SOURCE: “The Prophet” in The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961, pp. 33-61.

[In the essay that follows, Zaehner offers an overview of Zoroaster's life and his spiritual doctrines, as outlined in the Gathas.]

HIS PLACE AND DATE

The traditional date the Zoroastrians assign to their Prophet is ‘258 years before Alexander’, and for the Persian or Iranian the name ‘Alexander’ can only have meant the sack of Persepolis, the extinction of the Achaemenian Empire, and the death of the last of the kings of kings, Darius III. This occurred in 330 bc, and Zoroaster's date would then be 588 bc, and this date we may take to refer to the initial success of his prophetic mission which consisted in the conversion of King Vishtāspa when Zoroaster was forty years old.¹ Since he is traditionally said to have lived seventy-seven years, we will not be far wrong in dating him at 628-551 bc. It seems also to be generally agreed that the Prophet's sphere of operation in which his message was proclaimed was ancient Chorasmia—an area comprising, perhaps, what is now Persian Khorasan, Western Afghanistan, and the Turkmen Republic of the U.S.S.R.² There is, however, evidence to show that Zoroaster was not a native of these lands, for he himself complains to his God that he is persecuted in his homeland and asks him to what land he shall flee.³ Ultimately he found refuge with King Vishtāspa who was, according to Henning, the last paramount chief of a Chorasmian confederation finally overthrown by Cyrus. The only place in the Avesta which is brought into connexion with Zoroaster is Raghā (the classical Rhages and modern Ray, now a suburb of Tehran) which is described as ‘Zarathushtrian’.⁴ It is then rather more than possible that Zoroaster was a native of Rhages in Media and that he fled from there to Chorasmia where he finally found a patron in Vishtāspa. Yet even at the court of this prince, it would appear, he found no rest, for there are constant references to continuing hostile action on the part of his enemies even after he was assured of the royal protection.

The Economic and Political Background

The moral dualism between Asha and Druj, Truth and the Lie, Righteousness and Unrighteousness, which is so characteristic of the Gāthās, can be seen as a universalization of a concrete political and social situation in which a peaceful pastoral and cattle-breeding population was constantly threatened by the inroads of fierce nomadic tribes. To these latter Zoroaster habitually refers as the dregvants or drvants, the ‘followers of the Lie’, whereas his own supporters are the ashavans, the ‘followers of Truth or Righteousness’. The ‘Lie’, however, which both in the Gāthās, in the later Avesta, and the much later Pahlavi books, is the term used to represent the very principle of evil—Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, the ‘Evil’ or ‘Aggressive Spirit’ being only its leading personification—is not only the opponent and denial of Asha or abstract truth: much more essentially, in the Gāthās at least, it is predatory aggression against, or subversion of, good government and a peaceful agricultural and pastoral order. ‘This do I ask thee, Lord,’ the Prophet asks his God, ‘What retribution will there be for him who would secure the kingdom (political power) for the follower of the Lie, for the evil-doer who cannot earn a livelihood except by doing violence to the husbandman's herds and men, though they have not provoked him (adrujyantō, lit. “not lying to or harming him’).”⁵ The nomad is the aggressor and the word used to represent and, to some extent, to personify his aggressive impulse, is Aēshma, ‘violence’ or ‘fury’, from a root aēsh- meaning ‘to rush forward’ or ‘violent movement’.⁶ This violence is directed against both men and cattle, the latter being sought after not only as booty but as sacrificial victims. The plight of the ox, indeed, which finds itself defenceless in a world of violence, forms the subject-matter of a whole Gāthā. Its soul appeals in anguish to Ahura Mazdāh, the ‘Wise Lord’, who is also for Zoroaster the one true God and to the ‘Bounteous Immortals’ (amesha spentas) who at once surround him and are yet inseparable from him in that they are his most characteristic attributes.

‘For whom did ye create me?’ the soul of the ox demands. ‘Who was it that fashioned me? Violence, fury, cruelty, frightfulness, and might hem me in. No other husbandman have I but you; so assign me good grazing lands.⁷

To this Ahura Mazdāh replies:

‘None has been found to be thy master and to judge concerning thee in accordance with Righteousness; for the Creator fashioned thee for the herdsman and the husbandman. In agreement with Righteousness did the Wise Lord create for the ox the sacred formula of the oblation of fat⁸ and for parched(?) men [did he], bounteous in his ordinances, [create] milk.’⁹

This answer seems far from satisfactory to the soul of the ox who replies: ‘Whom hast thou from among men, who, being well disposed to us¹⁰ (the ox and the cow) would take care of us?’ ‘This man [alone] have I found here,’ the Wise Lord replies, ‘who has given ear to [my] ordinances, Zarathushtra of Spitama's lineage.’

Now what is the significance of this singular dialogue? The soul of the ox complains that it has become the object of violence and rapine, and this despite the fact that it has or believes it has divine protectors (‘No other husbandman have I but you’). Yet, far from comforting it, the Wise Lord replies that no one exists who can be its master or pass judgement concerning it according to Righteousness, for the Wise Lord himself in agreement with Righteousness had created for it ‘the sacred formula of the oblation of fat’ whereas its milk was to assuage the thirst of men. This is as much as to say that in the original dispensation the bovine species was destined not only to nourish man with its milk but also to serve as a sacrificial victim. This Ahura Mazdāh had decreed ‘in agreement with Asha’, that is, Righteousness or Truth.

Now of all the ‘Bounteous Immortals’¹¹ who surround and partake of the nature of Ahura Mazdāh, Asha alone is of demonstrably Indo-Iranian origin, that is to say, as a major religious concept it is common to both the earliest stratum of Indian religion found in the Rig-Veda and to the Avesta. Vohu Manah, the ‘Good Mind’, on the other hand, is a purely Iranian concept and is probably an invention of the Prophet Zoroaster himself. So it is that the soul of the ox asks whether no man exists who would take care of cattle in accordance with the Good Mind.¹² Such a man, Ahura Mazdāh replies, is to be found in Zoroaster.

This would seem to indicate that the Prophet did not regard himself as ‘doing away with the law and the prophets’ that preceded him in toto, rather he was adding a new dimension to the old religion in so far as it was represented by Ahura Mazdāh (if indeed he existed before his time) and Asha. Hence he continues to refer to his own followers as asha-vans, ‘followers of Truth or Righteousness’ and to his opponents as dreg-vans, ‘followers of the Lie’, that principle which violates the natural order.

Now it is obvious from the Gāthās that Zoroaster met with very stiff opposition from the civil and ecclesiastical authorities when once he had proclaimed his mission. The soul of the ox, when it learns that the powers above have entrusted it to him, cries out in genuine dismay and barely concealed derision: ‘What, am I to be satisfied with a protector who has no power, with the word of a feeble man, I who crave [a protector] who exercises his sovereignty at will?¹³ Will a man ever exist who will give him [effectual] aid with his hands?’¹⁴ Zoroaster too was conscious of his weakness and of how formidable the opposition to his teaching was: he complains of being persecuted by his own community because he is master of only a few cattle and men¹⁵ whereas his enemy is stronger than he.¹⁶

Once, however, he becomes confident of the patronage of King Vishtāspa his tone changes and he sets himself up as the judge between the two parties:

‘Remembering your laws we proclaim words to which those who cleave to the laws of the Lie and lay waste the worldly goods of the [followers of] Truth, will not listen, [words] most good, forsooth, to those who have given their hearts to Mazdāh. Though, maybe, the better path to choose may not be plain for all to see, yet will I face you all, for Ahura Mazdāh recognizes [me as] judge between the two parties, for it is we who live in accordance with Truth.’¹⁷

TRUTH AND THE LIE

The Prophet knew no spirit of compromise and, as prophets do, he saw things very much in black and white. On the one hand stood Asha—Truth and Righteousness—on the other the Druj—the Lie, Wickedness, and Disorder. This was not a matter on which compromise was possible: it was literally a matter of life and death, for he promised to bring as ‘an offering the life of his own body, the first-fruits of his good mind and deeds to Mazdāh and to the Truth. Through these are his hearkening (s(e)raosha) [to the Word] and his Kingdom (khshathra).’¹⁸ For him the issue is crystal clear and the battle is on.

There would seem to be little doubt that an actual state of war existed between the two parties, Zoroaster and his patron Vishtāspa standing on the one side and the so-called followers of the Lie, many of whom he mentions by name, on the other; for not only does the Prophet forbid his followers to have any contact with the ‘followers of the Lie’,¹⁹ but he also asks his God directly to which of the two opposing armies he will give the victory.²⁰ Like Muhammad, Zoroaster relied on the sword to enforce the efficacy of his prophetic word.

