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FAITH AND DOCTRINE
As Contained in the
Fenv-Avesta
AISBERT PEK E
1874
Copyright, 1924,
| by
The Supreme Council, 33°, Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, for the Southern
Jurisdicton of the United States of America.
‘
LIV ayy viLNadD)
THE SEVEN AMESHA-CPENTAS
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FOREWORD.
pe a |
Such words as ‘“‘colour,’’ ‘favour,’ “honour,’’ ‘labour,’ ‘‘saviour,
dour,” *
splen-
vapour,” ‘‘vigour,’’ and such other like words as “‘unfavourable,”’
etc., are printed as they were spelled by the author more than fifty years
since, when such spellings were proper.
Suppose, if one can, that the immortal works of Shakespeare had
remained unpublished until to-day—those works to which English
literature owes so much—those works which opened the souls of men—
which did so much for civilization through the genius of this great drama-
tist and historian as shown in his exposition of the character and passions
of humanity.
Our great apostle cultivated another field, a new and almost sacred
field of intellectual endeavor.
He knew, as well as did Max Miiller, that the Proto-Aryans and the
Indo-Aryans were our physical, linguistic and philosophical ancestors;
and he knew that the monotheistic Irano-Aryans were our religious,
religio-philosophical and spiritual ancestors; and with his transcendent
genius he places before our mental vision the habitat, migrations and
early pre-historic history of these our ancestors.
He made his own environment, struggling in an isolated life, though
filled with the highest dignity, that of ennobling genius, happy in the
thought that he would give us something by which we might be made
much happier and better men, and that he might live in our memories
for what he had been to us and for us.
_ These pages show his familiarity with the work of: Anquetil duPerron,
Benfey, Bleeck (translation of Spiegel), Bopp, Bunsen, Burnouf, Haug,
Muir, Miiller, Neriosengh, Panini, the Rawlinson brothers (Sir Henry
and Mr. George), Roth, Spiegel, Westergaard, Whitney and Windisch-
mann.
He, who had written poems on the gods of Grecian mythology before
he was twenty years of age, which poems were accorded high praise in
Blackwood’s Magazine, and who was thoroughly familiar with the works
of Plato and Philo in the original Greek, who was thoroughly familiar
with the works of the Church Fathers and with those of the Christian
and Pagan historians, may well be regarded as familiar with classical
Greek; who had translated the Pandects of Justinian and the Maxims of
the Roman Law, might well be regarded as familiar with Latin; who had,
more than fifty years ago, written a translation of and Commentary on
the Hebrew Kabalah, as a Hebrew scholar; whose translation of and Com-
mentary on the Vedic Hymns, in twenty large volumes, won for him fame
as one of the greatest Sanskrit scholars of his period; whose Lectures on
the Aryas in eight goodly volumes (four on the Irano-Aryans and four on
the Indo-Aryans) and other works like the present one show that he had
well earned the title given him forty years since as “‘the greatest living
Orientalist.”’
The task which he had assigned himself in this work was to search out
all the evidence which his phenomenally well-stored mind and his well-
schooled powers of discriminative analysis could bring to bear upon this
great problem of religious philosophy, which so fascinates every thoughtful
person. Having been a Chief Justice of a Supreme Court; he had been
schooled to weigh evidence.
The quotations from the Bible, written before the publication of the
Revised Version, are’ evidently frequently from the Hebrew or Greek
editions of the Books of the Bible, or from the Vulgate.
Should there arise a question of the rendering of passages in a more
or less fragmentary manner, written in a language of which there was no
dictionary in existence, the reader should consider the rendering of the
Pentateuch written before the days of Masoretic points, when even highly
skilled Hebrew scholars could not agree as to passages.
This is not a book to be read cursorily.:
It is not difficult to realize that in such a combination of quotations,
extracts, paraphrases and commentary, written rapidly, with quill pens
of his own make, in a small, cursive hand, the transcriber may have
occasionally failed to give due credit for authorship. Those who knew
the General and his literary habits, know how foreign and detestable to
him was plagiarism.
The writer, who has attempted to transcribe faithfully this great Work,
filled with reverence for the memory of its gifted author, desires that all
sins in this category in this work be ascribed to
M. W. Woop,
Transcriber.
September, 1924.
PREFATORY.
I appended to the Work on The Faith and Worship of the Aryans, a
chapter upon the Zendic Compositions contained in the collection known
as the ‘‘Zend-Avesta,’’ the more recent correct name for which is the
‘“Avesta-Zend.’’ The slight examination which I then made of these most
ancient embodiments of Aryan thought, so interested me as to persuade
me to a more careful and extended one; and has resulted in this attempt
partially to discover their meaning.
It is to be a book chiefly of conjectures and suggestions. I make
no pretensions to any critical knowledge of the Zend or Bactrian language,
and have for the most part had, as aids to interpretation, only the English
text, furnished by Bleeck (from Spiegel) and by Dr. Haug, with the notes
accompanying their translations. Therefore I know, of course, that this
work can be of no great value; and can only hope that it may be found to
contribute something towards correct interpretation of these old and muti-
lated monuments of the Aryan race. I daresay that my conjectures
will be often found to be over-bold, but I will not apologize for that, where
conjecture is so often the forced resource for interpretation.
Few names of antiquity are oftener mentioned than that of Zoro-
aster; few ancient Orders of Priests or Men than the Magi; and every
man of moderate acquaintance with the ancient religions has read of
Ormuzd and Ahriman, the rival principles of good and evil, light and
darkness; of the creative word Hopover, and the Amshaspands, Devs,
Izeds and Ferouers, and of Zeruane Akherene, the primal Time, of
Mithra the Sun-God, and Sosiosch the Saviour to come.
The Persians were conquered by and received their religion from
the Medes, who were Aryan emigrants from Bactria. The earliest account
of the religion of the Magi given by a Grecian writer is that by Herodotus,
in Book 1, Chapters 131-2. He says:
I know that the Persians observe these customs. It is not common among
them to have idols made, temples built, and altars erected; they accuse of folly
those who do so. I can account for that, only from their not believing that the
Gods are like men, as the Hellenes do. They are accustomed to bring sacrifices
to Zeus on the summits of mountains; they call the whole circle [hemispherical
vault] Zeus. They bring sacrifices to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and
winds, these originally being the only objects of worship; but they accepted from
the Assyrians and Arabs the worship of Aphrodité, the Queen of Heaven, whom
the Assyrians call Myletta, the Arabs Alitta, the Persians Mitra.
The Persians bring sacrifices to the aforesaid gods in the following manner:
They neither erect altars nor kindle fires when they are about to bring a sacrifice.
They neither use libations, nor flutes, nor wreaths, nor barley; but when any one
desires to bring a sacrifice he then carries the sacrificial beast to a pure spot, and
after having twined round his turban a great many wreaths of myrtle, in prefer-
ence to any other leaf, he invokes the Deity. The sacrificer ought not to pray
only for his own prosperity; he must also pray for the welfare of all the Persians,
and for the King, because he is included among them. When he has cut the
animal into pieces, he then boils its flesh, spreads the softest grass he can get,
especially preferring clover, and places the pieces of flesh on it. After having made
this arrangement, one of the Magi who is present sings a theogony, as they call the
incantation. Without one of the Magi no sacrifice can be brought. After wait-
ing a short time, the sacrificer takes off the pieces of flesh, and uses them as he
likes.
[This custom is still maintained by the Parsees. The offering is first con-
secrated by the Priest, then left for a short time near the fire, and finally taken
off by the sacrificer, to be used by him. It is never thrown into the fire. Havg.]
He also says that they believed Fire to be a God, wherefore Cam-
byses committed a great sin in burning the corpse of the King Amasis.
Lying was regarded by them as the most discreditable thing, and next to
it the incurring of debt, chiefly for the reason that the debtor is often
compelled to tell lies. They would not spit into or wash their hands in
a river, nor allow any one else to do so; for they paid a high reverence to
rivers.
It is useless to quote what is said by other Greek writers or by those
of Armenia or the Mohammedans, in regard to the tenets of the Persian
faith; since these had greatly changed after the times of Zarathustra and
his disciples and immediate successors. They will be found quoted by
Dr. Haug, in Chapter 1, of his ‘‘History of the Researches into the Sacred
Writings and Religion of the Parsees,’’ which forms the first part of his
Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings and Religion of the Parsees, pub-
lished at Bombay in 1862. We must’ascertain what the original tenets of
the religion of the Irano-Aryans were from the Zend-Avesta itself, and —
from the oldest compositions of that collection.
Dr. Haug divides the languages of Persia, commonly called Iranian,
into two divisions: :
1. Iranian languages in the strictest sense.
2. Affiliated tongues.
The first division comprises the ancient, middle age and modern languages
of Iran, i.e., of Persia, Media and Bactria, or chiefly of those countries which are
styled in the Zend-Avesta the Aryan countries (Airydo Danhdvé). We may class
them as follows:
(a) The East Iranian or Bactrian branch, extant only in the two dialects
in which the scanty fragments of the Parsee Scripture are written. The more
ancient of them may be called the Géthdé dialect, because the largest and most
important pieces preserved in this peculiar idiom are the so-called Gathas or songs;
the younger, in which most of the books which now make up the Zend-Avesta
il
are written, may be called ancient Bactrian, or the classical Zend language, which
was for many centuries the spoken and written language of Bactria. :
The Bactrian languages seem to have been dying out in the third century, B. C.,
no daughter of them having been left.
Zend, Dr. Haug says elsewhere, is quite a pure Aryan dialect, the
elder sister of Sanskrit, but not of the Sanskrit of the Veda. He says
further:
(b) The West Iranian languages, or those of Media and Persia. They
are known to us during the three periods, antiquity, middle ages and modern
times; but only in one dialect, viz.: that which at every period served as the
written language, throughout the Iranian provinces of the Persian Em-
pire. . . .. Of the ancient Persian, a few documents are now extant in
the cuneiform inscriptions of the kings of the Achemenian dynasty, to be found
in the ruins of Persepolis, on the rock of Behistun, near Hamadan, and some other
places of Persia. This language stands nearest to the two Bactrian dialects of
the Zend-Avesta, but shows, however, some peculiarities. . ... It is un-
doubtedly the mother of the modern Persian; but the differences between the two
are nevertheless great; and to read and understand the cuneiform inscriptions,
written in the ancient Persian, the Sanskrit and Zend, although they are only
sisters, have proved to be more useful than its daughter, the modern Persian.
The Pehlevi, that form of the Persian tongue current in Persia dur-
ing the Sassanian rule (235-640, A. D.), and into which the chief parts
of the Zend-Avesta (Yacna, Vispered and Vendidad) and some minor
pieces were translated, is the language of the Bundehesh and other books,
and, with variations, of many coins and inscriptions. It is a mixture of
Semitic and Iranian elements, the Semitic part being always identical with
Chaldee forms and words, and the Iranian with Persian. The non-Iranian
element is called by the Parsee Priests, Huzvoresh or Huzvaresh. About
700, A. D., the Pehlevi ceased to be a living language, by the restoration
of pure Iranian words, and the extermination of the foreign Huzvoresh
words, in writing commentaries on religious subjects. The restored lan-
guage, so purified, was called Pazend. This was used from 700 to I100,
A. D., when modern Persian took its place, a vast number of Arabic words
being incorporated with the Pazend or Parsee tongue, which still form an
inseparable part of the language.
It is also to be noted that the Semitic influence caused the Zend
to be written, like Hebrew, from right to left, while the Sanskrit is written
from left to right.
Dr. Haug thinks that:
the chief reason of the grammatical defects of the present texts of the Zend-Avesta
is owing to the want of grammatical studies among the ancient Persians and
Bactrians. The Zend.is a highly developed idiom, rich in inflexions, in the verbs
and nouns. In the former, where three numbers and eight cases can be distin-
iii
guished, it agrees almost completely with the Vedic Sanskrit; and in the latter it
exhibits a greater variety of form than the classical Sanskrit. Besides, he says,
we find a multitude of compound words of various kinds, and the sentences are
joined together in an easy way, which is apt to contribute largely towards a quick
understanding of the general sense of passages. It is a genuine sister of Sanskrit,
Greek, Latin and Gothic; but we find her no longer in the prime of life; she is
presented to us rather in her declining age.
There is every reason [he thinks], to believe that the grammar of the
Bactrian language was never fixed in any way by rules, as the Sanskrit was; so
that corruptions and abbreviations of forms were unavoidable, and almost all
knowledge of the exact meaning of the terminations died out, when the ancient
Iranian languages underwent the change from inflected to uninflected ones.
After that, the Priests, ignorant of grammar, merely copied out the Zarathustrian
books mechanically, or wrote them out from memory, of course full of blunders
and mistakes; for which reason the copies now in use are in the most deplorable
condition as regards grammar.
