1 They pray against Aeshma without qualification. ■ They might practise desolating havoc in time of war; but the raid, as in times of nominal peace, seems to have been foreign to them. m XXH THE GATHAS.
the line, or in skirmish. We conclude from the pre- valence of a thankful tone that the Zarathiutrians gained the upper hand during the Gothic period, but although the result may have been assured, the struggle at the time of the last Gatha was by no means over. In the latest Gatha, as in the earliest, we have signs of fierce and bloody conflict. The same type of existence prevailed greatly later, in the time of the Yaits, but the scene seems very different, and Zarathuytra’s human characteristics are wholly lost in the mythical attributes with which time and .superstition had abundantly provided him. By way, then, of summarising the chief characteristics of his original system, we may say that he and his companions were struggling to establish a kingdom under the Sovereign Power of God, whose first care was to relieve suffering, and shelter the honest and industrious poor 1. This kingdom was to be conducted according to His holy Order, or plan of salva- tion, to be permeated by living Piety, and with the ultimate object of bestowing both Weal and Immortality. This high- ideal was also not left as an abstract principle to work its way. Society was far too rudimental, then as ever, for the efficient survival of unsupported principles. A compact hierarchical system seems to have existed, the sacramental object being the fire, before which a priesthood officiated with unwavering zeal; but the traces of this are very restricted in the Gatlias, and, according to all probability, it was greatly less elaborated at their period than later.
Such, in very brief outline, is the system which meets us as Zarathuytrianism in that period of Mazda- worship when Zarathuytra lived and composed the Gathlc hymns.
As to the further question, c Who was Zarathuytra, and when and where did he live?? diversity of opinion still prehe practical operation of this prime principle seems to have been at times beneficial to a remarkable, if not unparalleled, exlent. Under the Sasanids the lower classes enjoyed great protection. See the remarks of Professor Raw- mson, The Seventh Oriental Monarchy, page 440 if. Also recall the extra- ordxHary treatment of the poor during the drought and famine under Pero.es.
Mnson '”**?*' SeeTabari P- * 3 °, cited by Professor INTRODUCTION.
XX!!!
vails, so much so that.as regards It I differ slightly even „ from my eminent friend and predecessor. As such differ- ' ences on the subject of the Avesta are however matters of course, I 'freely state my impressions. Who was then the person, if any person, corresponding to the name Zarathujtra in the G&thas? Did he exist, and was he really the author of these ancient hymns? That he existed as an historical person I have already affirmed; and as to the hymns ' as- cribed to 'him and his immediate associates, I have also no hesitation. Parts of these productions may have been interpolated, but the Gathas, as a whole, show great unity, and the interpolations are made in the spirit of the original.' And that Zarathujtra was the name of the individual in which this unity centres, we have no sufficient reason to dis- pute. The name is 'mentioned in the most sacred connec- tions, as well as in those which depict the reality of the prophet's sufferings; and there is no reason at all why it should have come down endeared to humanity, unless it be- longed to one, who, in the presence of a Sovereign and a kingdom, could impress his personality with greatly more defined distinctness upon Ms contemporaries than either that Sovereign or any of his adherents 1. That any forgery is present in the Gathas, any desire to palm off doctrines • upon the sacred community in' the name of the great pro- phet, as in the Vendidad and later Yasna, is quite out— of the question. The Gathas are genuine in their mass, as I believe no scholar anywhere now questions.
For the characteristics of this great teacher, I refer to the hymns themselves, which stand alone, of their kind, in litera- ture. Nowhere, at their period, had there been a human voice, so far as we have any evidence, which uttered thoughts like £hese. They are now,, some of them, the great com- monplaces of.philosophical religion; but till then they were unheard (agujti)..
And yet we must say of Zarathujtra, as of all our first announcers, that while he antedates all whose records have come down to us, he was probably only the last visible link See especially the remarks preceding V. L.
XXIV THE GATHAS.
in a far extended chain. His system, like those of his pre- decessors and successors, was a growth. His main concep- # tions had been surmised, although not spoken before. His world was ripe for them, and when he appeared, he had only to utter and develop them. I would not call him a reformer; he does not repudiate his predecessors. The old Aryan Gods retire before the spiritual Ahura; but I do not think that he especially intended to discredit them.
