§ 11

More and more real knowledge of prehistoric “civilizations” is being accumulated, but these discoveries necessarily tell us little about the accompanying moral ideas. For a more or less concrete idea of the good life for man we must come down to a more recent but still very ancient date. Thus in the sacred books of the Persians, the Zend Avesta or Commentary Lore—which according to the late Persian tradition were scattered and destroyed at the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest, but finally re-collected and re-compiled under the first Sassanian king in the third century of our era—there are embodied in the liturgy of sacrifice (the Yasnas) seventeen2 very ancient metrical hymns (Gâthâs), which there is every reason to believe are the genuine utterances of Zarathustra or written under his immediate influence. The language and style in which they are written is greatly different from that of the formulas which surround them. They are closely akin to the Vedic Sanskrit, and must proceed from an Iranian people belonging to the Aryan stock, akin to that which had invaded India. The gulf which separates the religious thought and social outlook of these hymns from the rest of the Avesta, or from the Persian religion as we hear of it in the sixth century b.c. and later, must represent a great interval of time. One of our authorities, Dr. J. H. Moulton, is content to postulate a date not later than the eighth century b.c. But Ed. Meyer and others—with reason, as it seems to me—require us to go back to some date not earlier than 1000 b.c. Let us be content to leave the date in uncertainty.3

What is of much more importance is that we should be satisfied that these are very ancient documents which give us authentic information about a hero prophet of Eastern Iran, who had become in later Persian legends a miraculous and divine being, but who is presented to us in these Gâthâs; in unmistakably historical fashion, as a purely human being on a remote but intelligible background, living, striving, failing, succeeding, desponding, rejoicing, but all through his experiences proclaiming himself as the inspired herald of a gospel of the kingdom of God which is profoundly ethical, enforcing an ideal of “the good life” for man, which in its main outlines is as clear as it is deeply impressive. Darmesteter, at the end of the last century, endeavoured to maintain the idea that Zara-thustra was not an historical character at all, but the product of mythical imagination, and that the Gâthâs were artificial productions of the second century b.c. The scholars have, however, refused this suggestion almost with unanimity. For my own part, having read the Gâthâs again and again, I cannot understand how their antiquity and authenticity can be doubted.

Zarathustra appears as belonging to a pastoral and agricultural community which is subject to constant assaults and outrages from nomad freebooters, of Turanian, that is non-Aryan, stocks, who made their life a burden to them, and who appear to be largely in possession of the country. In Zarathustra’s mind all that is good is identified with the quiet pastoral life, to which no doubt he belonged by tradition.4 “The soul of the kine” in these Gâthâs represents this quiet life, and its “wail,” as it is harried by the freebooters, goes up to heaven. This struggle of the pastoral peace-lovers against the violent and aggressive nomads becomes in Zarathustra’s imagination the world-wide struggle of good against evil—what seems the almost desperate struggle of the feeble good in the world against overwhelming evil. The picture of the divine commission entrusted to Zarathustra to be the champion of the good cause5 is very vivid. The wail of the kine goes up to the divine being or beings. “For whom did ye fashion me? who created me? Violence and rapine hath oppressed me and outrage and might. I have no other herdsman (shepherd) than you: prepare for me, then, the blessings of pasture.” The divine beings thus appealed to confer among themselves and the plea of the kine is accepted by the supreme being, Ahura Mazdah. “Destruction is not intended for the right-living, nor for the tender of cattle, at the hands of the Liars” (that is the characteristic name in these hymns for the adversaries of truth and right).

Again, the plea of the soul of the kine comes before one of the divine beings. “Whom hast thou among men who may care for us?” Then Zarathustra is named by one of the divine ministers as the one righteous man who will faithfully declare the divine purpose, but who needs for this high function to be endowed with the gift of acceptable speech. But the Soul of the Kine protests against so lowly a guardian. “Alas! that I must be content with the ineffectual word of an impotent man for my protector, when I wish for one who commands mightily. When shall there be one who shall give us effectual help?” The “Most High” takes no notice of this objection. Only the voice of Zarathustra is heard pleading for divine assistance, and also pleading with men to acknowledge him as the instructor of the faithful community. And the cattle, representing the pastoral people, do accept him. “Now help is ours: we will be ready to serve those that are with you.”