In the translations by Bleeck, from the German of Professor Spiegel,
of the Avesta-Zend, the different portions are not arranged according to
their age. First comes the Vendidad (vi-Daévo-datem, what is given
against Daevas), in 22 Fargards, or chapters; which is followed by the
Vispered (said by Spiegel to mean ‘‘all Lords” or ‘‘to all Lords,” invocations
being understood. Haug says it is Vigpé ratavd, meaning ‘“‘all heads’’), a
collection of prayers, composed of 23 chapters according to Haug, and of
27 according to Spiegel. Then follows the younger Yagna, in 27 chapters;
and then seven Gathas (hymns, songs, or odes), numbered as chapters of
the Yacna from xxviii. to lv. They are the Gathads Ahunavaiti (Yag. 28
to 34); Haptanhaiti (35 to 41); Ustvaiti (42 to 45); Cpénta Mainyf (46 to
49); Vohu-Khshathra (50, 51); Vahistoisti (52); and the Airyana Ishyo
(53 to 55).
Then follow the Crosh Yasht (56), and Yacna (57 to 71). Last is
the Khudah Avesta, containing among other pieces, twenty Yashts (yest,
‘worship by prayers and sacrifices’), addressed to and lauding various
Deities, and containing many Aryan legends.
But of all these, the Gathads are very much the oldest. Anquetil’s
translation, Dr. Haug says, may, in the Vendidad and other books, serve
as a guide for ascertaining the general sense; but in the Gaths, he is
utterly insufficient as a guide even for that. ‘‘The chief reason,” he says,
“is the peculiarity of this portion as to language and ideas. They contain
no description of ceremonies and observances, as the Vendidad does, nor
any enumeration of the glorious feats of angels, as the Yashts do, but
philosophical and abstract thoughts, and they differ widely from all other
pieces contained in the Zend-Avesta. As they have been unintelligible to
the Parsee priests for several thousand years, we cannot expect Anquetil
to have given a faint approximate statement of their general contents.”
iv
We shall see hereafter that Dr. Haug has a wholly different general
idea of these compositions from that of Professor Spiegel, and that the
rendering of almost every verse by one is widely different from that of the
other. Whether they contain philosophical and abstract thoughts, and
are correctly understood by either translator, and if so, by which, we
must endeavour to discover.
Meanwhile, I may say here, that I am satisfied, from internal evi-
dence amply furnished by the Hymns themselves, as I understand them,
that Dr. Haug is correct in saying and repeating at pages 39, 115, 138 and
218 of his Essays, that ‘the Gathas contain the undoubted teaching of
Zarathustra himself, as he imparted it to his disciples;’’ and that the five
Gathas, Ahunavaiti, Ustvaiti, Cpénta Mainyus, Vohu-Khshathrem and
Vahistoistis, really, as cannot be doubted, contain the sayings and teach-
ings of the great founder of the Parsee religion, Zarathustra Cpitama
himself.
‘‘While the other parts,’’ he says,
are nowhere said to be the work of Zarathustra Cpitama himself, he is, in the
Crosh Yasht distinctly and expressly mentioned as the author of these ancient
and sacred songs. Whereas in the other works of the Zend-Avesta, Zarathustra
is spoken of in the third person, and even occasionally invoked as a divine being,
in the Gathas he speaks of himself in the first person, and acts throughout as a
man who is commissioned by God to perform a great task. We find him placed
among men, surrounded by his friends, Kava-Victacgpa, Jamaspa and Frash4ostra,
preaching to his countrymen a new and more pure religion, exhorting them to
leave idolatry and to worship the living God only.
And we shall find, I think, that these Gathds are really patriotic
effusions, intended to arouse and unite the Aryan population against the
Infidels from the North who had invaded and conquered the country or a
large part of it; and the revolted indigenous Turanians who had allied
themselves with him, that Zarathustra succeeded in inspiring with courage
and the fervour of religious zeal the lukewarm and disheartened of the
oppressed Aryans, was himself a brave soldier and skillful leader, and not
a Priest, and finally, achieving complete victory, became the King of the
Mother Country and its Colonies.
The Yacna Haptanhdaiti, which Spiegel includes among the GAathas,
as the third, is to be distinguished, Haug thinks, from the Gathas, though
written in the Gatha dialect, and undoubtedly very old. There is no
sufficient evidence, he thinks, to trace it to Zarathustra himself. It is not
praised among the Gathas, in Fargard xix. of the Vendidad, and in Yacna
lxx., ‘‘all five Gathas’”’ only are spoken of. And, besides, Zarathustra not
only does not speak in it, but Mazda and Zarathustra are praised in it
together.
Haug points out the principal differences between the Gatha dialect
and the classical Zend, and concludes that its grammatical forms evidently
represent a more primitive state of the Bactrian language, nearer to its
Aryan source; and that other features “indicate a more ancient stage of
language in the Gatha dialect than we can discover in the common Zend.”
But the two, he thinks, ‘‘represent one and the same language, with such
changes as might be brought about within the space of one or two cen-
turies;’ wherefore, he thinks the Gatha dialect to be only one hundred
or at the utmost two hundred years the older.
The Gathds are metrical pieces, that were sung; and the metres
used in them are of the same nature as those that are found in the Vedic
hymns. There are no rhymes, and the syllables are merely counted,
without much attention being paid to their quantity. Each of the five
Gathas exhibits a different metre, verses of the same metre being put
together, irrespective of their contents. The first Gatha contains verses,
each of which consists of 48 syllables; in the second, the metre is of 55; in
the third, of 44, etc. The number of syllables is not always strictly ob-
served; there being now and then, one less or one more. In the first
Gatha, each verse consists of three lines, each line comprising sixteen syl-
lables. In the second, there are five lines in each stanza, each of eleven
syllables; in the third, four, each of eleven syllables; in the fourth, six,
each of seven; and in the fifth there are various metres.
The Yacgna Haptanhaiti, or “Book of Seven Chapters,’ is next in
antiquity to the Gathas, and appears, Dr. Haug says, “‘to be the work of
one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, called in ancient times
‘Zarathustra’ [which he insists is a dynastic or family name, like ‘Pha-
raoh,’ borne by his successors as well as himself], a ‘Zarathustrétema,’
who, deviating somewhat from the high and pure monotheistic principle
of (pitama, made some concessions to the adherents of the ante-Zoroas-
trian religion, by addressing prayers to other beings than Ahura Mazda.”
The language in which these books are written is erroneously called
‘Zend.’ Its proper name is Iranian. ‘“‘Zand”’ or ‘‘Zend’’ was a translation
or commentary on the Avesta, and in the Pehlevi translation of the Yacna,
the scripture is, if mentioned, always denoted by ‘‘Avesta-Zend,” showing
that the Zend was regarded by the translators as part of the scripture.
“Zend”? never was a name of the people or the language. The proper
name of the people, indeed, was ‘‘Arya,”’ as that of the people of the Pun-
jaub was. It was the name of the race; and I style the two branches
“Indo-Aryan” and “Irano-Aryan.”’
We dare say [Dr. Haug remarks], that Zend as well as Avesta is preserved
to a certain extent, and to be found in the texts which now go by the name
Zend-Avesta. .... The Avesta is to be found chiefly in Yagna (or Szeshne),
vi
while all the other books represent pre-eminently (not exclusively) the proper
Zend literature.
The Pehlevi translators, he says, used the denominative, Avesta u
Zand.
The Vendidad, Haug thinks, is the joint work of the successors of
Zarathustra Cpitama, the Supreme High Priests of the Iranian community.
The Chief High Priest is called, in the Vispered, Zarathustrétem6, which
word literally means (tema being the superlative affix), the greatest
Zarathustra. The works of these successors of the Great Leader and
Liberator are almost equally revered with those of himself; and the Yacna
Haptanhaiti is often named particularly, by itself, in the later writings,
and styled ‘“‘Holy,” and ‘‘Victorious’’—meaning that it has an inherent
efficacy to give victory and success.
The Yashts are analogous to the Puranic literature of the Brahmins.
They consist chiefly of two classes of works; I, Songs; and 2, Conversa-
tions with Ahura Mazda. They contain fragments of ancient epic poetry
or ballads of the Bactrian Aryans, such are also to be found in the younger
Yacna and Vendidad. In the present form, the Yashts, though contain-
ing many fragments of more ancient compositions, and really ancient
legends, are the most modern portions of the Zend-Avesta, and were com-
posed when the religion taught by Zarathustra had greatly degenerated,
partly by intermixture with the religions of the people of the countries
conquered by the Aryans; partly by that natural process whereby phrases
misunderstood cause the creation of mythological fables and the advent
of new Deities, and partly, perhaps, by the popular demand of the Aryan
common people themselves, for the restoration to their old places as
Deities, of stars and other supposed potencies of nature.
Thus, Mithra (the Sun), Ardvicfira, the goddess of water or rivers,
Drvacpa, Rashnu, and the stars Tistrya, Vanant, Haptdiringa, etc., came
to be worshipped as Deities, and are celebrated in the Yashts, as well as
Ahura Mazda and his Emanations or Hypostases, the Amésha Cpéntas.
Not the least trace of any adoration paid to these new Deities is found in
the Gathas.
Dr. Haug thinks that the Yashts had their origin from 350 to 450
years before Christ. He assigns a not much /ater date than 1200, B. C., to
the Gathas, and fixes that of the much larger part of the Vendidad at 900
or 1000, B. C.; and that of the younger Yagna at about 700 to 800. But he
also says that the ancient Iranian literature was, of course, the work of
centuries; that the different parts of it bear the same relation, the younger
‘to the older, as the Talmud and the books of the Old Testament other
‘than the Pentateuch do to the Pentateuch itself; that the sacred literature
of the Jews, from the early times of Moses (1300 or 1500 before Christ) to
Vii
the close of the Talmudic literature (960, A. D.), comprises a space of about
2400 years; and that, if we were to apply the same calculation to the
Zarathustrian literature, its beginning would be imputed to as early a date
as 2800, B. C., which would not in the least contradict the statements of
the Greeks, as to the time at which Zarathustra lived.
I think that the Gathdas are much older, even, than that, and perhaps
older than the Rig Veda. They were certainly composed in Bactria, not
very long after the Irano-Aryans crossed the Oxus and settled there, and
when Bactria was the Mother Country, and it and its Colonies were under
one government; when Media had not been reached by any stream of
Aryan emigrations, and consequently long before the Medo-Aryan race
was in existence, and longer still before that race conquered Persia and
afterwards Assyria.
Dr. Haug is of opinion that the number of Zarathustrian books was
very considerable, and that most of them are lost. The names of all the
books, with short summaries of their contents, are still extant. The whole
scripture consisted of twenty-one parts, called ‘‘Nosks’’ (nacko), each one
containing Avesta and Zend, 1. e., the original text and a commentary on
it. The names of the sections, and the number of chapters in each, with a
short statement of the chief contents are still extant; and Dr. Haug gives
them at page 125, according to the reports of them to be found in the
Rivayats (collections of correspondence and decisions). The whole num-
ber of chapters is 815.
Dr. Haug remarks that thousands of Brahmins are now living,
who are able to recite, parrot-like, with the greatest accuracy, even as to accents,
without any mistake, the whole of one of the Vedas [and that we must therefore
admit], that the same could have been the case at those early times to which we
must trace the origin of the Zarathustrian religion. As long [he remarks] as
the language of the songs or prayers repeated was a living one and perfectly intel-
ligible, there was no need of committing them to writing; but as soon as it had
become dead, the aid of writing was required, in order to guard the sacred prayers
[and songs} against corruption and mutilation. That [he says] was, in all proba-
bility, the case already, a thousand years before the beginning of our era.
It may be added that if the old Vedic Hymns could be preserved a
thousand years, as they certainly were, without writing, by the memories
of men, so could the Gath4s of Zarathustra; and that either could as well
be so preserved two, three or four thousand years as one thousand. That
the oldest Vedic Hymns were composed several thousand years before
Christ, I think there is no doubt; and I believe the Gathas to be even older
than these.
Dr. Haug explains the belief of the ancient Greeks and modern
Parsees in the Zarathustrian authorship of the whole Zend-Avesta, by
considering the name Zarathustra (corrupted by the Greeks into ‘‘Zoroas-
Vili
ter’’), not as the proper name of one individual only, ‘‘but as that of the
Spiritual heads of the religious community of the ancient Persians in
general.’’ Every High Priest, he thinks, was believed to be the successor
of Zarathustra Cpitama, and to have inherited his spirit, so that his utter-
ances came to be considered as sacred and divine as those that are with
reason to be ascribed to the founder alone.
Dr. Haug considers Gpitama to be a family name, which, he says,
is given to the Hechataspas also [Yagcna xlvt. (xlv. Spiegel) 15] who seem,
therefore, to have been his nearest relations. His father’s name was,
according to the younger Yacna and Vendidad, Pdéurushacpa; and his
daughter is mentioned, while her name is Pouruchicta, by the two names
[Yac. litt. (lit., Spiegel) 3], Héchatagpana Cpitami, which can be inter-
_ preted only as “‘belonging to the Cpitama family of the HéchatAcpa line-
age.’
