the pious hope that the end of the present world is not far distant.
He himself hopes, with his followers, to live to see the decisive
turn of things, the dawn of the new and better aeon.
Ormazd
will summon together all his powers for a final decisive struggle
and break the power of evil for ever; by his help the faithful will
achieve the victory over their detested enemies, the daēva worshippers,
and render them impotent. Thereupon Ormazd will hold
a judicium universale, in the form of a general ordeal, a great test
of all mankind by fire and molten metal, and will judge strictly
according to justice, punish the wicked, and assign to the good
the hoped-for reward. Satan will be cast, along with all those who
have been delivered over to him to suffer the pains of hell, into
the abyss, where he will henceforward lie powerless.
Forthwith
begins the one undivided kingdom of God in heaven and on earth.
This is called, sometimes the good kingdom, sometimes simply the
kingdom. Here the sun will for ever shine, and all the pious and
faithful will live a happy life, which no evil power can disturb, in
the eternal fellowship of Ormazd and his angels. Every believer
will receive as his guerdon the inexhaustible cow and the gracious
gifts of the Vohu manō. The prophet and his princely patrons
will be accorded special honour.
History and Later Development.—For the great mass of the people Zoroaster's doctrine was too abstract and spiritualistic. The vulgar fancy requires sensuous, plastic deities, which admit of visible representation; and so the old gods received honour again and new gods won acceptance. They are the angels (yazala) of New Zoroastrianism. Thus, in the later Avesta, we find not only Mithra but also purely popular divinities such as the angel of victory, Verethraghna, Anāhita (Anāitis), the goddess of the water, Tishrya (Sirius), and other heavenly bodies, invoked with special preference. The Gāthās know nothing of a new belief which afterwards arose in the Fravashi, or guardian angels of the faithful. Fravashi properly means “confession of faith,” and when personified comes to be regarded as a protecting spirit. Unbelievers have no fravashi.
On the basis of the new teaching arose a widely spread priesthood (āthravanō) who systematized its doctrines, organized and carried on its worship, and laid down the minutely elaborated laws for the purifying and keeping clean of soul and body, which are met with in the Vendidad. To these ecclesiastical precepts and expiations belong in particular the numerous ablutions, bodily chastisements, love of truth, beneficial works, support of comrades in the faith, alms, chastity, improvement of the land, arboriculture, breeding of cattle, agriculture, protection of useful animals, as the dog, the destruction of noxious animals, and the prohibition either to burn or to bury the dead. These are to be left on the appointed places (dakhmas) and exposed to the vultures and wild dogs. In the worship the drink prepared from the haoma (Indian soma) plant had a prominent place. Worship in the Zoroastrian Church was devoid of pomp; it was independent of temples. Its centre was the holy fire on the altar. The fire altars afterwards developed to fire temples. In the sanctuary of these temples the various sacrifices and high and low masses were celebrated. As offerings meat, milk, show-bread, fruits, flowers and consecrated water were used. The priests were the privileged keepers and teachers of religion. They only performed the sacrifices (Herodotus, i. 132), educated the young clergy, imposed the penances; they in person executed the circumstantial ceremonies of purification and exercised a spiritual guardianship and pastoral care of the laymen. Every young believer in Mazda, after having been received into the religious community by being girt with the holy lace, had to choose a confessor and a spiritual guide (ratu).
Also in eschatology, as may be expected, a change took place. The last things and the end of the world are relegated to the close of a long period of time (3000 years after Zoroaster), when a new Saoshyant is to be born of the seed of the prophet, the dead are to come to life, and a new incorruptible world to begin.
Zoroastrianism was the national religion of Iran, but it was not permanently restricted to the Iranians, being professed by Turanians as well. The worship of the Persian gods spread to Armenia and Cappadocia and over the whole of the Near East (Strabo, xv. 3, 14; xi. 8, 4; 14, 76). Of the Zoroastrian Church under the Achaemenides and Aeracides little is known. After the overthrow of the dynasty of the Achaemenides a period of decay seems to have set in. Yet the Aeracides and the Indo-Scythian kings as well as the Achaemenides were believers in Mazda. The national restoration of the Sasanidcs brought new life to the Zoroastrian religion and long-lasting sway to the Church. Protected by this dynasty, the priesthood developed into a completely organized state church, which was able to employ the power of the state in enforcing strict compliance with the religious law-book hitherto enjoined by their unaided efforts only. The head of the Church (Zara-Shushtrōtema) had his seat at Rai in Media and was the first person in the state next to the king. The formation of sects was at this period not infrequent (cf. Manichaeism). The Mohammedan invasion (636), with the terrible persecutions of the following centuries, was the death-blow of Zoroastrianism. In Persia itself only a few followers of Zoroaster are now found (in Kerman and Yezd). The Parsees (q.v.) in and around Bombay hold by Zoroaster as their prophet and by the ancient religious usages, but their doctrine has reached the stage of a pure monotheism.