Throughout the hymns, which give us but a dim picture of the external fortunes of the good cause, Zarathustra evidently relies upon the divine appointment and upon divine inspiration. Sometimes the cause seems to be in the gravest peril. But Zarathustra appears as having won the protection of the chieftain or king, Vishtaspa, a relative of his own, and of two of his chief supporters, Frasa-ustra, whose daughter Zarathustra married, and his own brother Jamaspa; and under the urgent insistence of Zarathustra they are ready to defend the cause by force of arms. Throughout the prophet is convinced that the good will prevail ultimately and the evil be utterly vanquished. That is the divine will and purpose, and the prophet is its minister. But he also with a pathetic earnestness desires some token for good here and now.6 His petitions for such present recognition are urgent, and they concern particular things—“ten mares, a stallion and a camel” which Ahura Mazdah, the good God, had promised him, as well as the future gifts of welfare and immortality7: also “two cows in calf” promised to a faithful follower as a pledge to-day of the Life Beyond.8

We must seek to gain as clear and detailed a conception as we can of the religious and ethical system which Zarathustra promulgated and sought to propagate. But, before this, we must ask what religious and ethical ideas he inherited and found around him. And we shall also want to know what measure of success his mission won. We will deal first, very briefly with the traditional background; secondly, more at length with the teaching of Zarathustra himself; thirdly, again very briefly, with its consequences in the Persian religion of later days.

§ 2

To the first question the answer of the experts is largely conjectural. The Iranian tribe to which Zarathustra belonged must, we should suppose, have inherited the Aryan tradition of religion—its great nature gods and minor departmental gods, its spirits good and bad, its sacrificial system and the priesthood to administer it. We know this religion in its Indian development in the earliest Vedas, and some of its features we find recognized by Zarathustra. Others are quite absent from the Gâthâs, but reappear in later Zoroastrianism, which in all probability represents in this respect a reversion to type. Thus Ahura Mazdah,9 Zarathustra’s supreme god, was an ancient Aryan god, parallel to the sublime Varuna of the earliest Indian tradition. But by his side were others, notably Mithra, who holds so great a place in later Persian religion, but was rejected by Zarathustra probably as associated with the cultus of the intoxicating drink (saoma). “When,” he cries to Ahura Mazdah, “when will the nobles understand the message? When wilt thou smite the filthiness of this intoxicant?”10 Minor departmental gods of the tradition, also originally nature gods, we shall see surviving in Zarathustra’s religious system as divine attributes, to reappear in the later Zoroastrianism as the Amshaspands, “The Holy Immortals,” the seven “Archangels.” The Dævas in Zarathustra’s system are the evil spirits, the servants of the Lie (Trug), the constant and inveterate enemies of the Truth. These were the minor gods “devas” of the Vedic tradition; but they were the chief objects of worship among the enemies of Zarathustra’s tribe, and appear therefore as devils in his teaching.

It was from tradition that he received the idea of the world as a mixed result of the activity of good and bad spirits, and the scene of their perpetual conflict. But there does not appear to have been any precise dualism in the tradition as he received it, though there was undoubtedly polytheism; nor does he himself seem to recognize any good spirits, other than the supreme Ahura and his attributes or “holy spirit.” The traditional veneration of the sacred fire he received, no doubt, and found a place for it, but, the sacrificial system he ignored, and, though once he calls himself a priest,11 he took no account of priestly ministrations. Of the Fravashis also, the geniuses of individual souls and the spirits of the dead, he took no account, but their cultus reappears later in full force.

On the whole we can draw a fairly distinct conclusion. The religion of his tribal tradition—a religion of many gods, primary and secondary, and of spirits good and bad, with its sacrifices and charms and priesthood—Zarathustra does not appear directly to have combated,12 except where it was associated with vice, as in the cultus of the Saoma, and probably of Mithra; but, concentrating his attention on certain elements in it, he converted it in his own mind and teaching into what was practically an ethical monotheism, claiming the co-operation of all loyal men in the purpose of the good God; and so went out on a purely prophetic mission, to inaugurate a reformation which was fundamental indeed, but which he strove to make effectual rather by affirming and deepening the better elements in the tradition which the inner light showed him to be alone the truth, than by starting afresh, like Ikhnaten in Egypt, or Muhammad in Arabia, in direct hostility to the accepted religion. He would, we may suppose, have left the unworthy elements in the traditional religion to die of themselves. Alas! Judged by the outcome, this method, as we shall see, cannot be said to have been successful. But of his profound originality there can be no question. Meyer calls him “a completely independent thinker,” “one of the very few real founders of religions,” “one of the most important figures in religious history.”

