This tradition is very old, and may be traced back from the present period even to Sassanian times2. It involves the assumption that the Avesta is the remnant of the sacred literature of Persia under the last Ach;emenian kings. To ascertain whether this inference is correct, and to what extent it may be so, we must first try to define, as accu- rately as we can, the exact time at which the collection, now in existence, was formed.
§ 4. The Ravaet quoted above states that it was formed ‘after the death of Iskander/ which expression is rather vague, and may as well mean ‘ centuries' after his death 5 as ‘ immediately after his death/ It is, in fact, hardly to be doubted that the latter was really what the writer meant; yet, as the date of that Ravaet is very recent, we had better look for older and more precise traditions. We find such a one in the Dinkar/, a Pahlavi hook which enjoys great authority with the Parsis of our days, and which, although it contains many things of late origin 3, also comprises many 1 Ravaet ap. Anquctil, Memoires de l’Acad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres XXXVIII, 216; Spiegel, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesell- 2 J. Darmesteter, La legendc d’ Alexandre chez les Parses.
9 We find in it a description of the four classes, which strikingly reminds INTRODUCTION, III.
XXXlll old and valuable traditions. According to a proclamation, ascribed to Khosrav Anosharv&n (531-579), the collection of the Avesta fragments was begun in the reign of the last Arsacides, and was finished under Shapfir II (309-380). King Valkash (Vologeses), it is said, first ordered all the fragments of the Avesta which might have escaped the ravages of Iskander, or been preserved by oral tradition, to be searched for and collected together. The first Sassanian king, Ardeshir Babagan, made the Avesta the sacred book of Iran, and Mazdeism the state religion: at last, Adarbad Mahraspand, under Shapflr II, purified the Avesta and fixed the number of the Nasks, and Shapfir proclaimed to the heterodox1: ‘ Now that we have recognised the law of the world here below, they shall not allow the infidelity of any one whatever 2, as I shall strive that it may be so V § 5. The authenticity of this record has been called in question, chiefly, I think, on account of the part that it ascribes to an Arsacide prince, which seems hardly to agree with the ideas generally entertained about the character of the Sassanian revolution4. Most Parsi and Muhammcdan writers agree that it w^s the Sassanian dynasty which raised the Zoroastrian religion from the state of humiliation into which the Greek invasion had made it sink, and, while it gave the signal for a revival of the old national spirit, made Mazdeism one of the corner stones of the new establish- ment5. Therefore it seems strange to hear that the first step taken to make Mazdeism a state religion was taken by one of those very Philhellenic Parthian princes, who were so fully imbued with Greek ideas and manners. Yet this is the one of the Brahmanical account of the origin of the castes (Chap. XLII; cf. the first pages of the Shikan Gumani), and which was certainly borrowed from India; whether at the time of the last Sassanians, when Persia learnt so much from India, or since the settlement of the Parsis in India, we are unable to decide: yet the former seems more probable.
1 G v£t rastakan. We are indebted to Mr. West for the right translation of this word.
a Thus translated by West (Glossary of the Book of Arda Viraf, p. 27), 3 Haug, Essay on Pahlavi, p. 145 seq., 149 seq.
4 Spiegel, Ennische Alterthumskunde III, 782, n. r.
5 S. de Sacy, Memoires sur quelques antiquites de la Perse. Cf. Masudi, XXXIV vendIdad.
very reason why we ought to feel some hesitation in rejecting this document, and its being at variance with the general Parsi view speaks rather for its authenticity; for as it was the general post-Sassanian tradition that the restoration of Mazdcism was the work of the first Sassanian kings, no Parsi would ever have thought of making them share what was in his eyes their first and best title of honour with any of the despised princes of the Parthian dynasty.