‘A true enemy of the follower of the Lie and a powerful support of the follower of Truth’:²¹ that is how Zoroaster describes himself. There can be no question of compromise with what the Prophet considers to be evil: the enemy must be either vanquished or converted. ‘He who, by word or thought or with his hands, works evil to the follower of the Lie or converts his comrade to the good, such a man does the will of the Wise Lord and pleases him well.’²²

Now who were these followers of the Lie whom Zoroaster so vigorously attacks? Primarily they were worshippers of the daēvas, a word that, in Zoroastrianism, comes to mean simply ‘demon’. Originally, however, the daēvas were not demons, they were a class of gods that were common to the Indians and Iranians alike. This is made certain by the fact that in the Rig-Veda in India two classes of deity are distinguished, the asuras and the devas, the former being more remote from man and the latter being closer to him. In the Rig-Veda the greatest of the asuras is Varuna, the protector of Truth, who is the guardian of the moral law, whereas the greatest of the devas is Indra, the war-god of the Aryans, who is the very personification of victorious might and who is not at all concerned with the moral order. The fate of the two classes of deity was very different in India and Iran; for whereas, in India, the asuras in the course of time sank to the rank of demon, in Iran it was the daēvas (= devas) who met with the same dismal fate, largely as a result of the direct onslaught that Zoroaster unleashed against them.

The leaders of Zoroaster's opponents, the followers of the Lie as he calls them, are usually called kavis and karapans. It has generally been assumed that the latter were a priestly caste, and the word itself has been shown to mean ‘mumbler’,²³ a reference, presumably, to the recitation of a traditional liturgy. The former term kavi, however, is not so clear, for it seems to have a quite different meaning in the Indian and the Iranian traditions. In India the word means a composer of hymns, but in the Gāthās Zoroaster uses the word not only to denote the leaders of his opponents but also as an epithet of his own patron Vishtāspa. Moreover, in the later Avesta the word is used to mean ‘ruler’ or ‘king’ and is regularly applied to the legendary kings of Iran, and the same development is maintained in the later languages. Despite the Indian evidence, then, it would appear that the kavis (of whom Zoroaster's patron was one) were local rulers who in the normal course of events would be supporters of the old religion which Zoroaster attacked. His enemies, then, were the established civil and religious authorities which supported the ancient national religion.

What this religion was is made fairly clear by Zoroaster's own attacks on it.

THE TRADITIONAL RELIGION

That it is a traditional religion he is attacking is made quite clear by the fact that it is Yima, the first man according to the ancient Iranian tradition, whom he singles out for especial abuse. ‘Among those sinners,’ he says, ‘was Yima, the son of Vivahvant, for so have we heard, who, to please our men, gave them portions of the flesh of the ox to eat. As to these, O Mazdāh, I leave the decision to thee(?).’²⁴ Zoroaster is here attacking a practice said to have been instituted by Yima who was both in the Indian and Iranian tradition²⁵ the first man, and which must therefore have been a national institution. Yima's crime would seem to have been not so much that he had introduced meat-eating among his people as that he had slaughtered cattle in sacrifice to the ancient gods. This sacrifice would appear to have been associated with the equally ancient rite of the consumption of the fermented juice of the Haoma plant which appears to have been associated with ritual intoxication.²⁶ ‘When wilt thou strike down this filthy drunkenness,’ the Prophet exclaims, ‘with which the priests (karapans) evilly delude [the people] as do the wicked rulers of the provinces in [full] consciousness [of what they do].’²⁷ More strangely Yima and his co-religionists are accused not only of laying waste the pasture lands but of declaring that the sun and the ox were ‘the worst things to see’.²⁸ This seems very odd indeed since Yima himself was almost certainly a solar figure, and there seems no ready explanation for so extraordinary an accusation except that the rite alleged to have been instituted by Yima consisted of the ritual slaughter of a bull or cow in a sunless place or at night. This is so strikingly similar to the Mithraic mysteries which were later to be practised in the Roman Empire and which were certainly of Iranian origin, that scholars have maintained that these rites were performed in honour of Mithra. We shall have to consider this view when we come to deal with the god Mithra as he appears in the Avesta.

From the passage we have been discussing, however, it would seem clear that Zoroaster is attacking a traditional cult in which a bull was slaughtered at night or in a sunless place in honour of the daēvas: this rite was accompanied by another in which the juice of the Haoma plant was extracted and ritually consumed. This juice must have been fermented and was certainly intoxicating. What is strange, however, is that already in the later Avesta the Haoma rite had become central to the Zoroastrian liturgy itself, and the whole of the later liturgy shows that in its original form animal sacrifice must have been prominent. So in Yasna 11, which forms part of the liturgy dedicated to Haoma, both the ox and Haoma are represented as complaining of being illused; but the ox does not, as one might expect, complain of being slaughtered but merely accuses the priest of not distributing its sacrificial flesh equitably, while Haoma complains that the priest withholds from him the jaw, tongue, and left eye of the sacrificial animal which had been allotted to him by his father, Ahura Mazdāh.

This, indeed, is one of the most puzzling aspects of early Zoroastrianism, for the whole liturgy of the Yasna (of which the Gāthās of the Prophet form part) centres round the Haoma rite, one form of which was certainly condemned by Zoroaster, and it is clear that although the rite as performed in later times did not involve animal sacrifice, it certainly did so in its earliest form, for among the offerings mentioned are both the ‘beneficent ox’ and the ‘living ox’. In the historical development of the ritual the ‘living ox’ was represented by milk, but in its original form it seems clear that an ox must actually have been immolated in sacrifice. How such a radical distortion of the Prophet's express wishes can have come about we shall shortly have to discuss when we come to deal with the later Avesta. For the moment it is sufficient to note that the so-called ‘followers of the Lie’ must have been worshippers of the traditional gods whose liturgy included the slaughter of an ox and the consumption of the fermented juice of the Haoma plant. Zoroaster sees himself as a prophet sent by God not only to proclaim a new doctrine but also to reform ritual practices claiming immemorial antiquity.

What this traditional religion was is fairly clear in its broad outlines both from the later Avesta into which much of the earlier ‘paganism’ has been readmitted, and from the parallel religion of the Rig-Veda in India which was never subjected to any radical reform. In the Rig-Veda, as we have seen, two types of deity were recognized, the asuras and the devas—the former being more remote and more directly concerned with the right ordering of the cosmos, the latter being nearer to man, more active, and more nearly associated with the victorious advance of the Aryan tribes then swarming into India. So too in Iran these two types of deity must have existed side by side before the Zoroastrian reform, and it is amply clear from the Gāthās themselves that the daēvas (= the Indian devas) were considered by Zoroaster to be no gods at all but maleficent powers who refused to do the will of the Wise Lord. Further evidence of this is supplied by the later Avesta where we find some of these demons’ names, and these names correspond exactly to the names of some of the most prominent gods of the Rig-Veda. Thus the most popular of all the Rig-Vedic gods, Indra, the patron war-god of the Aryans, turns up in the later Avesta as a demon. So too we meet with Saurva corresponding to the Indian Śarva or Rudra, the most sinister of the Vedic gods who was later to be known as Śiva, and Nāñhaithya corresponding to the two Nāsatyas or Aśvins of the Vedic texts. Never, however, does Zoroaster attack the other class of deity, the ahuras (= the Indian asuras), and yet he, pointedly perhaps, refrains from mentioning any of them by name. It would, however, not be true to say that he ignores their existence, for he twice speaks of ahuras or ‘lords’ in the plural,²⁹ thereby indicating that he had not, at least at the time when the two hymns in question were composed, entirely rejected the ahuras existing alongside his own supreme God, Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord. It is, however, fair to say that he found them inconsistent with his own religion and therefore studiously avoided mentioning them by name.

Zoroaster's world-view is rooted in the actual conditions of his time. From the old religion he takes over the antithesis—already attested in the Rig-Veda—of Truth (asha) and the Lie (druj), and in this respect his religion may be called an ethical dualism, but, unlike the Rig-Veda, he thrusts this fundamental antagonism right into the forefront of his religious teaching. He does not, however, start from any abstract principle, he starts from the concrete situation as it faced him in Eastern Iran. On the one side he found a settled pastoral and agricultural community devoted to the tilling of the soil and the raising of cattle, on the other he found a predatory, marauding tribal society which destroyed both cattle and men, and which was a menace to any settled way of life. Their gods were like unto them: never were they good rulers, delivering over, as they did, the ox to Fury (aēshma)³⁰ instead of providing it with good pasture.

In his war against the ‘followers of the Lie’ Zoroaster neither offers nor seeks a compromise: for him his opponents are evil incarnate, and they are to be treated as such. In an astonishing passage he says: ‘Whether a man dispose of much or little wealth, he should show kindness(?) to the follower of Truth, but should be evil to the follower of the Lie,’³¹ for the man ‘who is most good to the follower of the Lie is himself a follower of the Lie’.³² There can, then, be no question of loving your enemies because they embody the Lie, and so long as they do so, they are evil creatures to whom no mercy should be shown. So in his colloquy with the Good Mind³³ Zoroaster describes himself as a ‘true enemy of the follower of the Lie’ and a ‘strong support of the follower of Truth’.³⁴ The Prophet, however, did not believe that the followers of the Lie were necessarily irretrievably damned, for every man is free to choose between the two parties for himself. So long as they persist in adhering to what he considers to be a false religion they must be attacked, but the possibility of conversion is always at the back of his mind. ‘He who by word or thought or with his hands works evil to the follower of the Lie or converts his comrade to the good, such a man does the will of Ahura Mazdāh and pleases him well.’³⁵ His ultimate aim, indeed, is not merely to make war on the followers of the Lie, but rather to convert them and all men to the new religion he proclaimed.³⁶

FREE WILL

Zoroastrianism is the religion of free will par excellence. Each man is faced sooner or later with making his choice between Truth and the Lie—the true religion which the Prophet claimed had been revealed to him and the false religion which his contemporaries had inherited from their forebears. Zoroaster, however, projected this basic opposition between Truth and the Lie which he saw working itself out here and now on earth on to the purely spiritual sphere: on all levels were the two principles opposed, and so he came to see that the whole cosmos, both material and spiritual, was shot through with this fundamental tension: over against a transcendental Good Mind stood the Evil Mind, over against the Bounteous Spirit the Evil or Destructive Spirit, over against Right-Mindedness Pride and so on; and on every level a choice had to be made, Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, himself not being exempt.

