THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. THE interchange of ideas between writers and readers of all nationalities effected in the present day by increased facilities of communication, and the new light thrown on the religons of the East by the editing and translating of their sacred books, make a change of attitude towards non-Christian systems unavoidable. Until recently it was customary to regard every religion of the world, except Judaism and Christianity, as unworthy of scientific investigation. Any Christian who ventured to assert that any human being had benefited by his faith in any of the doctrines of a non-Christian religion, or that elements of truth might possibly underlie such doctrines, was at once suspected of disloyalty to his own faith. Furthermore, all Asiatic systems which appeared to be specially saturated with polytheism and idolatry were stigmatised by a special application of such opprobrious epithets as heathenism and paganism. They were not mere silly delusions. They were the outcome of man's diseased imagination, stimulated by the promptings of the evil one himself. All who believed in them were sinners. As to their so-called sacred books, they were held up to reprobation and derision. The writers of them were guilty of far greater sin than those who believed in them. And any Christian who attempted to examine them reverently and impartially on their best side, or from the point of view of those who accepted their inspiration, was guilty of almost as great a sin. Even unidolatrous Muhammadanism was denounced in equally strong languagethough its stern iconoclasm and its admitted points of contact with Judaism and Christianity saved it from the ignominy of consignment to the general limbo of the more despised and neglected heathen systems. No Christian thinker, in fact, suspected-or, at least, confessed to suspecting-what the science of religion is now demonstrating: that all false systems result from perversions or exaggerations of true ideas; that the principal non-Christian religions of the worldBrahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Muhammadanismcould not possibly have held their ground with such tenacity, nor acquired such real power over the mind, unless they had attempted with some success to solve problems which have from time immemorial perplexed the human intellect and burdened the human heart; that all the religions of the world have some common platform on which they may meet on friendly terms; and that Christianity itself is but the perfect concentration and embodiment of eternal truth scattered in fragments through other systems-the perfect expression of all the religious cravings and aspirations of the human race since man was first created. Perhaps few more remarkable facts have been revealed by the critical examination of non-Christian systems than the highly spiritual character of the ancient creed which it is usual to call the religion of Zoroaster. Only within the last few years has the progress of Iranian studies made it possible to gain an insight into the true meaning of the text of the Avesta-popularly known as the Zend Avesta-which is to Zoroastrianism what the Veda is to Brāhmanism. The knowledge thus obtained has made it clear that contemporaneously with Judaism an unidolatrous and monotheistic form of religion, containing a high moral code and many points of resemblance to Judaism itself, was developed by at least one branch of the Aryan race. Nor does the certainty of this fact rest on the testimony of the Zoroastrian scriptures only. It is attested by numerous allusions in the writings of Greek and Latin authors. We know that the Father of history himself, writing about 450 years before the Christian era, said of the Persians that it is not customary among them to make idols, to build temples and erect altars; they even upbraid with folly those who do.' The reason of this Herodotus declares to be that the Persians do not believe the gods to be like men, as the Hellenes do, but that they identify the whole celestial circle with the Supreme Being. We know, too, that Cyrus the Great, who must have been a Zoroastrian, evinced great sympathy with the Jews; and was styled by Isaiah 'the righteous one' (ch. xli. 2), 'the Shepherd of the Lord' (ch. xliv. 28), 'the Lord's Anointed' (ch. xlv. 1), who was commissioned to 'perform all God's pleasure' and carry out His decrees in regard to the rebuilding of the temple, and the restoration of the chosen people to their native land.1 It will be my aim in the present paper to give a brief description -based on the most recent researches of the various phases of the Zoroastrian religion from its earliest rise in Central Asia to its latest development among the Parsīs of India. Unfortunately, the whole subject, full as it is of importance and interest, is also fraught with extreme difficulty. 