HB-06-Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism  660 BC to 500 BC

            Peoples from north of the Alps migrating into the Middle East are known historically by various names.  The Hittites for example brought metal working skills with them, others known as Indo-European or Aryans brought with them the use of horses and chariots.  These people split, the larger movement went to the Oxus River valley in India; the other penetrated into present‑day Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the northwest fringes of the Iranian plateau (ancient Persia). They brought with them their beliefs as well as crafts.  Their ways and beliefs were handed down by oral traditions passed on in poems, songs, words and practices.   Scholars have gone to great length to identify beliefs showing common origin, though changed by time and place,

            The Hebrew tribe of Abraham (1700 BC) was driven out of Babylon by pressures from people using horse drawn chariots entering Persia.   Zoroaster (670 BC ?) became the spokesman for the religion imported into Persia.  The ruler of Persia accepted Zoroaster’s beliefs and applied them to the peoples of Babylon when he conquered them, which was at a time when the Israelis were under Babylonian rule.  Thus the middle east beliefs growing out of Semitic tribes and Canaan agriculture were exposed to new concepts.  Among these were the concept of a heaven and hell, of life after death, and of tolerance to others.  Exposure to Persian rule had a significant effect on Judaism and following religions.

The story of Zoroastrianism is not easy to unravel, sources are not clear and authentic, as in the Vedas (India branch). The Avesta, sacred book of Zoroastrian faith, was preserved orally for centuries until written about the third century A.D. It is miscellany, without cohesion; the remnant of a far larger body of literature. The most important part contains the Gathas or Hymns of Zoroaster, written in an ancient Gathic dialect which predates the Avestan language and is closely related to the Vedic. These hymns provide the only trustworthy information on Zoroaster's life and thought.

Pahlevi Texts in Parthian language written two hundred years after the Muslim conquest provide the Bundahishn, an account of the creation and structure of the world, and the Denkhart, a compendium of Zoroastrian lore; both insights into late Zoroastrianism.

A comparison of Iranian religion before Zoroaster, the life and teaching of Zoroaster and the Zoroastrianism of later times helps unravel the evolution of beliefs.

Iranian Religion Before Zoroaster

The common people worshiped powers known as daevas associated with the powers of nature, sun, moon, stars, earth, fire, water, and winds. The priests recognized ahuras ("lords") among the gods, considered to be high in the heavens and concerned with cosmic order; there was a hierarchic organization of the gods.

There was Intar or Indara (the Vedic Indra), a war god, best known as "he who struck down Verethra," an obstruction that held back the rain waters.  He was overshadowed by Mithra (Vedic Mitra), a popular god known among Aryan folk everywhere. In a Hittite document of 1400‑1300 BC., Mithra is mentioned under the name of Miidra, the chief god of the Mitarmi, an Aryan group; Iranians gave him highest honors. He was the giver of cattle and sons; the god of light, a sun‑god.  He stood for the quality of loyalty and faith‑keeping, the god to whom princes prayed when going into battle; he supported the sanctity of treaties (Mithra means "treaty" or "pact") he reveals bad faith – Mirthra causes steeds of the deceivers to refuse to bear their riders; though they run they do not advance or make progress; the lance from the hand of Mithra's enemy is borne away by the wind.

Hittite documents include the god Uruwana, known to the Greeks as Ouranos and the Vedic Varuna, the god of the domed sky and lord (ahura) with high moral character.

Other gods are Asha or Arta, whose attributes are truth, right, justice, and divine order, also the heavenly twins, the Nasatya or Asvins who were reduced by the later Persians to one, Vayu the wind, a companion of Indra, appearing under the double aspect of good and bad winds, blowing from the beginning of time. The first man to die, Yima (the Vedic Yama); and Fravashi or Fathers, the beloved and protective ancestral spirits.  These divine powers were worshiped and sacrificed to under the open sky, beside altars, with the aid of priests, fire‑worship, and the sacramental use of the psychedelic potion prepared from the sacred haoma plant (the Vedic soma).

Fire‑worship of ancient Iranians is similar to fire ceremonies of ancient India, and of importance in Zoroastrianism to the present. Under the Iranian name of Atar, a sacrificial fire was lit and reverenced, the grass around the altar was consecrated, sprinkled with haoma‑juice, and made the table upon which were laid portions of the sacrifice for the invisible divine guests. The sacrifice might be a cereal but usually an animal. In the latter case the victim was touched with the barsom, a bundle of boughs that was worshiped as supernatural and held before the face during the adoration of the sacred fire. The ceremony of the pressing of the haoma‑juice and the sacramental use of the sacred liquid were similar to the ceremonies of the kind in Vedic India.

For settlers who cultivated gardens and put their livestock out to graze, animal sacrifices were burdensome; what to nomads seemed natural and reasonable was far too costly to settlers. Reform was needed, and Zoroaster was at hand to effect it.

Zoroaster’s Life

It is impossible to be certain about the details of Zoroaster's life, the date and place of Zoroaster's birth is uncertain; Persian tradition places the time at 660 BC, somewhere in east‑central Iran.

According to tradition in youth he received instruction from a tutor, at the age of fifteen was known for his compassionate nature and at twenty left his father and mother and the wife they chose for him to wander seeking an answer to his deepest religious questionings.  At age thirty he received a revelation, the original event was magnified by legion into a series of miraculous visions. The first vision is where the archangel Vohu Manah (Good Thought) bade him lay aside the "vesture" of his material body and as a disembodied soul mount to the presence of Ahura Mazda, "the Wise Lord", the Supreme Being holding court among attendant angels.  Ahura Mazda instructed Zoroaster, to be a prophet following the doctrines and duties of the true religion. That during the next eight years he met in vision each of the six principal archangels, and each conference made more complete the original revelation -- so runs the tradition.

According to the Gathas, presumably Zoroaster's own words, references to these revelations furnish more authentic, though fragmentary details. Thus:

"As the holy one I recognized thee, Mazda Ahura, when Good Thought (Vohu Manah) came to me and asked me, 'Who art thou? to whom dost thou belong? By what sign wilt thou appoint the days for questioning about thy possessions and thyself?' ”

"Then said I to him: 'Zarathustra am I, a true foe to the Liar to the utmost of my power, but a powerful support would I be to the Righteous, that I may attain the future things of the infinite Dominion, according as I praise and sing thee, Mazda.' “

"As the holy one I recognized thee, Mazda Ahura, when Good Thought came to me. To his question, 'For which wilt thou decide?' I made reply 'At every offering of reverence to thy Fire, I will bethink me of Right [Ashal so long as I have power. Then show me Right, upon whom I call.' . . .

"And when thou said to me, 'To Right shalt thou go for teaching,' then thou didst not command what I did not obey: 'Speed thee my Obedience  come, followed by treasure‑laden Destiny, who shall render to men severally the destinies of the two‑fold award.

Tradition says he immediately began o preach but without success. Discouraged, he was visited by a severe temptation. The Evil Spirit, Angra Mainyu, bade him renounce the worship of Mazda.  But Zarathustra answered him: “No, I shall not renounce the good religion of the worshipers of Mazda, not though life, limb, and soul should part asunder."