§ 3

The religion of Zarathustra was deeply ethical, but it was based upon his dominant conception of God; and we must turn our attention first to this. He was neither a mystic nor a metaphysician, and his theological ideas lack precision; but for all practical purposes he was a monotheist and a monotheist by profound conviction. The one God of his devotion was the Aryan deity, Ahura Mazdah—the Lord Wisdom—associated in tradition with Mithra, whom Zarathustra seems to have rejected as morally inadequate, isolating Mazdah into a sole supremacy, as “God of Gods,” “the first and the last,” “the creator of all things by the holy spirit,” the fount of all goodness, the supreme and omniscient judge, the only ultimate power.13 The tradition ascribed the world to a mixed creative activity of good and bad spirits, and Zarathustra retains this convenient belief, so apparently congruous to experience; but his supposed dualism has been misconceived. Let us examine the only proof-texts.

“Now will I proclaim to those who will hear the things which the understanding man should remember … Hear with your ears the best things; look upon them with clear-seeing thought, for decision between the two beliefs … The two primal spirits, who revealed themselves in vision as twins, are the Bad and the Good in thought and word and action. And between the two the wise ones chose aright, the foolish not so. And when these twain spirits came together in the beginning, they established Life and Not-Life. Of these twain spirits, he that followed the Lie chose doing the worst things; the holiest spirit chose right, he that clothes himself with the many heavens as a garment; so likewise they that are fain to please Ahurah Mazdah by dutiful actions. Between these twain the Dævas [the minor nature Gods of Aryan tradition] also chose not aright, for infatuation came upon them as they took counsel together, so that they chose the worst thoughts. Then they rushed together to violence, that they might enfeeble the world of man.”14

Again,15 “I will speak of the spirits twain at the first beginning of life, of whom the holier thus spake to the Enemy. [Here only does the name Ahrim(an) appear in the Gâthâs.] ‘Neither thoughts nor teachings nor wills nor beliefs nor words nor deeds nor selves nor souls of us twain agree together.’”

Here we get a clear idea of two primeval Spirits good and bad. The evil spirit is Druj, the Lie, the Enemy—later known as Ahriman. Whether the primal good Spirit is to be identified with Ahura Mazdah is not clear. But three points must be noticed.

1. (1) The power of the evil one is to destroy or spoil, not to create. Evil is, in this sense, negative, not positive. His product is “not-life.”
2. (2) The conflict of good and evil is due to an original (and ever-repeated) choice of wills. The primeval spirits choose good or evil. They must have existed therefore before they chose; and, like the Dævas, who followed them, they appear therefore as fallen spirits, like Satan and his angels in Christian belief. So also we seem to trace a dim allusion to a fall of man, led by a primitive man, under the inspiration of the Dævas, who gave them forbidden food, “portions of beef, to eat.”16 “Ye (the Dævas) defrauded mankind of happy life and of immortality … so as to ruin mankind.” At any rate, it is fairly clear that evil throughout is attributed to an original bad choice made by beings already in existence endowed with free wills; and what lies behind (the really primal being) is left in obscurity. Practically, however, Zarathustra treats Mazdah as the only Creator and supreme God; thus the ultimate controlling will in the universe is only good.
3. Further (3), though Mazdah is now in conflict with a kingdom of evil, and needs the help of men “to make the world advance,”17 his final victory in the whole universe of things at the great consummation or “the last turning-point of creation”18 is assured. He is ultimately omnipotent; and the forces of evil, higher and lower, are destined to utter defeat and woe. But of this more hereafter. Zarathustra is to all intents and purposes a monotheist.

There is another problem, which, however, appears to admit of fairly easy solution. Above (p. 35), in the scene of Zarathustra’s call and commission, and constantly throughout the Gâthâs, we are confronted not only with the Most High, Ahura Mazdah, but with what are apparently other divine “holy ones,” who share his supremacy. These are, in the front rank, Asha (truth or right), and Vohumanah (best thought); then Khshathra (kingdom or sovereignty, sometimes desired kingdom, as being future); Aramaiti (piety); Haurvatat (welfare); Ameritat (immortality). There is also Sraosa (obedience); Spenta Mainyu (holy spirit). The first six of these appear in the later Persian religion as the six, or seven, Amshaspands, commonly translated “archangels.”