On the lowest level the ox has freedom to choose between the good husbandman and the man who is no husbandman, and ‘of the two it chose the husbandman who would tend it, a master who follows Truth and cultivates(?) the Good Mind; no share in the good news shall the man who is no husbandman have, however much he strive.’³⁷ The free choice which is the privilege even of the animal kingdom was God's free gift to his creatures at the very beginning of existence, for ‘in the beginning, O Mazdāh, by thy mind didst thou create for us material forms (gaēthā) and consciences and rational wills (khratu), for thou didst establish corporeal life—deeds and doctrines that men might thereby make their choices in freedom of will.’³⁸ The choice that must be made is ultimately always that between Truth and the Lie. ‘For our choice,’ the Prophet says, ‘Truth has been presented for our own benefit, but to the [false] teacher the Lie for his own undoing.’³⁹ Thus though there is no doubt at all in Zoroaster's mind that Truth is exclusively on his side, he realizes that the freedom of the will entails freedom to make the wrong choice, freedom, that is, to err; and it is interesting that the word varena which in Avestan means ‘free choice’ comes, in its Pahlavi form varan, to mean ‘heresy’—an exact parallel to the development of the Greek word hairesis in Christianity. ‘Both he who speaks true and he who speaks falsely, both the wise and the fool, raise their voices in accordance with [what is in their] hearts and minds.’⁴⁰ Both parties are entitled to proclaim their doctrines and there would seem to be no obvious way of deciding which doctrines is true unless some universally accepted authority is recognized. This difficulty was fully apparent to Zoroaster for he asks of his God who is really a follower of the Truth and who a follower of the Lie,⁴¹ thereby conceding that his enemies may have been sincere in holding their false views. To solve the difficulty and because he sincerely saw himself as a prophet of God, he claimed such authority for himself and set himself up as judge between the two parties. ‘Though,’ he says, ‘maybe, the better path to choose may not be plain for all to see, yet will I face you all, for the Wise Lord recognizes [me as] judge between the two parties, for it is we who live in accordance with Truth.’⁴²

It is in this capacity of judge, perhaps, that Zoroaster in Yasna 30 summons all men to make the great decision. ‘Hear with your ears,’ he prophesies, ‘behold with mind all clear the two choices between which you must decide, each man [deciding] for his own self, [each man] knowing how it will appear (?) to us at the [time of] great crisis.’⁴³ With these words he introduces the myth of the primeval choice that the two Spirits whom he calls ‘twins’ had to make at the beginning of time:

‘In the beginning those two Spirits who are the well-endowed(?) twins were known as the one good and the other evil, in thought, word, and deed. Between them the wise chose rightly, not so the fools. And when these Spirits met they established in the beginning life and death that in the end the followers of the Lie should meet with the worst existence, but the followers of Truth with the Best Mind. Of these two Spirits he who was of the Lie chose to do the worst things; but the Most Holy Spirit, clothed in rugged heaven, [chose] Truth as did [all] who sought with zeal to do the pleasure of the Wise Lord by [doing] good works. Between the two the daēvas did not choose rightly; for, as they deliberated, delusion overcame them so that they chose the most Evil Mind. Then did they, with one accord, rush headlong unto Fury that they might thereby extinguish(?) the existence of mortal men.’⁴⁴

THE TWO SPIRITS

It is impossible to say whether this myth of the two twins was original to Zoroaster himself or whether he was reformulating a more ancient myth in accordance with his own ideology. In the myth, however, he projects the concrete situation he saw on earth—where the followers of the Lie represented destructive forces hostile to physical life, and the followers of Truth the life-conserving and life-enhancing forces—on to the spiritual world. Here the basic duality of Truth and Falsehood, Righteousness and Wickedness, Order and Disorder are personified in a pair of Primal Twins whom he calls the Bounteous or Holy Spirit—for the word spenta usually translated as ‘holy’ implies increase and abundance—and the Destructive or Evil Spirit (Angra Mainyu, the later Ahriman), the one the bringer of life and the other the author of death. These two Spirits stand over against each other, irreconcilably opposed to each other in a total contradiction.

‘I will speak out,’ the Prophet proclaims, ‘concerning the two Spirits of whom, at the beginning of existence, the Holier thus spoke to him who is Evil: “Neither our thoughts, nor our teachings, nor our wills, nor our choices, nor our words, nor our deeds, nor our consciences, nor yet our souls agree.”’⁴⁵

In the Gāthās the Holy or Bounteous Spirit is not identical with Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, who is also the supreme God, but is only an aspect of him, one of his ‘sons’. But even Ahura Mazdāh himself must make his choice between Truth and the Lie, between good and evil. In a strange passage in which both men and daēvas are represented as making supplication at the divine court Zoroaster says:

‘Family, and village, and tribe, and you daēvas too, like me, sought to rejoice the Wise Lord [saying]: “Let us be thy messengers that we may keep at bay those who hate thee.” To them did the Wise Lord, united with the Good Mind and in close companionship with bright Truth, make answer from his Kingdom: “Holy and good Right-Mindedness do we choose: let it be ours.”’⁴⁶

So does God himself make the choice that all must make between good and evil. United with the Good Mind and in close companionship with Truth or Righteousness, God chooses the good and utterly condemns the old religion which he identifies with evil.

‘But you, you daēvas,’ he exclaims, ‘and whosoever multiplies his sacrifice to you, are all the seed of the Evil Mind, the Lie, and Pride; doubtful(?) are your deeds for which ye are famed throughout the seventh part of the earth. For ye have so devised it that men who do what is worst should thrive [as if they were] favoured by the “gods” (daēvas)—men who depart from the Good Mind and break away from the will of the Wise Lord and from Truth. So would you defraud man of the good life and immortality even as the Evil Spirit [defrauded you], you daēvas, through his Evil Mind—a deed by which, with evil words, he promised dominion to the followers of the Lie.’⁴⁷

So does the Wise Lord unequivocally condemn the old religion and take the part of Truth which he identifies with Zoroaster's reform.

ZOROASTER AND HIS GOD

Zoroaster, on his side, saw himself as a prophet and a visionary. He was also a priest⁴⁸ and therefore, presumably, must originally have been connected with the earlier cult which he was later to condemn. He saw himself as a prophet speaking to God and hearkening to his word. He is ‘the Prophet who raises his voice in veneration, the friend of Truth’⁴⁹ and God's friend.⁵⁰ His relationship to his God is not one of servility, rather he asks his help—the kind of help that a friend grants to a friend.⁵¹ His mission was foreordained, for he was chosen by God ‘in the beginning’,⁵² and he claims to have seen him in a vision which transported him back in time to the beginning of the world. ‘Then, Mazdāh, did I realize that thou wast holy when I saw thee in the beginning, at the birth of existence, when thou didst ordain a [just] requital for deeds and words, an evil lot for evil [done] and a good one for a good [deed]: by thy virtue [shall all this come to pass] at the last turning-point of creation.’⁵³ Repeatedly he asks to see his God and the entities associated with him.⁵⁴ ‘When will I see thee in Truth, and the Good Mind, and the path [that leads] to the Wise Lord, the most mighty, [the path that is] to hearken [to his word]?’⁵⁵ The word sraosha which we have translated as ‘to hearken’ and which is usually translated as ‘obedience’ or ‘discipline’ probably originally meant the Prophet's relationship to God, the one hearing and obeying the divine message, the other hearkening to the prayers of his prophet. Although Sraosha, the genius of hearing and obeying, was later to become more fully personalized and anthropomorphized than almost any other deity, surviving right down into Islamic times as Surūsh, the messenger of God sometimes identified with the angel Gabriel, yet the original meaning of his name was never wholly lost, for the Pahlavi translators often render it with the Pahlavi word nighōshishn meaning ‘listening’ or ‘hearkening’; and this meaning of the Avestan word too can still be detected in Yasna 56.1 in the phrase ‘May the listening to [the word of] the Wise Lord be present here’. Thus Zoroaster not only sees his God, he also hears the words he speaks. This ‘hearing’ of God's voice he expresses in the most concrete possible imagery: he asks God to speak to him ‘with the tongue of his mouth’.⁵⁶ He hears God and he sees him, and seeing him knows him as he is in Truth: ‘Now have I seen him with my eyes, knowing him in Truth to be the Wise Lord of the Good Mind and of [good] deeds and words.’⁵⁷ Zoroaster realizes the holiness of God not by thought or concentration but by a direct vision of his goodness, truth, and eternity. ‘Then did I understand in my mind,’ he confesses, ‘that thou art the ancient, thou the [ever] young, the father of the Good Mind, when I comprehended thee with my eyes—[thee], the very creator of Truth, Lord of [all] creation in thy works.’⁵⁸ For the Prophet this vision is self-authenticating: he has seen God as the holy and good, as the eternal, the primeval being who is yet ever young, the first and the last, and the origin of all goodness: he sees him with his eyes and grasps him with his mind. It is, if you like, an intellectual vision of God's holiness. ‘Then did I realize that thou wast holy, Wise Lord …’ is the refrain that runs throughout Yasna 43: it is an intensely personal experience of the reality of God's goodness.