But Spiegel everywhere renders Cpitama as the adjective ‘‘Holy”’;
and I do not find any other Zarathustra anywhere spoken of in the Avesta-
Zend than the original Bactrian Hero and Liberator, the original Teacher
of the Ahurian faith. The word is, in fact, an adjective, in the superlative
degree, and means ‘‘most noble.”
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PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.
The written text of the Zend-Avesta is to be referred to the reign of
Ardeshir Babegan, originally a Persian officer of royal descent, who,
serving in the army of Artaban the Parthian, revolted, and succeeded in
relieving Persia of the Parthian yoke, and re-establishing the ancient
Empire, about 226 years after Christ.
The history of Persia as an independent nation had then been a
blank for five hundred years; it having been divided into petty kingdoms,
ruled over first by the Greeks and then by the Parthians, from een) B.C.,
to 226, A. D.
The first care of Ardeshir was to restore the national religion to its
primitive splendour; to effect which he summoned the Mobeds to collect
the writings and traditions of the ancient faith. The language of the
Avesta had long before ceased to be spoken. The Mobeds discharged
their task honestly, without interpolating any new doctrines of their own.
Occasionally, when the original text was imperfect, they introduced a few
words to connect these; but these, Professor Westergaard says, are merely
simple clauses or introductory words, partly found already in the ancient
texts; and even these betray a want of real knowledge.
We may therefore [Mr. Bleeck says, in his introduction to his translation of
the German version of the Avesta of Professor Spiegel], consider it certain that
the text of the Avesta which we now possess is such as had been preserved by
tradition from a very early period, and that, whatever may have been its imper-
fections, it is at least genuine. Unfortunately, the imperfections are very nu-
merous.
Professor Miiller says (Lectures on the Science of Language, New
York Ed. of 1869, 7. 205):
It was chiefly through the Sanskrit, and with the help of comparative
philology, that the ancient dialect of the Parsis or Fire-worshippers was deci-
phered. The manuscripts had been preserved by the Parsi Priests at Bombay,
where a colony of Fire-worshippers had fled in the tenth century.
Other settlements of Guebres are to be found in Yezd and other parts of Kerman.
Professor Whitney says (Oriental and Linguistic Studies, 1 53), that
when these communities in Kerman and Yezd were visited in 1843, by
Westergaard, he found them in the lowest state of decay, and fast becom-
ng extinct by conversion to Mohammedanism. He says:
They had almost lost the knowledge of their religion; they had but few
manuscripts, and among these nothing that was not already known; they had
forgotten the ancient tongues in which their scriptures were written, and were
able to make use only of such parts of them as were translated into modern Per-
Ridit. In another century, the religion of Zoroaster will probably have
bo
IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
become quite extinct in its native country, and will exist only in the Indian colony;
but it has lived long enough to transmit as an everlasting possession to the after-
world, all that has for centuries been in existence of the old and authentic records
of its doctrines; and having done that its task may be regarded as fulfilled, and
its extinction as a matter of little moment.
Respecting the region [the same writer says (p. 166)], in which the Avesta
had its origin, we may speak with more confidence; it was doubtless Bactria and
its vicinity, the Northeastern portion of the immense territory occupied by the
Iranian people, and far removed from those countries with which the Western
World came more closely into contact. To give in detail the grounds upon which
this opinion is founded, would occupy too much time and space here; they are,
briefly stated, the relation which the Avestan language sustains to the Indian and
to the other Persian dialects, difference of religious customs and institutions from
those which we know to have prevailed in the West (as, for instance, that the
Avesta knows nothing of the Magi, the Priestly caste in Media and in Persia
proper), the indirect but important evidences derived from the general character
of the texts, the views and conceptions which they represent, the state of culture
and mode of life which they indicate as belonging to the people among whom they
originated; and, especially the direct geographical notices which they contain.
During the long interval of neglect and oppression [which ended with the
overthrow of the Parthian rule, and the establishment of the Sassanian dynasty],
say the traditions, the sacred books, even such as were saved from destruction by
the tyrant Iskander [Alexander], had become lost, and the doctrines and rites of
the Zoroastrian religion were nearly forgotten. King Ardeshir gathered from all
parts of the land a great assembly of Mobeds, to the number, according to some,
of fifty thousand, and from their memory and recitation of the scriptures, so much
of the latter as was not forgotten was again collected and committed to writing.
This, too, is a notice which there is much reason for believing to be in the main
authentic. The whole state and condition of the collection, as it exists in our
hands, indicates that its material must have passed through some process anal-
ogous to this. The incomplete and fragmentary character of the books that
compose it, the frequent want of connection, or the evident interpolations of
longer or shorter passages, the hopelessly corrupt state of portions of the text, the
awkward style and entire grammatical incorrectness displayed by others, all go
to show that it must be, in some measure, an assemblage of fragments, combined
without a full understanding of their meaning and connection. To this is to be
added the evidence afforded by the alphabetic character in which the texts are
written. The Avestan character is of Semitic origin, akin to the Syriac alphabets
of the commencement of the Christian era, and closely resembling that of the
inscriptions and upon the coins of the earliest Sassanids, of which it seems a
developed form. It cannot, then, have been from the beginning the medium of
preservation of the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta cannot have been written
in it before the time of Christ. But it is a very difficult matter to suppose a
deliberate change in the method of writing a text esteemed sacred, unless when
peculiar circumstances require or strongly favour it. The character comes to par-
take of the sanctity of the matter written in it, and is almost as unalterable. It
could hardly be, excepting when the body of scripture was assembled and cast into
a new form, that it should be transcribed in a character before unused. The
Sassanian reconstruction of the Zoroastrian canon, and its committal to writing
in an alphabet of that period, must probably have taken place together.
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA a
The oldest existing manuscripts of the Avesta date from the early
part of the fourteenth century, or not less than a thousand years later
than the compilations, and most of them are considerably more modern,
and, Professor Whitney says:
They all offer the same text, there are indeed very considerable varieties of
reading among them, as regards the orthography and the division of the words, so
that not unfrequently different grammatical forms and different combinations
seem to show themselves; yet, sentence by sentence, and page by page, they are
found to agree in presenting the same matter in the same order; their disagree-
ments are to be charged to the ignorance and carelessness of the copyists. They
all represent a single original. So that we have in our hands nearly or quite all
the scriptures recoverable when their recovery was attempted.
Of the Zend language itself, Professor Max Miiller (Chips, 7. 81, et seq.)
says. P
Here, comparative philology has actually had to create and re-animate all
the materials of language, in which it has afterwards to work. Little was known
of the language of Persia and Media, previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, com-
posed about 1000, A. D.; and it is due entirely to the inductive method of compar-
ative philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of three
periods of Persian language deciphered, translated and explained. We have the
language of the Zoroastrians, the language of the Achemenians, and the language
of the Sassanians, which represent the history of the Persian tongue, in three suc-
cessive periods. . . . . All now rendered intelligible by the aid of compar-
ative philology, while but fifty years ago their very name and existence were
questioned.
I interpose here the following, from Mr. Bleeck’s introduction to the
translation of the Zend-Avesta.
The Achemenian dynasty fell in 331 B. C. The Sassanian rose with Arde-
shir, in 226 A. D. Thirty-one kings comprised it, and extended its empire,
until, in the reign of Nushirwan the Just (A. D. 531 to 579), it reached from the
banks of the Phoses to the shores of the Mediterranean, and from the Red Sea to
the Jaxartes and the Indus. The last of the dynasty ascended the throne in 632,
A. D. In his reign the Mohammedan invasion occurred, which swept away
forever the dominion of the followers of Zarathustra, in 641, A. D. Ina short
time, the Zarathustrian religion was almost rooted out of Persia, and the Parsees
were confined to the oasis of Yezd, though a secret attachment to the religion o
their ancestors lingered for many years among the landed nobility of Persia,
particularly in the Eastern Provinces.
About the middle of the seventh century, and a century later, the Parsees
emigrated to India, and for more than a thousand years may be said to have been
all but unknown to Europe. Their ancient language, the Zend, remained in
obscurity for upwards of a thousand years, and had become almost extinct, when
it was brought to Europe.
It is now (1864) rather more than a century ago that a young Frenchman,
by name Anquetil du Perron, happened to see a few pages in the Zend character,
which had been copied from the Vendidad Sadé in the Bodleian Library (procured
4 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
at Surat in 1718). He immediately conceived the idea of going out to India in
search of the original Zend writings; and having no other means of making the
journey (a long and hazardous one in those days), he actually enlisted in a Regi-
ment about to proceed to India. His friends now took his cause warmly in hand,
and he was soon released from his enlistment, and sent out to India with a pension
from the king, to enable him to prosecute his design.
After various adventures, Anquetil was successful in his attempt: he pro-
cured copies of the Avesta and other works relating to the Zarathustrian
religion, made translations with the help of the Destur Darab, and returned in
triumph to Europe.
His translation of the Avesta was published, being, of course, very
defective, and the only wonder being that he was able to produce any
translation at all, his teacher, the Destur Darab, possessing no grammat-
ical knowledge of the Zend, and he and Anquetil communicating with each
other through the medium of Persian; the case thus resembling
that of a man attempting to teach a language which he does not understand
himself, by means of a language which his pupil understands but indifferently.
Anquetil returned from India in 1762, his book was published in
1771, and a German translation of it by Kleuker appeared in Germany
in 1781.
For many years after this, the study of Zend made scarcely any prog-
ress. Erskine and some scholars regarded it as merely a corruption of
Sanskrit, and this opinion was pretty generally received, until Professor
Rask completely overturned it, and proved that Zend, though allied to
Sanskrit, was a distinct language; and further, that modern Persian was
derived from Zend as Italian is from Latin. His treatise, in Danish, was
translated into German by Von der Hagen, and published in 1826.
But the real founder of Zend philology was Eugene Burnouf, whose
“Commentaries sur le Yagcna,” and ‘Etudes sur le langue et les textes
Zends”’ are a monument of patient learning and critical acumen.
He compared Anquetil’s translation with the Sanskrit version of
Neryosengh, and carefully analyzed every word of the original Zend. His
labours extended over a period of more than twenty years (1829-1852),
during which time other scholars began to apply themselves to the study
of the Zend. The discovery that it was one of the languages of the cunei-
form inscriptions gave a fresh importance to the language of the Avesta.
Sir H. C. Rawlinson translated a large portion of these inscriptions by
means of the Zend, and Zend philology now made rapid progress.
Burnouf had caused the Vendidad Sadé to be lithographed and pub-
lished in a magnificent folio volume, and in 1850 Professor Brockhaus
of Leipzig published an edition of it in Roman characters, and added to it —
a glossary. In 1852-54, Professor Westergaard gave a complete edition
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 5
of the Avesta and Khordah Avesta, in Zend characters. Professor Haug,
in 1862, published essays on the language, writings and religion of the
Parsees, at Bombay; and in 1852 Professor Spiegel published a German
version of the Avesta, followed in 1859 by a version of the Vispered and
Yacna, and in 1863 by one of the Khordah Avesta. An English trans-
lation of all these, by Arthur Henry Bleeck, was published in England
in 1864.
I return now to Miiller:
The labours of Anquetil du Perron, who first translated the Zend-Avesta,
were those of a bold adventurer, not of a scholar. Rask was the first who, with
the material collected by du Perron and himself, analyzed the language scientif-
ically. He proved:
1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W. Erskine, but
that it differed from it as Greek, Latin or Lithuanian differed from one another,
and from Sanskrit.
2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend, as the Italian
was from Latin; and
3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zarathustra, must have been reduced
to writing at least previously to Alexander’s conquest. The opinion that Zend
was an artificial language (an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
philology, beginning with Sir Wm. Jones) is passed over by Rask as not deserving
of refutation.
The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the MSS., the
outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and philological anatomy of
considerable portions of the Zarathustrian writings were the work of the late
Eugene Burnouf. He was the real founder of Zend philology. It is clear from
his works, and from Bopp’s valuable remarks in his comparative grammar, that
Zend, in its grammar and its dictionary, is nearer to Sanskrit than any other Indo-
European language. Many Zend words can be re-translated into Sanskrit, by
simply changing the Zend letters into their corresponding forms in Sanskrit.
With regard to the correspondence of the letters, in Grimm’s sense of the word,
Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical languages. It differs from Sanskrit
principally in its sibilants, nasals and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance,
is represented by the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into
the Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus the
geographical name hapta-hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes intelligible
if we re-translate the Zend hf, into the Sanskrit s. For Saptasindhu, or the
seven rivers, is the old Vaidic name of India itself, derived from the five rivers of
the Punjab, together with the Indus and the Sarasvati.
Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the North-
ern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with Zend. The
numerals are the same in all these languages, up to 100. The name for ‘thousand,’
however, Sahosra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does not occur in any of the Indo-
European dialects, except in Zend, where it becomes hazoura. Inthe same manner,
the German and Sclavonic languages have a word for ‘thousand,’ peculiar to them-
selves; as also in Greek or Latin we find many common words, which we look for
in vain in any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of his-
torical meaning, and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove that these two
6 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
languages continued together, long after they were separated from the common
Indo-European stock.
Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India, in religion
and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are worshipped
under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change of some of the most
sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil spirits in Zend, only serves to
strengthen the conviction that we have here the usual traces of a schism, which
separated a community that had once been united.
Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta principally
with the later Sanskrit, inclined at first to the opinion that this schism took
place in Persia, and that the dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into
India. This is still the prevailing opinion; but it requires to be modified in ac-
cordance with new facts elicited from the Veda.
The Vaidik worship was of Fire, Light, Heat, and their manifesta-
tions. Light, Heat, the softening and melting Potency were Subsistences,
or Hypostases, of the one universal substance, Fire. There is no con-
ception in the Veda of any Deity, Spirit or Power creative, intelligent or
otherwise, superior to the Fire, Agni, whose name is preserved in the Latin
Ignis. This philosophical creed was itself a long step forward from the
original worship of the heavenly bodies and physical agents of nature, the
remains whereof are found in the Veda, in the adoration of Mitra, Varuna
and Aryaman, the Maruts, Ushas and the Aswins. The Keltic, Sclavonic,
Germanic and the Greek and Latin outflowings from the great sea of Aryan
life, took place before the worship of Agni and Indra had succeeded that
of the heavenly bodies, and in each race that so flowed off and colonized
and conquered, the original rude faith and nature worship was developed
with different results, each, perhaps even adopting at first the names given
by the people whom they conquered and incorporated with themselves,
to the Sun, Planets, Stars and other natural objects.
The opinion of all the commentators is, that the Iranian emigration
was a consequence of the reform in the Aryan faith, instituted by Zara-
thustra. I shall endeavour to show that there is no evidence of any schism
at all; that before Agni, Indra, Vishnu and Varuna were known as Gods,
but when Mitra and Vayu were, Yima, an Aryan chief, led a large body
of emigrants across the Oxus, to the South of that river, and occupied the
eastern part of Bactria, leaving behind in Sogdiana those of the race whose
descendants afterwards emigrated to the Indus country by the way of
Kabul.
I shall endeavour to show that Yima (by the name of Yama) was
remembered with veneration, ages afterward, by the Indo-Aryans, as the
chief who led a large force of ‘‘the fathers’ across the mighty water, and
opened the way for others to follow, having free choice of routes; that
Yima occupied and settled in the fertile plain, South of the Oxus, in which
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 7
the city of Balkh, anciently Bactra, stands; and that, among those of the
race who had remained behind, and by their descendants in India, he
came to be regarded as the first man that died, and as having conveyed
the souls of the fathers across the streams, into the land of the departed;
until he came to represent Death himself.
I think it will appear that while the Indo-Aryan mind was slowly
attaining the conceptions of a higher nature than those of star worship,
and the philosophical doctrines of the Agni and Indra worship were devel-
oping themselves, Zarathustra advanced from the Fire-worship to that of
an Infinite source of Light and Life, containing within itself an infinite
intellect and infinite beneficence as well as power; and to the philosophic
conception of Divine action by Emanations, personifying His attributes
and Potencies, and whereby only the infinite God was revealed. It will
appear that this no more caused a schism in Bactria, than the advance to
the Agni and Indra worship created one in Kabul or Sapta Sindhu; but
all the Irano-Aryans embraced the faith taught by Zarathustra.
Indra is not named at all in the Zend-Avesta. It is generally said
that he is named, once or twice. I think it will appear that he is not.
The Devas, originally the luminaries of the sky, and which became spir-
itual beings for the Indo-Aryans, after Yima’s emigration became evil
spirits to the Irano-Aryans, simply because they were the Stars and other
bodies that the native tribes and hostile Tatars or Toorkhs adored.
Zarathustra lived some generations after Yima, and at a time, as
I think it will clearly appear, when strong bodies of Tatar, Scythian or
Toorkish horsemen (Drukhs), had invaded Bactria and possessed them-
selves of a large portion of it, including the fertile plain which I have
mentioned (called in the Zend-Avesta ‘‘the Best Place’’); and the business
of Zarathustra’s life was to unite the Aryan people against these infidel
invaders, and the native tribes, which, once conquered and converted, had
relapsed, and, allied with the invaders, had marauded and plundered at
will along the Aryan border, and far into the bowels of the land.
“Zend’’, Miiller continues, if compared with classical Sanskrit, exhib-
its, in many points of grammar, features of a more primitive character
than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and Burnouf himself admitted
it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik differs on the very same points
from the later Sanskrit, and has preserved the same primitive and irregular
form as the Zend. I still hold that the name of ‘‘Zend’’ was originally a
corruption of the Sanskrit word Khandas, which is the name given to the
language of the Veda by Panini and others. When we read in Panini’s
grammar that certain forms occur in Khandas, but not in the classical
language, we may almost always translate Khandas by Zend, for nearly
all these rules apply equally to the language of the Avesta.
8 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
In mythology, also, the nemina and numina of the Avesta appear at first
sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahabharata. But if regarded from a
Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once, and many of the gods of the
Zarathustrians come out once more as mere reflections and deflections of the
primitive and authentic Gods of the Veda. It can now be proved, even by
geographical evidence, that the Zarathustrians had been settled in India, before
they emigrated into Persia. I say the Zarathustrians, for we have no evidence
to bear us out in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
general. That the Zarathustrians and their ancestors started from India during
the Vaidik period, can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of Massilia
started from Greece. The geographical traditions in the first Fargard of the
Vendidad do not interfere with this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would
embody a remembrance preserved by the Zarathustrians, but forgotten by the
Vaidik poets. . . . . a remembrance of times previous to their first common
descent into the country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the Zarathustrians after
they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of countries and nations, sub-
sequent to their emigration from the land of the Seven Rivers.
And Professor Miiller adds, in a note:
The purely mythological character of this geographical chapter has been
proved by M. Michel Bréal [Journal Astatique, 1862]. Professor Spiegel
considers the first Fargard, ‘a most important geographical record of the coun-
tries known to the early Iranians.’ ‘It was formerly held,’ he says, ‘that this
Fargard contained a series of traditions relating to the most ancient migration
of the Aryan race; but the best authorities are now agreed that the idea of ‘‘suc-
cessive migrations’ by the Aryans into the various countries enumerated must be
given up. Bunsen and Haug, however, we believe, still adhere to their previous
opinion.’
We shall refer, shortly, to Baron Bunsen’s opinion in regard to it,
and to the time of the Iranian separation; and I only remark here that I
am not at all convinced that the Iranians or Zarathustrians did not sep-
arate and flow off toward Persia, until the Vaidik period. I think that
this emigration took place long before the Aryan settlement in the land of
Seven Rivers or the Indus country. The religious hymns called the
Gathas contain the pure and primitive Zarathustrianism; and were evi-
dently written, or rather composed, at a period considerably older than the
Vaidik one, and among a people of more primitive and simple habit of life
than is displayed to us by the Veda. And Miiller admits that these and
similar questions of the highest importance for the early history of the
Aryan language and mythology must await their final decision, until the
whole of the Veda and the Avesta have been published.
Westergaard and Spiegel agree in considering the Veda as the safest key
to an understanding of the Avesta. Professor Roth of Tiibingen, has well
expressed the mutual relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following
simile: “The Veda,’ he writes, ‘and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers, flowing
from one fountain head: the stream of the Veda is fuller and purer, and has
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 9
remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has been in various
ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot, with certainty, be traced back
to its source.’
As to the language of the Achamenians, presented to us in the Persian
text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as soon as it
became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that of the Avesta, only in a
second stage of its continuous growth. The process of deciphering these bundles
of arrows by means of Zend and Sanskrit, has been very much like deciphering
an Italian inscription, without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical
and medieval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick per-
ception of a Grotefend, to read more than the proper names and a few titles, on
the walls of the Persian palaces, without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems
almost providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at any
previous period would have been in the eyes of either classical or Oriental scholars
nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails, wedges or arrows, should have been
rescued from the dust of centuries at the very moment when the discovery and
study of Sanskrit and Zend had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple suc-
cessfully with their difficulties.
Spiegel, as quoted here by Miiller in a note (p. 88), arranges the
different portions in the order of their antiquity:
1. The second part of the Yagna (the Gathas), as separated in respect
to the language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zarathustra himself,
since he is named in the third person; and, indeed, everything intimates that
neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. 2. The Vendidad, which, though
not originally composed as it now stands, it having suffered both earlier and later
interpolations, is still, in its present form, of a considerable antiquity. Among
the writings of the last period are the first part of the Yacna, and the Yeshts in
Khurdah Avesta. It is a significant fact that in the oldest of these writings, the
Gathas, nothing is fixed in the doctrine regarding God. In the Vendidad we trace
the advance to a theological, and, in its way, mild and scientific system. Out of
this, in the last place, there springs the stern and intolerant religion of the
Sassanian epoch.
The language of the Avesta [Miiller continues], though certainly not
the language of Zarathustra, displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and
forms so much more primitive [than the mountain records of the Achzemenian
dynasty, the edicts of Darius], that centuries must have elapsed between the two
periods represented by these two strata of language. And yet [he says], the
phonetic system of the cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular
than even that of the earlier portions of the Avesta. The confusion in the pho-
netic system of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
tradition; which, particularly if confided to the safeguard of a learned priesthood,
is able to preserve, during centuries of growth and change, the sacred accents of a
dead language; but it is liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of
a corrupt pronunciation. There are no facts to prove that the text of the Avesta,
in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and Yezd now possess it, was com-
mitted to writing previous to the Sassanian dynasty (226, A. D.). After that
time, it can indeed be traced, and to a great extent be controlled and checked by
the Huzvaresh translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made,
it seems, after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is small, and we have
10 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta in the days of Arda Viraj, was, on
the whole, exactly the same as at present. At the time when these translations
were made, it is clear from their own evidence, that the language of Zarathustra
had already suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully under-
stood, even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed, that the
doctrine of Zarathustra had been committed to writing, for Alexander is said to
have destroyed the books of the Zarathustrians; Hermippus of Alexandria is said
to have read them. |
Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by the
genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and, last but not least,
by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the ante-historical epoch of
Zarathustra, down to the age of Darius and Artaxerxes II. . . . . The his-
tory of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest, and during the
Parthian occupation, is indeed but a blank page. The next glimpse of an authen-
tic contemporaneous document is the inscription of Ardeshir, the founder of the
new national dynasty of the Sassanians. It is written in what was once called
Pehlevi, and is now more commonly known as Huzvaresh, this being the proper
title of the language of the translation of the Avesta. . . . To judge from the
specimen given by Anquetil du Perron, it was not to be wondered at that this
dialect, then called Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon.
Even where more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed
so overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from the
Iranian family. Sir William Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of Chaldee.
Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these translations, has estab-
lished the fact that the language is truly Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous,
but Persian in roots and grammar.
From a ‘‘chip’’ of Professor Miiller [On the Study of the Zend-
Avesta in India’’ (Chips 7. 118)], we take the following:
Next to Sanskrit, there is no more ancient language than Zend; and next
to the Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more primitive religious code
‘than the Zend-Avesta.
The Zend, I believe, is an older Aryan dialect or language than the
Sanskrit of the Veda; and the Gathdas older compositions than most of the
Vaidik hymns, and much older than any other compositions now in exist-
ence.
It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled in the heart of
Anquetil du Perron by the sight of a fac simile of a page of the Zend-Avesta, that
he spent six years (1754-1761) in different parts of western India, trying to’collect
MSS. of the sacred writings of Zarathustra, and to acquire from the Dustoors a —
knowledge of their contents.
Rask, a learned Dane, collected many valuable MSS. at Bombay,
and wrote in 1826 his essay, ‘‘On the Age and Genuineness of the Zend
Language.’ Westergaard, also a Dane, went to India (1841-1843) before
he undertook to publish his edition of the religious books of the Zarathus- |
trians, at Copenhagen, in 1852. During all this time, French and German —
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA . 11
scholars, like Burnouf, Bopp and Spiegel were hard at work in decipher-
ing the curious remains of the Magian religion.
The translation of the Zend Avesta, published by Anquetil du Perron, with the
assistance of Dustoor Darab, was by no means trustworthy. It was, in fact, a
French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi version of the Zend
original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his knowledge of Sanskrit, and his
familiarity with the principles of comparative grammar, approached for the first
time the very words of the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of
ground for himself, and his Commentaire sur le Yacna is, in fact, like the deci-
phering of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later decipher-
ments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achemenian monarchs of Persia.