But, though Zarathustra appeals to some of them and speaks of them as persons, it is fairly plain that the first two or three are not really separable from Ahura Mazdah himself, but are simply his effective attributes, like the Divine Wisdom in the Old Testament.19 Moreover, the two first are communicated to men to possess and guide them; mankind is to think God’s “best thought” after Him and to embody His truth or right; and the others are rather divine gifts for man than attributes of Mazdah, though they belong to his being. Nor does the “holy spirit” appear to be anything else than a summary expression for the divine activity.

Mazdah is thus an utterly transcendent being—Zarathustra is as far as possible from pantheism—but he is also immanent in obedient mankind, in the obedient community to which Zarathustra would convert all living men,20 and his Haurvatat and Ameritat (welfare and immortality) are to become the very substance of the blessed future state. On the whole, then, we need not hesitate to think of these holy beings as in the religion of Zarathustra no more than personified attributes of Mazdah and of his activities among men.21 It is to be observed, however, that the names were not new, and that many of them—Aramaiti, Haurvatat, Ameritat—were originally minor nature gods, representing earth, water and plants. But the use of them by Zarathustra would appear to be thoroughly original; Moulton calls them “the most distinctive features of Zarathustra’s own thought.”22

On this basis of theology stood Zarathustra’s conception of mankind. Man is a being endowed with reason and freedom of will. His vocation is to correspond by a deliberate act of choice with the beneficent purpose of the good God, finding his happiness in dedicating all his faculties to his service; and in describing this service the phrase constantly recurs “in thought and word and deed.” This is a message for “all living men,”23 and not for any class or race of men; and it is for women as for men. All possible stress is laid on individual responsibility—“each man for himself”—and the choice is to be made in view of the divine assurance of everlasting bliss for those who choose the right, and everlasting misery for those who choose otherwise. Thus man has the making of his own heaven or his own hell.24 By co-operating with God—“making the world to advance”—he accumulates merits, and by the opposite conduct, demerits; and according to the ultimate balance of one over the other will he be dealt with when he reaches the final “bridge of the separation” which connects this life with the hereafter at “the last turning-point of creation.”25 We hear rather dimly of a middle place in the Beyond for those whose merits and demerits balance.26 But this perhaps only concerns an “intermediate state” before the final consummation. As to this there is no certain information.27

But the picture of the human vocation and destiny is startlingly clear and delivered with the assurance of inspiration. The appeal to individual responsibility is a ringing appeal, and it is much more than an appeal to avoid offences. Every man is to be active and militant in the divine cause. Even the followers of the Lie may be converted and saved.28 For the divine piety strives with the sinner. “Passing from one to another, she pleads with the spirit in which there is wavering.”29 But the conversion of the Liars is not seemingly much expected. And so long as they remain unconverted they are to be hated with a holy hatred, as the enemies of God. “He is himself a liar, who is good to a liar”30; nor does Zarathustra shrink from identifying with the enemies of God those who have done him a particular injury. He has a vivid memory of an occasion when a certain follower of the Lie refused hospitality to him and his two shivering horses on some occasion of great peril.31 And he thirsts for vengeance at the hand of God. All this hatred of the hateful, this active hostility to the enemies of the true religion, is a necessary part of a service of God. All the desire of “the friends of Ahura Mazdah” is indeed for peace. His kingdom is a kingdom of peace. But to the violators of the righteous law there is to be no peace. They are the Dragvans—the lovers of the Lie—and the prophet thunders curses upon them.32

In Zarathustra’s disclosures of his own inner life we are given a wonderfully vivid impression of a life of constant and importunate prayer to Ahura Mazdah—for particular physical blessings, but much more for speedy vindication of the divine law. It is only by prayer, we gather, for oneself and for others, that the soul of man can keep in correspondence with God.33 And the ethical content of human life is determined by the thought that God’s own attributes as explained above (or God’s own spirit) possess the soul of the righteous man, who is his fellow-worker and “friend.”34