1 In Ezra i. 2-4, Cyrus is represented as acknowledging Jehovah to be the God. But Canon Rawlinson has shown in a late number of the Contemporary Review that if the interpretation of a recently discovered inscription is to be relied on, Cyrus was not the monotheist and iconoclast he is generally represented to have been, but simply a time-server and syncretist. Its importance must not be measured by the number of persons in the world-at present barely amounting to one hundred thousandwho profess the Zoroastrian creed, but rather by its connection with the history of the ancient Persians who-inheritors of the greatness and glory of their precursors, the Assyrians and Babylonians were the first of all the Aryan races to achieve empire, and were for a time the most conspicuous and remarkable people on the surface of the globe, influencing by their religious and philosophical ideas, by their literature, laws, and social institutions, the intellectual development of the whole human race. Nor, again, is the interest of the subject due so much to the independent merit of the system itself as to the nature of the doctrines which it has in common with Judaism, and through it with Christianity, and to the intimate relationship subsisting between the religion of the Avesta and that of the ancient religion of our Indian fellow-subjects. On the other hand the intricacy of the inquiry is due to the utterly corrupt and fragmentary condition of the sacred writings and traditions on which the whole system rests, and to the conflict of opinion among scholars as to their interpretation. With a view to greater perspicuity, I propose to arrange my explanations in the form of answers to the following questions:1. What is the probable origin of the people commonly called Iranian, who became followers of Zoroaster? 2. What do we know of Zoroaster, and what was the character of the religious system he inaugurated? 3. How did his doctrines become affected by the migration of his disciples into Persia? 4. What are the exact nature and present condition of the sacred writings on which Zoroastrianism is founded? 5. Why and how was the system expelled from Persia and transferred to India? 6. What modifications have the Indian Pārsīs introduced into the Zoroastrian creed? I. To begin with the early history of the Iranian people. I need scarcely point out that the Iranians were an offshoot from the great Aryan stock. The designation Iranian ought not strictly to be applied to them until their settlement in Persia. It is a term derived from Iran, the name given to ancient Persia in contradistinction to Turan, the vast region of Central Asia occupied by the uncivilised Turkish tribes. For convenience and to distinguish the Iranian from other Aryan races, especially from the Indo-Aryans, I propose to call them Irano-Aryans. There was a time, at least 2,000 years B.c., when Irano-Aryans and Indo-Aryans lived together as fellow-countrymen, along with the ancestors of Englishmen and of the principal European nations, in some central region of Asia-probably the extensive tract of tableland north of the Hindu Kūsh, usually known as the Pamir plateau. This region was the primeval home of all the Aryan races, both Asiatic and European. There they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, obeyed the same laws, and were called by the same name (ārya, excellent). The climate was in general cold and ungenial, yet favourable to the development of a hardy race of inhabitants, partly nomad in their habits, partly agricultural, who very soon multiplied beyond the capacity of the soil to support. the entire population. Emigration then became a necessity. The most enterprising led the way. Some descended into the valley of the Indus and the plains of the Panjab, passing through the passes of Afghanistan, the Chitral valley, and Kaśmir. These were the ancestors of the Indo-Aryans. Others either occupied the highlands and region north of Kabul, or descended into the valley of the Oxus, following the course of that river and settling in the rich adjacent country including the whole region afterwards called Bactria, of which Balkh (the present capital of Afghan Turkistān) and Samarkand eventually became the chief cities. These were the ancestors of the Irano-Aryans or Iranians. When they found themselves becoming prosperous in their new settlements, they naturally sent messages to relatives and friends, urging them to follow. Hence there was a constant succession of fresh arrivals. * The Magi of the New Testament may have been simply wise men from Babylon or Persia, but it is more likely that they were Zoroastrian priests or religious emissaries deputed to express sympathy with the Jews on the occasion