■ One of the inferior ones is mentioned for a moment, but the great Benevolence, Order, and Power, together with their results in the human subject, Ahura’s Piety incarnate in men, and their Weal and Immortality as a consequence, crowd out all other thoughts. His mental insight Is as evident from his system as his deep moral, inspiration. As to his secondary characteristics, his manner of thought and expression, we find them peculiar to the last degree. He has given us writings in which every syllable seems loaded with thought, sometimes much repeated, and to us of the present day, very familiar; but then, when he wrote, one would suppose that he intended to ‘ utter his dark speech;’ Succinctness is carried to an unexampled extreme 1, while the wonderful idea that God’s attributes are His messengers sent out into the human soul to ennoble and redeem, makes him at times so subtle that the latest scholars cannot tell whether he means Asha and Vohu Manah personified as Archangels, or as the thoughts and beneficent intentions of the Deity reproduced in men. I can recall no passage whatsoever in which Vohu Manah, Asha, Khsliathra, &c, are not strongly felt 'to mean exactly what they signify as words, while at the same time they are prayed to, and be- sought to come, as Gods or angels. Either the personifica- tion is purely poetical, which would make it, as found in the Gathas, considering their age and place, a very remarkable phenomenon, or else, having dogmatically personified the divine attributes, Zarathurtra never forgets to express a respect which is higher than ‘ a respect for persons/ that is, 1 I regard it as most unfortunate that Zendists should search for easy and natural expression in the Gathas, and the expression of commonplace detail. lt 2S 0Q v m passionate utterance that their style becomes simple.
INTRODUCTION.
XXV a respect for the principles which they represent. In making every laudatory statement, however, I take for granted, what I fear is nevertheless far from uniformly granted, and that is, that the reader will weigh well what makes all the difference,, namely, the very remote period at which we are obliged to place the Gathas, and the compara- tively rude • civilisation amid which we must suppose them to have been composed. We must set the ideas which lie before us in this framework of time and place. If we fail to- do so, as a matter of course the thoughts and their 'ex- pression will contain for us nothing whatever new; but as viewed in the light of relation, after long weighing the matter, I cannot refer to them in any other terms than those which I use, without becoming aware that I am recoiling through fear of exaggeration from stating what I believe to be the truth.
As to the personal sentiment of Zarathujtra, we can only say that it -was devoted. His word zarazdaiti gives the keynote to his purposes. We are certain that he was a man of courage; but that he was not scrupulous at shedding blood is also evident. • He was not reticent under misfortune, while yet endowed, with rare persistence to overcome it.
His sphere was not restricted. The objects which con- cern him are provinces as well as villages, armies as well as individuals. His circle was the reigning prince and promi- nent chieftains, a few gifted men deeply embued with religious veneration for the sacred compositions which- had come down to them from primeval antiquity in ancient metres; and these, together with a priesthood exceptionally pure, leading on a sobered population, were also his public. But three orders appear in it, the king, the people, and the ' peers. That the times were disturbed is involved in what has already been said. One feature alone needs mention, it is that the agitations involved the tenure of the throne. Vistaspa had no easy seat, and the prospect of revolution in the sense of supersedure was continually before As to the family life of Zarathujtra, we can only say that he commanded respect; nothing whatever is further known.
It will be seen from the above sketch that I make the widest distinction between the Githic period and that of the XXVI THE GATHAS.
later Avesta. I do so, not influenced very greatly by the fact that the Gathas are cited in the later Avesta. Most of these citations are indeed genuine and valid as proofs of priority, while others are mere displacements of the Gathas made for liturgical purposes, as Genesis is read in churches sometimes after portions of later matter. But a book may be cited by another when it is merely prior to it, and not much older. Nor do I lay too much stress upon the differ- ence between the Gathic dialect and the so-called Zend; but I do lay very great stress upon the totally dissimilar atmospheres of the two portions. In the Githas all is sober • and real. The Kine’s soul is indeed poetically described as wailing aloud, and the Deity with His Immortals is re- ported as speaking, hearing, and seeing; but with these rhetorical exceptions, everything which occupies the atten- tion is practical in the extreme. Grriima and B^dva, the Karpans, the Kavis, and the Usi^s(-ks), are no mythical mon- sters. No dragon threatens the settlements, and no fabulous ■ beings defend them. Zarathiutra, Gamaspa, Frashaoitra, and Maidhydmah; the Spitamas, Hvogvas, the Haeia /- aspas, are as real, and are alluded to with a simplicity as unconscious, as any characters in history. Except inspira- tion, there are also no miracles. All the action is made up of the exertions and passions of living and suffering men. Let the Zendist study the Gathas well, and then, let him turn to the Ya«$ts or the Vendidad; he will go from the land of reality to the land of fable. He leaves in the one a toiling prophet, to meet in the other a phantastic demi-god. However ancient the fundamental ideas in the myths of the Yasts and Vendidad may be (and' some of them were certainly older than the Gathas or the oldest Riks) in the forms in which they now stand, they are greatly later.