§ 6. It is difficult, of course, to prove directly the authen- ticity of this record, the more so as we do not even know who was the king alluded to. There were, in fact, four kings at least 1 who bore the name of Valkhash: the most celebrated and best known of the four was Vologeses I, the contemporary of Nero. Now that Zoroastrianism prevailed with him, or at least with members of his family, we see from the conduct of his brother Tiridates, who was a Ma- gian (Magus) 2; and by this term we must not understand a magician 3, but a priest, and one of the Zoroastrian religion. That he was a priest appears from Tacitus’ testimony4; that he was a Zoroastrian is shown by his scruples about the worship of the elements. When he came from Asia to Rome to receive the crown of Armenia at the hands of Nero, he wanted not to come by sea, but rode along the coasts5 6, because the Magi were forbidden to defile the seac. This is quite in the spirit of later Zoroastrianism, and savours much of Mazdeism. That Vologeses himself shared the reli- gious scruples of his brother appears from his answer to Nero, 1 Perhaps five (see de Longperier, Memoire sur la Numismatique dcs Arsa- cides, p. in).
2 ‘ Magus ad eum Tiridates venerat * (Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXX, 6).
3 Pliny very often confounds Magism and Magia, Magians and Magicians. We know from Pliny, too, that Tiridates refused to initiate Nero into his art: but the cause was not, as he assumes, that it was 'a detestable, frivolous, and vain art,* but because Mazdean law forbids the holy knowledge to be revealed to laymen, much more to foreigners (Yast IV, io; cf. Philostrati Vita Soph. I, io).
4 ‘Nec recusaturum Tiridatcm accipiendo diademati in urbem venire, nisi sacerdotii religione attineretur* (Ann. XV, 24).
5 He crossed only the Hellespont. i 6 1 Navigarc noluerat, quoniam inspuere in maria, aliisque mortalium necessi- tatibus violare naturam earn fas non putaut ' (Pliny, 1.1. Cf. Introd. V, 8 seq.)
INTRODUCTION, III.
XXXV who insisted upon his coming to Rome also: * Come your- self, it is easier for you to cross such immensity of sea V § 7. Thus we hear on one hand from the Parsis that the first collection of the Avesta was made by an Arsacide named Vologeses; and we hear, on the other hand, from a quite independent source, that an Arsacide named Volo- gescs behaved himself as a follower of the Avesta might have done. In all this there is no evidence that it is Volo- geses I who is mentioned in the Dinkar/', much less that he was really the first editor of the Avesta; but it shows at all events that the first attempt to recover the sacred literature of Iran might very well have been made by an Arsacide, and that we may trust, in this matter, to a docu- ment which has been written perhaps by a Sassanian king, but, at any rate, in a Sassanian spirit. In fact, in the struggle between Ardavan and Ardeshir, there was no religious interest at stake, but only a political one; and we are expressly told by Hamza that between Ardeshir and his adversaries there was perfect accordance in religious matters2. It can, therefore, be fairly admitted that even in the time and at the court of the Philhellenic Parthians a Zoroastrian movement may have originated, and that there came a time when they perceived that a national religion is a part of national life. It was the merit of the Sassa- nides that they saw the drift of this idea which they had the good fortune to carry out; and this would not be the only instance, in the history of the world, of an idea being sown by one party and its advantages reaped by their adversaries.
1 Dio Cassius, LXIII, 4. The answer was mistaken for an insult by Nero, and, as it seems, by Dio himself. In fact Vologeses remained to the last faithful to the memory of Nero (Suet. Nero, 57). What we know moreover of his personal character qualifies him for taking the initiative in a religious work. He seems to have been a man of contemplative mind rather than a man of action, which often excited the anger or scorn of his people against him; and he had the glory of breaking with the family policy of Parthian kings (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 1, 2). It was under his reign that the first interference of religion with politics, of which the history of Persia speaks, took place, as he was called by the people of Adiabene against their king Izates, who had become a Jew (Josephus, Antiq. XX, 4, 2).
3 Hamzac Ispahensis Annales, ed. Gottwaldt, p. 31 (in the translation).
XXXVI vendIdAd.