Tradition continues, somewhere in eastern Iran he found himself in the court of an Aryan prince by the name of Vishtaspa.  With renewed hope he began a two years' effort to win this ruler to his faith. Vishtaspa, all but hidden from view in the mass of laudatory tradition gathered round him, gives the impression of being an honest‑hearted man, simple and sincere in his habit of life. The prince was dominated by the Karpans, a greedy throng of priests. With their numerous animal sacrifices, and their magical procedures designed to make the crops grow, protect the cattle, keep the marauding nomads of the north (the Turanians) at a distance, and frustrate demonic influences of all sorts -- they roused Zoroaster's intensest opposition. During the struggle with him they managed to have him cast into prison, but after two hard years, aided by his wondrous cure of Vishtaspa's favorite black horse and helped by the sympathetic support of Vishtaspa's consort, Hutaosa, he won the monarch over to his faith.

The conversion was complete and unreserved. Vishtaspa put all his power behind the propagation of the faith. The whole court followed the monarch into the new religion. The king's brother, Zain, and his gallant son, Isfendir, were of special importance as converts. Two brothers, both nobles who stood high in the councils of Vishtaspa, Frashaoshtra and Janmaspa by name, became Zoroaster's kin by marriage; the former gave Zoroaster his daughter, Huovi, to wife, and the latter married Pourucista, Zoroaster's daughter by his first wife.

Tradition says the next twenty years were spent in vigorously promulgating the faith among the Iranians and in fighting two holy wars in its defense. The first of these saw the rise of Isfendir to great heights of heroism in routing the invading Turanians.  Tradition says the second Turanian invasion which took place when Zoroaster was seventy‑seven years of age, was at first successful and led to Zoroaster's death. The later writers of the Avesta state, over a thousand years after the event, state that when the Turanians stormed Balkh, one of their number surprised and slew him before the fire‑altar at which he was officiating.   Whether or not this was the manner of it, Zoroaster's death did not mean the extinction of the faith. He had planted his new faith deeply in Iranian folk‑consciousness, where it was destined to flourish.

Zoroasters Teachings

Zoroaster taught inherited beliefs, that the moral law requiring human righteousness proceeded from one good God; the supreme god Ahura Mazda ("Wise Lord")  whom the Aryans of India worshiped under the name of Varuna.  Mazda means "the wise" or "the full of light." Ahura is the same word as the Vedic Asura, meaning "lord," an Indo‑European name for outstanding figures among the devas or gods.

The Indo‑Aryans, like the Romans and Celts on the other side of the world, called their good spirits devas (Roman deus, Celtic divin, and English deity or divinity), but their experience of the capricious natural forces of India somehow caused the name asura (lord) to be applied exclusively to evil spirits, the sublime and awful lords of mischief. (This shift in meaning may be seen taking place between the earlier and later hymns of the Rig‑Veda.) In Iran, on the other hand, Zoroaster attached to these words quite the opposite meanings. In Mazda he saw the one true Ahura to whom his entire devotion should be paid, the sublime and awful "Lord" who was perfect wisdom and goodness. But he feared that Mazda would not be recognized in the same way by the masses of the people. Under the leadership of the priests of the old religion, they worshiped along with the Ahura Mazda, Mithra, and Aparn Napat (a designation for Agni, Fire), a host of daevas, gods called by many ancient Indo‑European names, Indra and Vayu, for example. The "corrupt" priests made magic with the aid of these deities. The wild nomads to the north, who were the scourge of all good settlers, sacrificed to these deities before they made their raids on Iran to carry off the grain and cattle and gut the barns and homes with fire. There could be only one conclusion for Zoroaster: the daevas were malicious devils masquerading as good spirits, fathers of lies deceit. They wrought evil and turned men from following Ahura Mazda.

Zoroaster set forth his religious system in a few clear‑cut conceptions.

1. The Gathas (Hymns of Zoraster) again and again set forth his claim that he had been called to his prophetic mission by Ahura Mazda himself and that the religion he taught was the final and true religion.

2. He gave all his devotion to one god Ahura Mazda, to him the supreme deity‑that is to say, supreme in creation, supreme in value, and supreme by anticipation of the final apocalyptic event by which he would forever crush all evil and establish right and truth. In contradistinction to some of his later followers, Zoroaster believed that by the will of the one supreme Lord Mazda all things had come into being. As the following sentences from the Gathas declare:  Mazda caused darkness as well as light. Who is by generation the Father of Right (Asha) at the first? Who determined the path of sun and stars? Who is it by whom the moon waxes and wanes again? ... Who upheld the earth beneath and the firmament from falling? Who made the water and the plants? Who yoked swiftness to winds and clouds? ... What artist made light and darkness, sleep and waking? Who made morning, noon, and night, that call the understanding man to his duty? ... I strive to recognize by these things thee, 0 Mazda, creator of all things through the holy spirit.

            3. He had a rich conception of Ahura Mazda's way of accomplishing results. Mazda expresses his will through a Holy Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) and various modes of divine action, called the "Immortal Holy Ones" or Amesha Spentas (the Ameshaspands of later Persia). These modes of ethical activity bear such names as Vohu Manah (Good Thought or Sense), Asha (Right), Kshathra (Power or Dominion), Haurvatat (Prosperity), Armaiti (Piety), and Ameretat (Immortality). Asha (or Arta) is the Vedic Rita. Vohu Manah is the divine mode that conducted Zoroaster to Ahura Mazda for his first revelation. Armaiti, Kshathra, Haurvatat, and Ameretat are gifts of Ahura Mazda to man and also forces and facts in their own right.

In name at least, they all are abstract qualities or states, and it is a little perplexing to know just what Zoroaster's conception of them was, whether he felt that they were good genii of Ahura Mazda, with their own being and individuality, or whether he meant to give them no more than the force of personalized abstractions.  Other modes of divine expression are named besides the Amesha Spentas‑for example, Obedience (Sraosha), the Ox‑Creator or Spirit that protects cows (Geus Urva), and still others. But none of these are very clearly visualized as divine beings with independent personalities. At all events, they are kept subordinate to Ahura Mazda as agents of his divine self‑expression. In short, Zoroaster gives us a rich conception of deity without abandoning monotheism.

3. Though Ahura Mazda is supreme, he is not unopposed. This is an important belief of Zoroaster. Ever against Asha (Right or Truth) is Druj (the Lie). Truth is confronted with Falsehood, Life with Death. The Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) is opposed by Angra Mainyu, literally, "the Bad Spirit." It is characteristic of the Gathas to lay continual emphasis on the fundamental cleavage in the world of nature and in the life of man between right and wrong, the, true religion and the false. This cleavage began at the time Ahura Mazda created the world and established freedom of choice for his creatures.

            The two primal Spirits, who revealed themselves in vision as Twins, are the Better and the Bad in thought and word and action. And between these two the wise once choose aright, the foolish not so. And when these twain Spirits came together in the beginning, they established Life and Not‑Life, and that at the last the Worst Existence (Hell) shall be to the followers of the Lie, but the Best Thought (Paradise) to him that follows Right. Of these twain Spirits he that followed the Lie chose doing the worst things; the holiest Spirit chose Right.

I will speak of the Spirits twain at the first beginning of the world, of whom the holier thus spake to the enemy: "Neither thought nor teachings nor wills nor beliefs nor words nor deeds nor selves nor souls of us twain agree."  Thus, at the beginning of the world, the good spirit going forth from Ahura Mazda was met and opposed by an evil spirit‑the spirit called in later times Shaitin or Satan.

