It does not follow hence, of course, that there was nothing left to individual genius in the formation of Mazdeism; the contrary is evident a priori from the fact that Mazdeism expresses the ideas of a sacerdotal caste. It sprang from the long elaboration of successive generations of priests, and that elaboration is so far from having been the work of one day and of one man that the exact symmetry which is the chief characteristic of Mazdeism is still imperfect in the Avesta on certain most important points. For instance, the opposition of six arch-fiends to the six arch-gods which we find in Plutarch and in the Bundahi* was still unknown when the Xth Fargard of the Vendidad and the XIXth Yast were composed, and the stars were not yet members lxxxii vendIdAd.
of the Ormazdean army when the bulk of the VUIth Ya-rt was written.
The reflective spirit that had given rise to Mazdeism never rested, but continued to produce new systems; and there is hardly any religion in which slow growth and con- tinual change is more apparent. When the Magi had accounted for the existence of evil by the existence of two principles, there arose the question how there could be two principles, and a longing for unity was felt, which found its satisfaction in the assumption that both are derived from one and the same principle. This principle was, according to divers sects, either Space, or Infinite Light, or Boundless Time, or Fate1. Of most of these systems no direct trace is found in the Avcsta 2, yet they existed already in the time of Aristotle 3 * * * * 8.
They came at last to pure monotheism. Some forty years ago when the Rev. Dr. Wilson was engaged in his controversy with the Parsis, some of his opponents repelled the charge of dualism by denying to Ahriman any real existence, and making him a symbolical personification of bad instincts in man. It was not difficult for the Doctor to show that they wore at variance with their sacred books, and critics in Europe occasionally wondered at the progress made by the Parsis in rationalism of the school of Voltaire and Gibbon. Yet there was no European influence at the bottom; and long before the Parsis had heard of Europe and Christianity, commentators, explaining the myth of Tahmurath, who rode for thirty years on Ahriman as a horse, interpreted the feat of the old legendary king as the 1 All these four principles are only abstract forms of Ormazd himself, at least in his first naturalistic character of the Heaven God. Heaven is Infinite Space, it is Infinite Light, and by its movement it gives rise to Time and to Fate (Orm. Ahr. §§ 244-259). Time is twofold: there is the limited time that measures the duration of the world (see above, § 39) and lasts 12,000 years, which is Zrvan daregh6-Avadita, ‘ the Sovereign Time of the long period;* and there is ‘ the Boundless Time/ Zrvan akarana (Farg. XIX, 9).
8 When Vendtdad XIX, 9 was written, the Zervanitic system seems to have been, if not fully developed, at least already existent.
8 Eudemos (ap. Damascius, ed. Kopp, 3 84) knows of xp6voi and rliro* as the first principles of the Magi; Boundless Time is already transformed into a legendary hero in Berosus (third century u. c.)
INTRODUCTION, V.
lxxxiii curbing of evil passion and restraining the Ahriman in the heart of man That idealistic interpretation was current as early as the fifteenth century, and is prevalent now with most of the Dasturs1 2. To. what extent that alteration may have been influenced by Islamism, can hardly be decided; there are even some faint signs that it began at a time when the old religion was still flourishing; at any rate, no one can think of ascribing to one man, or to one time, that slow change from dualism to monotheism, which is, however, really deeper and wider than the movement which, in pre- historic times, brought the Magi from an imperfect form of dualism to one more perfect.
CHAPTER V.
The Vend id Ad.
§ j. According to Parsi tradition the Vcndid&d 3 is the only Nosk, out of the twenty-one, that was preserved in its entirety4. This is a statement to which it is difficult to trust; for, if there is anything that shows how right the Parsis are in admitting that the Avesta is only a collection of fragments, it is just the fragmentary character of the Vendidad.
The Vendid&d has often been described as the book of the laws of the Parsis; it may be more exactly called the code of purification, a description, however, which is itself only so far correct that the laws of purification arc the object of the largest part of the book.
1 Aogemaide, ed. Geiger, p. 36, § 92; Mirkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, tr. Shea, p. 98. Cf. Revue Critique, 1879, II, 163.