In all this Zarathustra is speaking of himself just as a man. But he is a man with a special vocation—to be the proclaimer of the Message, the good tidings of the kingdom, speaking with authority. Man, he conceives, needs a prophet much more than a priest—a spiritual guide to show him the way. As such, then, Zarathustra knows himself divinely appointed. Even in the worst times he seems to expect God’s immediate coming in judgment, and he himself in that dread hour is to be the saviour (Saoshyant) and judge.35 But he does not isolate himself in this respect or make any exclusive claim for himself. He speaks of other saviour judges,36 many whom Mazdah will appoint to prepare his way. The idea of the one saviour in a far future does not appear in the Gâthâs.37

It must be noticed that “the bridge of separation” connecting this world with the world to come was apparently a traditional conception. Those who could walk over what was in later Zoroastrianism defined as its sharp razor-edge, would be only the righteous helped by the Saviour, while the friends of the Lie, the worshippers of the Dævas, would fall off into hell. Zarathustra is very sparing in his use of metaphor or symbols. But he introduces into the picture of the day of judgment at “the bridge of separation” the symbol of the Holy Fire, “for the faithful visible delight, but for the enemy visible torment, according to the pointings of the hand”38—this last expression, which recurs several times, refers to the gesture of the Supreme Judge separating the saved from the lost. There is also the flood of “molten metal” which presumably both purges the good and consumes the evil; once more there is “the weighing of actions by the good Spirit.”39 These images are used without explanation or elaboration, and Zarathustra is never carried away by such imagery from a strictly rational and spiritual conception of heaven and hell as the region of “the best thought” and “the worst thought,” “the best [and the worst] state,” the “better than good” and the “worse than evil”:40 and he speaks of both as everlasting.41 Whether Meyer is right in thinking that he carries into eternity the accompaniments of pastoral life—cows and abundant pasture, etc.—seems to be doubtful.42 But heaven is certainly to be full fellowship with Ahura Mazdah and with his faithful servants.

The blessed in Paradise are not to be disembodied souls. There is to be apparently for the virtuous dead a resurrection of the body.43 For Zoroaster the body, or matter, is not evil. There is no trace in him of the sort of asceticism which is based on such a conception; thus he has a high ideal of marriage. He rejoices before God in the prospect of his own marriage. “The fair form of one who is dear has Frashaostra Hvogva promised to me. May sovran Mazdah Ahura grant that she attain possession of the right for her good self.”44 And on the occasion of his youngest daughter’s marriage,45 the bridegroom, Jamaspa, makes profession: “Earnestly will I lead her to the faith, that she may serve her father and her husband, the peasant and the nobles, as a righteous woman serving the righteous. The glorious heritage of good thought shall Mazdah Ahura give to her good self for all time.” And the ruler of the feast, or Zarathustra himself, addresses all married couples. “I address teachings to maidens marrying, to you bridegrooms also giving counsels. Lay them to heart, and learn to get them within your own selves in earnest attention to the life of good thought. Let each of you strive to excel the other in the Right, for it will be a prize for that one. So it is in fact ye men and women … if only faithful zeal be in the wedded pair.”46

We do not find in the Gâthâs much ethical detail. The virtuous life is the life of the good, peace-loving peasant or noble—peace-loving save that there is to be truceless hatred and war to the death against the servants of the Lie. And the agricultural life centres in the home. There is no occupation for the good man contemplated except the agricultural. “The love of the kine” is essential.47 Further than this, the attributes of right and truth, in thought and word and deed, and piety and obedience, and conformity to the good thought, and constant watchfulness against the machinations of the spirit of the Lie and his servants, give us his general character; but there are no detailed enactments for the direction of the community or the individual, such as we get in the Code of Hammurabi or the Jewish Code.

Throughout this description I have been confining myself to the Gâthâs. As will appear, we have no right to rely upon the later developments of Zoroastrianism as reflecting the spirit or teaching of Zarathustra. Moulton may be justified in speaking of his religion as “aristocratic” in the sense that, while his teaching is undoubtedly intended for man as such and not for any particular class, and while he has a horror of any oppression of the poor—indeed, in one place he calls his religion a religion of the poor—yet he takes for granted the authority of the ruling family, and he certainly makes no attempt to be popular. It is a dry, austere, abstract teaching that we find in the Gâthâs. There is little of the fascinating metaphor and splendid rhetoric which we find in the Hebrew prophets, no story-telling, no ritual, to attract and attach the people. Doubtless this was one of the causes of the seeming failure of his reformation. This dryness will appear if I copy out, with a few alterations in phraseology, the summary of Zarathustra’s religion as given by Dr. Carnoy in the article already referred to.