5. Although only a few words are needed to state it, it was perhaps Zoroaster's cardinal moral principle that each man's soul is the seat of a war between good and evil. This war in the breast is of critical importance. In creating man, Ahura Mazda gave him freedom to determine his own actions and hence the power to choose between right and wrong. Though Ahura Mazda seeks always by the power of his Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) and through Vohu Manah to commend the right, he has not made man inaccessible to Angra Mainyu's evil suggestions. So it is required of each man to decide the issue of the war in his own bosom, and to choose either the good or the evil. The good man chooses aright.

6. Good and evil are not clearly defined, but we cannot rightly expect the Gathas, which are devotional hymns and not theological treatises, to be precise. The Gathas, however, give us an indication of the practical difference between right and wrong. The good people, for example, were to Zoroaster those who accepted the true religion, and the evil were those who rejected it, especially those who continued to practice the old popular religion with its worship of the daevas. The daevas, it seemed clear, had allied themselves with Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit, and so those who followed them were living in a condition fraught with evil. Such people were not merely to be shunned: "Resist them with the weapon!  If it is good always to speak the truth and to aid all those who follow Asha and Vohu Manah, it is evil to help the bad, to do them favors, or to give them gifts. The good ‑ and here is an insight into Zoroaster's practical common sense ‑ till the soil, raise grain, grow fruits, root out weeds, reclaim wasteland, irrigate the barren ground, and treat kindly the animals, especially the cow, that are of service to the farmers. In their personal relations they are truth‑speakers; they never lie. The evil have no agriculture. That is their condemnation. He that is no husbandman, 0 Mazda, however eager he be, has no part in the good message.  Angra Mainyu is always busy against husbandry: The Liar stays the supporters of Right from prospering the cattle in district and province, infamous that he is."

The Turanian nomads represented evil at its worst. They prepared for their raids by worshiping the daevas, after wickedly slaying cattle as sacrifices for the altar. Then they fell upon the fields and destroyed their produce. Such is the evil one may expect from daeva worshipers!

The good man would say, in the words of an old Zoroastrian pledge: "I repudiate the Daevas. I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a Zarathustrian, as an enemy of the Daevas, a prophet of the Lord, praising and worshipping the Immortal Holy Ones (the Amesha Spentas). To the Wise Lord I promise all good; to him, the good, beneficent, righteous, glorious, venerable, I vow all the best; to him from whom is the cow, the law, the (celestial) luminaries, with whose luminaries (heavenly) blessedness is conjoined. I choose the holy, good Armaiti, she shall be mine. I abjure theft and cattle‑stealing, plundering and devastating the villages of Mazda worshippers."

7.  Of religious ceremonial little is left. The old Aryan ritual is purged (almost to the vanishing point) of magic and idolatry. Animal sacrifices are eliminated and the ritual intoxication attendant upon drinking haoma‑juice is condemned. {Not only did Zoroaster disapprove of the hallucinogenic effects of haoma‑juice; he also condemned the practice of having laymen catch the urine of the soma‑drinking priests and drink it. Evidently "soma" passes through the body of those who drink it relatively unchanged, except for dilution, and those drinking the urine are psychodelically affected by it.}

            But there was one feature of the old ritual that Zoroaster retained. According to tradition, as we have seen, he was done to death while serving before the sacred fire. In a previous quotation from the Gathas we have heard him say, "At every offering to thy Fire, I will bethink me of Right so long as I have power." Elsewhere he declares the sacred fire to be a gift of Ahura Mazda to mankind. But Zoroaster did not worship the fire, as his ancestors had done, or as some of his followers later did; it was to him a precious symbol of Ahura Mazda, and no more, through which he could realize the nature and essence of the Wise Lord. So, at least, his language and the logic of his whole position seem to have led him to believe.

8.  What, finally, is to be the issue of the long struggle between good and evil? Will Ahura Mazda forever be opposed? Will Angra Mainyu, the Liar, always afflict man and lead him astray?  Whatever misgivings his later followers may have had on the subject, Zoroaster had no doubt that Ahura Mazda would, in the fullness of time, triumphantly overthrow all evil. He did not believe that the influence of evil is as eternal as good. He was thoroughly opti­mistic. Good would yet outlast and outwit evil.

Here, as among the Celts and Teutons, eschatology, the conception of "last things" or the end of the world, comes into prominence. According to Zoroaster's teachings, a general resurrection will take place at the end of the present world order. The good and evil will then be subjected to an ordeal of fire and molten metal. By this fiery test, as a later amplification of the original teaching declares, the evil will be made known by their terrible burning, but the righteous will find the fire kindly and the molten metal harmless, as soft and healing as milk. In the Gathas the picture is much less clearly defined, so that it remains in doubt whether the forces of evil, including Angra Mainyu, will be entirely consumed by the fiery ordeal or will survive to be hurled into the abyss of the "Abode of Lies" (Hell).

If the latter conception is the correct one, some consistency can be read into the rather confused imagery of individual judgment. Individual judgment follows shortly after death, and the state of the soul remains fixed thereafter until the general resurrection at the end of the world. The references to it ‑ marked by excessive brevity ‑ may, with a little interpretation, be made to yield a picture replete with picturesque detail. Each soul, good or bad, must face judgment at the Bridge of the Separator (the Chinvat Bridge), which spans the abyss of hell and at its farther end opens on paradise. At this bridge the record of the soul is read. The balarfce of merits and demerits is cast. If good deeds predominate over evil, the "pointing of the hand" (of Ahura Mazda?) will be toward paradise, but if evil overbalances good, the hand will point to the abyss below the bridge. The crossing of the bridge is most dramatically conceived. The righteous, guided by Zoroaster, will have no difficulty, but the evil, already condemned by the judges, will find themselves in no case able to go beyond its center. Why? Zoroaster held the profound doctrine that a man's self fixes his destiny. He said of the evil:

            "Their own Soul and their own Self  shall torment them when they come to the Bridge of the Separator. To all time will they be guests for the House of the Lie."  Staggered by their own guilty consciences, they will of themselves fall to their doom.  They will dwell in "the House of the Lie," the Gathas' hell, a place called "the worst existence," the abode of "the worst thought," an ill‑smelling region, most dreadful to the Iranian imagination because it is so foul. In its lightless depths sad voices cry out, but each sufferer is forever "alone." On the other hand, the righteous will dwell beyond the great bridge in "the House of Song," the Gathas' paradise, described as "the best existence," the abode of "the best thought," where the sun shines forever, and the righteous enjoy spiritual bliss, happy in their ever‑joyous companionship.

Zoroaster believed so earnestly that the good religion of Ahura Mazda would win enough adherents to bring about the eventual defeat of evil that he had the stout hope that some of these adherents would be, like him, "deliverers."   He therefore had no doubt of Ahura Mazda's ultimate triumph, but he also felt strongly, let no man who sees the nature of the struggle between truth and falsehood fail meanwhile to ally himself with truth!

Such was the militant note with which Zoroaster brought his moral challenge to the folk of his time. How far he was in advance of his age, those who read further may judge.

 

 

III The Religion of the Later Avesta

            So far, our story of Zoroaster's reform, while beset with difficulties, has had a solid anchor in the facts supplied by the Gathas; but now we are about to enter an area of the greatest uncertainty, where further research and additional data are much needed. Valuable records have disappeared in the tumults of a thousand years of history (300 B.C. to 700 A.D.), and perhaps the lacunae now existing will never be filled.