As we enter into further and necessary detail, this seems to be the place for a word as to the relative ages of the several sections which make up these hymns. We see struggle and suffering, fear and anger in some of them, and we naturally group these together as having been composed at a particular stage in* Zarathujtra’s career. We read expressions of happy confidence, and we refer them to a INTRODUCTION.
XXV11 period of repose, as we do those sections where meditation, speculation, or dogmatic statement, are prominent; but nothing is certain except -that Y. LIII must have ‘been written after Zarathiutra had attained to a sufficient age to have a marriageable daughter. An ancient leader may have.reached a position of influence from doctrinal produc- tions, and afterwards expressed the vicissitudes of an active political career. One circumstance must, however, be held in view; and that is, that neither the Gdthas, nor any other ancient pieces, which were hardly at first committed to writing, have been preserved in the form in which they were delivered for the first time. The poet himself would file them into better (?) order at each subsequent delivery, and verses which referred originally to one period of time would, if especially striking, be reproduced in subsequent effusions. And pieces which the composer may have left in one shape, his early successors would be likely to modify by interpola- tions, excerptions, or inversions. I believe that the Gathas show the presence of less foreign matter than is usual, and that the interpolations which' are present in them, are them- selves of great antiquity, or even practically synchronous with the original. Certainly few of them show anything like an ingenious attempt at imitation. If there exist any interpolations, and we* may say a priori that all existing compositions of their antiquity are, and must have.been, interpolated, the additions were the work of the author’s -earliest disciples who composed fully in his spirit, while the position of sections in this or that Gatha has little or no- thing to do with the question of their relative age, the metres being all ancient, -and the Uktavaiti, Spe^ta-mainyu, &c., showing as decided evidence of originality as any parts of the Ahunjivaiti. (See remarks on the Gatha Urtavaiti, p. 9 1 if.)
As we proceed from the question of the. relative age of the particular sections as compared with each other to that of their age considered as a whole, we are first met by the question as to place. Were the Gathas first sung in the East or the West of Iran? I would here say that I- regard this point as especially open, as I am even inclined to differ in one particular J>om my eminent friend xxviii THE GATHAS.
Professor Darmesteter, but let it be understood, only or chiefly, as to the place of origin of the Gathas. I think that the scene of the Gathic and original Zarathuit nanism was" the North-east of Iran, and that the later Avesta was com- posed during the hundreds of years during which the Zara- thortrian tribes were migrating westward in Media.
One certain fact is the occurrence of geographical names in Vendidad I, which are obviously intended to describe the earliest homes of the Iranian races whose lore was the Avesta. The present forms of those names, as they appear in the A. vesta, are indeed not the most ancient, but they occur in passages which plainly repeat very ancient myths. These names describe a region from the middle of the North of Iran to the East of it, including ancient Bactria, but extending as far West as Ragha; and, as the Gathas are unanimously acknowledged to be the oldest portion of the Avesta, dealing as they do with Zarathuitra as an historical person, we naturally look for the scene of his life in the oldest seats. The Zarathostrian Ragha, much further West than the other places mentioned, seems to have a special claim to be regarded as his birthplace, as it possesses so firm a hold upon his name, but the epithet Zarathujtrian, together with the special eminence of the governor of Ragha as needing no ' Zarathu^'tra ’ over him, that is, no imperial chief (see Y. XIX, 19), may both be attributed to successors of Zarathiuira. From some reason, probably the migration of Zarathuitrian influence toward the West, Ragha became a stronghold of his descendants; or his name, entirely apart from all lamily connection, may have become a title for leading politico-ecclesiastical officials (compare the Zara- thuitrotema). There is no mention of a foreign origin of Zarathuitra in the Gathas, nor is there any expression from which we might infer it. His family seems as settled as himself The Spitamas are mentioned with the same familiarity as the Hvogvas, and the persons named are, some of them, related to Mm. He was no isolated figure among the people whom he influenced. Unless then we can place Vtrtaspa and Gamaspa, Frashaoitra, and Maid- hyomah, in Ragha, we cannot well -place Zarathuitra there, INTRODUCTION.
XXIX for he Is to be placed beside them. Tradition of a late and Rubious character places Vtst&spa in Bactria; but it is better to leave the exact region undecided, as certainty can never be reached.