“By his right choice the man who obeys Law (Asha-van) helps in the final victory of the good spirit, the spirit of the Lord Wisdom (Ahura Mazda), over the Spirit of Deceit and Treachery (Druj, Avigra-Mainya). Inspired by Right Mind, he takes his stand against the whole world of the Druj, its satellites (the Dæva), its priests, its sorcerers, its fairies and its cult, sacrifices of living creatures and of the intoxicating haoma. He repudiates with special emphasis nomadic life with its brigandage and strife, the life of the Infidels. He lives with Wisdom of Purpose an Orderly Existence, according to Law, in obedience to the Good Spirit, represented by a moral adviser (or judge). In this way he will realize in this world and hereafter the Wished-for Kingdom, the Kingdom of Blessings, the Kingdom of the Best, the Good Reward, with perfect Happiness and Immortality, that will follow the Last Ordeal and the Restoration of the World.’

Clearly it is not possible to suggest that this lofty religion—however closely resembling the Jewish faith—could have been borrowed from the Jews; its date renders that impossible. (The question whether and how far it influenced the Old Testament must be kept till we are considering the religion and morality of Israel.) Nor is there any other alien source to which it can be attributed. It remains in its lofty severity a momentous creation, if it be not wiser to call it, as Zarathustra himself would have called it, a signal inspiration by the divine Spirit of an individual prophet. It exhibits at a very early stage in the history of mankind a clear conception of the Good Life for Man. It is puritanical—that is, it has no flavouring of art and gives but few signs of accommodation to ordinary human desires for relaxation and enjoyment; but it is in the highest degree lofty and inspiring, and, full as it is of the sense of pity for the oppressed and miserable, it can rightly call itself a gospel; further, it is conspicuous for the simplicity and decision with which (on the basis of a highly ambiguous tradition) it exhibits in the boldest outline the theology by which this good life is controlled and justified, and the eschatology by which it is supported. The longer one thinks about Zarathustra’s religion and allows it to absorb one’s mind, the more central, the more illuminating, the more divine, it appears. But in fact, if it was truly a light shining in a dark place, it shone in its purity but for a very little while and in a very restricted area.

§ 4

All the scholars are agreed that the light shed by Zarathustra was swallowed up in darkness. There must have been a counter-reformation following on what Zarathustra speaks of as his “reformation.” The deeply ethical tone of his religion was gradually lost in a welter of superstition and magic. Anyone who tries to read the Avesta at length will certainly be convinced of this deterioration, and will find it highly significant that what survives of the Gâthâs (which is probably only a portion of the whole) has survived because the hymns were regarded as effective charms to be scrupulously preserved and recited. There seem to be stages in the process of deterioration. First, we have a prose appendix to the Gâthâs called the Gâthâ Heptangaiti,48 in seven chapters, still more or less in the dialect of the older Gâthâs, and therefore presumably not so very much later in date, but exhibiting a very different spirit. It is noticeable that the name of Zarathustra does not occur either here49 or in the famous inscriptions of Darius at Behistan c. 518 b.c. The personified attributes have become distinct divine persons, and sacrifice is offered to them, while the deep ethical meaning of their names is no more apparent: the Fravishi and their cult have become again prominent: fire and earth and grass are also worshipped. What we seem to be witnesses of is a rapid recovery in the generations after Zarathustra of the older tradition of religion.

On the other hand, the Heptangaiti Gâthâ is widely different from the later Yasnas; and, whatever may have been the case for a while, the name and fame of Zarathustra could not be permanently suppressed. Thus in the later religion of the Persians, such as we know it under the Achæmenid Kings following Darius, he is worshipped as a divine and miraculous being; but though his teaching still gave to the Persian religion an ethical tinge, which it was never to lose50—the emphasis on truth remains constant—yet the elements which were really Zoroastrian were greatly obscured or submerged in superstition. “The religion of the Persian court was practically the old Iranian polytheism, with the reformer’s name retained to atone for the absence of his spirit. What new elements there were came not from him but from Semitic sources, or through the powerful influence of the Magian priesthood already at work.”51 Still later, when this priesthood had won a complete triumph, their religion was still further removed from Zarathustra’s own. For the purpose of this book, however, we need not concern ourselves with the later eclipse of the real Reformer. For present-day Parseeism (i.e. the Zoroastrianism which survives almost only in Bombay, whither its followers fled from Muhammadan persecutions) an outside observer would say that nothing is more to be desired than a movement “Back to Zoroaster.”

