Zardusht). Its signification is obscure; but it certainly contains the word ushtra, “camel.”
Zoroaster was already famous in classical antiquity as the founder of the widely renowned wisdom of the Magi. His Evidence for his life. name is not mentioned by Herodotus in his sketch of the Medo-Persian religion (i. 131 seq.). It occurs for the first time in a fragment of Xanthus (29), and in the Alcibiades of Plato (i. p. 122), who calls him the son of Oromazdes. For occidental writers, Zoroaster is always the Magus, or the founder of the whole Magian system (Plut. de Is. et Osir. 46; Plat. loc. cit.; Diog. Laërt. prooem. 2: other passages in Jackson's Zoroaster, 6 seq.). They sometimes call him a Bactrian, sometimes a Median or Persian (cf. Jackson, op. cit. 186). The ancients also recount a few points regarding the childhood of Zoroaster and his hermit-life. Thus, according to Pliny (Nat. Hist. vii. 15), he laughed on the very day of his birth—a statement found also in the Zardusht-Nāma—and lived in the wilderness upon cheese (xi. 97). Plutarch speaks of his intercourse with the deity, and compares him with Lycurgus and Numa (Numa, 4). Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch's contemporary, declares that neither Homer nor Hesiod sang of the chariot and horses of Zeus so worthily as Zoroaster, of whom the Persians tell that, out of love to wisdom and righteousness, he withdrew himself from men, and lived in solitude upon a mountain. The mountain was consumed by fire, but Zoroaster escaped uninjured and spoke to the multitude (vol. ii. p. 60). Plutarch, drawing partly on Theopompus, speaks of his religion in his Isis and Osiris (cc. 46-47). He gives a faithful sketch of the doctrines, mythology and dualistic system of the Magian Zoroaster.
As to the period in which he lived, most of the Greeks have already lost the true perspective. Hermodorus and Hermippus of Smyrna place him 5000 years before the Trojan war, Xanthus 6000 years before Xerxes, Eudoxus and Aristotle 6000 years before the death of Plato. Agathias remarks (ii. 24), with perfect truth, that it is no longer possible to determine with any certainty when he lived and legislated. “The Persians,” he adds, “say that Zoroaster lived under Hystaspes, but do not make it clear whether by this name they mean the father of Darius or another Hystaspes. But, whatever may have been his date, he was their teacher and instructor in the Magian religion, modified their former religious customs, and introduced a variegated and composite belief.”
He is nowhere mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenidae, although Darius and his successors were without doubt devoted adherents of Zoroastrianism. The Avesta is, indeed, our principal source for the doctrine of Zoroaster; on the subject of his person and his life it is comparatively reticent; with regard to his date it is, naturally enough, absolutely silent. The 13th section, or Spend Nask, which was mainly consecrated to the description of his life, has perished; while the biographies founded upon it in the 7th book of the Dinkard (9th century A.D.), the Shāh-Nāma, and the Zardusht-Nāma (13th century), are thoroughly legendary—full of wonders, fabulous histories and miraculous deliverances.
Under all circumstances we must imitate the ancient authors in holding fast to the historic personality of Zoroaster; though he—like many another name of the dim past—has failed to escape the fate of being regarded as a purely mythical creation (for instance, by Kern and by Darmesteter, in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv. 1880, introd. 76). According to Darmesteter, the Zarathustra of the Avesta is a mere myth, a divinity invested with human attributes, an incarnation of the storm-god, who with his divine word, the thunder, comes and smites the demons. Darmesteter has failed to realize sufficiently the disdnction between the Zoroaster of the later Avesta and the Zoroaster of the Gāthās. It cannot be denied that in the later Avesta, and still more in writings of more recent date, he is presented in a legendary light and endowed with superhuman powers. At his appearing all nature rejoices (Yasht, 13, 93); he enters into conflict with the demons and rids the earth of their presence (Yasht, 17, 19); Satan approaches him as tempter to make him renounce his faith (Vendidad, 19, 6).
The Gāthās alone within the Avesta make claim to be the ipsissima verba of the prophet; in the rest of that work they are put into Zoroaster's own mouth (Yasna, 9, 1) and are expressly called “the Gāthās of the holy Zoroaster” (Yasna, 57, 8). The litanies of the Yasna, and the Yashts, refer to him as a personage belonging to the past. The Vendidad also merely gives accounts of the dialogues between Ormazd and Zoroaster. The Gāthās alone claim to be authentic utterances of Zoroaster, his actual expressions in presence of the assembled congregation. They are the last genuine survivals of the doctrinal discourses with which—as the promulgator of a new religion—he appeared at the court of King Vishtāspa.