There are at present five editions, more or less complete, of the Zend-Avesta.
The first was lithographed under Burnouf’s direction, and published at Paris,
1829-1843. The second edition of the text, transcribed into Roman characters,
appeared at Leipzig, 1850, published by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition,
in Zend characters, was given to the world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about
the same time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at
Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the Zend-Avesta,
published in India, with Gujerati translations, which we have not seen, but which
are frequently quoted by native scholars. A German translation of the Zend-
Avesta was undertaken by Professor Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of
Anquetil du Perron, yet in the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of
the ancient text had been minutely analyzed and translated by Dr. Haug [Professor
of Sanskrit in the Poona College at Bombay, and author of Essays on the Sacred
Language, Writings and Religion of the Parsees published at Bombay, 1862],
even before his departure for the East.
The first volume of the German translation by Professor Spiegel
was published in 1852, and the other two volumes some years after. All
these are translated into English by Mr. Bleeck, and the version of Profes-
ior Spiegel carefully compared with a Gujerati manuscript translation.
The Zend-Avesta [Professor Miiller continues], is not a voluminous work.
We still call it the Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is .
Avesta Zend; nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever
be surrendered for the more correct one. . . . Nor do we feel at all con-
vinced that the name of Avesta Zend is the original and only correct name.
According to the Parsis Avesta means sacred text; Zend, its Pehlevi translation.
But in the Pehlevi translations themselves, the original work of Zarathustra is
spoken of as Avesta Zend. Why it is so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are
nowhere told by the translators themselves, and many conjectures have, in conse-
quence, been started by almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the
earliest portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called Avesta, the later portions
Zend; Zend meaning, according to him, commentary, explanation, gloss. Neither
the word Avesta nor Zend, however, occurs in the original Zend texts, and though
Avesta seems to be the Sanskrit avasth@, the Pehlevi apestak, in the sense of
‘authorized text,’ the etymology of Zend, as derived from a supposed zanti, San-
skrit gnati, ‘knowledge’, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most
likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the Pehlevi
12
In
says:
IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
translators, who retained it in their writings. It was possibly misinterpreted by
them, as many other Zend words have been at their hands, and may have been
originally the Sanskrit word Khandas, which is applied by the Brahmans to the ©
sacred hymns of the Veda.
Though the existence of different dialects in the ancient texts was pointed
out by Spiegel, and although the metrical portions of the Yagna had been clearly
marked by Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug’s great achievement to have —
extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have attempted a
complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt could be carried out at the ~
present moment. His edition of the Gathas—for this is the name of the ancient
metrical portions—marks an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and
the importance of the recovery of these genuine relics of Zarathustra’s religion
has been well brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books [‘‘Gott in _
der Geschtchte’’}. :
We by no means think that the translations here offered by Dr. Haug are
final.
Many of the passages as translated by him are as pie as daylight, and —
carry conviction by their very clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, ©
meaningless. We feel that they must have been intended for something else, —
something more definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the
words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of translation. We must.
feel convinced there was good sense in these ancient poems, otherwise mankind —
would not have taken the trouble to preserve them; and if we cannot discover
good sense in them, it must be either our fault, or the words as we now read them
were not the words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world.
the article [‘‘Progress of Zend Scholarship” (Chips 1. 129)], Miiller
There are certain branches of philological research, which seem to be con-
stantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the key to the
interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it by no means follows that
every word can at once be definitely explained, or every sentence correctly con-
strued. Thus it happens that the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered
differently by different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new ren-
dering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has been published.
And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions, applies with equal force to
the translation of ancient texts. A translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of
the Zend-Avesta, and, we may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly
the same process as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of
finding the real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the Zara-
thustrians or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the same word occurs, -
and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable to all and can at the same
time be defended on grammatical and etymological grounds. This is no doubt a
tedious process, nor can it be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty
inherent in the subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose
genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest pages of
ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the efforts by which
Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen and Rawlinson unravelled the inscriptions of Cyrus,
Darius and Xerxes, it may seem inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription
which at one time was supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus,
- mal
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 13
that Darius obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse, should
now yield a very different meaning.
The fact that different scholars should differ in their interpretations, or
that the same scholar should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one
that possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be thrown
on points hitherto doubtful and obscure—all this, which, in the hands of
those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so formidable a
weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the many, produces very little
effect in the minds of those who understand the reason of these changes, and to
whom each new change represents but a new step in the advance of the discovery
of truth.
In many cases of the same word used in different passages, it must
be equally as impossible in the Veda or Zend-Avesta as it is in the Hebrew
books to find ‘“‘a meaning that is equally applicable to all.’’ The same
word often has meanings that are opposites to each other; as Kadosh,
for example, means “consecrated,” “holy,” and also ‘‘a prostitute,’ and
nekah means ‘‘was devastated,’’ also ‘‘escaped punishment.’ Derivative
and secondary meanings from the same root very often so diverge as to
become complete contraries. To assign later meanings to ancient words is
to give incorrect meanings, also, and to use, in translating very ancient
books, words that are now expressive of ideas that did not exist when the
books were composed, is entirely to mistranslate; as, for example, the words
“Heaven” and “‘Spirit’’ in translating the Veda.
The meaning of words changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where
there is a literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four
or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned divines
in England would find it easy to read and to understand accurately a theological
treatise written in English four hundred years ago. The same happened, and
happened to a far greater extent, in ancient languages. Nor was the sacred
character attributed to certain writings any safeguard. On the contrary, greater
violence is done by successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other
relics of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries to
find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their early prophets, and in
addition to the ordinary influences which blur and obscure the sharp features of
old words, artificial influences are here at work, distorting the natural expression
of words which have been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda
or Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines are gen-
erally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of native commentators.
But as soon as any word or sentence can be so turned as to support a doctrine,
however modern, or a precept, however irrational, the simplest phrases are tor-
tured and mangled till at last they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most
foreign to the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta.
To find out how the words of the Old Testament were understood by those
to whom they were originally addressed, is a task attempted by very few inter-
preters of the Bible. The great majority of readers transfer without hesitation
the ideas which they connect with words as used in the nineteenth century to the
mind of Moses or his contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which
14 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
divides their language and their thoughts from the thoughts and language of the
wandering Tribes of Israel. How many words, again, there are in Homer, which
have indeed a traditional interpretation, as given by our dictionaries and com-
mentaries, but the exact purport of which is completely lost, is best known to Greek
scholars.
Miiller here instances the word gephurai, in the expression polemoto
gephurai, rendered “‘bridges of war,’’ what Homer meant by it being
wholly unknown; and the word hieros, sacred, as applied to a fish and a
chariot.
Considering the difficulty of translating the passages of the Zend-Avesta,
we can never hope to have every sentence of it rendered into clear and intelligible
English. Those who for the first time reduced the sacred traditions of the Zara-
thustrians to writing, were separated by more than a thousand years from the
time of their original composition. After that came all the vicissitudes to which
manuscripts are exposed during the process of being copied by more or less ig-
norant scribes. The most ancient MSS. of the Zend-Avesta date from thé
beginning of the fourteenth century. It is true there is an early translation of
the Zend-Avesta, the Pehlevi translation, and a later one in Sanskrit by Neriosengh.
But the Pehlevi translation, which was made under the auspices of the Sassanian
kings of Persia, served only to show how completely the literal and grammatical
meaning of the Zend-Avesta was lost even at that time, in the third century after
Christ; while the Sanskrit translation was clearly made, not from the original,
but from the Pehlevi.
I copy now from Bunsen (Egypi’s Place in Universal History, 1.
455, et seq.):
Many years elapsed after the talented Anquetil made the discovery of
the Zend-Avesta, before the researches on that head were established on a firm
foundation. The labours of Benfey, Spiegel, Westergaard and Haug have been
added to those of Burnouf, and we now possess still more extensive investigations
by the last three writers, into the records of the Zarathustrian religion. The
unfortunate notion that Zoroaster’s king Gustasp was Darius, the son of Hystaspes,
has been abandoned by men of learning, and it would now be as unscientific to
controvert such an idea, as it formerly was to advance it. We have intimated in
the First Book, that the central point of the old Aryan dominion was Bactria.
Haug has very recently also maintained that the language of the Zend books is
Bactrian.
We take up the subject with the advantage of having two fresh resting-
places. In the first place, we have additional proof of the correctness of the fact
already assumed by Niebuhr; that in the year 1903 before Alexander, or 2234,
B. C., a Zarathustrian king of Media conquered Babylon, and that the iseta
aeiiet he founded there reigned more than two hundred years.
Bactria, however, and not Media, was the original seat of Zarathustrian—
lore. This in itself compels us to inquire whether the date of the Great Founder
of that religion must not be placed much earlier; and in endeavouring to fix that
date, we have obtained important vantage-ground.
In the second place, we can now institute our historical inquiry upon a—
more certain philological basis.
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 15
Bunsen then proceeds to examine the first Fargard of the Vendidad,
declaring that the labours of Dr. Haug had confirmed his conviction,
that the nucleus of this record dates from the most ancient times, and that its
contents are nothing less than the reminiscences of the passages of the Aryans to
India, in other words, the succession of the foundation of fourteen kingdoms, the
last and most Southern of which was the Land of the Five Rivers, the Punjab.
-He accompanies his discussion with a sketch prepared by Dr.
Petermann, which I copy here. We have seen that Spiegel and others
do not agree with him in regard to the meaning of this “‘Geographical
Chapter of the Vendidad”’, which commences abruptly thus:
1. Ahura Mazda spoke to the holy Zarathustra.
2. I created, O holy Zarathustra, a place, a creation of delight.
5. The first and best of regions and places have I created, I who am
Ahura Mazda.
6. The Airyana Vaéja of the good creation.
13. The second and best of regions and places have I created, I who am
Ahura Mazda.
14. Gafi, the dwelling-place of Sughdha.
Thus it proceeds, stating the creation of, in all, sixteen places, and
as creation by Anra-Mainy‘is of a curse, a plague for each. The fourth
s “Bakhdi, the beautiful, with lofty standards” (Spiegel and Bleeck),
or “the happy Bakhdi with the tall banner’? (Haug and Bunsen); by
which Spiegel understands the modern Balkh, and Haug and Bunsen,
Bactria. ‘‘The tall plumes,’’ Bunsen says, ‘‘indicate the imperial banner
(mentioned also by Firdousi), and refer consequently to the time when
Bactria was the seat of empire.”
The fifteenth place created is Hapta Hendt, the Indus country, called
in the Vedas ‘‘Sapta Sindhavas”’ or ‘‘the Seven Rivers.’”’ And the sixteenth
is “those who dwell without ramparts on the sea-coast,’’ according to
Haug; but, according to Spiegel, ‘‘to the East of Ranha, which is gov-
erned without Kings.”
Certainly nothing is said in this Fargard about journeyings and
emigrations. But Bunsen speaks thus, in regard to it:
Two successful efforts of the critical school have at last established the
value, and facilitated the understanding of the celebrated first Fargard or Section
of the Vendidad. One of these was the study of the Bactrian language (commonly
called Zénd), which was commenced by Burnouf and continued by Benfey, Spiegel
and Haug. The other circumstance which facilitated the explanation of the above
record was the eminently successful decipherment of the first or Bactro-Medo-
Persian cuneiform writing of the Achemenids by Burnouf and Lassen, and
latterly by Rawlinson’s publication and elucidation of the inscription of Bisutun.
Among these inscriptions, the most important in its bearing upon this record is
the list of the Iranian nations who were subject to Darius in Naksh-i-Rustam.
16 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
Ritter, in 1838, materially assisted in explaining the geographical portion of it.
Here, however, insurmountable difficulties already presented themselves, as to
the explanation of the names of individual countries. According to Burnouf we
were completely in the dark as to at least three out of the fourteen provinces
mentioned between Sogdiana and the Punjab.
It should be generally known that he [Spiegel], was with Rhode in thinking
that it contains the history of the gradual dispersion of the Aryans. The first
argument in favour of it is, that Sogdiana is called the Primeval land. The fact
of the Punjab being as unquestionably the most Southerly, as Sogdiana is*the
Northeasterly, tends to strengthen this opinion.
I start, therefore, upon the assumption that the opening of that sacred code
contains as certainly an historical tradition of the Aryans, about their wanderings,
expeditions and conquests as does the fourteenth chapter of Genesis an historical
account of the oldest recorded war between Mesopotamia and Canaan. The histori-
cal and geographical traditions therein contained became confused and obscured in
early times; but we think we can point out which are the additions, and which the
original text. The Fargard is divided into two great parts, one comprising the
immigrations from the Eastern and Northeastern primeval country to Bactria, in
consequence of a natural catastrophe and climatic changes; the other the subse-
quent extension of the Aryan dominion through Eastern central Asia, which
terminated in the occupation of the Punjab.
