
47. Fox and Pemberton, op. cit., p. 22.
48. Ib., p. 44.
49. Ib., p. 80, 81; for other references see Jackson, ib., p. 147-149.
50. Fox and Pemberton, ib., p. 82.
51. Ib., p. 28.
52. See Jackson, ib., p. 154-157.
53. Jackson, ib., 152-154; Fox and Pemberton, ib., p. 45, 80.
54. Fox and Pemberton, ib., p. 45, 46.
55. Ib., p. 28, 54, 65, 73, 82.
56. Ib., p. 22, 52, 60, 65, 69, 82.
57. Ib., p. 48.
58. Ib., p. 73.
59. Ib., p. 45.