Literature.—See under Zend-Avesta. Also Hyde, Historia Religionis veterum Purarum (Oxon, 1700); Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien (Berlin, 1863); A. V. Williams Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran (New York, 1899); Jackson, in the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, vol. ii. 612 sqq. (Strassburg, 1896–1904); Tiele, Die Religion bei den iranischen Völkern (Gotha, 1898); Tiele, Kompendium der Religionsgeschichte, German transl. by Söderblom (Breslau, 1903); Rastamji Edulji Dastoor Peshotan Sanjana, Zarathushtra and Zarathushtrianism in the Avesta (Bombay, 1906); E. Lehmann, Zarathushtra, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1899–1902); E. W. West, “Marvels of Zoroastrianism” in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xlvii.; Z. A. Ragozin, The Story of Media, Babylon and Persia (New York, 1888); Dosabhai Framji Karaka, History of the Parsis (2 vols., London, 1884). (K. G.)
ZORRILLA y MORAL, JOSÉ (1817–1893), Spanish poet and dramatist, son of a magistrate in whom Ferdinand VII. placed special confidence, was born at Valladolid on the 21st of February 1817. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Real Seminario de Nobles in Madrid, wrote verses when he was twelve, became an enthusiastic admirer of Scott and Chateaubriand, and took part in the school performances of plays by Lope de Vega and Calderon. In 1833 he was sent to read law at the University of Toledo, but, after a year of idleness, he fled to Madrid, where he horrified the friends of his absolutist father by making violent speeches and by founding a newspaper which was promptly suppressed by the government. He narrowly escaped transportation to the Philippines, and passed the next few years in poverty. The death of the satirist Larra brought Zorrilla into notice. His elegiac poem, declaimed at Larra's funeral in February 1837, served as an introduction to the leading men of letters. In 1837 he published a book of verses, mostly imitations of Lamartine and Hugo, which was so favourably received that he printed six more volumes within three years. His subjects are treated with fluency and grace, but the carelessness which disfigures much of his work is prominent in these juvenile poems. After collaborating with García Gutiérrez, in a piece entitled Juan Dándolo (1839) Zorrilla began his individual career as a dramatist with Cada cual con su razón (1840), and during the following five years he wrote twenty-two plays, many of them extremely successful. His Cantos del trovador (1841), a collection of national legends versified with infinite spirit, showed a decided advance in skill, and secured for the author the place next to Espronceda in popular esteem. National legends also supply the themes of his dramas, though in this department Zorrilla somewhat compromised his reputation for originality by adapting older plays which had fallen out of fashion. For example, in El Zapatero y el Rey he recasts El montañés Juan Pascual by Juan de la Hoz y Mota; in La mejor razón la espada he borrows from Moreto's Travesuras del estudiante Pantoja; in Don Juan Tenorio he adapts from Tirso de Molina's Burlador de Sevilla and from the elder Dumas's Don Juan de Marana (which itself derives from Les âmes du purgatoire of Prosper Mérimée). But his rearrangements usually contain original elements, and in Sancho García, El Rey loco, and El Alcalde Ronquillo he apparently owes little to any predecessor. The last and (as he himself believed) the best of his plays is Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (1845). Upon the death of his mother in 1847 Zorrilla left Spain, resided for a while at Bordeaux, and settled in Paris, where his incomplete Granada, a striking poem of gorgeous local colour, was published in 1852. In a fit of depression, the causes of which are not known, he emigrated to America three years later, hoping, as he says, that yellow fever or smallpox would carry him off. During eleven years spent in Mexico he produced little, and that little was of no merit. He returned in 1866, to find himself a half-forgotten classic. His old fertility was gone, and new standards of taste were coming into fashion. A small post, obtained for him through the influence of Jovellar and Cánovas del Castillo, was abolished by the republican