8 ‘ The Parsis are now strict monotheists, and whatever may have been the views of former philosophical writings, their one supreme deity is Ahura Mazda. Their views of Angra Mainyu seem to differ in no respect from what is supposed to be the orthodox Christian view of the devil.’ Haug’s Essays, and ed. p. 53. Mandelslo, in the seventeenth century, speaks of Parsiism as a monotheistic religion.
3 The word Vendidad is a corruption ofVldaevo-datem (datem), 'the anti- demoniac law.* It is sometimes applied to the whole of the law (Vendidad S&dah).
* See above, p. xxxii.
lxxxiv VEND! DAD.
The first two chapters deal with mythical matter, with- out any direct connection with the general object of the Vendidad, and are remnants of an old epic and cosmogonic literature. The first deals with the creations and counter- creations of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu; the second speaks of Yima, the founder of civilisation. Although there was no particular reason for placing them in the Vendidad, as soon as they were admitted into it they were put at the beginning, because they referred to the first ages o.f the world. Three chapters of a mythical character, about the origin of medicine, were put at the end of the book, for want of any better place, but might as well have been kept apart1, as was the so-called Ilad- hokht Nosk fragment. There is also another mythical Fargard, the nineteenth, which, as it treats of the revelation of the law by Ahura to Zarathartra, would have been more suitably placed at the beginning of the Vendidad proper, that is, as the third Fargard.
The other seventeen chapters deal chiefly with religious observances, although mythical fragments, or moral digres- sions, are met with here and there, which arc more or less artificially connected with the text, and which were most probably not written along with the passages which they follow ~.
§ 2. A rough attempt at regular order appears in these seventeen chapters: nearly all the matter contained in the eight chapters from V to XII deals chiefly with impurity from the dead and the way of dispelling it; but the subject is again treated, here and there, in other Fargards 3, and matter irrelevant to the subject has also found its way into these same eight Fargards 4. Fargards XIII and XIV are devoted to the dog, but must be completed with a part of the XVth. Fargards XVI, XVII, and most part of XVIII deal with several sorts of uncleanness, and their proper * As an introduction to a code of laws on physicians; see I' arg. VII, 36-44.
4 The passages on medicine (VII, 36-44), and on the sea Vouru-kasha (V, INTRODUCTION, V.
lxxxv place should rather have been after the Xllth Fargard. Fargard III is devoted to the earth1; Fargard IV stands by itself, as it deals with a matter which is treated only there, namely, civil and penal laws 2.
No better order prevails within these several parts: prescriptions on one and the same subject arc scattered about through several Fargards, without any subject being treated at once in a full and exhaustive way; and this occasions needless repetitions3.
The main cause of this disorder was, of course, that the advantage of order is rarely felt by Orientals; but it was further promoted by the very form of exposition adopted by the first composers of the Vendidad. The law is revealed by Ahura in a scries of answers to questions put to him by ZarathuJtra 4; and as these questions are not of a general character, but refer to details, the matter is much broken into fragments, each of which, consisting of a question with its answer, stands by itself, as an independent passage.
We shall treat in the following pages, first of the laws of purification, then of the civil laws, and, lastly, of the penalties both religious and civil.
A.
§ 3. The first object of man is purity, yaosdau: ‘purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good V Purity and impurity have not in the Vcndld&d the exclusively spiritual meaning which they have in our languages: they do not refer to an inward state of the 1 It contains two digressions, the one on funeral laws, the other on hus- bandry. See Farg. Ill, Introd.
a It contains one digression on physical weal, which must have belonged originally to Farg. 111. See Farg. IV, Introd.
4 The outward form of the Vendidad has been often compared with that of the Books of Moses. But in reality, in the Bible, there is no conversation between God and the lawgiver: the law comes down unasked, and God gives commands, but gives no answers. In the Vendidad, on the contrary, it is the wish of man, not the will of God, that is the first cause of the revelation. Man must ask of Ahura, who knows everything, and is pleased to answer (XVIII, 13 seq.); the law is * the question to Ahura,* ahuri frasno.