I have spoken fully enough in regard to this ancient legend, in the
Ancient Faith and Worship of the Aryans, and shall only repeat here
that Bunsen fixes upon the slopes of the Belur (Bolor) Tagh, in the High-
land of Pamir, between the 4oth and 47th degrees of North Latitude, and
the 86th and goth degrees of Longitude, as the primeval home of the
Aryans. Hence they emigrated, he holds, first to Sogdiana, thence to
Margiana, and then to Bactria. He says:
There is no one single fertile district in the whole of eastern central Asia of
which our Aryan ancestors did not possess themselves, except Southern Media
and all Farsistan or Persia. Now, as history exhibits the Aryan race spread
throughout the whole of Media, but as dominant only in Persia, it follows that
Ghilan and Masandaran formed the nucleus of these ancient possessions, which
afterward became so important and celebrated. There cannot, therefore, be a
more unfortunate theory than the one which makes Persia the original seat of
Zarathustra and his doctrine.
Philological and historical criticism has long ago set at rest the unfortunate
theory that Vistaspa, who was mentioned in the books of the Zend-Avesta as the
royal patron of Zarathustra, was the father of king Darius Hystaspes.
The name of Zoroaster is already known to us as a royal name, from the
Armenian edition of Eusebius in the Chaldean lists of Berosus. It is the name of
the Median conqueror of Babylon, who vanquished the realm and city of the
Chaldees, and founded the second Babylonian dynasty in the year 2234, B. C.
The king can only have received this title from being a follower of
Zarathustra, and professing the religion of the prophet: the title of ‘greatest
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 17
minstrel’ is in character with that of the founder of a religion, not with that of a
conqueror.
But he was preceded by a series of eighty-four Median kings. Media
again was not the historical birthplace of the religion and language of the Zend
books, but Bactria, the seat of a primeval kingdom.
Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the date of Zoroaster, as
fixed by Aristotle, cannot be said to be so very irrational. He and Eudoxus,
according to Pliny [N. H. xxx. 2], place him 6000 years before the death of Plato;
Hermippus, 5000 before the Trojan War. The two dates above mentioned
essentially agree; for 6000 years before the death of Plato [Olymp. 108. 1; B. C.
348], brings us to about 6350; and the date of Hermippus is 6300, according to
the common Alexandrian chronology of the Trojan War, 407 or 408 before Olymp.
1, equaling 1184, B. C.
At the present stage of the inquiry, the question whether this date is set
too high cannot be answered in either the negative or affirmative. All that we
know from Berosus is, that another dynasty of eighty-four kings reigned in Media
before that of Zoroaster, whose names were given by Polyhistor. In the mean-
time, we do not even know whether he conquered Media (that is, from Bactria),
as he afterwards captured Babylon, or whether his family was Median.
The determination of the age of the founder of the religion depends upon
the answer to the following question: whether the appearance of Zarathustra in
Bactria is to be placed before or after the emigration from Bactria? In the
latter case, the only rational explanation would be, that a schism broke out in the
country of the Indus, in consequence of which the adherents of the old fire-worship
(the devotees of Agni) retraced their steps.
The oldest Vedic Hymns were certainly composed at least 4000 and
perhaps 5000 years before Christ, when the sun entered Gemini at the
Vernal Equinox, and the stars Castor and Pollux were therefore worshipped
as the Asvins. Zarathustra’s reform could not have been subsequent to
the composition of these Hymns, and to the subordination of the worship
of the Stars and Planets, to that of the Fire and Light principles, Agni
and Indra. If it had, we should have found some traces of these names
in the Gathas. :
The Vaidic Devas were the Heavenly orbs; and their worship had
preceded that of Agni and Indra. Zarathustra proscribed this Star and
Planet worship, and the Devas became, for his followers, evil spirits and
malevolent genii. Therefore his reform must have occurred before the
worship of Agni and Indra had grown up, and at least 6000 years before
Christ, probably in Bactria. The Gath4s give positive and ample evidence
of a general state of society much more primitive and simple than that of
the Punjab as reflected and painted in the Veda.
Dr. Haug, in his introduction to the First Chapter of the Vendidad,
shows that chapter to be, even after eliminating the later additions,
decidedly after the time of Zarathustra, and posterior to the Gathas or
Songs (in which the greater part of the genuine maxims and doctrines of
18 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
Zarathustra have been transmitted). The principal ground for this
opinion we shall refer to hereafter. He adds:
Though after this evidence no doubt can be entertained that the Chapter |
belongs to the post-Zarathustrian period, this by no means implies that it is |
generally of modern origin. The whole tenor of it would lead us, on the contrary,
to conclude that it must be very old. A certain historical date, however, can
hardly be given to it. From the names of the countries mentioned, it is clear
that when it was composed, not only geographical information was very restricted,
but also that the actual Aryan territory was of much more limited extent than
we find it afterwards. At all events, it is older than the foundation of the Median
Empire by Deioces (708, B. C.), inasmuch as several important Provinces of Media,
such as Atropatene (Aderbeigdn), and several important cities, such as Ecbatana
(Haqmatana in the first cuneiform writing), are not mentioned. This would not
have been the case here, where Aryan civilization and Zarathustrian faith were
widely spread, had Media then have exercised that influence over Iran, which she
attained under Deioces. At the date of its composition, the Aryans probably had
only first begun to spread through the Provinces of Media. Further proof of its
high antiquity will be found in the predicate of Bactria, er¢édhwé-drafsha, ‘with
the tall banner.’ This would seem to refer to a time when Bactria was the centre
of an empire; for it can only mean the imperial banner, the KavyAni-direfsh, a
banner of the Kajanians, which is mentioned in the Shahnameh. But the power
of Bactria had been broken down by the Assyrians long before Deioces (about
1200, B. C.). We may therefore place the date of the original at a period anterior
to the Assyrian conquest.
If, however, we look a little more closely into the scanty notices in this
connexion, we shall find that the geography of the Zend-Avesta was not limited
to the countries mentioned in this Chapter. The whole globe used to be divided
into Seven Kareshvares (i. e., cultivable districts), the names of which frequently
recur in the Jeshts (Yashts), (St. 10, 15, 67, 133), they are called Areza, Sava,
Fradadhafshu, Vidadhafshu, Vouru-baresti, Vouru-garesti and Qaniratha. This
account must be very ancient, inasmuch as the Seven-surfaced or Seven-portioned
earth is mentioned already in the Gathas, and in fact in the first (Yasht 32. 3).
In Yasht 29. 7, mention is also made of the earth, and its six regions (gavoi Khshvi-
deméa urushaéibjo).
It is strange that Dr. Haug should have considered these as
divisions of the whole globe, and should not have suspected that they
were simply divisions of one country. A division of the whole earth into
portions was entirely out of the range of thought of the composers of the
Gathas or Vendidad.
The passages cited by him from the Jeshts or Yashts (of the Khudah-
Avesta), are all from the tenth or Mihr-Yasht, addressed to Mithra. They
are:
[Mihr-Yasht (10) 4, 12 to 16]: Mithra, etc., who, as the first heavenly
Yazata rises over Hara before the Sun, the Immortal, with swift steeds, who first,
with golden form, seizes the fair summits, then surrounds the whole Aryan place
[Aryan land], the most profitable; where Rulers, excellent, order round about the
lands, where mountains, great with much fodder, abounding in water, afford wells
PRESERVATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA 19
for the cattle, where are canals, deep, full of water, where flowing waters, broad
with water, hurry to Iskata and Pouruta, to Mouru and Hareva, to Gau, Cughda
and Qairizao, to Arézahé, to Cavahé, to Fradadhafshu, to Vidadhafshu, to Vouru-
barsti and Vouru-saisti, to this Kareshvare Qaniratha, the lofty, the dwelling-place
of the cattle, the dwelling of the cattle, Mithra, the health-bringing, goes round,
who marches unto all Kareshvares, as a heavenly Yazata bestowing brightness,
etc.
The meaning of this seems to me not to admit of doubt. Mithra,
as the chief of the celestial luminaries, is represented before the Sun is
visible, as pouring his light over the mountain tops, and then, rising, as
flooding ‘with it the whole Aryan land. In this land, wise rulers have
divided the arable and pasture lands among the people by boundaries;
and great mountains, heavily wooded, and abounding with water, afford
springs for the cattle, while there are deep channels in which broad rivers
run to Iskata and six other places or towns, watering Arézahé and six
other Kareshvares or divisions formed by these rivers, and in which the
herds of cattle are pastured. This Aryan land is ‘‘profitable,”’ i. e., produc-
tive or fertile; and the climate salubrious, for here Mithra is the health-
bringing.
Mr. Bleeck says, in a note, that the writer of verse 14 must have
lived in the northeast of Eran, as he could scarcely have represented all
the rivers as flowing North and South. In my work on The Fath and
Worship of the Aryans, | have ventured to suggest that this Aryan land
was Bactria, lying South of the Oxus, and having on the East and South
the mountains of the Bolor Tagh, Caucasus and Paropamisus, from which,
in the East, the great river Oxus flows, and from the South northward,
seven rivers that flow into it, having between them the fertile valleys
called Kareshvares.
[v. 67]: Mithra is described as riding in his chariot from the
Kareshvare Arezahé to the Kareshvare Qaniratha; which shows that in
the former passage these sub-divisions of the country are named from
east to west.
And in verse 133, Mithra, with wide pastures, is represented as riding
over all the Kareshvares, which are named, and in the same order.
“The seven-fold earth’, in Gatha Ahunavaiti, Yacna xxxi1. 3, .on ’
which the Devas spread abroad unbelief, is simply the Aryan-land,
composed of seven districts formed by the affluents of the Oxus.
The reference to Yacna xxix. 7, is erroneous.
Dr. Haug remarks that the circumstance of this old mythological
division of the earth being omitted in the first Fargard, is an argument in
favour of the historical.character of the original, and its great value for
ancient Aryan history. I do not think it was ever a division of the earth,
or mythological: and it was omitted in the first Fargard, because that is
20 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
a geographical recital of various Aryan countries, of which Bactria was
only one. Of course the division of one of these countries into portions
was not alluded to. But if my conjecture is right, it establishes the fact
beyond controversy, that either Sogdiana or Bactria was the birthplace of
the Zarathustrian worship and creed. The home of the Irano-Aryans was
a “‘profitable”’ i. e., a productive, fertile land; and in the first Fargard the
fourth land of blessing is Bakhdi. I am now convinced that Airyana
Vaéja was the country immediately around Samarcand; Sughda, the second
country, that in which the city of Bokhara now is; Mouru, the third, Merv
or Margiana, South of the Oxus and West of Bactria; and Bakhd}, Bactria.
I think I shall show that this removes all difficulties.
Bakhdi is called ‘‘the fortunate spot.’ Of this phrase, Dr. Haug
says, that we must necessarily identify it with the modern Balkh, the
Bactria of the cuneiform writings, and the classics. He says:
The difference in the terminations tra and dhé is easily accounted for by
supposing Bdékhd? to mean principally the capital of Bactria; Bactra, the country
itself. It is even possible that the one was in vogue in Eastern Iran, the other in
Western Iran or Media. As far as the sense goes, it makes but little difference,
Bak-ira is the ‘Most fortunate,’ Bakh-di ‘the fortunate’ spot. The predicate
stra, i. e., ‘fortunate’ exactly suits the name.
In his note to verse 5 of the first Fargard, Dr. Haug gives the original
of the words translated by ‘‘Aryan-place,”’ in the Mihr-Yasht. They are:
Atryo Shayanem, the latter being, he says, an ‘abstraction’ from shi, ‘to dwell’,
and signifying ‘the dwelling, dwelling-place, country, district’. The shining
Qaniratha, the seventh Kareshvare, is gava shayanem, the ‘land of cattle.’
Bunsen says (177. 570):
The language of our Zend books is the old Bactrian of the home-country, worn
down; that is, East Iranian. It forms a contrast to the Vedic as well as Sanskrit
languages. That of the first cuneiform character, on the contrary, is West Iranian
of a later epoch.
Dr. Haug’s etymological annotations may be correct. I give them
as I find them. I find no Sanskrit verb shi, and I find no other words
resembling Bdékhdi or Bakh-tra, than Bhakta ‘‘ford’’ and Bhakti ‘“‘worship,
devotion, service, etc.’ Tra is not the superlative termination. It is a
suffix that forms locative adverbs, and substantives that express the
instruments that are, as it were, the inanimate accomplishers of actions.
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM. -
In the article entitled ‘“The Relation Between the Vedic Times and
That of Zoroaster, and the Starting Point of His Doctrine,”’ we find the
following, by Bunsen:
The Brahminism of the Sanskrit books is the mythico-pantheistic form of
Vedic Naturalism, whereas the Zoroastrian books place a Supreme God above the
powers of Nature. Magism is an article of later devélopment common to them
both. What the later Zend books are to Zoroastrianism, the Atharva Veda is to
Brahminism. Prayer has become a charmed formulary; thanksgiving, execration
and curse, spirit, fire, life, death.
