SOURCE: An introduction to The Zoroastrian Doctrine of a Future Life: From Death to the Individual Judgement, second edition, 1929. Reprint AMS Press, 1965, pp. 1-8.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1929, Pavry discusses the form and style of Zoroaster's Gathasand observes that according to Zoroaster's doctrines, salvation is achieved through faith and works.]

Yōi mōi ahmāi ssraošsm
dąn čayasčā
upā.jimsn haurvātā
amsrstātā vaehsuš
mainysuš šyaoθanāiš.

—Gāthā Ushtavaitī, Ys. 45. 5.

ZARATHUSHTRA'S MESSAGE OF IMMORTALITY.

‘All those who will give hearing for Me unto this one (the Prophet) will come unto Salvation and Immortality through the works of the Good Spirit’—such was the promise given by Ahura Mazdāh to those who accepted the Religion of Zarathushtra, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, and such were the words in which the Supreme Deity vouchsafed the revelation to him. Divinely inspired and strongly convinced of his own mission, the Prophet (m̧ͣθran) delivered his message (dūtya) to mankind nearly three thousand years ago. It was a message full of hope for the future. It throbbed with a pious expectation of a world perfected in the present life and to be realized in all its fulness in the world beyond. We can understand the echo which it found in the heart of the folk when he appeared as the spiritual leader (ratav) of Old Iran in the bygone ages of history. Nor has its ringing truth been forgotten today.

Zarathushtra's pre-eminent concern with the bearing of eschatology on conduct can easily be seen from a study of the Gāthās. Faith and works form the foundation of the doctrine of salvation in the religion of Ancient Iran. A belief in the freedom of the will, in the acknowledgment of man's ability to choose the right or to choose the wrong, and in his consequent responsibility to his Creator, lies at the basis of the moral and ethical system of the Zoroastrian religion, which above all emphasizes the existence of the two warring principles of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. To guide man to the choice of right, and thus to assure his gaining eternal salvation, was the very purpose of Zarathushtra's mission upon earth.

The very words ‘Salvation’ (haurvatāt), or the essence of wholesome completeness in a spiritual sense—that personified ‘saving health’ with all the connotation of the term as used in Christianity—and ‘Immortality’ (amsrstāt) in the life eternal have already struck this note. Not this world alone, which the Prophet sought to improve through his teachings, but the outlook for a world regenerate, made perfect and renewed (fsrašsm ksrsnāun ahūm, fsrašōtsma, etc.), formed the burden of his Gāthās, ‘Hymns’ or ‘Psalms.’ He visualized all this as the sovereign rule, dominion, and power, ‘the Kingdom’ (xšaθra) to come, when mankind, regenerate and individually judged, should bring to pass the final Renovation (frašōksrsti) of the world. As a ‘Savior,’ or, perhaps more literally, as ‘He who will be the Benefactor’ (saošyant), Zarathushtra came forward with his message of endless hope and cheerful optimism, which has never failed to animate the hearts of his followers. It may be that in later times the religion which he founded looked forward to the fulfilment of his prophetic view through the appearance in successive millenniums of three Saoshyants spiritually born of his seed, and in many other points gave more concrete form to his ideal conceptions; but, as we study the sources, from his own words preserved in the Gāthās, the ipsissima verba of the Prophet, down through the centuries, we shall always find the belief in the future life and the heavenly world present as one of the main currents in Zoroastrain thought.

THE SOURCES IN GENERAL.

The sacred writings of the Zoroastrian Faith, from the earliest texts to the latest works that deal with the Religion, bear abundant witness to what has been stated above, as will be shown in the course of the following investigation. The examination is naturally based upon the texts comprised in the Avestan canon itself, and upon the traditional literature in Pahlavi as developed in Sasanian times and afterwards, supplemented later by the religious writings in Parsi-Persian.

It were to be wished that we had some material to add from the Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenian Kings, since these monuments in stone present records which are most nearly akin to the Avesta in religion and language.¹ We do not find in them, however, any mention of a future life; the blessings which are prayed for and the imprecations which are invoked are purely of a temporal character.² The absence of specific reference to the life hereafter may be due perhaps to the official character of these records (haⁿdugā) and to their limited extent.

The silence of these official records would not be so significant if we felt assured that we could accept as corroborative testimony certain references made by Greek writers to the religious beliefs of the Achaemenian rulers,³ but these do not concern this particular part of our study and are reserved for treatment later.