The Avestan word we have translated as ‘holy’ is spenta, but we might equally translate ‘bounteous’. The Pahlavi translators render the word by the Pahlavi equivalent abhzōnīk, an adjective derived from abhzōn (‘increase’). Holiness, for Zoroaster, also meant abundance, growth, and health. The divine nature is seen as an overwhelming giving of self, as superabundant life both in the spiritual and the material realm; for Zoroastrianism is in all its phases a religion that enthusiastically and thankfully accepts and blesses all the good things of this world as well as those of the next: indeed, in the Gāthās, the work of the Prophet himself, it is often exceedingly difficult to decide whether he is referring to a concrete situation here on earth or whether he is speaking of the last things.

THE BOUNTEOUS IMMORTALS

God is spenta: he is holy and he gives abundance. Ahura Mazdāh, however, the Wise Lord, is not identical with Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit, who, as we have seen, is the eternal antagonist of the Evil or Destructive Spirit ‘who chose to do the worst things’. The relationship between the Holy Spirit and those other entities that are close to the Wise Lord is not easy to define. Very soon after the Prophet's death these ‘entities’ were drawn into a closed system, forming a heptad of so-called amesha spentas, ‘Holy’ or ‘Bounteous Immortals’. Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, came to be identified with the Holy Spirit, though nowhere in the Gāthās is such an identification made, and beside him were six abstractions, all of which figure prominently in the Gāthās—the Good Mind, Truth or Righteousness (asha), Right-Mindedness (ārmaiti), the Kingdom, Wholeness, and Immortality. In the Gāthās Ahura Mazdāh is spoken of as the father of the Holy Spirit,⁵⁹ as he is the father of Truth,⁶⁰ the Good Mind,⁶¹ and Right-Mindedness;⁶² but paternity in God is not to be understood in any crude sense, for he is also said simply to have created Truth or Righteousness by an act of will (khratu). Zoroaster's idea of paternity in God, then, is very like its Christian counterpart: Holy Spirit, Good Mind, Truth, and Right-Mindedness are thought into existence by the Wise Lord who is the supreme Being. Of these various entities the Holy Spirit, Truth, and the Good Mind stand nearest to God and are rightly regarded as his hypostases. Right-Mindedness, on the other hand, is rather the attitude of man towards God, it is an attitude of humility, the opposite of pride,⁶³ while the Kingdom, though it is an essential attribute of Ahura Mazdāh, being his by right, may on occasion be usurped by the followers of the Lie.⁶⁴ Wholeness and Immortality are indeed attributes of God, but in Zoroaster's thought they are also regarded as being primarily his gifts to man.⁶⁵ Indeed, of the ‘Bounteous Immortals’ only the Holy Spirit is exclusively appropriated to God: the others belong to God by nature but can be and are bestowed on man if he lives according to Truth. So intimately are the spiritual and material worlds connected that very soon after the Prophet's death each of the Bounteous Immortals came to be identified with physical ‘elements’—the Good Mind with cattle, Truth with fire, the Kingdom with metals, Right-Mindedness with the earth, Wholeness with water, and Immortality with plants. This linking up of the spiritual with the material world in so concrete and apparently arbitrary a manner seems to date back to Zoroaster himself. Already in the Gāthās, Ārmaiti or Right-Mindedness seems to have been identified with the earth, for it is said to have been created as a pasturage for the ox⁶⁶ and plants are made to grow for it,⁶⁷ whereas in Yasna 51.7 Wholeness and Immortality seem to be equated with water and plants.⁶⁸ Moreover, already in the Gāthās, fire is a symbol of Truth and has its power,⁶⁹ while the Good Mind is closely connected with cattle.

Yet in Zoroaster's thought all this is subsidiary: the Bounteous Immortals are primarily aspects of God, but aspects in which man too can share. Wholeness and Immortality are pre-eminently the divine qualities which the Wise Lord bestows on the followers of Truth, and it is the Good Mind which unites man to God⁷⁰ and, so to speak, activates Righteousness in him; and it is through Righteousness or Truth that the just man treads the paths of the Good Mind.⁷¹ Yet it is quite impossible to assign any definite role to these Bounteous Immortals in the Gāthās: they are little more than the agencies through which God acts. The Good Mind is simply God's mind, though this does not prevent man from participating in it. Truth is what it is because it is God's creation, and he himself is not only spenta, ‘holy’ or ‘bounteous’, he is also asha-van ‘truth-ful’.⁷² That the Bounteous Immortals were not conceived of by Zoroaster as having an existence separate from God seems to be shown by the fact that God usually appears as the agent and his various divine operations take place through one of the Bounteous Immortals, and it is for this reason that, grammatically, they so frequently appear in the instrumental case. Typical of the way in which Zoroaster sees God and his Bounteous Immortals in mutual interdependence is the following stanza: ‘May the Wise Lord give us Wholeness and Immortality through the Holy Spirit and the Best Mind, through deeds and words [that are] in accordance with Truth, and through the Kingdom and Right-Mindedness.’⁷³

Here all the Bounteous Immortals appear together—two being God's direct gift to man—Wholeness and Immortality, the other five being the instruments through which he operates. This ‘instrumental’ role of the Bounteous Immortals can perhaps be better understood if we compare it to the formulae of Christian prayer. Christianity too is a monotheistic religion, but its God is not an absolutely pure monad but a Trinity: so the ending of a well-known Catholic prayer is per eumdem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum—‘through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end.’ Man prays to God through Christ just as God creates through the same Christ, his Son and pre-existent Word. So, too, in Zoroastrianism, it is through the Good Mind that God communes with man, and through the Holy Spirit that he creates, both the Good Mind and the Holy Spirit being his ‘sons’. He also reigns in virtue of the Kingdom which is his by right in union with the Holy Spirit, and his reign lasts for ever and ever because he is possessed of Wholeness and Immortality.

It is true that there are traces of a specific relationship between Right-Mindedness and the earth, and between Wholeness and Immortality and water and plants in the Gāthās themselves, but this is because Zoroaster saw the spiritual and material worlds as being the opposite poles of a unitary whole intimately linked together. The link is only weakened with the appearance of the Lie and its most illustrious representative, Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit, who first introduces death into the world. In the later tradition man is the earthly counterpart of Ahura Mazdāh himself, the ox of the Good Mind, fire of Truth, the earth of Right-Mindedness, water and plants of Wholeness and Immortality. None of this does violence to the Prophet's own thought, for physical life in its perfection is the mirror of the divine life: earth and water which give rise to plants, plants which provide fodder for cattle, and cattle which furnish both milk and meat to man are all part of the universal life-process, of the universal natural harmony that is only marred by the violence and corruption introduced by the Lie. But since the Lie is with us and is likely to remain with us as long as the world lasts, man needs weapons with which to defend himself, he needs the metals which are the earthly counterpart of the Kingdom, but which, like the Kingdom itself, can be filched from him and used against him by his enemies. Finally there is the fire which Zoroaster made the centre of his cultus⁷⁴ because in its power to destroy darkness it is the symbol of Truth itself whose brilliance too destroys the darkness of error.

Very much has been written on the ‘origin’ of the Bounteous Immortals, and the mere fact that scholars are in such total disagreement on this subject only goes to show that we know nothing certainly. Asha who is Truth, Righteousness, and Order, we also know in the Rig-Veda as Rta; and we can therefore be certain that the concept is inherited from Indo-Iranian times, as is its opposition to the Lie. In the case of the Kingdom (khshathra), Wholeness, and Immortality, it would seem rather futile to look round for an origin at all since these are concepts that are common to almost all religions. As to the Good Mind and Right-Mindedness, these would seem to be further and more specific elaborations of the basic antithesis between Truth and the Lie that gives its especial flavour to Zoroastrianism. Over against the Good Mind is set the Evil Mind,⁷⁵ just as the Holy Spirit on a yet higher level is opposed to the Destructive Spirit. There is, however, this difference: the Holy Spirit is conceived of as being totally divine whereas the Good Mind, though divine and of divine provenance, can be shared by man, and it is this selfsame Good Mind which envelops the Prophet when he comes to the realization of the holiness of God;⁷⁶ and it is the Good Mind whom he consults⁷⁷ and with whom he seeks union.⁷⁸ Similarly Ārmaiti, Right-Mindedness, is opposed to Tarōmaiti or Pairimaiti, ‘pride’. Right-Mindedness, then, is predominantly a human excellence, and because this is so, it is Right-Mindedness rather than Truth that the Wise Lord chooses when he himself is required to make his irrevocable choice between truth and falsehood; for Truth and the Good Mind are his from all eternity whereas Right-Mindedness is rather the right and fitting response of man to the Good Mind of God in accordance with Truth.