§ 8. Another presumptive evidence of the groundwork of the Avesta being anterior to the age of the Sassanians is given by the language in which it is written. That lan- guage not only was not, but had never been, the national language of Persia. It is indeed closely connected with the ancient Persian, as found in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achrcmenian kings, from which modern Persian is derived; but the relations between ancient Persian and Zend are of such a kind that neither language can be con- ceived as being derived from the other; they arc not one and the same language in two different stages of its deve- lopment, but two independent ‘dialects in nearly the same stage, which is a proof that they did not belong to the same country, and, therefore, that Zend was not the lan- guage of Persia. Now the language used in Persia after the death of Alexander, under the Arsacidcs and wSassa- nides, that is, during the period in which the Avesta must have been edited, was Pahlavi, which is not derived from Zend, but from ancient Persian, being the middle dialect between ancient and modern Persian. Therefore, if the Sassanian kings had conceived the project of having reli- gious books of their own written and composed, it is not likely that they would have had them written in an old foreign dialect, but in the old national language, the more so, because, owing both to their origin and their policy, they were bound to be the representatives of the genuine old Persian tradition. Therefore, if they adopted Zend as the language of religion, it must have been because it was already so when they appeared, that is to say, because the only remnants of sacred literature then extant were written in Zend, and the editors of the Avesta had Zend writings before them.
This docs not, of course, prove that all we find in the Avesta is prc-Sassanian, and that the editors did not com- pose new Zend texts. Although Zend was not only a dead language, but also a foreign one, it was not an unknown language: that it was well understood by the learned class, the priests, appears from the Pahlavi trans- lation, which was made by them, and which, the deeper INTRODUCTION, III.
xxxvii one enters into the meaning of the text, has the fuller •justice done to its. merits. The earliest date that can be ascribed to that translation, in its present form, is the last century of the Sassanian dynasty, as it contains an allusion to the death of the heresiarch Mazdak, the son of Bamdad \ who was put to death in the beginning of the reign of Khosrav Andsharv&n (about 531). Now the ability to translate a dead language is a good test of the ability to write in it, and in the question of the age of the Zend texts the possibility of new ones having been composed by the editors cannot be excluded d priori. Nay, wc shall see further on that there are passages in these texts which look very modern, and may have been written at the time when the book took its last and definitive form. But whatever may be the proportion of the new texts to the old ones (which I believe to be very small), it is quite certain that the bulk of the Avesta is prc-Sassanian.
§ 9. The date assigned by the Dinkart to the final edition of the Avesta and to its promulgation as the sacred law of the nation, agrees with what we know of the reli- gious state of Iran in the times of Shapfir II. Mazdeism had just been threatened with destruction by a new religion sprung from itself, the religion of Man!, which for a while numbered a king amongst its followers (Shapfir I, 240- 270). Mazdeism was shaken for a long time, and when Man! was put to death, his work did not perish with him. In the Kissah-i San^ah, Zoroaster is introduced prophe- sying that the holy religion will be overthrown three times and restored three times; overthrown the first time by Iskander, it will be restored by Ardeshir; overthrown again, it will be restored by Shapiir II and Adarbad Mah- raspand; and, lastly, it will be overthrown by the Arabs and restored at the end of time by Soshyos. The Parsi traditions about Adarb&d, although they are mixed with much fable, allow some historical truth to show itself. He was a holy man under Shapur II, who, as there were many religipns and heresies in Iran and the true religion 1 Vide infra, p. xli, note 3.
xxxviii vendidAd.
was falling into oblivion, restored it through a miracle, as he gave a sign of its truth by allowing melted brass to be poured on his breast, without his being injured. Setting aside the miracle, which is most probably borrowed from the legend of Zoroaster, this account receives its true inter- pretation from the passages in the Kissah-i San^ah and the Dinkar/, which imply that Adarbad restored Mazdeism, which had been shaken by the Manichean heresy, and that in order to settle it upon a solid and lasting base, he gave a definitive form to the religious book of Iran and closed the Holy Writ. And even nowadays the Parsi, while reciting the Patet, acknowledges Adarb&d as the third founder of the Avcsta; the first being Zoroaster, who re- ceived it from Ormazd; the second Camasp, who received it from Zoroaster; and the third Adarbdd, who taught it and restored it to its purity.
