Piety, which every day brings offerings and prayers to the fire of the altar, was worshipped in the Vedas as Aramati, the goddess who every day, morning and evening, 1 Yt. VIII, 23 seq.
a Prepared with certain riles and prayers; it is the Vedic hotra.
3 A piece of meat placed on the draona (Farg. V, 25, n. 3).
7 Bundahis. Cf. Farg. XIX, 9, 43; Yasna XIX.
8 Yasna LXI (LX).
lxx VENDIDAD.
streaming with the sacred butter, goes and gives up her- self to Agni \ She was praised in the Avesta in a more sober manner as the abstract genius of piety; yet a few practices preserved evident traces of old myths on her union with Atar, the fire-god 1 2.
Agni, as a messenger between gods and men, was known to the Vedas as NanWansa; hence came the.Avesta mes- senger of Ahura, Nairyo-sangha 3.
The riches that go up from earth to heaven in the offerings of man and come down from heaven to earth in the gifts of the gods were deified as Rata4, the gift, Ashi, the felicity5 *, and more vividly in Pare/*di the keeper of treasures, who comes on a sounding chariot, a sister to the Vcdic Puramdhi.
The order of the world, the Vcdic Hit a, the Zend Asha, was deified as Asha Vahfrta, 4 the excellent Asha7/ § 3 t. Sraosha is the 'priest god8: he first tied the Baresma into bundles, and offered up sacrifice to Ahura; he first sang the holy hymns: his weapons arc the Ahuna- Vairya and the Yasna, and thrice in each day, in each night, he descends upon this Karshvarc to smite Angra Mainyu and his crew of demons. It is he who, with his club uplifted, protects the living world from the terrors of the night, when the fiends rush upon the earth; it is he who protects the dead from the terrors of death, from the assaults of Angra Mainyu and Vidotas*9. It is through a sacrifice performed by Ormazd, as a Zoti, and Sraosha, as a Raspi lu, that at the end of time Ahriman will be for ever vanquished and brought to nought n.
§ 32. Thus far, the single elements of Mazdcism do not essentially differ from those of the Vedic and Indo- European mythologies generally. Yet Mazdeism, as a whole, took an aspect of its own by grouping these ele- ments in a new order, since by referring everything either 3 Farg. XXII, 7.
5 Nerioscngh.
7 Parsi Ardibehcit.
8 Farg. XVIII, 51 seq.
0 Yasna LVI.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
to Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu as its source, it came to divide the world into two symmetrical halves, in both of which a strong unity prevailed. The change was summed up in the rising of Angra Mainyu, a being of mixed nature, who was produced by abstract speculation from the old Indo-European storm fiend, and who borrowed his form from the supreme god himself. On the one hand, as the world battle is only an enlarged form of the mythical storm fight, Angra Mainyu, the fiend of fiends and the leader of the evil powers, is partly an abstract embodiment of their energies and feats; on the other hand, as the antagonist of Ahura, he is modelled after him, and is partly, as it were, a negative projection of Ahura1.
Ahura is all light, truth, goodness, and knowledge; Angra Mainyu is all darkness, falsehood, wickedness, and ignorance \ Ahura dwells in the infinite light; Angra Mainyu dwells in the infinite night.
Whatever the good Spirit makes, the evil Spirit mars. When the world was created, Angra Mainyu broke into it a, opposed every creation of Ahura’s with a plague of his own2 * 4, killed the first-born bull that had been the first offspring and source of life on earth 5, he mixed poison with plants, smoke with fire, sin with man, and death with life.
§ 33- Under Ahura were ranged the six Amcsha Spe//tas. They were at first mere personifications of virtues and moral or liturgical powers0; but as their lord and father ruled over the whole of the world, they took by and by each a part of the world under their care. The choice was not altogether artificial, but partly natural and spontaneous. The empire of waters ai^d trees was vested in Haurvata/ and Amcrcta/, health and immortality, through the influence of old Indo-Iranian formulae, in which waters and trees were invoked as the springs of health and life. More complex trains of ideas and partly the influence of analogy fixed the 3 Yast XIII, 77!