The other^ circumstances which are imperative with many for a decision for the East as the region where Zarathurtra laboured, have been stated with perhaps the greatest power and beauty by Darmesteter \ who still inclines to the West. These are the strong analogies existing between the Zend' language and the Vedic Sanskrit on the one side, and between the gods, heroes, and myths of the Avesta, and those of Veda, on the other.
As bearing, however, in favour of a western origin of the Gathic, as well as of the later Avesta, we must confess that the West Iranian of the Cuneiform Inscriptions possesses the same analogies with the Vedic which the language of the Avesta possesses with it; and no reader should need _ to be. reminded that the West Iranian as well as the East Iranian was in no sense derived from the Vedic. The old Aryan from which all descended was once spread without distinction over both West and East, while, ojn the other hand, the mythological features of the Avesta, kindred as they are to those of the Eastern Veda, are yet reproduced for us, some of them, in the poetry of the mediaeval West as drawn from the Avesta; and the name of.Mazda, unknown (?) to the Rzks 2, appears cut in the rocks of Persepolis and Behistun, while all the sacred books of the Zarathiiitrians, including the Gathas as well as the later Avesta, together with their interpretations, have come down to us from the West, where the Greeks also found their system from the time of Herodotus down.
Added to which we must acknowledge that the differ- ences in dialect between the Avesta and Veda make a wide separation as to place far from startling, while myths as well as religions migrate as by a law.
We must therefore consider well before we venture to differ from those who decide for the West as the scene of Zarathurtra*s life.
1 See the Introduction to the first two volumes, arid also Ormum and Ahriman, XXX THE GATHAS.
But as 'we mention the Inscriptions, we must make a very- careful distinction. Is their theology that of Zarathujtra? If it is, this would certainly constitute a point in conjunction with the descriptions of the Greeks, in favour of a still more extensive prevalence of Zarathiutrianism in the West at the dates 'which the Inscriptions cover.
As to this disputed point, I would answer that their theology may be the Zarathu^trian in a sense as yet too little applied to the term, for it may be Git hie Zarathur- trianism, or at least a Mazda-worship at a stage of develop- ment corresponding to the stage of Mazda- worship in which it stood when Zarathiutra left it; but that it was the later and fully developed Zarath ust nanism, provided with all the regulations of the Vendidad, seems out of the question.
In the first place there is no certain mention of Angra Mainyu, or of the Amesha Speata, in the Inscriptions; and this silence must be accounted for 1 in any case 2.
The ready and just suggestion is made that the documents are exceedingly limited; that many deities would not be named on so narrow a space, while the statements of Herodotus and his successors make it probable that the entire system of Zarathurtra was known in the near neighbourhood, and must have been very familiar to the persons who ordered the Inscriptions to be cut. To this the necessary rejoinder might be made, that the familiarity of Darius with the later, or indeed with the original; Zara- thiiftiianism, if he was familiar with it, renders the absence of the name of Angra Mainyu at least all the more striking.
What more imperative call could there be for the use of that name than in denouncing the opponents whose over- throw forms the theme of the mighty writings?
As the £ grace of Auramazda ’ is mentioned on the one . S ^ e T el; ef 1S & lven b y a mention of the Draogha, bnt the bagahya are Mlt? ra and Anabita ( see the Inscription of Artaxerxes I^nemon, 4) rather than the Amesha Spewta. As we notice the name of Mithra, however T e ™ U *i? ema - Tk diat ’ as tbe Mitbra worship undoubtedly existed previously to P f e T n °^ and feH int0 n ^ect at the Gothic period, it might be said that the greatly later Inscriptions represent Mazda-worship as it existed among the ancestors of the Zarathu^rians in a pre-Gathic age or even Vedic age. Angra Mainyu and the Amesha are also prominent in the Gathas INTRODUCTION.
XXXI INTRODUCTION.
XXXI side, one naturally expects to see some reference to the "opposition 3 * of His chief adversary on the other, and one -also expects to trace some certain recognition of the Bountiful Immortals. I think that both were omitted because ' their names retained less weight, as we cannot suppose that they were unknown, or, if once known, then forgotten. But allowing that it is not quite fair to reason from such scanty texts, we are met by the positive fact that an important Inscription is written on a tomb 1; and, as the burial of the dead was one of the most flagrant violations of the Zarathmrtrian ceremonial law, it is not conceivable that Darius could have been a Zarathuitrian according to the later Faith. He was either 'a heretical schismatic departing from a sacred precept, or he was following the creed of his fathers, a Mazda-worshipper, but not ‘ of Zarathujtra’s order/ or, If a Zarathuitrian, then a partial inheritor of Zarathuitra’s religion at an undeveloped stage, while burial was not as yet forbidden by it; and at the same time he neglected also prominent doctrines of the Gathas.