It would, then, seem quite likely that both the Good Mind and Right-Mindedness on the one hand and their opposites, the Evil Mind and ‘perverted-mindedness’ or ‘pride’, are concepts developed by Zoroaster to fill out the overall picture of the great antagonism between Truth and Lie he had inherited from his forebears. That Zoroaster felt himself to be especially close to the Good Mind seems clear from the following passages. In Yasna 29 where the soul of the ox complains of ill-treatment at the hands of the ‘followers of the Lie’, neither Truth nor the Wise Lord himself can or will grant the ox a protector. On the contrary: ‘In agreement with Righteousness did the Wise Lord create for the ox the sacred formula of the oblation of fat and for parched(?) men [did he], bounteous in his ordinances, [create] milk.’⁷⁹ The soul of the ox, then, appeals directly to the Good Mind and in return the latter appoints Zoroaster as his protector. Thus the Good Mind is represented as modifying an eternal ordinance promulgated by the supreme Being and his Truth, but he does this not of himself but at the behest of Ahura Mazdāh himself, who chooses him as his vehicle of prophecy through which he inspires him not indeed to abrogate his ordinances but to reform what in them had been corrupted. Similarly in what is perhaps the most personal of all the revelations vouchsafed to Zoroaster it is the Good Mind who envelops him and asks him who he is and what his credentials are. ‘Who art thou? Whose son art thou? By what token wilt thou appoint a day that I may question thee concerning thy worldly goods and thy self?’⁸⁰ To this the Prophet replies: ‘First I am Zarathushtra, a true enemy of the follower of the Lie as far as lies within my power, then a powerful support for the follower of Truth.’ Thus it is to the Good Mind that Zoroaster confesses himself to be a genuine follower of Truth, and again it is through him that he establishes the fire as the centre of his cult. There is then good reason to suppose that the Good Mind at least was a personal invention of Zoroaster's—the Good Mind which was the manifestation of the divine mind to him personally.

It should not, however, be supposed that the modification of an age-old ordinance of the Wise Lord and his Truth by the Good Mind indicates any tension within the personality of the divine heptad, for Truth and the Good Mind are always represented as being intimately united:⁸¹ the Good Mind is merely the more active partner, the agency through which God prefers to reveal himself to Zoroaster. Both are intimately associated with the supreme Being, and Professor Duchesne-Guillemin is quite right to refer to the three combined as the divine ‘Triad’. Truth and the Good Mind are inseparably united to Ahura Mazdāh in a way that the other Bounteous Immortals are not.

The very originality of Zoroaster's conception of these divine entities which surround his God has disconcerted scholars ever since the Avesta was discovered. The theories that have been elucubrated to explain them in fact explain nothing at all and are scarcely worth even a cursory notice. They have been likened to the Ādityas of early Indian mythology despite the fact that not one single name is common to the two groups; or, because their number is seven, they have been likened to the Babylonian planetary system with which they have nothing whatever in common. More recently the distinguished French scholar, Georges Dumézil, has seen in them the representatives of the ‘three functions’ into which, he maintains, all Indo-European society was divided—Truth and the Good Mind representing what he calls the function of sovereignty, the Kingdom representing the warrior function, and Wholeness and Immortality representing the pastoral and agricultural activity of the peasant. This hypothesis, though not wholly implausible, really explains nothing, and it is further vitiated by the parallels that Dumézil and his disciples attempt to draw between Zoroaster's Bounteous Immortals and specific Vedic deities: the parallels are not parallel at all. The defenders of this latest fashion, quite undaunted by the fact that none of the Zoroastrian ‘entities’ correspond in name with the Vedic deities they are supposed to resemble or by the fact that their nature and function are quite different, seem indifferent to the acknowledged fact that the Asha—Truth and Righteousness and Cosmic Order—of the Gāthās corresponds most exactly, in etymology and in function, to the Rta of the Rig-Veda. This, at least, can safely be said to form part of a common Indo-Iranian heritage, and, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, we must suppose that the other ‘entities’ were developed from very rudimentary beginnings by Zoroaster since they are only faintly adumbrated in the Veda. The Prophet's originality may be disconcerting, but it is none the less real for that. That his thought was indeed profoundly original becomes glaringly obvious once we compare his Gāthās both with the hymns of the Rig-Veda and with the later Avesta. The parallels between these latter two are unmistakable: in the Gāthās we are in a totally different religious world. Both the Rig-Veda and the later Avesta are frankly polytheistic or—if one prefers the more ambiguous phrase—henotheistic, whereas in the Gāthās we meet with a pure monotheism that not only has the stamp of a profoundly experienced revelation but also gives the impression of having been deeply thought out.

GOD AND THE TWO SPIRITS

Yet, just how far are we justified in describing the religion of the Gāthās as being an ethical monotheism? Earlier in this chapter we had occasion to quote two crucial passages depicting the eternal antagonism that exists between the twin Spirits, Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, the Holy Spirit and the Destructive Spirit. Whence did the Destructive Spirit arise? The answer would seem to be clear enough, for the two Spirits are explicitly said to be twins, and we learn from Yasna 47.2-3 that the Wise Lord is the father of the Holy Spirit. In that case he must be the father of the Destructive Spirit too—a conception that has recently been described as ‘absolutely absurd in the mental framework of the Gāthās’.⁸² In actual fact the logical conclusion we are bound to draw from our texts, namely, that Ahura Mazdāh is the father of the Destructive as well as of the Holy Spirit is only ‘absurd’ if we persist in judging Zoroaster's own teaching by the standards of a very much later dualist orthodoxy: and there are very good reasons for refusing to do this. First it is undeniable that in many respects as, for example, in the matter of animal sacrifice the later tradition grossly distorts the Prophet's teaching. Secondly, the later tradition identified Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, with the Holy Spirit, whereas the Gāthās ascribe paternity of the Holy Spirit to the Wise Lord. Thirdly, the later tradition assimilates the Wise Lord, now identical with the Holy Spirit, to light and the Destructive Spirit to darkness, whereas the Gāthās declare that the Wise Lord creates both light and darkness.⁸³ Lastly, the later tradition is divided on the interpretation of the stanzas in question; for the rigid dualism of late Sussanian orthodoxy did not hold the field alone. Orthodoxy, indeed, maintained a rigorously dualist position—there were two eternal distinct and separate principles of good and evil, the good principle being Ahura Mazdāh whom tradition had erroneously identified with the Holy Spirit. Zurvanite heterodoxy, however, drew the obvious conclusion from the Gāthic text that describes the two Spirits as twins and argued that, if they were twins, then they must have had a common father. Since Ahura Mazdāh was already identified with the Holy Spirit, he could no longer be considered to be the latter's father. So, for reasons that are obscure, they made the two Spirits the sons of Zrvan Akarana or Infinite Time. Yet another sect maintained that the Evil Spirit arose from a single evil thought of the supreme Being. Since, then, two sects among the later Zoroastrians themselves interpreted this stanza (Yasna 30.3) as meaning that the Evil Spirit derived from God himself, it seems a trifle wayward to condemn such a notion out of hand in the case of the Prophet himself.

All that we can say is that, by describing the two Spirits as ‘twins’, Zoroaster implied that the Evil Spirit too must derive from God, but he differs from the later Sassanian orthodoxy in that, for him, the Evil or Destructive Spirit is not an evil substance—he is evil by choice. Like Lucifer he ‘chooses to do the worst things’; he is not forced to do so either by God or by any inner compulsion of his own nature: the misery he brings upon himself and upon his followers is entirely his own fault and will inevitably lead to his destruction.