5 Cf. Farg. XXI, 1.
4 Cf. Farg. I.
6 See above, p. lx.
lxxii vendIdAd.
field of action of the others. Khshathra Vairya, the perfect sovereignty, had molten brass for its emblem, as the god in the storm established his empire by means of that ‘ molten brass,’ the fire of lightning; he thus became the king of metals in general. Asha Vahijta, the holy order of the world, as maintained chiefly by the sacrificial fire, became the genius of fire. Armaiti seems to have become a goddess of the earth as early as the Indo-Iranian period, and Vohu- mano had the living creation left to his superintendence \ § 34. The Amesha Spe^tas projected, as it were, out of themselves, as many Daevas or demons, who, either in their being or functions, were, most of them, hardly more than dim inverted images of the very gods they were to oppose, and whom they followed through all their successive evolu- tions. Haurvata/ and Amereta/, health and life, were opposed by Tauru and Zairi, sickness and decay, who changed into rulers of thirst and hunger when Haurvata^ and Amcretatf had become the Amshaspands of waters and trees.
Vohu-man6, or good thought, was reflected in Ako- mano, evil thought. Sauru, the arrow of death 2, Indra, a name or epithet of fire as destructive3, Naunhaithya, an old Indo-Iranian divinity whose meaning was forgotten in Iran and misinterpreted by popular etymology 4, were opposed, respectively, to Khshathra Vairya, Asha VahLrta, and Spc//ta Armaiti, and became the demons of tyranny, corruption, and impiety.
Then came the symmetrical armies of the numberless gods and fiends, Yazatas and Drvaw/s.
§ 35. Everything in the world was engaged iri the conflict. Whatever works, or is fancied to work, for the good of man or for his harm, for the wider spread of life or against it, comes from, and strives for, either Ahura or Angra Mainyu.
Animals are enlisted under the standards of either the one spirit or the other 5. In the eyes of the Parsis, they ■r* A strict discipline prevails among them. Every class of animals has a chief or r a t u above it ^Bund. XXIV). The same organisation extends to all the beings INTRODUCTION, IV.
Ixxiii belong either to Ormazd or Ahriman according as they are useful or hurtful to man; but, in fact, they belonged origin- ally to either the one or the other, according as they had been incarnations of the god or of the fiend, that is, as they chanced to have lent their forms to either in the storm talcs k In a few cases, of course, the habits of the animal had not been without influence upon its mythic destiny: but the determinative cause was different. The fiend was not described as a serpent because the serpent is a subtle and crafty reptile, but because the storm fiend envelops the goddess of light, or the milch cows of the raining heavens, with the coils of the cloud as with a snake’s folds. It was not animal psychology that disguised gods and fiends as dogs, otters, hedge-hogs, and cocks, or as snakes, tortoises, frogs, and ants, but the accidents of physical qualities and the caprice of popular fancy, as both the god and the fiend might be compared with, and transformed into, any object, the idea of which was suggested by the uproar of the storm, the blazing of the lightning, the streaming of the water, or the hue and shape of the clouds.
Killing the Ahrimanian creatures, the Khrafstras2, is killing Ahriman himself, and sin may be atoned for by this means3. Killing an Ormazdcan animal is an abomination, it is killing God himself. Persia was on the brink of zoolatry, and escaped it only by misunderstanding the principle she followed4.
in nature: stars, men, gods have their respective ratus, Tiitrya, Zoroaster, Ahura.
3 There is scarcely any religious custom that can be followed through so con- tinuous a series of historical evidence: fifth century b.c., Herodotus 1, 140; first century a. n., Plutarch, l)e Isid. XLVI; Quacst Conviv. IV, 5, 2; sixth century, Agathias 11, 24; seventeenth century, G. du Chinon.