At this point, it is impossible to know with certainty which of two possibilities was the actual historical situation (this author favors the first): (i) whether Zoroaster's reform, which perhaps for the first time elevated Ahura Mazda to the position of supreme being, made its way as an ethical monotheism among the princes of eastern Iran, then came down into the Mesopotamian basin and was substantially modified in order to accommodate it to the polytheistic faiths encountered there; or (2) whether another monotheistic reform, parallel to Zoroaster's, occurred in western Iran, perhaps through the efforts of the Magi, and won the adherence of Darius and his successors, a reform that pitted a good god like Ahura Mazda against Ahriman in a cosmic arena filled with subordinate Indo‑Iranian gods and demons coming from very early times, and that included the refinement that Zurvan or Boundless Time was the ground or the "father" from which or whom the good god and Ahriman both originated (see below).

The first hypothesis presumes that when Zoroaster's reform entered the Mesopotamian basin and became known among the Medes of Northwestern Iran, it won the influential support of the Magi, concerning whose identity there is still a considerable mystery. They probably were not of Aryan stock. But they were known as far west as Jerusalem and Athens for their skill in the practice of magical arts. (The word magic is, of course, derived from them.) Babylon knew of them, even before that great city fell under the successful onslaught of Cyrus. The second hypothesis presumes that when Zoroastrianism first came on the scene, the Magi opposed it as a rival faith, but becoming convinced that their special talents as priests could be used in its assimilation they adopted it and became its leading exponents in the Mesopotamian world.

Cyrus the Great, who in 538 B.C. overthrew Babylon and put an end to the Chaldaean empire, was presumably a Zoroastrian, but not a strict one, because for political reasons, when he first extended his sway over the Chaldaeans, he sought their support by appearing to be a worshiper of the Babylonian god Marduk. But Darius I and Xerxes after him did less compromising; they honored Ahura Mazda, in their many inscriptions, as supreme Lord of heaven and earth. Their religion was not that of Zoroaster as presented in the Gathas, but they believed firmly that Ahura Mazda and the agencies of his divine working and favor were with them.

It was in these days that world history hung in the balance. Cambyses first, then Darius, and Xerxes later, turned to world‑conquest. Summoning the resources of the great new Persian empire to their aid, they marched into Egypt and then toward Europe. Xerxes invaded Greece, and perhaps only the disaster of Salamis prevented Zoroaster's faith or a modification of it from becoming a major religion of the Western world.

The Persians fell back into Asia Minor (479 B.C.) and then, in the fourth century B.C., 15 o years later, were overthrown throughout their empire by Alexander the Great. With his coming, Hellenism had the support of official policy, and its cultural force did not recede until the first century A.D. Meanwhile, the Arsacids, who were Parthians from eastern Iran speaking the language called Pahlevi, came to power in Persia, ruling from 250 B.C. to 226 A.D. (The Romans came to grief trying to subdue them.) They were overthrown finally by the Sassanids from Fars (Old Persia), whose dynasty endured from 226 to 651 A.D., when the Muslims brought about their fall.

During this long period, a modified Zoroastrianism held sway, in which Ahura Mazda lost almost all of his prominence to a resurgent Mithra and a captivating Anahita (see below). The empire‑wide ascendancy of Zoroastrianism had been won at a great cost to the cause of monotheism, of which Zoroaster was the clearest exponent.,

What changes had occurred? we may ask.

Without prejudice to either of the two views men­tioned above, the account that follows assumes what is common to both views, namely, that the reform of Zoroaster became known in the Mesopotamian basin and in the course of its adoption underwent great modifications. We shall now review these changes, changes that must be called typical of any religion founded upon the views of a prophetic personality but propagated at a later time on alien soil by priests and kings.

1. To begin with the early changes first, a highly worshipful attitude came to be taken toward Zoroaster himself To the adoring eyes of his later followers, that very human man, "the shepherd of the poor" of the Gathas, became a godlike personage whose whole exist­ence was attended by supernatural manifestations. Heaven and hell were thrown into commotion by him. His coming Was known and foretold three thousand years before by the mythical primeval bull, and King Yima, in the Golden Age, gave the demons warning that their defeat was impending. The demons, thus forewarned, strove to prevent the occurrence of what they so much feared. They noted with consternation the manner of Zoroaster's conception. The Glory of Ahura Mazda united itself with Zoroaster's future mother at her birth and rendered her fit thereby to bear the prophet. At the same time a divinely protected stem of a haoma plant was infused with the ftavash of the coming prophet, and at the proper time the parents of Zoroaster drank its juices mixed with a potent milk, which the demons vainly sought to de­stroy and which contained the material essence (body protoplasm) of the child about to be conceived. After his birth, at which all nature rejoiced, and at the mo­ment of which he himself laughed aloud, demons and hostile wizards surrounded him with every sort of hazard. His own father was rendered by magic arts indifferent to his fate. The baby was almost killed in his cradle, burnt in a huge fire, and trampled to death by a herd of cattle (whose leading ox, however, stood above him and saved him, exactly as did a leading horse, in a similar event where demons stampeded a herd of horses). He was placed in a cave with wolves whose young had been killed, and sad would have been his plight if these savage creatures had not allowed a ewe to enter and suckle him!

According to the highly elaborated tradition, the same sort of miracle attended his adult life. The Zartusht Namah (composed about 1200 A.D. from earlier material) thus tells the famous story ‑of the healing of Vishtaspa's horse. Zoroaster had been imprisoned as the result of a plot of the hostile nobles (Kavis) and priests of the daevas (Karpans). Thereupon King Vishtaspa's horse fell to the ground, unable to move, its four legs drawn up toward its belly. Zoroaster sent word from his cell that he could cure the animal. But he promised to act only on one condition‑that the king would grant a boon for each leg he restored. Zoroaster was summoned to the king's presence. The first boon asked was that Vishtaspa accept the faith. When the king agreed, the right front leg was straightened. As readily the king granted the other three boons‑that the king's son Isfendir, should fight for the faith, that the queen should also become a convert, and that the names of those in the plot against Zoroaster should be revealed and the plotters punished‑in consideration of which, one by one the quivering charger's other legs were restored to use and it leapt to its feet, full of strength and fire. At one stroke Zoraster had routed his enemies and multiplied his converts.

His miraculous powers should have afforded no one surprise, one observes, if his first appearance at Vishtaspa's court was, as some writers record, an entrance through the palace roof, which opened of itself to admit the prophet, holding in his hand "a cube of fire with which he played without its hurting him."  Zoroaster was highly venerated in antiquity. The Greeks and Romans were much impressed by what they heard of him and his religion. How greatly they were impressed is evidenced by the astonishingly nu­merous references to him in the extant literature and by the fact that Plato was reportedly prevented, shortly after the death of Socrates, from going to Persia to study Zoroastrianism at first hand only by the outbreak of the War of Sparta with Persia in 386 B.C.

2. A change came over the monotheism of Zoroaster. In theory‑that is to say, according to the official creed of the later Avesta‑Ahura Mazda (or Ohrmazd as he came to be called) was always adored as a supreme deity, transcendent and without equal. He was held to be too great and spiritual to have images made of him, as though he could be contained in wood or stone. But he was no longer godhead undivided. The old Aryan nature‑gods whom Zoroaster condemned and fought crept back into the faith and provided powerful figures around him to share his powers. Thus Vohu Manah (Good Thought), upon hearing in the lowing of the cattle a prayer to him to plead their cause, assumed certain agricultural functions and became the guardian divinity of the cattle. Asha (Right) became the guardian divinity of fire, and Kshathra (Dominion) the lord of metals. Because the other Amesha Spentas had feminine names they became fe­male archangels. Armaiti (Piety) became the goddess of the soil, Haurvatat (Prosperity) the goddess of waters, and Ameretat (immortality) the goddess of vegetation.