The teaching of Zarathustra as presented in the Gâthâs, when it is considered as a whole, and its early date taken into account, is of even startling significance. According to it the life of man, in spite of all the evils which imperil and beset it, in spite of the enormous abuses of life which prevail, is a good thing, of eternal and immeasurable worth. The responsibility of saving one’s soul or realizing one’s being is the supreme responsibility of men and women, as free and rational beings. The adventure and the opportunity is for man as man, not for any class or any race or either sex in particular. For there is a good purpose running through creation, though there are many adversaries. The supreme Lord Wisdom, the creator, the final judge, omniscient and (ultimately) omnipotent, is the only God to be worshipped, and is one day to come into His own in His whole creation, awarding just judgment of eternal bliss or eternal woe on all men according to their deeds. The function of man is therefore to cooperate with this good God, who through all the present age has to win His way by struggle against evil spirits and evil men—the Truth against the Lie. Man’s vocation is to put his whole self, body and soul, thought and word and deed, at the service of the Holy Wisdom, by prayer and by work, by living the peaceful, beneficent life and loving the lovers of truth and peace, but also by fighting hard against the followers of the Lie, and hating them with a holy hatred, even while seeking their conversion. There is no way of fellowship with God by charms or sacrifices, but only by the way of likeness to God. And what He is we know. Transcendent and supreme, He is yet, by His attributes and holy spirit, immanent in the world and in men of good will. We know His character of truth and justice, purity, goodness and pity, and can live according to His spirit which works in us in devout obedience. We can live in the certainty of the final day of infallible judgment with its eternal issues.

Here is indeed a theory, as intelligible as it is magnificent, of the good life for man in fellowship with God. And the prophet who, relying upon divine inspiration and divine appointment, spent his life in proclaiming it, is morally worthy of his high vocation. Through the mist of ages we can discern him, afar but distinct. We note the close resemblance of the ideal which he proclaims to that of the Jewish prophets (of whom, however, he is completely independent) even in their limitations, though in one respect the difference is marked. For, if Christianity be taken as the fulfilment of Judaism, Judaism is a strictly national religion which at last expanded to become universal, but Zoroastrianism is at starting a universal religion for man as man which ultimately narrowed into an intensely national form in the Persian religion and Parseeism. But both are alike in making the essence of the good life for man to be correspondence with the purpose and character of God, and in finding the knowledge of his character and purpose to depend not on the labours of the human intellect but on his own self-revelation.

We shall have to return upon Zarathustra’s religion and its principles. But first we must continue our long search for ideals of the good life for man among the nations of the earth.

• 1.

  Having no knowledge of the language in which the Zend Avesta is written, I am simply dependent on authorities, especially on the translation of the texts by L. H. Mills, in Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi, and by James Hope Moulton, in Early Zoroastrianism (Hibbert Lectures, 1913). For interpretation I have relied chiefly on the latter book, on Ed. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, vol. ii, pt. ii, pp. 58 ff. (1921), on the Encyclop. of Religions and Ethics, “Zoroastrianism” (Prof. Carnoy), and Dr. Sydney Cave’s Introd. to Study of Living Religions of the East (Duckworth, 1921). There is no important difference between these authorities.

• 2.

  Seventeen, as cut into portions for recitation; but Mills reckons them as originally five. A peculiar efficacy was ascribed to those ancient hymns as chanted in the sacrificial liturgy—“correctly uttered words,” “intoned with sanctity.” Hence, no doubt, their accurate preservation. “Constant repetition with traditional music” kept the Gâthâs from corruption (Moulton, p. 15). Hence “In the Gâthâs Z. speaks in his own person, wholly or nearly so” (p. 17). So Meyer, p. 58.

• 3.