* Thus arose a classification which was often at variance with its supposed principle. As the god who rushes in the lightning was said to move on a raven's wings, with a hawk’s flight, birds of prey belonged to the realm of Ormazd. The Tarsi theologians were puzzled at this fact, but their ingenuity proved equal to the emergency: Ormazd, while- creating the hunting hawk, said to him: * O thou hunting hawk! 1 have created thee; but I ought rather to be sorry than glad of it: for thou doest the will of Ahriman much more than mine: like a wicked man who never has money enough, thou art never satisfied with killing birds.
lxxiv VENDi DAD.
§ 36. The fulgurating conqueror of Apaosha, TLrtrya, was described in mythic talcs sometimes as a boar with golden horns, sometimes as a horse with yellow ears, some- times as a beautiful youth. But as he had been compared to a shining star on account of the gleaming of lightning, the stars joined in the fray, where they stood with TLrtrya on Ahura’s side; and partly for the sake of symmetry, partly owing to Chaldacan influences, the planets passed into the army of Ahriman.
§ 37. Man, according to his deeds, belongs to Ormazd or to Ahriman. He belongs to Ormazd, he is a man of Asha, a holy one, if he offers sacrifice to Ormazd and the gods, if he helps them by good thoughts, words, and deeds, if he enlarges the world of Ormazd by spreading life over the world, and if he makes the realm of Ahriman narrower by destroying his creatures. A man of Asha is the Athravati (priest) who drives away fiends and diseases by spells, the Katlia&ta (warrior) who with his club crushes the head of the impious, the Vastryo (husbandman) who makes good and plentiful harvests grow up out of the earth. He who does the contrary is a Drva nt> ‘ demon/ an Anashavan, ‘ foe of Asha/ an Ashcmaogha, * confoundcr of Asha/ The man of Asha who has lived for Ahura Mazda will have a scat near him in heaven, in the same way as in India the man of A7ta, the faithful one, goes to the palace of Varu//a, there to live with the forefathers, the Pitr/s, a life of everlasting happiness l. Thence he will go out, at the end of time, when the dead shall rise, and live a new and all-happy life on the earth freed from evil and death.
But hadst thou not been made by me, Ahriman, bloody Ahriman, would have made thee with the size of a man, and there would no more be any small creature left alive* (Bundahis XIV). Inversely Ahriman created a lovely bird, the peacock, to show that he did not do evil from any incapacity of doing well, but through wilful wickedness (Eznik); Satan is still nowadays invoked by the Yezidis as Melck Tans (‘ angel peacock ‘).
1 From the worship of the Pitn's was developed in Iran the worship of the Fravasliis, who being at first identical with the Pitns, with the souls of the departed, became by and by a distinct principle. The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed before man and outlived him. Not only man was endowed with a Fravashi, but gods too, and the sky, fire, waters, and plants (Orm. Ahr.
INTRODUCTION, IV. lxXV § 38. This brings us to speak of a series of myths which have done much towards obscuring the close connection between the Avesta and the Vedic mythologies: I mean the myths about the heavenly life of Yima.
In the Veda Yama, the son of Vivasvat, is the first man and, therefore, the first of the dead, the king of the dead. As such he is the centre of gathering for the departed, and he presides over them in heaven, in the Yamasadanam, as king of men, near Varu/za the king of gods.
His Avesta twin-brother, Yima, the son of Vivanghat, is no longer the first man, as this character had been trans- ferred to another hero, of later growth, Gay6 Maratan; yet he has kept nearly all the attributes which were derived from his former character: on the one hand he is the first king, and the founder of civilisation; on the other hand, ‘ the best mortals’ gather around him in a marvellous palace, in Airyancm Vaqg*6, which appears to be identical with the Yamasadanam from Yama meeting there with Ahura and the gods, and making his people live there a blessed life l. But, by and by, as it was forgotten that Yima was the first man and the first of the dead, it was also forgotten that his people were nothing else than the dead going to their common ancestor above and to the king of heaven: the people in the Vara were no longer recognised as the human race, but became a race of a supernatural character, dif- ferent from those who continued going, day by day, from earth to heaven to join Ahura Mazda 2.