But these Holy Immortal Ones, perhaps because of a certain artificial quality about them (they were at least not suited to popular mythology), seemed much less important than the Yazatas, or angels, of whom about forty are named. That they came back into Zoroastrianism trailing clouds of glory from a far past is evident in the Yasht that speaks of the Yazatas as rising by "hundreds and thousands." They bore a distinct Aryan character, with many reminders of the Rig‑Veda. We shall here mention only the more promi­nent among them. (a) Greatest of them all was Mithra. Though Zoroaster apparently would have nothing to do with this radiant divinity, the people clung to him. In the later Avesta he returns to his earlier prominence. His name is regularly mentioned along with Ahura Mazda's in the inscriptions of the later Achaemenian kings, those of Artaxerxes, for instance. Theologically he was, of course, subordinate to Ahura Mazda, but in the religion of the masses he attained a supreme stature as the god of light, the rewarder of those who spoke truth and kept faith, and the chief support of those who relied on him to aid them in the struggle with the powers of darkness in this life and the next. His associates were Rashnu (perhaps an Iranian form of Vishnu) and Sraosha (Obedience), who presided with him at the Bridge of the Separator (as we shall see).  {Mithra became the central figure in a cult called Mithraism, which in the second century A.D. spread to the west as far as Britain, espe­cially among the Roman soldiery. He symbolized the "invincible sun," and in the legends told about him he was born in a cave, where shepherds adored him; in maturity he performed miracles; and finally he ascended to heaven. Because he was born in one, his worshipers pursued his worship in caves, natural or constructed, called Mithraeums.

Because his central exploit was the slaying of a sacred bull to fructify the earth with its blood, he was depicted in sculptured reliefs (many of which survive) as a handsome youth, wearing a Phrygian cap and flying cape, kneeling on a bull whose throat he is cutting. Part of the long initiation rites required that the initiate stand under a grating while the blood of a slain bull poured down on his naked body.

Mithraism was a rival of Christianity until it was suppressed in the fourth century after the latter became the official religion of the Roman Empire.}  (b) Also brought back (albeit refined of the character of excess) was Haoma, the sacred intoxicant "the enlivening, the healing, the beautiful, the lordly: with golden eyes." Animal sacrifices‑this would have horrified Zoroaster‑were made to him. He became again "the averter of Death," associated, as in the Rig-Veda, with long life and the immortality of the soul. (c) The strongest and most aggressive of the gods, Ferethragna, known to the Vedic Aryans as Indra, had at various times incarnated himself in ten strong creatures‑a bull with golden horns, a white horse, a male camel, a wild boar, a wild ram, a falcon, a male antelope, a swift wind, a handsome youth, and a warrior. Vigor and sharp eyesight were said to be his gift to Zoroaster. (d) Prominent also was the wind‑god Vayu (who appears under the same name in the Vedas). The Zoroastrians said he had a double nature, a good and an evil side, going back to the beginning of time. In his good manifestation, he protected the righteous and accompanied them as a fragrant wind over the Bridge of the Separator to Paradise; in his evil form he harmed the soul and escorted it to a terrible fall to Hell.

One of the unique features of this later Zoroastrianism is the extraordinary claim that Ahura Mazda himself offers sacrifices to Mithra and Anahita, and both Ahura Mazda and Mithra worship Vayu, the wind! (Yasht 10: 123, 15:24.) No wonder one leading scholar says, "It must be allowed that monotheism is submitted to a severe strain when Ahura Mazda himself offers worship to angels like these."

There were also the Fravashis. These beings are hard to describe because of their rather mixed character. Originally, they seem to have been the ancestral spirits, guarding, and in return expecting worship from, the living. But later their significance broadened, until they stood for ideal selves, who were also guardian genii, both of men and gods. Each living man was finally thought to have a fravashi, or eternal element, and so also certain beings not yet born, namely, "the Saoshyants who are to restore the world." Much more, the Amesba Spentas, the Yazatas, and Ahura Mazda himself were assumed each to have a fravashi! Carefully narrowing down this meaning, we arrive at the conclusion that such fravashis are the spiritual or immortal parts of living personalities, which, like the human souls in Plato's philosophy, exist before birth and survive after death. Here they have the added function of subsisting as ideal or better selves separately from men and pulling them heavenward and away from danger. Prayer and sacrifices were owing to ancestral fravashis in return for their indispensable service in the work of salvation.

So far did the process of fitting out Ahura Mazda's realm with assistant deities go that the Persians availed themselves of opportunities provided outside the Aryan scheme of things. In one of his inscriptions, Artaxerxes 11 (404‑358 B.C.) for the first time mentions a female deity named Anahita, "the Spotless One." His high regard for her is evidenced by the fact that he erected images to her in Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Damascus, and Sardis. Her origin was not of the best. She had Indo‑Iranian origins, if she may be identified with the Vedic Sarasvati, the goddess of the waters; but to the later Zoroastrians she was, it appears, one of the many forms taken by the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, whom we have met in other connections; in this case, she assumed a purified form. In the Yasht in which Anahita's praises are sung, she is called the goddess of the waters let down from heaven to fructify the earth in all its seven regions. Trim of waist and ample of bosom, with golden shoes on her feet, she brought fertility to vegetation and to flocks and herds, and she awakened in human beings, Ishtar‑like, the powers of reproduction, her blessing resting especially on women, that they might have easy births and abundant milk.

In all this we see monotheism relapsing into polytheism, a not uncommon fact in the history of religions. In all faiths there is a joyful acceptance of prophetic utterances and ideals in difficult and degenerate days, but reform is generally succeeded by relapse, a failing away from "thoughts that are high and deeds that are noble" to a more comfortable accommodation of doctrine and practice to the easy‑going ways of the masses of men "who like not thinking better than to follow habit."

3. The doctrine of evil was developed further and approached an almost complete ethical dualism. Like the good angels, the spirits of evil were more sharply individualized than they were by Zoroaster. Angra Mainyu, of whom Zoroaster had spoken bitterly, although not in very concrete terms, as being from the beginning of creation in opposition to Ahura Mazda's Spirit of Good, now became the arch‑fiend, and was set over against Ahura Mazda in dualistic fashion. Portions of the later Avesta almost made Angra Mainyu. co‑equal with as well as the contradiction of Ahura Mazda. For example, the world was regarded as their joint creation. In the first chapter of the Videvdat, Ahura Mazda is portrayed as telling Zoroaster the story of his struggle with Angra Mainyu at the creation of the world. He pictures himself creating the various Iranian districts and endowing them with every excellence; unfortunately, as he admits, Angra Mainyu was on hand, too, busily creating an evil for every good killing frost of winter, excessive heat of summer, snakes, locusts, ants, the wicked rich, evil sorcerers, non‑Aryan lords of the land, human vices, lusts, witchcraft, doubt, disbelief, and so on, not to speak of such unpardonable offenses as burying of the dead or cooking of carrion, practices peculiarly abhorrent to the orthodox Zoroastrians of later days. Angra Mainyu's capacity for mischief was in fact boundless. The twenty‑second chapter places the number of diseases created by him at 99,999, a stupendous number to the people of that time. But there was a final touch. He was the author of death.