  The later Parsi priesthood, perhaps influenced by the desire to bring the now mythical and divinized Zarathustra nearer to their own time, put him in the seventh century B.C. But the Greeks, relying on earlier tradition, assigned to him a very remote antiquity—6000 years before Alexander or 5000 years before the Trojan war (Plutarch).

• 4.

  His own name and that of his father-in-law Frasa-ustra are compounded of ustra (camel): his father Pourusaspa and his son-in-law Jamaspa had their name from aspa (horse). His mother’s name Dughdhova means “who has milked cows,” and the clan-name of his wife, Hvogva, “having fine oxen.”

• 5.

  Yasnas 29.

• 6.

  Yasna 34. 6.

• 7.

  Yasna 44. 18.

• 8.

  Yasna 46. 13.

• 9.

  “The Lord Wisdom,” according to Carnoy; “The Wise Lord,” according to Meyer. He is, of course, the Ormuzd of later tradition.

• 10.

  Yasna 48. 10.

• 11.

  Yasna 33. 6: “I who, as a priest [Zaota, the old Aryan title, not the word used in the Avesta otherwise], would learn the straight way.”

• 12.

  There is some difference between the authorities on this and other details.

• 13.

  Yasnas 31. 8; 44. 7, etc. (see Moulton, p. 140).

• 14.

  Yasna 30. 1-6.

• 15.

  Yasna 45. 2.

• 16.

  Yasna 32. 8 (see Moulton, p. 148); cf. 32. 5. But it is not at all clear that the reference is to any original sin.

• 17.

  Yasna 30. 9.

• 18.

  Yasna 43. 5.

• 19.

  The supreme triad of Ahuras (Holy Ones) consists of Mazdah, Asha, Vohu Manah (see Yasna 30. 9; 33. 6, etc.). The six are named together in Yasna 45. 10.

• 20.

  Yasna 31. 3.

• 21.

  This matter is discussed at length in Moulton and the other authorities cited above, with substantial agreement in conclusions reached.

• 22.

  P. 87.

• 23.

  Yasna 31. 3.

• 24.

  Yasna 46. 10, 11.

• 25.

  Yasna 43. 5.

• 26.

  Yasna 33. 1; 48. 4.

• 27.

  Meyer is inclined to read back into Zarathustra a more precise eschatology than the evidence of the Gâthâs justifies.

• 28.

  Yasna 46. 12; 28. 5; 33. 2.

• 29.

  Yasna 31. 12.

• 30.

  Yasna 46. 6; 47. 4, 6.

• 31.

  Yasna 51. 12. But the translation appears to be very doubtful.

• 32.

  Yasna 53. 8.

• 33.

  Yasna 43 (the whole); 44. 1, etc.

• 34.

  Yasna 44. 4.

• 35.

  Yasna 44. 16; 45. 11; 48. 9; 49. 9; 53. 2.

• 36.

  Yasna 46. 3; 49. 9.

• 37.

  I have not thought it necessary to refer to the later legends about the preservation of Zarathustra’s semen by 99,999 Fravishis in a lake, whence the final Saviour is to be born. (See Moulton, p. 310, and note.)

• 38.

  Yasna 34. 4; cf. 43. 4; 50. 5.

• 39.

  Yasna 48. 8. The weighing may result in an even balance of good and bad.

• 40.

  Yasna 43. 3; 51. 6.

• 41.

  Yasna 45; cf. 33. 13, where the lost cry in vain for mercy.

• 42.

  The wicked, however, in hell are said to be given “foul food” by the souls who have died earlier. Yasna 49. 11.

• 43.

  Yasna 53. 9. Whether this extends to the unrighteous is doubtful. They are said “to forfeit their own body.” But the translations of this Yasna vary considerably.

• 44.

  Yasna 31. 11; 43. 3; cf. Moulton, pp. 147-148.

• 45.

  Yasna 51. 17.

• 46.

  Yasna 53.

• 47.

  Yasna 48. 6-7; 51. 14; 28. 5.

• 48.

  Yasnas 35-41 or 42.

• 49.

  If (as is probable) Yasna 42, is of later date.

• 50.

  This is apparent in the accounts of it given by Herodotus. But later Greek accounts give a less favourable impression.

• 51.

  Moulton, pp. 78 f. On many points in this paragraph there is difference among the authorities, e.g. between Moulton and Ed. Meyer; but the differences only concern points with which we are not concerned.