§ 39. But the life of the world is limited, the struggle is not to last for ever, and Ahriman will be defeated at last.
The world was imagined as lasting a long year of twelve millenniums. There had been an old myth, connected with that notion, which made the world end in a frightful winter3, to be succeeded by an eternal spring, when the blessed would come down from the Vara of Yima to rcpeople the earth. But as storm was the ordinary and more dramatic form of the strife, there was another version, according to 1 Sec Farg. II.
3 Cf. Farg. II, Introd. and § 21 seq.
2 Farg. XIX, 28 seq.
lxxvi VENDiDAD.
which the world ended in a storm, and this version became the definitive one.
The serpent, Az\ Dahaka, let loose, takes hold of the world again. As the temporary disappearance of the light was often mythically described either as the sleeping of the god, or as his absence, or death, its reappearance was indi- cative of the awakening of the hero, or his return, or the arrival of a son born to him. Hence came the tales about Keresaspa awakening from his sleep to kill the snake finally1; the talcs about Peshotanu, Aghraeratha, Khumbya, and others living in remote countries till the day of the last fight is come 2; and, lastly, the tales about Saoshya/^, the son who is to be born to Zarathu-rtra at the end of time, and to bring eternal light and life to mankind, as his father brought them the law and the truth. This brings us to the question whether any historical reality underlies the legend of Zarathujrtra or Zoroaster.
§ 40. Mazdeism has often been called Zoroaster’s religion in the same sense as Islam is called Muhammed’s religion, that is, as being the work of a man named Zoroaster, a view which was favoured, not only by the Parsi and Greek accounts, but by the strong unity and symmetry of the whole system. Moreover, as the moral and abstract spirit which pervades Mazdeism is different from the Vedic spirit, and as the word dev a, which means a god in Sanskrit, means a demon in the Avesta, it was thought that Zoro- aster’s work had been a work of reaction against Indian polytheism, in fact, a religious schism. When he lived no one knows, and every one agrees that all that the Parsis and the Greeks tell of him is mere legend, through which no solid historical facts can be arrived at. The question is whether Zoroaster was a man converted into a god, or a god converted into a man. No one who reads, with a mind free from the yoke of classical recollections, I do not say the Book of Zoroaster (which may be charged with being a modern romance of recent invention), but the Avesta itself, will have any doubt that Zoroaster is no less an essential 1 See above, p. lxv.
2 Bundahis XXX.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
lxxvii part of the Mazdean mythology than the son expected to be born to him, at the end of time, to destroy Ahriman x.
Zoroaster is not described as one who brings new truth and drives away error, but as one who overthrows the demons: he is a smiter of fiends, like Vercthraghna, Apam NapS./, TLrtrya, Vayu, or Keresaspa, and he is stronger and more valiant than Kereslspa himself2; the difference between him and them is that, whereas they smite the fiend with material weapons, he smites them chiefly with a spiritual one, the word or prayer. We say ‘ chiefly’ because the holy word is not his only weapon; he repels the assaults of Ahriman with stones as big as a house which Ahura has given to him 3, and which were furnished, no doubt, from the same quarry as the stones which arc cast at their enemies by Indra, by Agni, by the Maruts, or by Thor, and which are { the flame, wherewith, as with a stone V the storm god aims at the fiend. Therefore his birth 6, like the birth of every storm god, is longed for and hailed with joy as the signal of its deliverance by the whole living creation, because it is the end of the dark and arid reign of the demon: ‘ In his birth, in his growth did the floods and trees rejoice; in his birth, in his growth the floods and trees did grow up; in his birth, in his growth the floods and trees exclaimed with joy V Ahura himself longs for him and fears lest the hero about to be born may not stand by him: ‘ He offered up a sacrifice to Ardvi Sfira Anahita, he, the Maker, Ahura Mazda; he offered up the Haoma, the Myazda, the Bares- ma, the holy words, he besought her, saying: Vouchsafe me that boon, O high, mighty, undefiled goddess, that I may bring about the son of Pourushaspa, the holy Zara- 1 The same view as to the mythological character of Zoroaster was main- tained, although with different arguments, by Professor Kern in an essay ‘ Over het woord Zarathustra/ as I see from a short abstract of it which Professor Max Muller kindly wrote for me.