1 XXX VI VENDiDAD.
person, but chiefly to a physical state of the body. Im- purity or uncleanness may be described as the state of a person or thing that is possessed of the demon; and the object of purification is to expel the demon.
The principal means by which uncleanness enters man is death, as death is the triumph of the demon.
When a man dies, as soon as the soul has parted from the body, the Dru^ Nasu or Corpse-Dru^ falls upon the dead from the regions of hell, and whoever thenceforth touches the corpse becomes unclean, and makes unclean whomsoever he touches l.
The Dru^* is expelled from the dead by means of the Sag-did, fcthe look of the dog:’ ‘a four-eyed dog* or ‘a white one with yellow ears5 is brought near the body and is made to look at the dead; as soon as he has done so, the Drug* flees back to hell 2.
The Drug* is expelled from the living, whom she has seized through their contact with the dead, by a process of washings with ox’s urine (gomez or nirang) and with water, combined with the Sag-did The real import of these ceremonies is shown by the spells which accompany their performance: ‘ Perish, O fiendish Drug*! Perish, O brood of the fiend! Perish, O world of the fiend! Perish away, O Drug*! Rush away, O Drug*! Perish away, O Drug*! Perish away to the regions of the north, never more to give unto death the living world of the holy spirit! * Thus, in the death of a man, there is more involved than the death of one man: the power of death, called forth from hell, threatens from the corpse, as from a stronghold, the whole world of the living, ready to seize whatever may fall within his reach, and 4 from the dead defiles the living, from the living rushes upon the living.’ When a man dies in a house, there is danger for three days lest somebody else should die in that house 4.
1 Farg. VII, i seq.
8 In the shape of a fly. ' The fly that came to the smell of the dead body was thought to be the corpse-spirit that came to take possession of the dead in the name of Ahriman* (Justi, Persien, p. 88).
INTRODUCTION, V.
lxxxvii The notion or feeling, out of which these ceremonies grew, was far from unknown to the other Indo-European peoples: what was peculiar to Mazdeism was that it carried it to an extreme, and preserved a clearer sense of it, while elsewhere it grew dimmer and dimmer, and faded away. In fact, when the Greek, going out of a house where a dead man lay, sprinkled himself with water from the ipbavCov at the door, it was death that he drove away from himself. The Vedic Indian, too, although his rites were intended chiefly for the benefit of the dead, considered himself in danger and, while burning the corpse, cried aloud: * Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men!* (Rig-vcda X, 18, 1.)
§ 4. As to the rites by means of which the Drug- is expelled, they are the performance of myths. There is nothing in worship but what existed before in mythology. What we call a practice is only an imitation of gods, an opoLucns 0e <3, as man fancies he can bring about the things he wants, by performing the acts which are supposed to have brought about things of the same kind when practised by the gods.
The Parsis, being at a loss to find four-eyed dogs, inter- pret the name as meaning a dog with two spots above the eyes1: but it is clear that the two-spotted dogs services are only accepted for want of a four-eyed one, or of a white one with yellow ears, which amounts to saying that there were myths, according to which the death-fiend was driven away by dogs of that description. This reminds one at once of the three-headed Kerberos, watching at the doors of hell, and, still more, of the two brown, four-eyed dogs of Yama, who guard the ways to the realm of death2.
The identity of the four-eyed dog of the Parsi with Kerberos and Yama’s dogs appears, moreover, from the Parsi tradition that the yellow-eared dog watches at the 1 In practice they are still less particular: 1 the Sag-did may be performed by a shepherd’s dog, by a house dog, by a Vohunazga dog (see Farg. XIII, 19, n.), or by a young dog (a dog four months old), Comm, ad Farg. VII, 2. As birds of prey are as fiend-smiting as the dog (see above, p. lxxiii, n. 4), they are Nasu-smiters like him, and one may appeal to their services, when there is no dog at hand (see Farg. VII, 3, n. 5).
Ixxxviii VENDfDAD.
Ixxxviii VENDfDAD.
head of the ATinva* bridge, which leads from this to the next world, and with his barking drives away the fiend from the souls of the holy ones, lest he should drag them to hell 1.