It is clear in any case, however, that the later Greek authors were acquainted with the doctrine of the Frashōkereti,⁴ but since again these references relate rather to eschatology proper than to the immediate fate of the soul, they may simply be mentioned here, but reserved for presentation elsewhere. Laying aside such classical evidences, we may now turn to the direct Zoroastrian sources themselves, beginning with the Gāthās.

THE GāTHāS.

The Gāthās, as being the oldest part of the Avesta and embodying the veritable words of Zarathushtra (seventh century b.c. or earlier),⁵ naturally form the starting-point from which to proceed in our research. These Gāthās, ‘hymns, psalms,’ are akin to the verses of the Vedic bards. They contain the teachings of the Prophet, summed up in metrical stanzas which he composed as a nucleus of his discourses.⁶ These anthems of divine praise are always spoken of as ‘the Holy Gāthās’ (gāθa ašaonīš) from an early date (cf. for example, Ys. 55. 1). Their language is more archaic and somewhat different from that used elsewhere in the Avesta. The style of expression is exceedingly lofty, and the ideas are prevailingly abstract in character, so that the interpretation of some of the passages affords great difficulty.

The Gāthās,⁷ comprising seventeen hymns in all, are arranged in five groups, the Gāthā Ahunavaitī (Ys. 28-34), Ushtavaitī (Ys. 43-46), Spentā Mainyū (Ys. 47-50), Vohukhshathrā (Ys. 51), and Vahishtōishti (Ys. 53). This grouping as a pentad is based on the scheme of the meters employed; we have no knowledge, however, of what the original order of the seventeen may have been. In any case, their importance is recognized by their position as the very center of the whole Yasna.

Between the first two of these Gāthic groups is interpolated the so-called Yasna Haptanghāiti, or ‘Yasna of the Seven Chapters’ (Ys. 35-42). Its language is as archaic as that of the Gāthās, but the form of composition is almost entirely prose. In age these ‘Seven Chapters’ would rank next after the Gāthās, but their special contents yield little if anything for the purpose of our present investigation.

THE LATER AVESTA.

Though the Gāthās are preponderantly eschatological in character, they deal much more with principles than with details. The later Avestan texts, sometimes termed the Younger Avesta, consequently serve to develop the picture outlined in those older documents. The Later Avesta, or remaining portion of the sacred canon so far as extant,⁸ may be classified, according to the commonly adopted arrangement, into the following divisions, or books. First in order comes the Yasna, ‘sacrifice, worship,’ the chief liturgical work of the sacred canon. It consists principally of ascriptions of praise and prayer, and, together with the Gāthās and the Yasna Haptanghāiti, it comprises seventy-two chapters. Then comes the Visprat (or Vīspered, as it is sometimes called), the book of invocations and offerings to ‘all the lords’ (Av. vīspe ratavō). It consists of additions to portions of the Yasna, which it resembles in language and in form, and comprises twenty-four chapters. Third in order come the Yashts (Av. yešti, ‘worship by laudation’), consisting of twenty-one hymns in praise of various divinities or ‘worshipful ones’ (Av. yazata). Together with these Yashts may be grouped certain minor texts, consisting of brief prayers and constituting what is called the Khvartak Apastāk (or Khorda Avesta). The last book of the sacred canon is the Vidēvdāt (or the Vendīdād, as it is commonly known), ‘law against the demons,’ a priestly code in twenty-two chapters. Besides the above texts there are a number of fragments, which are pieces surviving from the other Nasks, or divisions of the Avesta, no longer extant. The most important of these fragments, in the present connection, are those from the Hadhōkht Nask, and what is generally known as the Vishtāsp Yasht. Of minor importance are the Avestan quotations contained in the Nīrangastān, the Aogemadaēchā, and the Vicharkart i Dēnīk.

Although the books of the Later Avesta differ greatly in theme and style, they may be regarded in general as contemporaneous with the Achaemenian rule (b.c. 558-323) in Persia, although some portions may belong to the succeeding centuries.

THE PAHLAVI LITERATURE.

The subject of our study is developed further in the Pahlavi books, which belong mainly to the Sasanian period (a.d. 226-651), when Zoroastrianism enjoyed both material prosperity and a spiritual revival.

The Pahlavi literature⁹ may here be conveniently divided into two classes. First, Pahlavi translations (or versions) of the Avestan texts, intermingled with Pahlavi commentary. The work of translating the scriptures into the current idiom may already have begun during the latter part of the Parthian period. (b.c. 250-a.d. 226), and must have been completed at the latest during the reign of Shahpuhar II (a.d. 309-380), when the final revision of the Avestan texts was made by Āturpāt i Mahraspandān. Second, independent Pahlavi treatises on matters connected with religion. The importance of these latter Pahlavi texts can hardly be overestimated. They often preserve old material no longer extant in its Avestan form, and thus supplement the lacunae in the earlier doctrinal scheme, besides elaborating and adding to the data already found in the Avesta. It may be noted further that some of these Pahlavi works were either completed, though begun earlier, or written in their entirety during the rule of the Abbasids (A.D. 749-847), after the downfall of the Sasanian Empire. Additions seem to have been made to some Pahlavi works as late as the end of the eleventh century.