The evil power that Angra Mainyu possessed was many times multiplied by the demons he created to assist him, such as Aka Manah (Bad Thought), Andar (the Vedic Indra), Naonhaithya (the Vedic Nasatyas, "the heavenly twins," here reduced to one being), Sauru, Fauru, Zairi, and others. Besides these there were also "numberless myriads" of evil spirits, daevas (devils) all of them. In this connection we must not overlook Druj (the Lie), now appearing in the likeness of a female demon so destructive of righteousness among men that even Ahura Mazda, in one Yasht, exclaims: .Had not the awful Fravashis of the faithful given help unto me ... dominion would belong to the DmJ, the material world would belong to the Druj!"

This is one way to solve the problem of evil, to say that all good comes from God, all evil from the Devil. But consistency demands that the Devil, if he is the true author of evil, be co‑eternal with God from the beginning of time; otherwise, God created evil in the beginning. Only a few Zoroastrians embraced this logical corollary of their position.

4. Another solution to this problem was offered in what is called Zurvanism. A powerful group among the Magi, attempting to avoid the unsatisfactory con­clusion outlined above, proposed as early as the fourth century jax. a doctrine that was rejected by the main body of Zoroastrians but that seems an interesting foreshadowing of a modern physical theory. They sug­gested that both Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu sprang as twins from a unitary world‑principle called Zurvan (boundless Time or Space, or was it Space-Time?). God and Devil were thus made co‑equal in length of years. But even in the working out of this doctrine, which in one form personalized Zurvan as the "father" of Ohrmazd and Ahriman, the ultimate victory of Ohrmazd was declared to be certain, and opposition to evil was still made the first duty of every right‑thinking man.  {Some scholars consider the idea of Zurvan a later one than is here suggested, arguing that it arose in the minds of upper‑class intellectuals in Sassanian times in order to offer a solution to Zoroastrian dualism satisfactory to Babylonian and Greek critics, but that it did not give rise to distinctive cult practices nor survive the fall of the Sassanian dynasty. On the other hand, a number of scholars consider the idea an old one, a belief, in fact, of the Magi before the time of Zoroaster, as we have indicated above.}

5. Though man's conflict with the demons on the great battlefield of life is described as fundamentally moral, in the later Avesta, especially in the Videvdat, it becomes more and more a struggle against the demonic attempt to fasten ceremonial impurity on man. In consequence of this shift of interest, ancient procedures designed to preserve life by aversive magic made their way back into the religion of Zoroaster. To counteract the power of demons over a man in­volved in ceremonial impurity, the Videvdat provided not ethical and moral instruction but directions for the use of powerful manthras (cf. the Vedic and Hindu mantras), passages taken from the Gathas of Zoroaster for use as spells and incantations. In fact, all the Gathas become useful primarily as "spells of ineffable power, to be repeated without flaw, by men who may or may not understand them."

Besides the manthras, an effective means of daunting evil and avoiding its touch, defiling as pitch, was the offering of libations of haoma‑juice. To this day the Parsis of India take the twigs of a sacred plant and mix the juice pressed from them with milk and holy water, the resulting fluid being in part offered as a libation and in part drunk by the officiating priests. This procedure is almost identical with that performed thousands of years ago by the Indo‑Aryans on the banks of the Indus River.

But more directly effective were the methods of cleansing one's person of defilement and thus getting rid of a contaminating influence. According to the Videvdat, contact with the human dead is the source of greatest defilement. Anyone touching a corpse must immediately be purified by ablutions with water, or, in certain contingencies, with the urine of cattle. To modem as to ancient Parsis, corpses have always been so defiling that they are not allowed to enter the earth, lest they corrupt the ground, nor fall into the water, lest they render it unfit for any use, nor be burned on a funeral pyre, lest they defile the flame. In the early days of Zoroastrianism the dead were laid on a bed of stones or a layer of lime or encased in stone to keep them isolated from earth and water. Today they are placed in stone "towers of silence," open to the sky, so that birds of prey may feast on them. Any portion of a dead body, or, for that matter, any part severed from a living body‑as for example nail‑parings or hair cut from the head or beard‑is unclean. Spitting, especially in the presence of another person, is forbidden.

Figure Z1  Tower of Silence. On a remote and barren hilltop the vultures gather to accomplish the desire of the Parsi mourners‑the stripping of the corruptible flesh from the bones of the dead without contamination of the soil The shallow pits in which the corpses are laid appear in the central enclosure. A minority of Zoroastrians now advocate cremation on, with scattering of the ashes at sea.

            Even the exhaled breath is defiling, so that, down to the present day, priests wear cloths over their mouths while tending the sacred fire. Creatures that are known to feed on dead flesh‑maggots, flies, and ants‑are loathed. They are creations of Angra Mainyu, as are also snakes and frogs. In times past the Magi have killed hundreds of thousands of them as an act of piety. Direct contact with any of them requires that the person involved must be cleansed and purified without delay.

This shift from moral regeneration to considerations of ceremonial purity marks much of the history of Zoroastrianism.

6. In one more direction Zoroastrianism grew ever more elaborate: the doctrine of the future life was worked out in graphic detail, highly stimulating to the imagination.

Much attention was paid to the drama of individual judgment. This was not supposed to take place until the fourth day after death. For three nights, it was thought, the soul of the dead man sits at the head of its former body and meditates on its past good or evil thoughts, words, and deeds. During this time it is comforted, if it has been a righteous soul, by good angels, and tormented, if it has been wicked, by demons hovering about ready to drag it off to punishment. On the fourth day the soul makes its way to the Chinvat Bridge, to stand before its judges, Mithra and his associates Sraosha and Rashnu, the last of whom holds the dread scales for the final weighing of merits and de­merits. judgment rendered and sentence passed, the soul then walks onto the Chinvat Bridge. Here, according to the Pahlevi text called the Bundahishn, in the middle part of the bridge,

there is a sharp edge which stands like a sword; ... and Hell is below the Bridge. Then the soul is carried to where stands the sharp edge. Then, if it be righteous, the sharp edge presents its broad side.... If the soul be wicked, that sharp edge continues to stand edgewise, and does not give a passage.... With three steps which it (the soul) takes forward‑which are the evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds that it has performed‑it is cut down from the head of the Bridge, and falls headlong to Hell.

In a further account of the crossing, this text adds an attractive picture of how the righteous soul is guided over the bridge by its own daena, or conscience, in the form of a beautiful maiden, and how the wicked man is confronted by an ugly hag (the personification of his own bad conscience). A late text gives us this amplified description:

When (the righteous soul) takes a step over the Chinvat Bridge, there comes to it a fragrant wind from Paradise, which smells of musk and ambergris, and that fragrance is more pleasant to it than any other pleasure.

When it reaches the middle of the Bridge, it beholds an apparition of such beauty that it hath never seen a figure of greater beauty.... And when the apparition appears to the soul, (the soul) speaks thus: "Who art thou with such beauty that a figure of greater beauty I have never seen?"

The apparition speaks (thus): "I am thine own good actions. I myself was good, but thine actions have made me better. "

And she embraces him, and they both depart with plete joy and ease to Paradise.

            But if the soul be that of wicked man when it takes a step over the Chinvat Bridge, there blows to him an exceedingly foul wind from Hell, so foul as is unheard of among all the stench in the world. There is no stench fouler than that; and that stench is the worst of all the punishments that are visited upon it.