Wherever the corpse passes by, death walks with it; all along the way it has gone, from the house to its last resting-place, a spirit of death is breathing and threatening the living. Therefore, no man, no flock, no being whatever that belongs to the world of Ahura, is allowed to pass by that way until the deadly breath, that blows through it, has been blown away to hell 2 3. The four-eyed dog is made to go through the way three times, or six times, or nine times, while the priest helps the look of the dog with his spells, dreaded by the Drug*.
§ 5. The use of gomez in cleansing the unclean is also derived from old mythic conceptions The storm floods that cleanse the sky of the dark fiends in it were described in a class of myths as the urine of a gigantic animal in the heavens. As the floods from the bull above drive away the fiend from the god, so they do from man here below, they make him ‘free from the death-demon’ (franasu), and the death-fiend flees away hellwards, pursued by the fiend-smiting spell: 4 Perish thou, O Drug*..., never more to give over to Death the living world of the good spirit!’
§ 6. As unclcanncss is nothing else than the contagion of death, it is at its greatest intensity when life is just departing. The Nasu at that moment defiles ten persons around the 1 Gr. Rav. p. 592. Allusions to this myth are found in Farg. XIII, 9, and XIX, 30. The Commentary ad Farg. XIII, 17 has: ‘There are dogs who watch over the earthly regions; there are others who watch over the fourteen heavenly regions.’ The birth of the yellow-eared dog is described in the Ravaet (l. c.) as follows: ‘Ormazd, wishing to keep the body of the first man, Gaydmart, from the assaults of Ahriman, who tried to kill him, cried out: “ O thou yellow-eared dog, arise I '* and directly the dog barked and shook his two cars; and the unclean Satan and the fiends, when they saw the dreadful looks of the yellow-eared dog, and heard his barking, were sore afraid and fled down to hell.’
3 Orm. Ahr. § 124. The use of gomez has been lately found to be known in Basse-Bretagnc (Luzel, Le Nirang des Tarsis en Basse- Bretagne, Melusine, 493).
INTRODUCTION, V.
lxxxix corpse 1: when a year is over, the corpse defiles no longer 2. Thus the notion of uncleanness is quite the reverse of what is thought elsewhere: the corpse, when rotten, is less unclean than the body still all but warm with life; death defiles least when it looks most hideous, and defiles most when it might look majestic. The cause is that in the latter case the death-demon has just arrived in the fulness of his strength, whereas in the former case time has exhausted his power.
§ 7. As the focus of the contagion is in the corpse, it must be disposed of so that death may not spread abroad. O11 this point the old Indo-European customs have been completely changed by Mazdcism. The Indo-Europeans either burnt the corpse or buried it: both customs arc held to be sacrilegious in the Avesta.
§ 8. This view originated from the notion of the holiness of the elements being pushed to an extreme. The elements, fire, earth, and water arc holy, and during the Indo-Iranian period they were already considered so, and in the Vedas they arc worshipped as godlike beings. Yet this did not prevent the Indian from burning his dead; death did not appear to him so decidedly a work of the demon, and the dead man was a traveller to the other world, whom the fire kindly carried to his heavenly abode ‘on his undecay- ing, flying pinions, wherewith he killed the demons/ The fire was in that, as in the sacrifice, the god that goes from earth to heaven, from man to god, the mediator, the god most friendly to man. In Persia it remains more distant from him; being an earthly form of the eternal, infinite, godly light 3, no death, no unclcanncss can be allowed to enter it, as it is here below the purest offspring of the good spirit, the purest part of his pure creation. Its only function is to repel the fiends with its bright blazing. In every place where Parsis are settled, an everlasting fire is kept, the Bahr&m fire, which, ‘ preserved by a more than Vestal 3 Ignem coelitus delapsum (Ammian. Marcel. XXVII, 6); Cedrcnus; Elisaeus; Recogn. Clement. IV, 29; Clem. Homil. IX, 6; Henry Lord.
xc vend{dad.
care1/ and ever fed with perfumes and dry well-blazing wood, whichever side its flames are brought by the wind, it goes and kills thousands and thousands of fiends, as Bahram docs in heaven2. If the necessities of life oblige us to employ fire for profane uses, it must be only for a time an exile on our hearth, or in the oven of the potter, and it must go thence to the Right- Place, of the fire (D&ityo Gatu), the altar of the Bahram fire, there to be restored to the dignity and rights of its nature3.