THE TWO SPIRITS IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

An almost exact parallel to this solution of the problem of evil is to be found in the Manual of Discipline, perhaps the most interesting document of the Dead Sea sect of Qumrān. That Judaism was deeply influenced by Zoroastrianism during and after the Babylonian captivity can scarcely be questioned, and the extraordinary likeness between the Dead Sea text and the Gāthic conception of the nature and origin of evil, as we understand it, would seem to point to direct borrowing on the Jewish side. According to the account given in the Manual of Discipline God:

‘created man to have dominion over the world and made for him two spirits, that he might walk by them until the appointed time of his visitation; they are the spirits of truth and of error. In the abode of light are the origins of truth, and from the source of darkness are the origins of error. … And by the angel of darkness is the straying of all the sons of righteousness … and all the spirits of his lot try to make the sons of light stumble; but the God of Israel and his angel of truth have helped all the sons of light. For he created the spirits of light and of darkness, and upon them he founded every work and upon their ways every service. One of the spirits God loves for all ages of eternity, and with all its deeds he is pleased for ever; as for the other, he abhors its company, and all its ways he hates for ever.’⁸⁴

Here, in a Jewish setting, we have an exact parallel to the attitude of Ahura Mazdāh to the Holy and Destructive Spirits. Like the Jewish God, Ahura Mazdāh abhors the company of the Destructive Spirit, and ‘all its ways he hates for ever’; but his hatred is based on rather more rational grounds than is his Jewish counterpart's, for he did not create the Evil Spirit evil: he only becomes such by choice. Yet though there seems to be no valid reason for doubting the Wise Lord's paternity of the Destructive Spirit, repulsive though such an idea may have seemed to a later orthodoxy, it cannot be denied that there is a basic dualism underlying the Prophet's monotheism; but it is not the dualism between the Holy Spirit and the Destructive Spirit who are what they are by their free choice, but between Truth and the Lie, that is, the twin objects of all choice. Zoroaster does tell us indirectly how the Destructive Spirit came into existence and how and why he went wrong; he does not tell us how the Lie originated but leaves us rather to infer that it was there from the beginning. This dualism is basic to all his teaching, and it is this one idea, which he took over from his Indo-Iranian heritage, that he developed and expanded as the corner-stone of the new religion. His followers who elaborated the later orthodoxy merely systematized a doctrine that was already there.

Yet, though Zoroaster's whole vision of the cosmos is dominated by this mortal antagonism between Truth and the Lie, Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, stands above and beyond them, wholly committed though he is to the side of Truth. In the Gāthās the Destructive Spirit does not presume to set himself up as a principle independent of and antagonistic to the supreme God: he is content to measure his strength against the Holy Spirit which emanates from God yet is not God. The daēvas too, those ancient gods who had been dethroned, perhaps by Zoroaster himself, do not forget their divine origin, for, by asking the Wise Lord that they may still be allowed to be his messengers, they show that they too acknowledge him as supreme Lord.

‘Family, and village, and tribe, and you daēvas too, like me, sought to rejoice the Wise Lord [saying]; “Let us be thy messengers that we may keep at bay those who hate thee.” To them did the Wise Lord, united with the Good Mind and in close companionship with bright Truth, make answer from his kingdom: “Holy and good Right-Mindedness do we choose: let it be ours.”’⁸⁵

Here we are allowed a glimpse of the old order: the dethroned daēvas appeal to the God whom they too acknowledge as supreme, against the new authority claimed by the Prophet Zoroaster. Plainly the followers of the old religion did not lightly acquiesce in being dubbed ‘followers of the Lie’, for they too must have claimed to be ashavans, ‘followers of the Truth’; and Zoroaster himself seems to be aware of this, for he exclaims:

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. Which of those whom I consult is the follower of Truth and which the follower of the Lie? On which side is the aggressor (angra)? [Is it I?] or is he the aggressor, the follower of the Lie, who seeks to thwart thy bounty (savah)? How do things stand? Surely it is he, not those near me, that must be held to be the aggressor.’⁸⁶

So it would seem that Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord, was recognized as the supreme Being by the worshippers of the daēvas themselves, and these are rebuked for not taking pains to associate with Truth and for not consulting with the Good Mind, the inference being perhaps that though they may have claimed to be ‘followers of Truth’, this was not apparent from their behaviour. In accusing them of not consulting with the Good Mind, however, Zoroaster contrasts them with himself, for his very claim to prophethood is based on the close communion with the Wise Lord he experiences through the Good Mind.

The essence of Zoroaster's reform would appear to be that he immensely raised the stature of Ahura Mazdāh, seeing in him not merely the ‘greatest and best of the gods’ but the sole creator and preserver of the universe, omnipotent and omniscient Lord. We have seen that he is called the ‘father’ of the Holy Spirit and the Good Mind, of Truth and Right-Mindedness, but these entities are not brought into being by any crassly physical act of generation, they are thought into existence as eternal attributes of God himself. Truth, for instance, is created by God's will or wisdom (khratu)⁸⁷ and it is by Truth that he maintains his own Good Mind. Again at the beginning of existence God thinks, ‘Let the wide spaces be filled with lights’,⁸⁸ and it is so. Again it is by thought, that is, by the Good Mind operating within him, that Zoroaster comes to the realization that God is the eternal, the ancient and the ever new;⁸⁹ and it is by the Good Mind, the exteriorization of the divine thought, that the world is brought into existence, ‘by [his] mind, in the beginning, [he] fashioned forth corporeal things, consciences, and wills, [he] created bodily life, and deeds and doctrines among which men could freely make their choices’.⁹⁰ Man's free will, then, so passionately insisted on in the Gāthās, is also a direct creation of God's, his deliberate plan for humanity.

THE HOLINESS OF GOD

In Yasna 43 Zoroaster adopts the refrain ‘Then did I realize that thou wast holy when …’, and it will repay us to see in what he considers this holiness and bounty to consist. First he realizes God's holiness when he receives the Good Mind from his hand which holds the destinies of both good and evil men; secondly when he ‘sees’ him ‘at the birth of existence’ deal out their lots of weal and woe to good and bad and when he sees him pass judgement at the end of time; thirdly, when at the urgent behest of the Good Mind, he makes his confession of faith and resolves to be a ‘true enemy of the follower of the Lie and a powerful support to the follower of Truth’; fourthly when, once more impelled by the Good Mind, he vows to venerate the fire as the symbol of Truth; fifthly when he first hears God's words, puts aside all trust in men, and resolves to do whatever God tells him is best; sixthly when he glimpses eternal life in God's Kingdom which is his alone to grant or withhold; seventhly, when his ‘silent thought’ teaches him not to attempt to curry favour with the followers of the Lie who pretend that evil men are good.

Zoroaster, then, recognizes God's holiness first in the act of revelation itself which is transmitted to him through the illumination he receives from the Good Mind, secondly in the content of that revelation. And the content is this: that God is just and that he will judge men according to their good and evil deeds; that evil which is the Lie exists and must be fought; that Truth exists and is to be reverenced in the sacred fire; that God is to be obeyed and that no trust is to be put in men; that God will reward whom he will with eternal life; and lastly that it is wicked to dress up evil in the garb of good. In short, God is a just judge.

GOD, THE SOLE CREATOR

God is judge; and he is the creator of all things,⁹¹ both spiritual and material, and since he thinks all things into existence, his creation is ex nihilo. He is omnipotent for he ‘rules at will’,⁹² that is to say, though his Holy Spirit may be pitted against the Destructive Spirit, this happens by his will and consent. His being is in no way circumscribed by the forces of evil as it is in later Zoroastrianism: and it is he who will judge all men according to their deeds in the last days. God's creative activity is magnificently portrayed in a series of rhetorical questions that go to make up the bulk of Yasna 44:

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. Who is the primeval, the father of Truth through [generation and] birth? Who appointed their paths to the sun and stars? Who but thou is it through whom the moon waxes and wanes? This would I know, O Wise One, and other things besides.

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. Who set the earth below and the sky [above] so that it does not fall? Who the waters and the plants? Who yoked swift steeds to wind and clouds? Who, O Wise One, is the creator of the Good Mind?

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. What goodly craftsman made light and darkness? What goodly craftsman sleep and wakefulness? Who made morning, noon, and night to make the wise man mindful of his task?

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. Is the message I proclaim really true? Will Right-Mindedness [among men] support Truth by its deeds? Hast thou illumined (lit. taught) thy Kingdom with the Good Mind? For whom didst thou fashion the pregnant cow that brings prosperity?

‘This I ask thee, Lord: answer me truly. Who created Right-Mindedness venerable with the Kingdom? Who made the son dutiful(?) in his soul to his father? Recognizing thee by these [signs] as the creator of all things through thy Holy Spirit, I [go to] help thee.’⁹³

God, then, is the creator of all things, both spiritual and material, and he is the creator of free will. Man, then, enjoys an awful responsibility for his own actions, and though he will be judged by God, it is really he who automatically condemns or saves himself by his evil or good deeds. This is made amply clear in the following passage: ‘At the last, glory will be the portion(?) of the man who adheres to a follower of Truth. A long age of darkness, foul food, and cries of woe—to such an existence will your own consciences lead you because of your own deeds, ye followers of the Lie.’⁹⁴

Yet though man earns his own heaven and his own hell by his own good and evil deeds, it is Ahura Mazdāh who passes judgement⁹⁵ or this judgement is delegated to Sraosha;⁹⁶ for Sraosha is not only man's hearkening to the word of God, he is also God's all-hearing ear which nothing escapes; and so it is that in the later Avesta Sraosha becomes God's chosen instrument for the chastising of the daēvas and all evil men.