Among these independent Pahlavi treatises the most important for our investigation are (1) the Bundahishn,¹⁰ ‘creation of the beginning,’ or ‘original creation,’ a sort of Iranian Genesis and Revelation, based upon the old Dāmdāt Nask of the Avesta; (2) the Dēnkart, ‘acts of the religion,’ an encyclopaedia of Zoroastrianism; (3) the Artāk Vīrāz Nāmak, ‘book of Saint Vīrāz,’ or a Dantesque vision of Heaven and Hell; (4) the Dātastān i Dēnīk, ‘religious ordinances or opinions,’ together with (5) the Pahlavi Rivāyat accompanying this theological treatise; (6) the Dātastān i Mēnūk i Khrat, ‘ordinances of the Spirit of Wisdom’; (7) the Shāyist nē-Shāyist, ‘the proper and the improper’; and (8) the Shkand-vimānīk Vichār, ‘doubt-dispelling expositions.’ Of minor importance for our purpose, and seldom cited, are (9) the Handarz i Āturpāt i Mahraspandān, ‘admonitions of Āturpāt, son of Mahraspand’; (10) the Handarz i Hōsrav i Kavātān, ‘admonitions of Hōsrav, son of Kavāt’; (11) the Ganj i Shāhīkān, ‘treasure of the royal depository,’ a book of good counsel, containing gems of wisdom; and finally (12) the Vichītakīhā i Zātsparam, ‘selections of Zātsparam.’

THE PARSI-PERSIAN WRITINGS.

In surveying the literary material we must include the priestly writings of later times (dating after the eleventh century), the so-called Modern-Persian Zoroastrian literature of the Parsis.¹¹ The principal and doubtless earliest book among these is the prose Sad Dar, a treatise on ‘a hundred subjects’ connected with the Parsi religion. There exist two metrical versions of the Sad Dar, known as ‘the short-meter version’ (composed in 1496) and ‘the long-meter version’ (composed in 1605). The exact date of the writing of the prose Sad Dar has not yet been ascertained, but we can safely conjecture that it was already a very old book when the metrical versions were composed.¹² The second in order is the Sad Dar Bundahish, or the ‘Bundahish of a hundred chapters’ (composed some time before 1528), detailing in a hundred sections the chief customs and religious laws of the Parsis.¹³ Both these treatises are very often quoted in the later Persian Rivāyats, or collections of religious traditions (compiled between the years 1478 and 1773 a.d..).¹⁴ The most important of these latter writings, which stand third in order both as regards age and as regards contents, is the Rivāyat of Dārāb Hormazdyār. It may be noted that it is the most complete and systematically arranged among the so-called classified Rivāyats. It was compiled in a.d. 1679, and a Gujarati version of it was made by the author at a later date.

PRESENT-DAY CEREMONIES.

Further light may be thrown on the whole subject by the discussions added here and there to bring out the significance of certain of Zarathushtra's tenets which are observed today by the Parsis in their ceremonies connected with the dead, and which give assurance of life eternal in Paradise to the faithful who follow the religion of Zarathushtra, the Prophet of Ancient Iran.

NOTE ON THE TRANSCRIPTION OF IRANIAN WORDS

The system here adopted for the scientific transliteration of Avestan, Pahlavi, and Modern Persian words is substantially that employed by various scholars in the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie and in particular by Bartholomae in his Altiranisches Wörterbuch (see especially his introduction, page 23).

This exact mode of transcription is used to represent Iranian words when quoted from the texts translated by the author or when adduced in the footnotes. In these cases the words are printed in italics. In order to facilitate pronunciation, a slightly different method of transcription is followed when Iranian proper names and titles of books occur in continuous English text and are printed in roman type (š being represented by sh, č by ch, etc.).

Two points are particularly to be noted in connection with the transliteration of Pahlavi. First, the titles of Pahlavi works are uniformly given in the old Pahlavi form rather than in a form inclining to Modern Persian (e.g. Vičarkart i Dēnīk instead of Vijirkard i Dēnīg). Secondly, the Huzvārish words occurring in the Pahlavi text are invariably replaced (in accordance with the principles enunciated by Bartholomae in Indogermanische Forschungen, vol. 38, page 39) by the Pāzand equivalents which those word-forms were intended to represent.