The person of the Zoroaster whom we meet with in these hymns differs toto coelo from the Zoroaster of the younger Avesta. He is the exact opposite of the miraculous personage of later legend—a mere man, standing always on the solid ground of reality, whose only arms are trust in his God and the protection of his powerful allies. At times his position is precarious enough. He whom we hear in the Gāthās has had to face, not merely all forms of outward opposition and the unbelief and lukewarmness of adherents, but also the inward misgivings of his own heart as to the truth and final victory of his cause. At one time hope, at another despondency, now assured confidence, now doubt and despair, here a firm faith in the speedy coming of the kingdom of heaven, there the thought of taking refuge by flight—such is the range of the emotions which find their immediate expression in these hymns. And the whole breathes such a genuine originality, all is psychologically so accurate and just, the earliest beginnings of the new religious movement, the childhood of a new community of faith, are reflected so naturally in them all, that it is impossible for a moment to think of a later period of composition by a priesthood whom we know to have been devoid of any historical sense, and incapable of reconstructing the spiritual conditions under which Zoroaster lived. So soon as the point of view is clear—that in the Gāthās we have firm historical ground on which Zoroaster and his surroundings may rest, that here we have the beginnings of the Zoroastrian religion—then it becomes impossible to answer otherwise than affirmatively every general question as to the historical character of Zoroaster. Yet we must not expect too much from the Gāthās in the way of definite detail. They give no historical account of the life and teaching of their prophet, but rather are, so to say, versus memoriales, which recapitulate the main points of interest, often again in brief outlines. They are more of general admonitions, asseverations, solemn prophecies, sometimes directed to the faithful flock or to the princes, but generally cast in the form of dialogues with God and the archangels, whom he repeatedly invokes as witnesses to his veracity. Moreover, they contain many allusions to personal events which later generations have forgotten. It must be remembered, too, that their extent is limited, and their meaning, moreover, frequently dubious or obscure.
The Person of the Prophet.—As to his birthplace the testimonies are conflicting. According to the Avesta (Yasna, 9, 17), Airyanem Vaējō, on the river Dāitya, the old sacred country of the gods, was the home of Zoroaster, and the scene of his first appearance. There, on the river Darejya, assuming that the passage (Vend., 19, 4) is correctly interpreted, stood the house of his father; and the Bundahish (20, 32 and 24, 15) says expressly that the river Dāraja lay in Airan Vej, on its bank was the dwelling of his father, and that there Zoroaster was born. Now, according to the Bundahish (29, 12), Airan Vej was situated in the direction of Atropatene, and consequently Airyanem Vaējō is for the most part identified with the district of Arrān on the river Aras (Araxes), close by the north-western frontier of Media. Other traditions, however, make him a native of Rai (Ragha, Ῥάγαι). According to Yasna, 19, 18, the zarathushtrōtema, or supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, had at a later (Sasanian) time, his residence in Ragha. The Arabic writer Shahrastānī endeavours to bridge the divergence between the two traditions by means of the following theory: his father was a man of Atropatēne, while the mother was from Rai. In his home tradition recounts he enjoyed the celestial visions and the conversations with the archangels and Ormazd which are mentioned already in the Gāthās. There, too, according to Yasht, 5, 105, he prayed that he might succeed in converting King Vīshtāspa. He then appears to have quitted his native district. On this point the Avesta is wholly silent: only one obscure passage (Yasna, 53, 9) seems to intimate that he found an ill reception in Rai. Finally, in the person of Vīshtāspa, who seems to have been a prince resident in east Iran, he gained the powerful protector and faithful disciple of the new religion whom he desired—though after almost superhuman dangers and difficulties, which the later books depict in lively colours. According to the epic legend, Vīshtāspa was king of Bactria. Already in the later Avesta he has become a half-mythical figure, the last in the series of heroes of east Iranian legend, in the arrangement of which series priestly influence is unmistakably evident. He stands at the meeting-point between the old world and the new era which begins with Zoroaster. In the Gāthās he appears as a quite historical personage; it is essentially to his power and good example that the prophet is indebted for his success. In Yasna, 53, 2,