POST MORTEM JUDGEMENT

In later Zoroastrianism there is both an individual judgement at death and a universal ordeal by fire and molten metal at the end of time. Both ideas are present in embryo in the Gāthās. The individual soul is required to cross the ‘Bridge of the Requiter’ where those who have performed good works will receive a just return for their righteousness (asha) and the kingdom by their good mind.⁹⁷ Here, as so often in the Gāthās, we cannot be certain whether ‘righteousness’ and ‘good mind’ refer to the divine entities which are hypostases of the Wise Lord or to the righteousness and good thoughts of individual men. The underlying idea, however, would appear to be that when the good man crosses the Bridge of the Requiter the righteousness and good thoughts that had accompanied him on earth are united with substantial Righteousness and Truth and with the Good Mind of God which are themselves the source of all earthly goodness and truth. This thought is elsewhere expressed as union with the Good Mind.⁹⁸

The good man's guide across the bridge is Zoroaster himself. He leads the souls of his followers across the dreaded Bridge and conducts them into the House of the Good Mind⁹⁹ where they will come face to face with their creator who dwells together with Truth and that same Good Mind.¹⁰⁰ The wicked meet with a very different fate: ‘their souls and consciences trouble them when they come to the Bridge of the Requiter, guests for all eternity in the House of the Lie’.¹⁰¹

The Bridge of the Requiter at which the soul is judged figures prominently in the later tradition.¹⁰² On it the deeds of the soul are weighed in the balance of Rashnu, the just judge par excellence who is himself the Requiter,¹⁰³ and the gods Mithra and Sraosha assist him. This was probably the traditional picture as it existed before the Zoroastrian reform, and, if this is so, it shows how great the Prophet's zeal on behalf of Ahura Mazdāh, whom he regarded as the one true God who could brook no rival, was, for in the Gāthās it is not Rashnu nor even Sraosha who had been accepted into the Prophet's system, but Ahura Mazdāh himself who is the Requiter and judge of pure and impure alike.¹⁰⁴

HEAVEN AND HELL

Heaven and hell are variously described in the Gāthās; they are the best¹⁰⁵ and the worst¹⁰⁶ existences, and these quite unlocalized conceptions of the future life survive in the Persian language today: behesht, heaven, meaning originally simply ‘the best’, and dūzakh meaning ‘a wretched existence’. That the ‘best’ existence is regarded as being on a mental and spiritual level is shown by the fact that the opposite of the worst existence is not simply the best existence but the best Mind.¹⁰⁷ Similarly heaven and hell are the House of the Good Mind¹⁰⁸ and the house of the Worst Mind,¹⁰⁹ or, more typically, the House of Song¹¹⁰ and the House of the Lie.¹¹¹ Unlike Muhammad, Zoroaster does not describe the joys of heaven in physical terms; the blessed attain to ‘long life’, that is, presumably, eternal life and the Kingdom of the Good Mind;¹¹² they will be blessed with ease and benefit¹¹³ and will be possessed of Wholeness and Immortality, God's supreme gifts to the faithful.

Oddly enough, the torments of hell are more fully described than the joys of heaven. The damned will be oppressed with discomfort and torments,¹¹⁴ condemned to ‘a long age of darkness, foul food, and cries of woe’.¹¹⁵ Unlike later Zoroastrianism in which the souls of the damned are released in the last days, the Prophet seems to have regarded the torments of the damned as being eternal, for whereas the souls of the just will be granted immortality, the souls of the damned will be tormented in perpetuity (utayūtā).¹¹⁶

INFLUENCE ON JUDAISM

Zoroaster's doctrine of rewards and punishments, of an eternity of bliss and an eternity of woe allotted to good and evil men in another life beyond the grave is so strikingly similar to Christian teaching that we cannot fail to ask whether here at least there is not a direct influence at work. The answer is surely ‘Yes’, for the similarities are so great and the historical context so neatly apposite that it would be carrying scepticism altogether too far to refuse to draw the obvious conclusion. The case for a Judaeo-Christian dependence on Zoroastrianism in its purely eschatological thinking is quite different and not at all convincing, for apart from a few hints in the Gāthās which we shall shortly be considering and a short passage in Yasht 19.89-90 in which a deathless existence in body and soul at the end of time is affirmed, we have no evidence as to what eschatological ideas the Zoroastrians had in the last four centuries before Christ. The eschatologies of the Pahlavi books, though agreeing in their broad outlines, differ very considerably in detail and emphasis; they do not correspond at all closely to the eschatological writings of the inter-testamentary period nor to those of St Paul and the Apocalypse of St John. They do, however, agree that there will be a general resurrection of body as well as soul, but this idea would be the natural corollary to the survival of the soul as a moral entity, once that had been accepted, since both Jew and Zoroastrian regarded soul and body as being two aspects, ultimately inseparable, of the one human personality. We cannot say with any certainty whether the Jews borrowed from the Zoroastrians or the Zoroastrians from the Jews or whether either in fact borrowed from the other.

The case of rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, however, is very different; for the theory of a direct Zoroastrian influence on post-exilic Judaism does explain the sudden abandonment on the part of the Jews of the old idea of Sheol, a shadowy and depersonalized existence which is the lot of all men irrespective of what they had done on earth, and the sudden adoption, at precisely the time when the exiled Jews made contact with the Medes and Persians, of the Iranian Prophet's teaching concerning the afterlife. Thus it is Daniel, allegedly the minister of ‘Darius the Mede’, who first speaks clearly of everlasting life and eternal punishment. ‘Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth,’ he writes, ‘shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’¹¹⁷

Thus from the moment that the Jews first made contact with the Iranians they took over the typical Zoroastrian doctrine of an individual afterlife in which rewards are to be enjoyed and punishments endured. This Zoroastrian hope gained ever surer ground during the intertestamentary period, and by the time of Christ it was upheld by the Pharisees, whose very name some scholars have interpreted as meaning ‘Persian’, that is, the sect most open to Persian influence. So, too, the idea of a bodily resurrection at the end of time was probably original to Zoroastrianism, however it arose among the Jews, for the seeds of the later eschatology are already present in the Gāthās.

THE ‘SECOND EXISTENCE’

In later Zoroastrianism there is a well-defined eschatology: at the end of time the Saoshyans or ‘Saviour’ will come to renew all existence. He will raise the bodies of the dead and unite them with their souls, there will be a mighty conflagration, and all men will have to wade through a stream of molten metal which will seem like warm milk to the just and be in very truth what it is to the wicked. The sins of the damned are, however, purged away in this terrible ordeal and all creation returns to its Maker in joy. The ideas from which this eschatology developed are present in the Gāthās but not systematically worked out; moreover there is no looking forward to a time when the damned will be released from hell.

It would seem that Zoroaster first looked forward to himself ‘reforming’ existence here on earth, and that only later was the coming of God's Kingdom indefinitely postponed. So in Yasna 34.6 he asks God for a sign which will be ‘the total transformation of this existence’¹¹⁸ here and now, and begs him to make existence ‘most excellent’ (ferasha)¹¹⁹—again apparently here and now. Even clearer is his prayer that it may be ‘we who make existence most excellent’.¹²⁰ Similarly the Saoshyans in the Gāthās is no eschatological figure but Zoroaster himself. This seems to be certainly so in Yasna 48.9 and 45.11 whereas in Yasna 53.2, the only Gāthā composed after Zoroaster's death, the ‘religion of the Saoshyans’ which Ahura inaugurated must be the religion of Zoroaster. Again, when the word is used in the plural¹²¹ it probably refers to Zoroaster and his earthly allies, although this cannot be regarded as absolutely certain.

Yet alongside a belief that the world was to be made anew here and now by the Prophet, there was also a belief in ‘last things’—a ‘second existence’¹²² at the end of time when all things will be re-created in perfection. Then ‘at the last turning-point of existence’¹²³ the evil will be allotted their final doom and the just their eternal reward. The judgement will be in the form of an ordeal by fire and molten metal; and here again we almost certainly have another example of that interpenetration of the two worlds—the material and the spiritual—which is so characteristic of Zoroaster's thought, for the trial by ordeal certainly refers to an ordeal to which the Prophet himself must have submitted in order to prove the truth of his message as well as to an eschatological ordeal which will decide the lot of the two parties for ever and ever.¹²⁴ This fire it is which allots portions of weal and woe to the two sides¹²⁵ both here on earth and at the final reckoning.

The Zoroastrians have always been known as fire-worshippers and have, not unnaturally, resented this appellation; but it is quite clear that the Prophet himself revered this element ‘which possesses the power of Truth’.¹²⁶ Its association with the Wise Lord is, however, far less apparent in the Gāthās than it is in the later Avesta where it is habitually called his son, but ‘his’ fire is indeed bestowed on Zoroaster along with the Good Mind as his special protector, and it is through this fire that he will make Righteousness to thrive at the expense of the followers of the Lie.¹²⁷

Zoroaster's own eschatology is not identical with the more familiar eschatology of the later Avesta and the Pahlavi books. The Saoshyans is not yet an eschatological figure and the Frashkart or Final Rehabilitation of existence is only very vaguely adumbrated in the Gāthās, for it is Zoroaster himself who will make existence frasha, that is, ‘excellent’. In the Gāthās there appears an individual judgement at death when souls are judged at the Bridge of the Requiter and a final universal ordeal by fire when the two parties are allotted their eternal destinies of weal and woe. This is in marked contrast to the later doctrine in which there is one individual judgement only: the final eschatological ordeal is not in any sense a judgement but a purgation by molten metal in which the sins of the damned are burned away. By this final purification they are made fit for eternal life and eternal joy.