At least, let no gratuitous and wanton degradation be inflicted upon it: even blowing it with the breath of the mouth is a crime4; burning the dead is the most heinous of sins: in the times of Strabo it was a capital crime 5 6, and the Avesta expresses the same, when putting it in the number of those sins for which there is no atonement0.
Water was looked upon in the same light. Bringing dead matter to it is as bad as bringing it to the fire7. The Magi are said to have overthrown a king for having built bath-houses, as they cared more for the cleanness of water than for their own8.
§ 9. Not less holy was the earth, or, at least, it became so. There was a goddess who lived in her, Spe/rta Ar- maiti 9; no corpse ought to defile her sacred breast: burying the dead is, like burning the dead, a deed for which there is no atonement10. It was not always so in Persia: the burning of the dead had been forbidden for 1 J- Fryer, A New Account of East Tndia and Persia, 1698, p. 265.
2 Farg. VIII, 81-96; 79 -80. Cf. above, p. lxiv.
* Extinguishing it is a mortal sin (Ravaets; Elisaeus; cf. Strabo XV, 14).
4 A custom still existing with the Tazik, an Iranian tribe in Eastern Persia (de Khanikoff, Ethnographic de la Perse). Strabo XV, 14. Manu has the same prescription (IV, 53). Cf. Farg. XIV, 8, n. 7.
* Strabo XV, 14; cf. Herod. Ill, 16.
7 Farg. VII, 25-27; Strabo XV, 14; Herod. 1, 138.
* King llalash (Josue le Stylite, traduction Martin, § xx). It seems as if there were a confusion between Balash and Kav&t; at any rate, it shows that bathing smacked of heresy. Jews were forbidden to perform the legal ablutions (Hirst, Culturgeschichte der Juden, 9).
9 See above, p. lxxii.
INTRODUCTION, V.
XC1 years1, while the burying was still general2. Cambyses had roused the indignation of the Persians by burning the corpse of Amasis: yet, years later, Persians still buried their dead. But the priests already felt scruples, and feared to defile a god. Later on, with the ascendancy of the Magian religion, the sacerdotal observances became the general law 3.
§ io. Therefore the corpse is laid on the summit of a mountain, far from man, from water, from tree, from fire, and from the earth itself, as it is separated from it by a layer of stones or bricks 4. Special buildings, the Daklimas, were erected for this purpose5. There far from the world the dead were left to lie, beholding the sun 6.
§ ii. Not every corpse defiles man, but only those of such beings as belong to the world of Ahura. They arc the only ones in whose death the demon triumphs. The corpse of an Ahrimanian creature does not defile; as its life was incarnate death, the spring of death that was in it is dried up with its last breath: it killed while alive, it can 1 From the reign of Cyrus (of. above, p. li). 2 Cf. above, p. xlv.
3 Still the worship of the earth seems not to have so deeply penetrated the general religion as the worship of fire. The laws about the disposal of the dead were interpreted by many, it would seem, as intended only to secure the purity of water and fire, and they thought that they might be at peace with religion if they had taken care to bury the corpse, so that no part of it might be taken by animals to fire or water (Farg. Ill, 41, n. 7).
4 Farg. VI, 44 seq.; VIII, 10 seq. Cf. IX, ii, n. 4. Moreover, the Dakhma is ideally separated from the ground by means of a golden thread, which is supposed to keep it suspended in the air (Ravaet, ap. Spiegel, Uebcrsetzung des Avesta II, XXXVI).
5 ‘ The Dakhma is a round building, and is designated by some writers, “ The Tower of Silence.” A round pit, about six feet deep, is surrounded by an annular stone pavement, about seven feet wide, on which the dead bodies are placed. This place is enclosed all round by a stone wall some twenty feet high, with a small door on one side for taking the body in. The whole is built up of and paved with stone. The pit has communication with three or more closed pits, at some distance into which the rain washes out the liquids and the remains of the dead bodies' (Dadabhai Naoroji, The Manners and Customs of the Parsees, Bombay, 1864, p. 16). Cf. Farg. VI, 50. A Dakhma is the first building the Parsis erect when settling on a new place (Dosabhoy Framjce).