Therefore, so far as we can trust to inferences that rest upon such scanty and vague testimonies, it seems likely that the Avesta took its definitive form from the hands of Adarbfid Mahraspand, under King Sliaptir II, in conse- quence of the dangers with which Mani’s heresy had threatened the national religion. As the death of Mani and the first persecution of his followers took place some thirty years before Shapur’s accession to the throne, it may be presumed that the last revision of the Avesta was made in the first years of the new reign, when the agitation aroused by Mani s doctrines and imperfectly allayed by the persecution of his disciples had not yet subsided, and the old religion was still shaking on its base1.
§ io. It follows hence that Zend texts may have been composed even as late as the fourth century A. D. This is, of course, a mere theoretical possibility, for although the liturgical parts of the Yasna, the Visperad, the Sirdzah, and 1 Shapftr II ascended the throne about 309 (before being bom, as the tradi- tion goes): and as he appears from the Dinkar/ to have taken a personal part in the work of Adarbdd, the promulgation of the Avesta can hardly have taken place at an earlier date than 325-330. Adarbad and the Fathers at Nicaea lived and worked in the same age, and the Zoroastrian threats "of the king of Iran and the Catholic anathemas of the Kaisar of Rdm may have been issued on the same day.
INTRODUCTION, III.
XXXIX the Khorda Avesta must be ascribed to a later time than the Gathas, the Vendidad, and the Ya^ts, and may belong to some period of revision, they certainly do not belong to the period of this last revision. Adarbad was only the last editor of the Avesta, and it is likely, nay, it is beyond all question, that the doctors of the law, before his time, had tried to put the fragments in order, to connect them, and to fill up the gaps as far as the practical purposes of liturgy required it. Therefore instead of saying that there are parts of the Avesta that may belong to so late a period as the fourth century, it is more correct to say that no part of it can belong to a later date.
There are two passages in the Vendidad which seem to contain internal evidence of their date, and in both cases it points to Sassanian times, nay, the second of them points to the age of Manichcism. The first is found in the eighteenth Fargard (§ 10): Ahura Mazda, while cursing those who teach a wrong law, exclaims: ( And he who would set that man at liberty, when bound in prison, does no better deed than if he should flay a man alive and cut off his head.’
This anathema indicates a time when Mazdcism was a state religion and had to fight against heresy; it must, therefore, belong to Sassanian times. These lines are fully illustrated by a Parsi book of the same period1, the Mainy6-i-Khard: r Good government is that which maintains and orders the true law and custom of the city people and poor un- troubled, and thrusts out improper law and custom;...and keeps in progress the worship of God, and duties, and good works;...and will resign the body, and that also which [is] its own life, for the sake of the good religion of the Mazdayasnians. And if [there] be any one who shall stay [away] from the way of God, then it orders him to return thereto, and makes him a prisoner, and brings [him] back to the way of God; and will bestow, from the wealth that is his, the share of God, and the worthy, and good works, See the book of the Mainyo-i-Khard, ed. West; Introduction, p. x seq.
xl vend!dAd.
and the poor; and will deliver up the body on account of the soul. A good king who [isj of that sort, is called like the Yazads and the Amesh&spends V What doctrines are alluded to by theVendidad is not explained: it appears from the context that it had in view such sects as released the faithful from the yoke of religious practices, as it anathematizes, at the same time, those who have continued for three years without wearing the sacred girdle. We know too little of the Manichean liturgy to guess if the Manicheans are here alluded to: that Man! should have rejected many Zoroastrian practices is not unlikely, as his aim was to found a universal religion. While he pushed to extremes several of the Zoroastrian tenets, espe- cially those which had taken, or might receive, a moral or metaphysical meaning, he must have been very regardless of practices which could not be ennobled into moral sym- bolism. However it may be with regard to the foregoing passage, it is difficult not to sec a direct allusion to Manichcism in lines like the following (IV, 47 scq.): ‘Verily I say it unto thee, O Spitama Zarathuftra! the man who has a wife is far above him who begets no sons; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above him who has none.