When it reaches the middle of the Chinvat Bridge, it sees an apparition of such extreme ugliness and frightfulness that it hath never seen one uglier and more unseemly.... And it is as much terrified on account of her as a sheep is or a wolf, and wants to flee away from her.

And that apparition speaks thus: "Whither clost thou want to flee?"

It (the soul) speaks thus: "Who art thou with such ugliness and terror that a figure worse than thou art, uglier and more frightful, I have never seen in the world?"

She speaks (thus): "I am thine own bad actions. I myself was ugly, and thou madest me worse day after day, and now thou hast thrown me and thine own self into misery and damnation, and we shall suffer punishment till the day of the Resurrection."

And she embraces it, and both fall headlong from the middle of the Chinvat Bridge and descend to Hell.

            Thus did the later Zoroastrians elaborate the doctrine of their founder that a man's own self‑his own moral consciousness‑determines his future destiny.

In these later accounts it was held that those whose merits and demerits exactly balanced were sent to Harnestakan, a sort of limbo, located between earth and the stars. Hell, they believed, had several levels, the lowest being down in the bowels of the earth, where the darkness could be grasped by the hand and where the stench was unbearable. Heaven, on the other hand, presented ascending levels, corresponding to good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, and located respectively in the regions of the stars, the moon, and the sun. Through these ascending stations the good soul passed, until it reached highest heaven, Garotman or Garo‑demana, "the House of Song," the realm where the Best Thought dwells, and where it would enjoy felicity beyond earth's highest joy until the day of resurrection and the final judgment of all souls.

            In estimating when the final judgment would come, the later Zoroastrians developed a theory of world ages, each lasting three thousand years. They said Zoroaster had appeared at the beginning of the last of these aeons. He would be succeeded by three savior beings, each appearing at intervals of a thousand years: one, Aushetar, born a thousand years after Zoroaster; the second, Aushetarmah, two thousand years later; and the last, Soshyans (Saoshyant) at the end of the world; and Zoroaster would be their father! For it was said that Zoroaster's seed was being miraculously preserved in a lake in Persia, and at intervals of a thousand years three pure virgins would bathe there and conceive the great deliverers.

With the appearance of Soshyans, the last Messiah the "final days" would begin. All the dead would be raised; heaven and hell would be emptied of their residents, in order to make up the great assembly where the final judgment would be passed upon all souls. The righteous and the wicked would be separated, and a flood of molten metal would pour out upon the earth and roar through Hell, purifying all regions with its scorching fires. Every living soul would have to walk through the flaming river, but to the righteous it would seem like warm milk, because there would be no evil in them to be burned away. To the wicked it would bring terrible agony, a purifying burning proportioned to their wickedness, which would sear all the evil out of them and allow the survival only of their goodness. In a final conflict, Ahura Mazda and his angels would hurl Ahriman and his devils into the flames and they would be utterly consumed.  {Ahriman (Angra Mainyu's other name) faced other fates. Some of the later conceptions assert that at the resurrection men will drive him into outer darkness, there to hide himself forever, or, as others say, to be destroyed at last.}

 Then all the survivors of the fiery trial would live together in the new heavens and the new earth, in utmost joy and felicity. Adults would remain forever at forty years of age and children at fifteen; friends and relatives would be reunited forever. Even hell, at last made pure, would be brought back "for the enlargement of the world," and the world in its totality would then be "immortal for ever and everlasting.

IV The Zoroastrians of the Present Day

            The shifts in Zoroastrian doctrine that we have just reviewed began during the reigns of the Achaemenian kings and were resumed, after a prolonged period of disturbance occasioned by the invasion of Alexander the Great, during the time of the Sassanian dynasty (226‑651 A.D.). The influence that Zoroastrianism during this time wielded on orthodox Judaism and the pre‑Islamic Arabs, among them a young camel‑driver from Mecca, was very considerable, so far as ideas are concerned. Indeed, the young camel‑driver was so obsessed by visions of the approaching last judgment foretold alike by Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians that he became a warning prophet among his own amused and scornful townsmen, and then, in flight from his native place, began a career as soldier‑prophet that in its effects not only transformed Arabia but shook the Jewish and Christian worlds to their foundations and almost extinguished Zoroastrianism.

The Effects of the Muslim Conquest

            The successors of Muhammad conducted their conquests with almost incredible swiftness and thoroughness. In 636 they took Syria from the Christians, and in 639 Egypt. During the decade following 637 the empire of the Sassanids was overrun, and in 651 (or 652) the last of the Sassanid rulers was surprised and slain, and Zoroastrianism suffered a nearly fatal blow. But for a century or more, the Arab conquerors attempted no wholesale methods of force to bring about conversion, because the Qur'5n provided that peoples "to whom a Book (i.e., a scripture) has been given" were to be treated generously, and the Zoroastrians, like the Jews and Christians, had "a Book," in fact a whole library of sacred texts. It was some time after the Muslim conquest that pressure was exerted, and then the Arabs were not directly responsible.

            Nevertheless, within a hundred years of the Arab conquest, a great number of Zoroastrians; determined to leave Persia. They first moved to a city far down the coast, near the mouth of the Persian Gulf, then removed to an island off the coast of India, and finally to India itself Other emigrant bands of Zoroastrians; joined them, and among the tolerant Hindus, by whom they were called Parsis (i.e., Persians), all were allowed to pursue their religious rites and duties in freedom. We shall see shortly how well they fared.

Their co‑religionists who remained behind in Persia were not so fortunate.

The Gabars

The Zoroastrians of Persia did not name themselves Gabars (a name that was fastened upon them by the Muslims and means, loosely, "infidels"). They called themselves Zardushtians ("Zoroastrians") or Bahdinan ("those of the good religion"), but long persecution made them keep this name to themselves and hide away their light. To this day their clothes‑are rough and of a dull yellow, and their manners are subdued. But they have clung tenaciously to their faith. The priests are initiated according to the ancient rituals, keep the sa­cred fires fed in their unpretentious fire‑temples, and follow strict rules in performing all their offices. The lay‑folk are faithful to the old rites. They want no abbreviations of ceremony at the investiture of their boys with the sacred shirt (the sudra) and the sacred thread (the kusti, a three‑ply cord symbolizing good thought, good words, and good deeds, and worn as a girdle), and they want the full rites at marriages and at funerals, which end with placing the corpse for the vultures to eat in "towers of silence" (dakhmas, for further description of which see below). They are careful, too, to observe the ancient purification rites on the many occasions when they are polluted by contact with unclean things and persons. Like the Jews, they were for centuries from the old vicious circle into which religious persecution drew them: their sufferings made them secretive, and their secretiveness made them sus­pect. But recently, the more tolerant government of modern Iran has removed their civil disabilities, and their lot has greatly eased. They number about eighteen thousand now. But one wonders how their new freedom will affect their cohesion.

The Parsis in India

            More fortunate have been the Parsis of India, who number today about a hundred and twenty‑five thou­sand souls, most of them in Bombay and neighboring areas. An outsider visiting Bombay soon recognizes them, not only by their relatively light complexion and Aryan features, but also by their dignified mixture of ancient and modern dress. The men commonly dress in European clothes, although they usually wear snugly fitting white trousers. Except for the most westernized of them, they do not appear with uncovered heads in or out of doors, the common head‑gear being a shiny hat of stiffened cloth, darkly colored, rimless, and slop­ing back from the forehead. The women drape their brightly colored Indian saris over dresses of European style and go about freely with unveiled faces. The priests with their white turbans, full beards, and immaculate white garments appear in purely ancient garb.