* The Avesta and the Commentator attach great importance to that point: it is as if the dead man’s life were thus prolonged, since he can still behold the sun. ‘ Grant us that we may long behold the sun,’ Said the Indian Rishi.
xcu vendJdAd; do so no more when dead; it becomes clean by dying1. None of the faithful are defiled by the corpse of an Ashe- maogha or of a Khrafstra. Nay, killing them is a pious work, as it is killing Ahriman himself2.
§ 12. Not only real death makes one unclean, but partial death too. Everything that goes out of the body of man is dead, and becomes the property of the demon. The going breath is unclean, it is forbidden to blow the fire with it 3, and even to approach the fire without screening it from the contagion with a Pen6m 4. Parings of nails and cut- tings or shavings of hair arc unclean, and become weapons in the hands of the demons unless they have been protected by certain rites and spells 5. Any phenomenon by which the bodily nature is altered, whether accompanied with danger to health or not, was viewed as a work of the demon, and made the person unclean in whom it took place. One of these phenomena, which is a special object of attention in theVendidad, is the uncleanness of women during their menses. The menses are sent by Ahriman0, especially when they last beyond the usual time: therefore a woman, as long as they last, is unclean and possessed of the demon: she must be kept confined, apart from the faithful whom her touch would defile, and from the fire which her very look would injure; she is not allowed to cat as much as she wishes, as the strength she might acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food is not given to her from hand to hand, but is passed to her from a distance7, in a long leaden spoon. The origin of all these notions is in certain physical instincts, in physiological psychology, which is the reason why they are found among peoples very far removed from one another by race or religion 8. But they took in Persia a new meaning as they were made a logical part of the whole religious system.
§ 13. A woman that has been just delivered of a child 3 See above, p. xc. 5 Farg. XVII.
7 Farg XVI, 15.
a See above, p. lxxiii.
6 Farg. I, 18-19; XVI, 11. Cf. Bund. III. 8 Cf. Leviticus. See Fliny VII, 13.
INTRODUCTION, V.
XClll is also unclean \ although it would seem that she ought to be considered pure amongst the pure, since life has been increased by her in the world, and she has enlarged the /■calm of Ormazd. But the strength of old instincts over- came the drift of new principles. Only the case when the woman has been delivered of a still-born child is examined in the Vcndiddd. She is unclean as having been in contact with a dead creature; and she must first drink gomez to wash over the grave in her womb. So utterly unclean is she, that she is not even allowed to drink water, unless she is in danger of death; and even then, as the sacred element has been defiled, she is liable to the penalty of a Pcsh6- tanu1 2 *. It appears from modern customs that the treatment is the same when the child is born alive: the reason of which* is that, in any case, during the first three days after delivery she is in danger of death A great fire is lighted to keep away the fiends, who use then their utmost efforts to kill her and her child 4. She is unclean only because the death-fiend is in her.
§ 14. Logic required that the sick man should be treated as an unclean one, that is, as one possessed. Sickness, being sent by Ahriman, ought to be cured like all his other works, by washings and spells. In fact, the medicine of spells was considered the most powerful of all5, and although it did not oust the medicine of the lancet and that of drugs, yet it was more highly esteemed and less mistrusted. The commentator on the Vendidad very sensibly observes that if it does not relieve, it will surely do no harm which seems not to have been a matter of course with those who heal by the knife and physic. It 1 Farg. V, 45 seq. 2 Karg. VII, 70 scq.
3 ‘ When there is a pregnant woman in a house, one must take care that there be fire continually in it; when the child is brought forth, one must burn a candle, or, better still, a fire, for three days and three nights, to render the Devs and Dru»s unable to harm the child; for there is great danger during those three days and nights after the birth of the child’ (Saddar 16).
* ‘ When the child is being born, one brandishes a sword on the four sides* lest fairy Aal kill it* (Polack, Persien I, 223). In Rome, three gods, Interci-