of so great an event as the birth of Christ. * Tūrān was so called from Tür, eldest son of Faridün, a king of Persia who reigned about 750 years B.C., and who assigned Turkistan to his son. Possibly some of the progenitors of the Indo-Aryans may have first settled in Bactria, and dwelt for a time with the Iranians until quarrels and rivalries caused a separation, and led them to follow those who had descended to the plains of India through Afghanistan. All the chronology and topography of this period must be more or less conjectural. Nevertheless many valuable geographical hints are to be gathered from the first Fargard of the Vendīdād, constituting the opening chapter of the Zend Avesta. Its allusions to localities are obscure, but they warrant an inference that the primeval seat of the Aryans was a country in which winter prevailed for ten months of the year, and that the migrations of the Iranians extended through Sogdiana and Bactria to Merv and Herat. When the Irano-Aryans first settled in the valley of the Oxus and the Indo-Aryans in the valley of the Indus, their language, customs, and religious ideas must have been nearly identical. No sooner, however, did they begin their new life in their adopted countries than differences and divergences, the result of differences of climate, circumstances, and surroundings, began to be developed. And first as to language. The original Aryan speech went through a process of greater scientific elaboration in the one case than in the other. On the fertile plains watered by the Indus and the Ganges, a large class of thinking men were set free from agricultural labour to pursue their speculations undisturbed. Their first thoughts were directed towards the analysis of speech. The raw material they brought with them in the shape of their own mother-tongue was like the finest ore or clay-ductile, expansible, plastic, capable of being moulded and fashioned with the greatest artistic skill. All that was wanted was that men should be forthcoming capable of manipulating it. Such men were the grammatical giants Pānini, Kātyāyana, and Patanjali. In their hands the rough-hewn elements of speech very soon acquired regularity and beauty of form, and a language was produced in upper India, which, from the perfection of its structure, was called Sanskrit-a language which, in regard to the light it has thrown on the science of grammar generally, has never been matched. The Irano-Aryans, on the other hand, who first settled in Bactria, were not so favoured by circumstances of climate and position. They were unable to support a learned class. They brought with them, like the Indo-Aryans, a form of speech rich in vocabulary and inflexions, but they did comparatively little towards improving and developing it. The East-Iranian language, which by an unfortunate mistake has been called Zend or Zand-a name more correctly applicable to the Pahlavi translation and interpretation of their so-called book of revelation, the Avesta, -attained its extreme limit of development in the Avesta. This book, however, presents us with both an earlier and a later dialect of Zend. The early form is found in the Gāthā portion of the Avesta ascribed more directly to Zoroaster. The later has its best representative in the Vendīdād and Yashts. Zend and Vedic Sanskrit are really two sisters, and the family likeness between them is strong. The more corrupt system of vocalisation traceable in the Zend of the Avesta may be attributed, perhaps, to its long continued oral transmission. Many words in both dialects of the Avesta read as if they were mere corruptions of Vedic counterparts. Yet it is certain that the Zend language is not derived from Sanskrit, that it is very different from Sanskrit, and has even preserved some more primitive grammatical forms than its sister tongue. Unhappily it has no literature of any kind beyond the Avesta. Nor has it any lineal linguistic descendants. Zend is absolutely barren in both these respects. Modern Persian is a descendant not of Zend but of a sister language, the ancient Persian preserved in the Achæmenian cuneiform inscriptions, and the line of its descent appears to have been from this Achæmenian Persian-which was formed in Persia by • Zend, which should have been written Zand, is from the root zan (= Sanskrit jna, Greek and Latin yyw and gno), to know. According to Oppert, Zend means 'prayer,' and Avesta, 'divine law.' West is more probably right in connecting Avesta with the Sanskrit a-vid, to make known to (the world). The proper meaning of Avesta would then be 'Divine declaration,' or 'revelation,' and Zand is the Pahlavi translation. Haug gives as examples kerenaomi, I make = Vedic krinomi; jamaiti, he goes =Vedic gamati; gerewnāmi, I take = Vedic gribhnāmi; so also ahmai, to him = asmai. |