5 A singular trait of his birth, according to Pliny, who is on this point in perfect accordance with later Parsi tradition, is that, alone of mortals, he laughed while being born; this shows that his native place is in the very same regions where the Vedic Maruts are bom, those storm genii ‘born of the laughter of the lightning ’ (‘ I laugh as I pass in thunder ’ says the Cloud in Shelley; cf the Persian Khandah i barq, ‘ the laughter of the lightning’).
• Yast XIII, 93.
lxxviii vend{dAd.
thu^tra, to think according to the law, to speak according to the law, to work according to the law!’ Ardvi Sura Anahita granted that boon to him who was offering up libations, sacrificing and beseeching1.
Zarathujtra stands by Ahura. The fiends come rushing along from hell to kill him, and fly away terrified by his /rnireno: Angra Mainyu himself is driven away by the stones he hurls at him 2. But the great weapon of Zara- thujtra is neither the thunder-stones he hurls, nor the glory with which he is surrounded, it is the Word 2.
In the voice of the thunder the Greeks recognised the warning of a god which the wise understand, and they worshipped it as ’'Qacra Aios &yy^kos, ‘ the Word, messenger of Zeus;’ the Romans worshipped it as a goddess, Fama; India adores it as ‘ the Voice in the cloud,* Va£ Ambhrz;/i, which issues from the waters, from the forehead of the father, and hurls the deadly arrow against the foe of Brahman. So the word from above is cither a weapon that kills, or a revelation that teaches: in the mouth of Zarathujtra it is both: now * he smites down Angra Mainyu with the Ahuna vairya (Honovcr) as he would do with stones as big as a house, and he burns him up with the Ashem vohu as with melted brass3;* now he converses with Ahura, on the mountain of the holy questions, in the forest of the holy questions4. Any storm god, whose voice descends from above to the earth, may become a godlike messenger, a lawgiver, a Zarathu^tra. Nor is Zarathu^tra the only lawgiver, the only prophet, of whom the Avesta knows: Gay6 Maratan, Yima, the bird Kanriptan6, each of whom, under different names, forms, and functions, are one and the same being with Zarathuitra, that is to say, the godlike champion in the struggle for light, knew the law as well as Zarathartra. But as mythology, like language and life, likes to reduce every organ to one function, Zara- thujtra became the titulary lawgiver6.
6 The law is generally known as Datem v$da6v6-ddtem (of. V, 1); as emanating from Ahura it is Mathra Spewta, 1 the holy word,' which is the soul of Ahura (Farg. XIX, 14).
INTRODUCTION, IV.
lxxix As he overwhelmed Angra Mainyu' during his lifetime by his spell, he is to overwhelm him at the end of time by the hands of a son yet unborn. 4 Three times he came near unto his wife Hrdgvi, and three times the seed fell upon the ground. The Ized Neriosengh took what was bright and strong in it and intrusted it to the Ized Anahita. At the appointed time, it will be united again with a ma- ternal womb: 99,999 Fravashis of the faithful watch over it, lest the fiends destroy it V A maid bathing in the lake Kasava will conceive by it and bring forth the victorious Saoshya;// (Soshyos), who will come from the region of the dawn to free the world from death and decay, from cor- ruption and rottenness, ever living and ever thriving, when the dead shall rise and immortality commence1 2.