‘ And of two men, he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit much more than he who does not so; the latter is all but dead; the former is above him by the worth of an Asperena, by the worth of a sheep, by the worth of an ox, by the worth of a man.
4 It is this man that can strive against the onsets of Asto- vidhotu; that can strive against the self-moving arrow; that can strive against the winter fiend, with thinnest gar- ment on; that can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head; it is this man that can strive against the ungodly Ashemaogha1 2 who does not eat V 1 Chap. XV, 1 6 seq. as translated by West.
a Ashemaogha, ‘ the confounder of Asha ’ (see IV, 37), is the name of the fiends and of the heretics. The Parsis distinguish two sorts of Ashemao- ghas, the deceiver and the deceived; the deceiver, while alive, is mar- INTRODUCTION, III.
xli That this is a bit of religious polemics, and that it refers to definite doctrines and tenets which were held at the time when it was written, can hardly be doubted. It may remind one of the Christian doctrines; and. in fact, it was nearly in the same tone, and with the same expressions, that in the fifth century King Yazdgard branded the Chris- tians in Armenia 4. But however eager the Christian pro- paganda may have been for a time in Persia, they never endangered the state religion. The real enemy was the heresy sprung from Mazdeism itself; and Christianity, coming from abroad, was more of a political than a reli- gious foe. And, in point of fact, the description in the above passage agrees better with the Manichcan doctrines than with the Christian 5. Like Mani, Christian teachers held the single life holier than the state of matrimony, yet they had not forbidden marriage, which Mani did; they put poor Lazarus above Dives, but they never forbade trade and husbandry, which Mani did; and, lastly, they never prohibited the eating of flesh, which was one of the chief precepts of Mum0. Wc find, therefore, in this passage, an illustration, from the Avesta itself, of the celebrated doc- trine of the three seals with which Mani had sealed the bosom, the hand, and the mouth of his disciples (signa- culum sinus, manus, oris)0.
garzan, ‘ worthy of death,’ and after death is a darvand (a fiend, or one of the damned); the deceived one is only margarz&n.
8 The Pahlavi translation illustrates the words 'who does not eat’ by the gloss, ‘ like Mazdak, son of Bam dad/ which proves that this part of the com- mentary is posterior to, or contemporary With the crushing of the Mazilakian sect (in the first years of Khosrav Anosharvan, about 531). The words * against the wicked tyrant’ are explained by the gloss, ‘like Zarvandad / may it not be Kobad, the heretic king, or ‘Yazdgard the sinner/ the scorner of the Magi?
4 Elisacus, pp. 29, 52, in the French translation by Garabed.
5 At least with orthodox Christianity, which seems to have alone prevailed in Persia till the arrival of the Ncstorians. The description would apply very well to certain gnostic sects, especially that of Cerdo and Marcio, which is no wonder, as it was through that channel that Christianity became known to Man?. Masndi makes M&ni a disciple of Kardun (ed. B. de Meynard, II, 167), and the care which his biographer (ap. Fliigcl, Mani, pp. 51, 85) takes to determine the length of time wtiich intervened between Marcio and Mani seems to betray some dim recollection of an historical connection between the two doctrines.