It Is not possible that he could have been an isolated schismatic as to such a particular. If he composed the Inscriptions as a monarch of another religion than that of the later Avesta, it would seem to prove either that he was an adherent to a cruder, or half effaced, form of Githic Zarathuitrianism, which had found its way during the long periods of its existence westward before the later Zarathuitrianism arose in the western settlements, or else that It, the religion of the Inscriptions, simply originated where we find it, from an original and wide-spread Mazda- worship which had not yet forbidden the burial of the dead 2.
1 And all are tie Inscriptions of buried men. See also the statements of Professor de Harlez on the subject.
2 And perhaps it had also not forbidden cremation. Geiger (see * The Civili- sation of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times; 5 English translation by Darab Dastur Peshotan Sa%ana, B.A., p. 90) conjectures that the dakhma were originally places for cremation. If this is a correct surmise, both burial and cremation may have been permitted at the Gathic period, being forbidden long after. At least the original Mazda-worship did not recoil from cremation, otherwise the story of the attempt to bum the Lydian Croesus could not have arisen. The earlier Persians had no abhorrence of either burial or burning.
Only the developed Zarathmtrian Magism of the Medes obeyed the Vendidad.
xxxii THE GATH AS.
That such a Mazda-worship once existed in primeval Iran seems certain, and that it was greatly earlier than Zara- thurtrianism x. It is also very probable that some form of it survived unadulterated by Zarathurt nanism. And this is as probable a priori when we reflect on what might have happened, as it is when ' we seek for an explanation of the burial of a Mazda-worshipper in a tomb.
As the Asura (Ahura) worship extended into India with the Indians as they migrated from Iran, a form of Asura worship arose In Iran which added the name, of Mazda to the original term for God. In the East it began to acquire additional peculiarities out of which, when Zarathostra arose, he developed his original system, while in other parts of Iran, and with great probability in Persia, it retained its original simplicity. At subsequent periods only, the Zara-' thurtrian form spread, first at the Gathic stage, and later a second time, and from a centre further West, as the Zarathur- trianism of the later Avesta which is reported by the Greeks. Either then Darius was a Mazda-worshipper, like his fathers, following an original and independent type of ■ Mazda-worship, or he was following a mutilated Gathic Zatathurtrianism, which may not yet have forbidden burial 2, he and his chieftains- adhering to this ancient form, while the masses yielded to the novelties, as the patrician Jews held to Sadduoeeism after the masses had become Pharisees, and as the patrician Romans clung to Paganism after Rome had become Catholic. In either case it seems to me that the Mazda-worship of the Inscriptions might be severed from the later Zarathurtrianism; and that it must be so severed on some theory or other, all with one - voice seem to agree.
In deciding for the North-east 3 as the scene of Zara- thurtra s personal labours, and for the GeLthic • dialect as its more particular form of speech, I am not, I trust, solely * Compare even the Scythic name Thamimasadas, cited by Professor Rawlinson (Herod. 3rd edit, iii, p. 195). Were branches of the Scyths themselves in a sense Mazda-worshippers, or could the name have been borrowed?
2 ' And which insisted less upon the personality of Satan. ' 3 The name Bactrian cannot be considered as more than a convenient expression.
INTRODUCTION. ' xxxm or unduly Influenced by the occurrence of the eastern names in the first chapter of the Vendidad, for those names may indicate primeval homes from which the ancestors of Zara- thastra migrated toward the west centuries before his appearance. I merely say that the occurrence of the names shows that the ancestors of the Zarathurtrian Mazda-worshippers once lived in East Iran; and if that is the case, their descendants may have still lived there when Zarathurtra developed his system, and it is also possible that masses of Zarathu^trians may long have remained behind in the East Iranian mountains after.the Zarathin- trians of the later Avesta had gone west. The descendant may have arisen in the home of his ancestors, and in fact, other things being equal, there is a stronger probability that he arose there. - I do not think that the appearance of a later Zarathuitrianism in the west, is a sufficient reason for doubting that the founder of the system laboured nearer the land of the Vedas, where a Vistaspa once ruled (?), where a Baeva-worship long lingered, and where the common names of the Irano-indian gods were heard as household words, and which. w r e may add, was precisely the place where we should suppose the Indo-aryans to have left the Irano-aryans, as they descended into the Pu%ab.