Notes

1. See Clemen, Nachrichten pers. Religion, p. 54-94; cf. further Jackson in GIrPh. 2. 687-693, and also Gray in ERE. 1. 69-73.

2. For example, the Behistan inscription of Darius, col. 4. 54-59: ‘may Auramazdā be thy friend (dauštā) and thy family be numerous, and mayest thou live long (dargam jīvā). … (But, if wicked,) may Auramazdā be thy smiter (ja^etā) and there be no family to thee.’ Cf. also Bh. col. 4. 73-80.

3. Cf., for example, the words of Prexaspes as recorded by Herodotus (3.62), see Clemen, op. cit. p. 123; or again the speech placed on the lips of the dying Cyrus the Great by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia (8. 7. 17-24), see Clemen, op. cit. p. 89.

4. Among such references would be Theopompus (flourished b.c. 338) as quoted by Diogenes Laertius (flourished c. a.d. 210), Prooem. 6, 9; Plutarch (c. a.d. 46-120), Isis and Osiris, ch. 47; Aeneas of Gaza (flourished at the beginning of the sixth century), Theophrastus, 77; also others. Cf. Jackson in GIrPh. 2. 684; Clemen, op. cit. p. 123, 128-131, 167-169, 215; also Moulton, EZ. p. 415-417.

5. For views regarding the much-discussed question of the date of Zarathushtra see Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, p. 150-178 (New York, 1899), who makes a strong case in favor of accepting the date that stands in the Parsi tradition, namely b.c. 660—583. So also Meillet, Trois conférences sur les Gāthā (Paris, 1925), p. 21-32. Hertel, in a recent monograph, Die Zeit Zoroasters (Leipzing, 1924), advances arguments in support of a still later date, according to which (p. 47) Zarathushtra must have been alive in 522 b.c. and probably after that date also. Charpentier, in BSOS. (London, 1925), 3. 747-755, refutes this ‘new theory’ and is in favor of a much earlier date, namely (p. 754) ‘somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000-900 b.c.—or perhaps even somewhat earlier.’ This he holds ‘with Eduard Meyer, Andreas, Clemen, Bartholomae, and others.’ See especially Bartholomae, Zarathuštra's Leben und Lehre, p. 10-11 (Heidelberg, 1924), and compare Geldner in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 21. 246, but particularly 28. 1041.

6. The theory that the Gāthās presuppose a frame-work of prose no longer extant is mentioned by Jackson, Av. Grammar, introd. p. 18; see also Geldner in GIrPh. 2. 29; Bartholomae, Die Gatha's des Awesta, introd. p. 4-5; and cf. especially Meillet, Trois Conférences sur les Gāthā, p. 39-52.

7. For a detailed description of the contents, arrangement, extent, and character of the Gāthās and the Later Avesta, see Geldner, ‘Awestalitterature,’ in GIrPh. 2. 1-53.

8. See above, page 4, note 7.

9. For a detailed description of the extent and character of the Pahlavi literature and the later Parsi-Persian writings, see West, ‘Pahlavi Literature,’ in GIrPh. 2. 75-129.

10. There exist two recensions of the Bundahishn, one Indian and the other Iranian; see below, page 12, note 16.

11. See above, page 6, note 9.

12. For additional details as to this book, see below, page 18.

13. For further remarks, see below, page 18.

14. See also below, page 19, note 48.

Abbreviations and Symbols

Bh. Behistan inscription of Darius. …

BSOS. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, London Institution. …

Enc. Brit. Encyclopaedia Britannica. …

ERE. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. Hastings. …

EZ. Early Zoroastrianism (Moulton) …

GIrPh. Grundriss der iranischen Philologie. …

Bibliography

… Clemen, Carl. Die griechischen und lateinischen Nachrichten über die persische Religion. Giessen, 1920. …

Geldner, Karl F. Article ‘Zoroaster.’ In Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 28, p. 1039-1043. …

Gray, Louis H. Article ‘Life and Death (Iranian).’ In ERE. 8. 37. …

Jackson A. V. Williams. Die iranische Religion. In GIrPh. 2. 612-708, Strassburg, 1903. Pages 683-687. …

Meillet, A. Trois Conférences sur les Gâthâ de l’Avesta. Paris, 1925. (Annales du Musée Guimet, Bibliothèque de Vulgarisation, vol. 44.) …

Moulton, J. H. Early Zoroastrianism. London, 1913. Pages 154-181. …