The Bombay Parsis are often seen by travelers gathering at evening on the sands of the city's Back Bay, in order to face the setting sun and "adore" for a few moments, according to ancient custom, the shining waters rolling in from the west.

As a class the Parsis are wealthy and have the reputation of being the most highly educated and business­like community in India. They are frequently described as India's best businessmen and most competent industrialists; they are said to control the best hotels, the biggest stores, the most cotton, jute, and steel mills, and the new Indian air service. Not only can they make money, but they are famous for their many and large benefactions. Yet in their dealings with non-Zoroastrians they still preserve a certain self‑protective dignity, a kind of ceremonial coldness, and, like the Gabars of Iran, they let no outsiders, however trusted, share their more sacred rites or look upon the holy fires burning in their fire‑temples.

The Bombay Parsis have recently shown concern about the decline in their numbers. They reduced the child‑bearing span of their women by being among the first to abolish child marriages when European standards became known; also marriage has been put off by males and females alike to complete their higher education. These factors, together with rules forbidding marriage outside of Parsi ranks and disallowing conversion to Zoroastrianism for the sake of marriage, have led to steadily shrinking numbers.

Fire‑Temples and Worship

The ceremonial life of the Parsis is regulated by the priesthood, which is hereditary and traces its descent to the ancient tribe of Magi. Their high priests are called dasturs, and many of them are highly educated. Yet the ceremonies in the fire‑temples are performed not by them, but by a specially trained class of priests called mobeds, whose ritual of initiation is very exacting and who keep themselves constantly purified by cleansing rites. These priests memorize fully half of the Avesta, without as a rule understanding a word of it because it is composed in what is now a dead language. In this they do not greatly differ from the ordinary worshipers, who also memorize the more sacred passages of the Avesta and repeat them during ceremonial procedures.

In both Iran and India the fire‑temple is not distinguishable from other buildings when viewed from the street. But the worshipers know the fire is kept there, and that it is better if the outsider is not made too curious by a distinctive exterior. In Iran the fire-temple may be merely a room in a quiet part of a dwelling; in India the whole building usually is devoted to the fire‑keeping and the ceremonies. Not all the Indian temples are equally holy, however. Some, where the fire is more ancient or is purified to a greater degree, are holier. This matter of purifying the fire is distinctive of Zoroastrians and is of more than ordinary interest. The more holy fire has to be compounded of sixteen different fires, all purified after a long and complicated ritual. One such fire is obtained from the cremation of a corpse.

A number of sandalwood logs are kindled from the cremation. Then above the flame, a little too high to touch it, a metal spoon is held, with small holes in it, containing chips of sandalwood. When these ignite, the flame is made to kindle a fresh fire. This process is repeated ninety‑one times, to the accompaniment of recited prayers.

Other fires, purified to a greater or lesser degree by a similar use of spoons, are obtained from flames kindled by a bolt of lightning, from fire produced by flints, and from fires in idol‑temples, distilleries, and homes. Finally, the sixteen purified fires are brought together by priests (who hardly dare to breathe through the covering over their mouths) into one urn, and placed in the fire‑chamber of the temple.

The fire occupies the center of an inner room, resting in its ash‑filled urn on a four‑legged stone pedestal. It is fed day in and day out by the attendant priests with pieces of sandalwood. During the performance of their duties in the fire‑chamber the priests always wear a cloth over their mouths, so as to prevent a single breath from coming directly upon and contaminating the pure flame, and they may not cough or sneeze, at any rate not near the fire.

The worshipers come individually, at any time they wish to. Inside the entrance each washes the uncovered parts of his body, recites the Kusti prayer in Avestan, and then, putting off his shoes, proceeds bare‑footed through the inner hall to the threshold‑no further of the fire‑chamber, where he gives the priest his offering of sandalwood and money and receives in return a ladleful of ashes from the sacred urn, which he rubs on his forehead and eyelids. Bowing toward the fire, he offers prayers (but not to the fire, for it is only a symbol), and then he retreats slowly backward to his shoes and goes home.

Perhaps the most important visit to the fire‑temple is on the Parsi New Year's Day. On that day the worshipers rise early, bathe, put on new clothes, go to the fire‑temple, worship, and, after giving alms to the poor, spend the rest of the day in exchanging greetings and in feasting.

The rite of extracting the haoma‑juice, although it was frowned upon by Zoroaster, was reintroduced after his time in a modified form, the identity of the original plant having been lost and plants thought to be the same having been found. {For the probable identity of the original plant} Today the rite centers around a pressing of the pith of plants of the genus E hedra, thought to be haoma plants, which produces a juice that at the first pressing is mixed with purified water and the juice of crushed pomegranate twigs and at the second pressing with milk and water. In these rites, the drinking of the juice by the officiating priests and subsequently by the worshipers, after it is first offered to the fire, the symbol of Ahura Mazda, has been through the years the central act of the Zoro­astrian ritual, in the faith that priests and worshipers may thus share in God's eternal life.

That Parsi practices in general are based on the religion of the later Avesta and not simply on the religion of Zoroaster himself is evident from the briefest study of the annual ceremonies. One festival honors Mithra, whose seat is the sun, and who enjoins upon his devotees truth and friendship‑faith‑keeping. A very solemn festival is that in honor of Farvadin, the deity who presides over the Fravashis or the spirits of the departed ancestors. During this festival, which lasts for ten days, the Fravashis revisit the homes of their descendants. To give them welcome the worshipers attend special ceremonies for the dead on the hills before the towers of silence. Still another festival honors Vohu Manah, regarded as the guardian of cattle; during this period the Parsis practice special kindness to animals. Other feasts commemorate the six phases of creation-heaven, water, earth, trees, animals, and man.

The Towers of Silence

            The dakhmas, or towers of silence, provide the Parsis with an approved way of disposing of their dead without contaminating soil and water with spoiling flesh. A dakhma is traditionally a stone floor with a circular brick or stone wall around it. The floor is built with a pit. in the center and is in three sections‑the highest section for men, the next for women, and the lowest for children. The corpse is brought to the dakhma. by six bearers, followed by t,he mourners, all in white. After a final viewing of the remains by the funeral procession, the body is taken inside the tower, laid in a shallow pit on its proper level, and partially un­covered by a thorough slitting of its clothes with scissors. As to what follows:

As soon as the corpse‑bearers have left the Tower, the vultures swoop down from their post of observation round the wall, and in half an hour there is nothing left but the skeleton. Quickly the bones dry, and the corpse‑bearers enter again after some days, and cast the bones into the central well, where they crumble away.

For obvious reasons, the towers of silence are situated on hilltops in vacant land. There are seven in the vicinity of Bombay, where deaths occur frequently enough to attract a constant attendance of vultures. In other parts of India where the Parsis are not numerous, as in Calcutta, there is occasional difficulty in attracting vultures at the right time. In communities too small to have a dakhma, interment in lead coffins or in underground stone or cement chambers is common.

At this point we conclude our study of the Zoroastrian faith. A great deal more might have been discussed‑for example, that the Parsis are divided into two sects over the question of the yearly calendar, or that there is a rising sentiment against the use of dakhmas. But enough has been told to give a clear picture, it is hoped, of the course run by any religion that has had only one great prophet in its history.