But in searching after the historical connection, we soon lose our way in
what appears impenetrable obscurity. Two very different paths present them-
selves. Proper original Zoroastrianism may be placed after the religious schisms
which sprang up in the Indian life of the Aryans. In that case, the religion which
Zoroaster found in existence is the old form of the oldest Brahminism on the
Sarasvati. Or we may assume that the original Zarathustra founded a new
religion before the migration into India, as a mere counterpoise to the earliest
Bactrian Naturalism; and that the Aryans when they migrated carried with them
this primitive Zoroastrian religion, on their conquering expeditions, the last scene
of which was the Indus country.
The generally received opinion that the Brahmins who migrated into Media
left Persia on account of the change introduced by Zoroaster is, in this case, alto-
gether untenable. Upon such a supposition, Persia would be as great an
anachronism as is the idea of the Brahmins migrating. Even Burnouf himself
seems to have given this up, by the admission that the Zend, in its forms and
grammar, approaches nearer to the language of the Vedas than the Sanskrit does.
It has been noticed by Dr. Haug and others, that in the enumeration
of the Aryan countries in the first Fargard, as far as the eleventh land of
blessing, the direction is from northeast to southwest, these eleven
being, 1. Airyanem V4ej6, or Iran pure and simple; 2. Sogdiana, the fire
land; 3. Margiana, to the southwest of Sogdiana; 4. Bactria; 5. Nisaya,
west of Herat; 6. Herat; 7. Segestan; 8. Cabul; 9. Kandahar; Io.
Arachosia, to the southward of Cabil; 11. the Valley of the Hilmend, to
the west of Arachosia.
Then comes a change of direction. The 12th land, Ragha, is Rei,
in the vicinity of Teheran, immediately South of the mountain range that
lies South of the Caspian, called afterwards Rhagiana, and forming part
of Media. The 13th, Kakhra, Khorassan, East of Rhagiana. The 14th,
Varena, is Ghilan, to the northwest of Rhagiana, in Media; and the 15th
is Hapta Hindu, the Indus country, far to the Southeastward. It can
hardly be that it was intended to represent the Aryans as emigrating from
the neighborhood of Ecbatana, Southwest of the Caspian, at one march,
to and across the Indus. Naturally they would have crossed that river
22 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
from Cabil and Kandahar, which, with Arachosia, lie on the west side of it.
I conclude from this that, if the first Fargard records the marches
and settlements of the Aryans, it does not represent one stream of emigra-
tion as flowing, in the succession in which the countries are named, from
one to the other; but that it represents these countries as lying upon the
line of march of two distinct masses of Aryans, which separated from each
other at some point, perhaps at Bactria or Herat, and turned their courses,
one to the Eastward and one to the Westward, until one, the Indo-Aryans,
flowed over the Indus, into the land of the Seven Rivers, and the other
into Media and Persia, the latter being the Iranian or Zarathustrian
branch of the race.
If not sooner, Zarathustrianism commenced in Bactria. It repudi-
ated the Hosts of Heaven as objects of worship, and taught the existence,
intelligence and government of Ahura Mazda. The long experience of
humanity proves that a new and more philosophical faith, denouncing
the gods of the people as not gods at all, cannot long be taught without
provoking collision, and must either conquer the ruder and idolatrous
faith, or abandon the field to it and emigrate. If Zarathustrianism had
co-existed with the ancient faith, and the votaries of both remained one
people during the long period between its origin in Bactria, and the immi-
gration into the land of the Seven Rivers (which was simply impossible),
how are we to account for the advance into the Fire and Light worship
during the same time, the co-existence of the Veda and Gathas, and, above
all, the total difference, not only of ideas, but of names of deities, between
the two faiths? Only a total separation, long continued, can account for
the total absence, in each faith, of anything to show its relationship to the
other.
Bunsen proceeds to say:
But the question is, whether this compels us to adopt Max Miiller’s view,
that the Zoroastrians left India in Vedic times. Apart from the fact that such an
assumption is wholly at issue with the tradition of the migrations of the Aryans,
inasmuch as, instead of beginning with India, they ended with it, there is this
difficulty which meets us at the outset, that we should be under the necessity of
supposing a previous migration of the Aryans to the Indus country, so that the
one in question would have been a retrogression.
These are the reasons why Miuiiller’s theory has not met with any favour.
The fuller explanation of his views has not been published. We will endeavour in
the meantime to show what are the arguments which, according to our view of
the case, may be adduced in support of it.
Bunsen then speaks of
allusions in some of the Vedic hymns to an antagonistic schismatic religion in
the country, to one, indeed, the principle of which was fire-worship, then in force
in the Punjab.
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 23
Indra is represented as warring against them. It appears that
they worshipped Agni only, of the three gods, Agni, Indra and Varuna.
The conflict took place on the Sutlej. Sudas, king of the Tritsu, of the
race of the Bharata, the worshipper of Indra and subduer of the heretics,
was obliged to cross the stream to attack the enemy, and Bunsen con-
cludes that ‘‘the residence, therefore, of the worshippers of Indra was no
longer in the Punjab, although they had friends and allies there.’ ‘“Yam-
—una”’, it is said, ‘“‘and the Tritsu remained faithful to Indra”; and among the
enemy were the men of Anu and the Druhju, inhabitants of the North and
_ West, who are mentioned with the Turvasu and Yadu, men of the South-
east and South.
I do not see the proof that the residence of the worshippers of Indra
was no longer in the Punjab. It is not likely, either that, after a residence
of centuries in that country, they abandoned it, in spreading beyond the
Sutlej into the land between the Indus and the Ganges, or that they left
in their rear, if they did so, hostile occupants powerful enough to wage
great battles with them. The men of Anu and Druhju, of Turvasu and
~Yadu, were, no doubt, aborigines or Turanians, dwelling East of the
-Sutlej, which the Aryans crossed, to attack them; and these native tribes
no doubt worshipped deities of their own and set Indra at naught.
I do not propose to review the arguments for and against Miiller’s
theory, as they are stated by Bunsen. Whether the war of which he
speaks did or did not grow out of a religious schism among the Aryans
themselves; whether it was carried on on the eastern or western side of the
~Sutlej; whether the Aryans had at that period emigrated beyond that
river; and whether the hymns in question belong or not to the later half
of the Vedic period, the theory of Professor Miiller seems to me equally
“untenable. There is no evidence of a return of any portion of the Aryans
of the Punjab, from that region to Bactria, or of any emigration from or
to the westward. The antagonism between Zarathustrianism and the
religious system of India, proven by the facts that Aindra and the Devas
are evil spirits in the Zend-Avesta, does not in the least tend to prove that
the religion of Zarathustra had its origin after the Indo-Aryan faith had
assumed the settled character which it has in the Veda. If that were so,
why should not Agni and Vishnu also appear as evil spirits in the Zend-
Avesta? The Devas do, because they were ‘‘the Hosts of Heaven’’
worshipped long before the Vaidik period, and Zarathustrianism deposed
these from their seats as Gods. I do not believe that Aindra and Indra
were identical. For Fire (Agni) is in the Zend-Avesta the son of Ahura
Mazda; and why should Light have become an evil deity? If they were
identical, however, Indra or Aindra was probably worshipped long before
the Vaidik period.
24 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
Bunsen remarks that the forms of the Zend are decidedly younger
than those of the Veda. Opinions seem to differ as to that; but if it were
so, some of the Vedic hymns are to be referred to even the time when the
whole race dwelt together on the Steppes of Sogdiana.
Bunsen says in reply, that the only certain fixed point in the whole
inquiry is,
the fact of the Aryan Indians having come from Bactria; and that India is not
the mother country of the Bactrians, but, vice versa, Bactria the mother country
of the Indians.
He imagines three Aryan sects to have existed, during that epoch.
First, to the Eastward, the inhabitants of the Sarasvati District, and the
Northern Doab, who were inclined to Brahminism, and the principle of
sacerdotal caste. Then, to the Westward, the emigrating Zarathustrians,
or old Agni worshippers, who adopted Zarathustrianism in Bactria, under
the influence of the inspiring minstrelsy and dogmas of Zarathustra; and
lastly, between the two, in the Punjab, the adherents of the old Bactrian
natural religion, without its semi-polytheistic, semi-speculative, sacerdotal
additions, which soon became predominant in India proper.
As to the first supposed sect, we have no evidence at all of the
existence in the Punjab, even in an incipient form, of Brahminism and the
principle of sacerdotal caste. Brahminism and the later Hindu religion
grew out of the religion of the Vedas, but at a much later day. It com-
menced as the Mazdayacnian faith did, by the reaching of the intellect
after an Intelligent Principle, superior to, and the Creative Cause of the
visible universe, and its potencies. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva were of
the same order with the Amésha Cpéntas; but, in imagining the Supreme
God, Brahm, the Hindu intellect went far in advance of the Bactrian.
And it is certain that in the Veda we find no trace of a conception of any
Intelligent Cause of the material universe. Before any of the Vedic gods
were, it was, for they are all Nature-Gods.
As to the second sect, there is no evidence that the Indo-Aryans
had any more communication with the Iranians or Medo-Aryans, than
they had with their elder kinsmen, the Greeks and Latins. There is no
evidence that Zarathustrianism ever existed in the Punjab; and the suppo-
sition is even contrary to all reason and probability.
And, as to the third, the Vedic faith existing alone among the Aryan
population (for there is really no evidence of any schism there), was
probably not the old Bactrian natural religion; for that was, as the law
of self-development in religious faith and idea forces us to conclude, not
so philosophical and advanced a faith as that of the Vedas. No religious
faith is stationary for ages; and the Veda itself contains evidence that
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 25
many deities once worshipped had become subordinate, so that only their
names remained, while Agni and Indra had assumed supremacy, and even
in the Heavenly bodies there were adored, as manifested by these, and
energizing them. In obedience to the same law of movement and develop-
ment, afterwards but not “‘soon,’’ the semi-polytheistic, semi-speculative,
sacerdotal additions became predominant in India, and the Vedic deities
were, some deposed and forgotten, and some subordinated or invested
with attributes entirely new.
We here see [Bunsen says], at once the difficulty of the whole assumption.
Zoroaster’s work was called forth by an Indian schism. The exclusive adherents
of Agni left the Punjab, and returned, in order to be converted by him to a new
faith. For they knew no more of Ahura Mazda, the only good God, than the
pre-Zarathustrian Bactrians could have known.
Clearly, it zs all assumption. Nothing tends to prove any part of
it, and Bunsen well says:
We gain nothing, therefore, by the theory of the retrogression. It only
helps to make the explanation of the context more difficult. But if we look at
the matter a little more closely, what necessity is there for adopting such a theory?
He clearly shows that there is none. If the Iranian forms are
younger than the Indian, that is accounted for by the organic law of sec-’
ondary formations. The Norwegian forms are new, as compared with
those of the Icelanders, who, nevertheless, were certainly Norwegian emi-
grants of the ninth century of our era. In the mother country, the roots
and forms of a language wear off, while its colonies retain the old elements.
We have no reason to think that these Iranian countries previously bore
other Iranian names. As little do we learn of the retrograde movement from
India to Bactria. The immigration of the Iranian Aryans into the Indus country
is, on the contrary, an uncontroverted fact.
How improbable it is, lastly, that the names of Iranian districts,
which we find in the old record of the Vendidad, should only have been
given to them on the occasion of this imaginary return, as a reminiscence
‘of the country from which they had been expelled! It is an assumption
irreconcilable with any sense whatever of the above record of the Aryan
journeyings in Central Asia, and it offers no explanation of the origin of
Zarathustrianism.
Either Zarathustra founded his religion before the great emigration from
Bactria, or about a thousand years afterwards. What is the argument in favour
of the former? The language of: the oldest portions of the Zend-Avesta, High
Bactrian, approaches very near to the Veda language, i. e., the oldest East Iranian,
which was preserved in the Punjab; and between them there is, strictly speaking,
only a dialectical difference.
26 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
Ahura Mazda must originally have been pronounced Asura Medhah, i. e.,
living dispenser of wisdom; just as the ancient form of Haroyu (Herat) was Sarayu;
of Haragaiti (Arachosia), Sarasvati; of Hindu, Sindu; and lastly, Soma of Haoma.
These statements are not self-evidently true; and I do not see how
it is to be known which of the two pronunciations, in each of these instances,
was the original one. One would be glad to know why Ahura Mazda must
originally have been Asura Medhah. We know that Zend and the
Sanskrit of the Veda have both been formed from one original language;
but we do not know what words in either have remained unchanged, any
more than we should know, if all knowledge of Latin were lost, and not a
line of it remained, and if we only knew that there was once such a lan-
guage, because the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian evidently
had a common source and stock,—any more, I say, than we should know
whether the Spanish or Italian form of a particular word was the original
form, or whether that original was different from both. It would be mere
guess-work, or argumentation without a fixed basis, and therefore wholly
inconclusive.