SUMMARY OF DOCTRINE

The main doctrines preached by the Prophet Zoroaster can, then, be summed up as follows:

(1) There is a supreme God who is creator of all things both spiritual and material. He thinks his creation into existence by his Holy Spirit: he is holy and righteous, and by holiness are also understood creativeness, productivity, bounty, and generosity. He is surrounded by six other entities of which he is said to be the father and creator. Three can be said to be inseparable from his own essence—the Holy Spirit through which he creates, the Good Mind, and Truth. He dwells in his Kingdom, which means, no doubt, that he is absolute Lord of all that he has created—a kingdom which is now marred by the onslaughts of evil but which will be restored to its purity in the last days. Wholeness and Immortality, too, are inseparable from his essence, but they are also the reward he promises to those who do his will in Right-Mindedness. This last ‘entity’ or virtue is common to God and man and represents a right relationship between the two. God, the Wise Lord, stands beyond the reach of the powers of evil.

(2) The world as we know it is divided between Truth and the Lie. Truth is created by the Wise Lord or is his ‘son’. About the origin of the Lie the Prophet is mute. This dualism between these two opposite poles, these two alternatives offered to the free choices of men, is basic to Zoroaster's thought; and although there are dim parallels to it in the sister tradition of India, nowhere in that civilization are they so tremendously and so uniquely emphasized.

(3) The creatures of the Wise Lord are created free—free to choose between Truth and the Lie. This applies as much to spiritual beings as it does to man. So Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit, described surprisingly as the twin brother of the Holy Spirit, ‘chooses to do the worst things’. This he does of his own free will as do the daēvas, the ancient gods whom, on account of the violence associated with their worship, Zoroaster considered to be evil powers.

(4) Since the will of man is entirely free, he is himself responsible for his ultimate fate. By good deeds he earns an eternal reward: Wholeness and Immortality are his. The evil-doer too is condemned by his own conscience as well as by a just God to the eternal pains of hell, the ‘worst existence’.

(5) The outward symbol of Truth is the fire; and it is the fire-altar that becomes the centre of the Zoroastrian cult. It is by an ordeal of fire and molten metal that the Prophet vindicates the truth of his message, and it is by fire and molten metal that all humanity will be judged in the last days.

These would appear to be the salient doctrines taught in the Gāthās. Characteristic for the whole teaching is the word savah, ‘benefit’ or ‘increase’. The word is used both for prosperity on earth and for the joys of heaven. Zoroaster is the Prophet of life, and of life ever more abounding.

Notes

1. This agrees with Theodore bar Kônai who gives Zoroaster's date (sc. his birth) as 628 bc. See Zaehner, ZZD, p. 442.

2. See W. B. Henning, Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-Doctor?, pp. 42ff.

3. Y. 46.1.

4. Ibid., 19.18.

5. Ibid., 31.15.

6. Ibid., 29.1,2: 30.6: 44.20: 48.7,12: 49.4.

7. Ibid., 29.1.

8. mānthrem āzūtōish: mānthra—means ‘sacred word’. Āzūiti is plainly akin to Vedic āhuti—‘oblation’, but in the later Avesta it comes to mean ‘fat’ and is so translated into Pahlavi (charpīh), or, as Bartholomae rightly says ‘solid food in contrast to liquid’. Nyberg's translation (Religionen des alten Iran, p. 197) is merely perverse.

9. Y. 29.6-7.

10. Vohū manañhā, ‘in accordance with good mind, or the Good Mind.’ See p. 46.

11. See pp. 45-50.

12. See n. 10.

13. Ishā-khshathrīm: to ‘aēsh-, ‘to be powerful’, on the analogy of vasō-khshathra.

14. Y. 29.9.

15. Ibid., 46.1-2.

16. Ibid., 34.8.

17. Ibid., 31.1-2.

18. Ibid., 33.14.

19. Ibid., 49.3.

20. Ibid., 44.15.

21. Ibid., 43.8.

22. Ibid., 33.2.

23. W. B. Henning, Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-Doctor?, p. 45.

24. Y. 32.8. Humbach's translation of this passage is totally different.

25. In India he becomes the lord of the dead.

26. Y. 32.14.

27. Ibid., 48.10.

28. See pp. 126-44.

29. Y. 30.9:31.4.

30. Ibid., 44.20.

31. Ibid., 47.4.

32. Ibid., 46.6.

33. See p. 54.

34. Y. 43.8.

35. Ibid., 33.2.

36. Ibid., 31.3.

37. Ibid., 31.10.

38. Ibid., 31.11.

39. Ibid., 49.3.

40. Ibid., 31.12.

41. Ibid., 44.12.

42. Ibid., 31.2.

43. Ibid., 30.2.

44. Ibid., 30.3-6.

45. Ibid., 45.2.

46. Ibid., 32.1-2.

47. Ibid., 32.3-5.

48. Ibid., 33.6.

49. Ibid., 50.6.

50. Ibid., 44.2.

51. Ibid., 46.2.

52. Ibid., 44.11.

53. Ibid., 43.5.

54. Ibid., 33.6-7.

55. Ibid., 28.5.

56. Ibid., 31.3.

57. Ibid., 45.8.

58. Y. 31.8.

59. Ibid., 47.2-3.

60. Ibid., 44.3: 47.2.

61. Ibid., 45.4: 31.8.

62. Ibid., 45.4.

63. Ibid., 60.5: cf. 33.4.

64. Ibid., 31.15.

65. Ibid., 33.8: 34.1: 45.5, etc.

66. Ibid., 47.3.

67. Ibid., 48.6.

68. Ibid., 34.11.

69. Ibid., 43.4.

70. Ibid., 28.4: 46.12: 49.3.

71. Ibid., 34.12.

72. Ibid., 46.9.

73. Ibid., 47.1.

74. Ibid., 43.9.

75. Ibid., 32.2-3: 47.5.

76. Ibid., 43.7.

77. Ibid., 45.6.

78. See p. 46.

79. See p. 34.

80. Y. 43.7.

81. e.g. Y. 45.9.

82. Ugo Bianchi, Zamān i Ohrmazd, Turin, 1958, p. 82.

83. See p. 55.

84. Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, New York, 1956, p. 374.

85. Y. 32.1-2.

86. Ibid., 44.12.

87. Ibid., 31.7.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid., 31.8.

90. Ibid., 31.11.

91. Ibid., 44.7.

92. Y. 43.1.

93. Ibid., 44.3-7.

94. Ibid., 31.20.

95. Ibid., 30.11: 45.9.

96. Ibid., 43.12.

97. Ibid., 46.10.

98. Ibid., 46.12: 49.3,5.

99. Ibid., 32.15.

100. Ibid., 44.9.

101. Ibid., 46.11.

102. See pp. 302-4.

103. PR. 48.66. Cf. BSOAS, xvii, pp. 246-7.

104. Y. 46.17.

105. Ibid., 44.2.

106. Ibid., 30.4.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid., 32.15.

109. Ibid., 32.13.

110. Ibid., 51.15.

111. Ibid., 51.14.

112. Ibid., 33.5.

113. Ibid., 30.11: 43.12.

114. Ibid., 30.11.

115. Ibid., 31.20.

116. Ibid., 45.7.

117. Daniel 12.2.

118. Y. 34.6.

119. Ibid., 34.15.

120. Ibid., 30.9.

121. Ibid., 34.13: 46.3: 48.12.

122. Ibid., 45.1.

123. Ibid., 51.6.

124. Ibid., 51.9.

125. Ibid., 31.19.

126. Ibid., 43.4: 34.4.

127. Ibid., 46.7.

Abbreviations

A²H. Inscription of Artaxerxes II at Hamadan.

AVN. Artāy Virāf Nāmak.

BSOAS. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Clemen, Fontes. Fontes historiae religionis persicae.

DB. Inscription of Darius I at Bīsitūn.

Dd. Dātastān i dēnīk.

DkM. Dēnkart, ed. Madan.

DN. Inscription of Darius I at Naqsh-i Rustam.

DP. Inscription of Darius I at Persepolis.

DS. Inscription of Darius I at Susa.

GB. Greater Bundahishn.

MKh. Mēnōk i Khrat.

Murūj. [Mas‘ūdī], Murūj al-dhahab.

Ny. Nyāyishn.

Phl. Pahlavi.

PR. Pahlavi Rivāyats.

PT. Pahlavi Texts.

RV. Rig-Veda.

ShGV. Shikand-Gumānīk Vichār.

TM. [R. C. Zaehner] The Teachings of the Magi.

Vd. Vidēvdāt.

XP. Inscription of Xerxes at Persepolis.

Y. Yasna.

Yt. Yasht.

ZKhA. Zand i Khwartak Apastāk.

Zs. Selections of Zātspram.

ZZD. [R. C. Zaehner] Zurvan, A Zoroastrian Dilemma.