All the features in Zarathartra point to a god: that the god may have grown up from a man, that pre-existent mythic elements may have gathered around the name of a man, born on earth, and by and by surrounded the human face with the aureole of a god, may of course be maintained, but only on condition that one may distinctly express what was the real work of Zoroaster. That he raised a new religion against the Vedic religion, and cast down into hell the gods of older days can no longer be maintained, since the gods, the ideas, and the worship of Mazdeism are shown to emanate directly from the old religion, and have nothing more of a reaction against it than Zend has against Sanskrit.
§ 41. The only evidence in favour of the old hypothesis of a religious schism is reduced to the evidence of a few words which might & priori be challenged, as the life of words is not the same as the life of the things they express, the nature of things does not change with the meaning of the syllables which were attached to them for a while, and the history of the world is not a chapter of grammar. And, in fact, the evidence appealed to, when more closely con- sidered, proves to speak against the very theory it is meant 1 Bund. XXXIII; Eznik. The whole of the myth belongs to the Avesta period, as appears from Yast XIII, 61; Vendidad XIX, 5.
2 Yast XIX, 89 seq.
lxxx VENDtDAD.
to support. The word Asura, which in the Avesta means ‘the Lord,’ and is the name of the supreme God, means 1 a demon 5 in the Brahmanical literature; but in the older religion of the Vedas it is quite as august as in the Avesta, and is applied to the highest deities, and particularly to Varu//a, the Indian brother of Ahura. This shows that when the Iranians and Indians sallied forth from their common native land, the Asura continued for a long time to be the Lord in India as well as in Persia; and the change took place, not in Iran, but in India. The descent of the word daeva from ‘a god5 to ‘a demon’ is a mere accident of language. There were in the Indo-Iranian language three words expressive of divinity: Asura, ‘the Lord,’ Ya^ata,4 the one who is worthy of sacrifice,’ Daeva, 4 the shining one.’ Asura became the name of the supreme God, Ya^ata was the general name of all gods. Now as there were old Indo-Iranian formulae which deprecated the wrath of both men and devas (gods), or invoked the aid of some god against the hate and oppression of both men and devas1, that word daeva, which had become obsolete (because Asura and Ya^*ata met all the wants of religious language), took by and by from formulae of this kind a dark and fiendish meaning. What favoured the change was the want of a technical word for expressing the general notion of a fiend, a want the more felt as the dualistic idea acquired greater strength and distinctness. Etymology was unable to preserve the Daevas from this degradation, as the root div, 4 to shine,’ was lost in Zend, and thus the primitive meaning being forgotten, the word was ready to take any new meaning which chance or necessity should give to it. But only the word descended into hell, not the beings it denoted; neither Varu//a, nor Mitra, nor the Adityas, nor Agni, nor Soma, in fact none of the old Aryan deities fell or tottered. Though the word Indra is the name of a fiend in the Avesta, the Vedic god it denotes was as bright and as mighty in Iran as in India under the name of Vere- thraghna: and as we do not know the etymological mcan- INTRODUCTION, IV.
lxxxi ing of the name, it may have been such epithet as could be applied to a fiend as well as to a god. The same can be said of Nmmghaithya. Moreover, both Indra and Naunghaithya are in the Avesta mere names: neither the Avesta nor old tradition knows anything about them, which would look very strange, had they been vanquished in a religious struggle, as they should have played the foremost part at the head of the fiends. As to the third comparison estab- lished between the Iranian demon Sauru and the Indian god.Sarva, it fails utterly, as Sauru is the Vedic £aru, a symbol of death, and both are therefore beings of the same nature.
§ 42. Therefore, so far as the Vedic religion and the Avesta religion are concerned, there is not the abyss of a schism between them. They are quite different, and must be so, since each of them lived its own life, and living is changing; but nowhere is the link broken that binds both to their common source. Nowhere in the Avesta is the effort of any man felt who, standing against the belief of his people, enforces upon them a new creed, by the ascendancy of his genius, and turns the stream of their thoughts from the bed wherein it had flowed for centuries. There was no religious revolution: there was only a long and slow movement which led, by insensible degrees, the vague and unconscious dualism of the Indo-Iranian religion onwards to the sharply defined dualism of the Magi.