6 The patriarch of Alexandria, Timotheus, allowed the other patriarchs, xlii VENDfDAD.
§ ii. Wc must now go a step farther back, and try to solve the question whence came the original texts out of which the editors of the Avesta formed their collection. Setting aside the Dinkar/, we have no oriental document to help us in tracing them through the age of the Arsa- cidcs, a complete historical desert, and we arc driven for information to the classical writers who arc, on this point, neither very clear nor always credible. The mention of books ascribed to Zoroaster occurs not seldom during that period, but very often it applies to Alexandrian and Gnostic apocrypha1. Yet there are a few passages which make it pretty certain that there was a Mazdean literature in existence in those times. Pausanias, travelling through Lydia in the second century of our era, saw and heard Magian priests singing hymns from a book2; whether these hymns were the same as the Gatlias, still extant, we cannot ascertain, but this shows that there were Gathas. The existence of a Zoroastrian literature might be traced back as far as the third century before Christ, if Pliny could be credited when he says that Hermippus:i had given an analysis of the books of Zoroaster, which are said to have amounted to 2,000,000 lines 4. For want of external evidence for ascertaining whether the original texts were already in existence in the later years of the Achmmenian dynasty, we must seek for internal evidence. A comparison between the ideas expressed in our texts and what wc know of the ideas of Achaemenian Persia may perhaps lead to safer inferences.
§ 12. That all the Avesta ideas were already fully developed in the time, or, at least, at the end of the bishops, and monks to eat meat on Sundays, in order to recognise those who belonged to the Manichean sect (Fliigcl, Man!, p. 279).
1 ‘ Those who follow the heresy of Prodicus boast of possessing secret books of Zoroaster,’ Clemens Alex. Stromata I. Cf. the airoieakvil/eis Zupoaurpov forged by Adelphius or Aquilinus (ap. Porphyr. Vita Plotini, § 16).
3 See Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, 288.
4 1 Hermippus, qui de tota arte ea (magia) diligentissime scripsit et viciens centiens inilia versuum a Zoroastre condita indicibus quoque voluminum ejus positis cxplanavit.'...(Hist. Nat. XXX, 1, 2). He had written a book it tpl pdycov (Diog. Laert. Proocm. 8).
INTRODUCTION, III.
xliii xliii Achaemenian dynasty, appears from the perfect accord- ance of the account of Mazdeism in Theopompos1 with the data of the Zend books. All the main features of Mazdean belief, namely, the existence of two principles, a good and an evil one, Ormazd and Ahriman, the antithetical crea- tions of the two supreme powers, the division of all the beings in nature into two corresponding classes, the limited duration of the world, the end of the struggle between Ormazd and Ahriman by the defeat and destruction of the evil principle, the resurrection of the dead, and the ever- lasting life, all these tenets of the Avesta had already been established at the time of Philip and Aristotle. Therefore wc must admit that the religious literature then in existence, if there were any, must have differed but little, so far as its contents were concerned, from the Avesta; its extent was greater of course, and wc have a proof of this in this very account of Theopompos, which gives us details nowhere to be found in the present texts, and yet the authenticity of which is made quite certain by comparative mythology 2 3. Therefore there is nothing that forbids us to believe, with the Parsis, that the fragments of which the Avesta is com- posed were already in existence before the Greek invasion”.
§ 13. Put it docs not follow hence that the Achaemenian Avesta was the sacred book of the Achnemenians and of Persia, and it must not be forgotten that the account in Plutarch is not about the religion of Persia, but about the belief of the Magi and the lore of Zoroaster. Now if we consider that the two characteristic features of Avestean M agism arc, so far as belief goes, the admission of two principles, and so far as practice is concerned, the prohibi- tion of burying the dead, we find that there is no evidence 1 In Plutarch, De Iside et Osiridc, §§ 46-47.
2 Men, when raised from the dead, shall have no shadow any longer (fi'fjTt oKi&v irotovvras). In India, gods have no shadows (Nalus); in Persia, Ra- shid addin was recognised to be a god from his producing no shadow (Guyard, Un grand maitre des Assassins, Journal Asiatique, 1877, I, 392); the plant of eternal life, Ilaoma, has no shadow (Henry Lord).
3 Persian tradition cannot be much relied on, when it tries to go back beyond Alexander, and on that special point it seems to be more an inference of later ages, than a real tradition; but the inference happens to be right.
xliv vendJdad.