Bunsen calls the Zend language, Bactrian. Was it, then, the lan-
guage of the Aryans at the time of their immigration into Bactria? When,
then, had the separation taken place between those who spoke it, and
those who continued to speak the ancient parent language, the Aryan?
And where were those, and what had become of them, who spoke the
latter? Or was the Bactrian or Zend formed in Bactria, growing into a
distinct tongue by the side of the mother-language; and if so, under what
circumstances? It is not conceivable that it could have grown into a
distinct language, except by separation of those whose language it became,
either by their own emigration, leaving the other portion of their race
behind them, or by the emigration of these, leaving those behind whose
tongue afterwards became Zend. If the Zend is Bactrian, either it grew
up in Bactria after the Indo-Aryan branch had sought new homes to the
Southward, leaving the Zarathustrians behind them, or it was the original
language, and that of the Indo-Aryans grew up after the separation. It
required a long series of generations to form the Zend and Sanskrit from
an original language, and these were no doubt formed, as Italian and Span
ish were from the Latin, by intermixture with indigenous races, and the
formation of a new language; in each case, by the intermingling and _
coalescing of two or three.
If Zarathustrianism had its origin in the Indus country, the Zend -
language must have had its origin there also, or as a consequence of sepa-_
ration and emigration Westward, of the Zarathustrians. But if the
formation of a language is an exceedingly slow process, so also is the propa-
gation of a new, purer and more philosophical religious faith. We know
¢
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BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 27
what slow progress Mohammedanism made, it being a protest of the
reason against idolatry, in favour of Allah, the one God. If, then, all the
Aryan people worshipped the Host of Heaven, or perhaps the Light and
Fire Principles manifested by them, Zarathustra, alone and unaided, ven-
tured to preach faith in an Intelligent Cause, Creator, Ruler and Bene-
factor, whose Instruments these Powers of Nature were—thus at one
blow dethroning all the Natural deities, of course he had to contend
against all the priests of the ancient faith, whose sacred functions and
their importance ceased at once, if the gods whose ministers and favourites
they were, became no longer gods; and all the Rishis, to whom the sacred
hymns which they sing were the source of revenue and support. As to
the common people, they are always slow to adopt a new, and especially
a more enlightened faith. They never even commenced to believe in one
God, in Greece, and it would have been idle for Socrates or Plato to pro-
mulgate at Athens faith in a one God, like Brahm 6r Ahura Mazda.
For a long while, therefore, the followers of. Zarathustra must have
been few. They may have remained in Bactria, when their brethren,
adhering to their Nature-worship, crossed the mountains, and were seen
and heard of no more by them. That this was the case seems probable,
from the fact, proven by the Zend-Avesta, that Bactria, worshipping
Ahura Mazda, was a populous and fertile country, composed of seven
Kareshvares. It must have required centuries to people it, if only the
followers of the new faith remained in it; and for this branch of the great
Aryan family to flow westward, conquering as it flowed, to the regions
south of the Caspian, into Media and Persia, while the Indo-Aryans just
settling in Cabil, there increased until they overflowed into Kandahar and
Arachosia, and at last across the Indus. And during the procession of
these ages, the Zend and Sanskrit were formed and the ruder mother lan-
guage became obsolete, and the Vedic faith grew up with gods whose names
were unknown before the separation, while the names of Ahura Mazda
and the Amésha Cpéntas were equally unknown to the composers of the
Vedic hymns.
As regards the religion [Bunsen continues], the Agni, or Fire-worship, of
which mention is made in the Vedic hymns [the expression is a singular one, since
Agni is the great Vedic Deity, to whom a hundred hymns are addressed], it must
be considered as a remnant of the original pre-Zarathustrian doctrine, which,
therefore, might have been the consequence of a recantation of the faith in Ahura
Mazda, and of the ethical principle, with the retention of fire-worship. The
supposition that there were two Zoroasters, an original one, and one of more
recent date, who was the inventor of Ahura Mazda, is certainly inadmissible.
The name of Zoroaster is inseparable from the doctrine of Ormuzd, according to
all the traditions; which doctrine is the distinctive mark of Zoroastrianism.
28 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
There is no sort of foundation for the notion that the Indo-Aryans
were back-sliding or renegade Zarathustrians. There is nothing which
requires such a conjecture as an explanation. The worship of the invisible
Principle of Fire, and of those of Light and Heat, was a natural sequence
of the worship of the stars . . . . the half-way station between that
worship and the conception of a Creative Intelligence, Self-existent and
Infinite. Zarathustrianism for a long time stood still, while the old faith
was advancing toward higher conceptions, that were to end in that of
Brahm; but at last the old gods, the stars, began to demand to be wor-
shipped again; i. e., either that worship had never been wholly abandoned
by the Iranians, and they compelled its revival, or the conquered element
demanded worship for their own gods. The result was a swarm of deities,
worshipped together with Ahura Mazda, as numerous as those of the
Hindu Pantheon.
The immigrating Aryans were not ‘‘ Zoroastrians who relapsed from the
faith, although pure fire-worshippers.”’
On the former supposition, therefore [Bunsen continues], the immigrating
Aryans were Zoroastrians who relapsed from the faith, although pure fire-worship-
pers. When they left Bactria, the gods were still called Déva, which is in perfect
accordance with the historical fact of the pre-Zoroastrian period, that the Helleno-
Italian races do not understand the word in any other sense.
The stars and planets were called Déva, and they alone are called so
in the Veda. No doubt they were called so in Bactria. Agni, Indra,
Vishnu, Pushan, Rudra are rarely called so. They are denizens of Dyaus,
the sky; and they became evil spirits to the Mazdayacnians, because
Zarathustra abolished the worship of the stars as idolatry. It is possible
and even probable that when his reflections led him to the belief in the
existence of a spiritual, personal and intelligent Cause, the idea of the
fire-principle or substance, of which the luminaries were the revealings
and outshinings, and the conceptions of Light and Heat as hypostases of
fire (which afterwards became the general and popular faith), were already
entertained by men of intellect, and taught, perhaps, by them to a small
number of disciples. It was but a step for the mind to take, from these
conceptions to that of a creative God, revealed and manifested in a created
universe. And therefore Zoroaster, merely elevating the Fire-Spirit or
Principle to the height of Deity, without definite idea of the nature of that
Deity, and merely transferring to him the attributes of personality, intelli-
gence, justice and beneficence, already imputed to the Fire and Light
Principles, made no war on Fire-worship, but called Fire the son of Ahura
Mazda.
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 29
The genuine Bactrian Zoroaster [Bunsen continues], and probably his prede-
cessors, the old Iranian Fire-priests, applied the name [Déva] to evil spirits,
of whom Indra was also one, and by this application of it, abandoned the usage
of the primitive times. Even the Zendic writings show how deeply natural
religion had taken root among the Bactrian Aryans. Zoroaster had made the
worship of Nature subordinate to faith in Ahura Mazda. He did not extirpate
it. Fire-worship, especially, continued to be a sacred symbol. [Of what?] The
worship of Mitra, the Sun, was not eradicated altogether from their religious
consciousness. Possibly, indeed, as Haug supposes, the Armenian Anahit is really
the female Mitra-goddess of Herodotus, and her worship perhaps formed a portion
of the Bactrian creed.
Well, perhaps it did not. What is one “‘perhaps’’ worth more than
the other? What has this “‘perhaps,’’ and what has the Armenian god-
dess Anahit, whether Mitra-goddess or not, to do with the question, when
Zarathustra established his religious creed?
What is meant, when it is said that this god of one people 7s this or
the other god of another? That the Egyptian Hermes was the Mercury
of the Greeks, and the Greek Hercules the Malkart of the Phoenicians?
It never did mean that this and that nation originally worshipped the same
god, by the same name, and continue to worship him with a mere change
of name. What we want to know is, what the gods of each people repre-
sented and were, to itself—what Orb or Potency, Principle or Men-
tal Conception. Every god was some thing, to those who worshipped
him. The Sun had a different name in every nation, and it could, no
doubt, be truly said, that Baal, Sfrya and Osiris, each being originally the
Sun, and Mithra, were one and the same Deity under different names.
But it is the attributes that make the personal individuality of the god
and one’s lip instinctively curls with the same contempt that one feels for
the impudent argument of the pettifogger, often, when he hears another
babbling of the Tyrian Hercules. As far as we can now judge, the Hebrew
~Yahouah and the Tsurian Baal were essentially the same deity, under
different names. The Hindu Brahm is the God of Christian philosophy.
In essence and substance they are the same, for the same intellect produced
both. We can conceive of nothing superior to our own Creative Intelli-
gence, as we can conceive of no other senses than those which belong to us,
and so we impute to God an intelligence, as we impute to him our senses
of seeing and hearing. The God that we create in our own intellectual
image we call “‘Yehouah, Jehovah, Adonai, God;’’ and the Brahmins call
him Brahm.
‘‘Fire-worship” is a deceptive term. The Aryans did not worship
the Fire itself, but that invisible Principle and intellectual personality. of
which Fire was the visible out-shining or manifestation. This Fire-worship
continued to be more than a sacred symbol, to the Zarathustrians; if it
30 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
can be said that a worship is a symbol at all. Fire, to the Zarathustrians,
was the son of Ahura Mazda. The worship of the Fire Principle, perhaps
in secret, by the Priests, had led Zarathustra to the conception of an
intelligent Creative Cause. What he understood by this Cause, and by
his or its agents, the Amésha Cpéntas, it is my object in this book to
inquire. |
I wish to learn, if I can, why Zarathustra did not extirpate the
Fire-worship, and why he did not even endeavour to eradicate the worship
of Mitra, the Sun, ‘‘from the religious consciousness”’ of his followers. We
probably know as much as we ever shall know about the origin and birth
of the Zarathustrian faith, and its early fortunes and those of its original
adherents. What further we can learn as to its meaning and origin, is to
be learned from the GAth4as, and these I propose to study with care.
Whether the Indo-Aryans had relapsed from Zarathustrianism it is useless
to inquire, as it is not possible to determine. But it is not true that “all
the religions of the world have been spiritual at their commencement.”
The phrase itself is meaningless, the use of such phrases being a common
vice of books of speculation at the present day. Nature-worship has not
always, or ever, been a relapse from a spiritual or philosophical faith.
What is meant by the phrases that fire-worship continued to be a symbol,
and ‘‘the eradication of worship from religious consciousness’?
Zoroaster’s attempt to reverse the ancient religious ideas, even to the extent
of converting the old Light Gods of the Ether into evil spirits [what is the
Ether, where the Light Gods are?] was never thoroughly carried out in Bactria.
Some of the names of the gods were retained. May not this practice have been
abandoned [what practice?], when the Aryans reached the Indus many centuries
after?
The idea of Bunsen seems to have been that in order to establish
that Bactria was the birthplace of Zarathustrianism it was not necessary
to hold that it was the faith of the whole people. I see no necessity for
any such hypothesis. There is certainly no proof of its truth. And if it
were true, would not it force us to go further, and suppose the Zend to
have been, in Bactria, the language of all the Aryans, and that the Indo- —
Aryans changed their language when they relapsed from their religion?
If the theory that the religion of Zarathustra is true [Bunsen says], we —
should be compelled to assign a very high antiquity to Zoroaster. If the immi-
gration of the Iranian Aryans into the country of the Indus took place about
4000, B. C., we must fix the date of their emigration, and consequently pretty
nearly that of Zarathustra, at least at 5000. But Aristotle and Eudoxus, best of —
all the old commentators, agree in placing him very considerably later.
’
I do not see the propriety of the term ‘‘Iranian Aryans,” as applied
to those who emigrated to the Indus country. The mythical original
i
ee ee
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 31
home of the race is called in the first Fargard, Airyanem VGej6, as its ruler,
Yima, the renowned Dshemshéd of the Persian legend, is called Straté
Airyéné Vaégahi, a title borne by Ahura Mazda himself. The whole
context, Dr. Haug says, shows that Airyanem is
a substantive, and in fact an abstraction of Airya, Aryans; hence it signifies
Aryanship, of the Aryan country. But this pure, unmixed Aryan country forms
at the same time a contrast to Iran, which has acquired historical celebrity.
For, although Iran, Airan or Eran is the self-same land Airyana, it has
been habitually and specially applied to the land of the Persian Aryans.
The Aryans of the Indus country never were Iranian Aryans, in any
proper sense of that phrase; for Aistan confines the use of the term ‘‘Iranian”
to the branch of the Aryans that followed Zoroaster and peopled Media
‘and Persia.
As to the question of antiquity, there is little danger of fixing too
remote a date for the time of Zarathustra. The Vedic hymns were com-
posed, or at least the Aswins (or twin Horsemen) became Aryan deities,
when the sun was in Gemini at the Vernal Equinox, i. e., at least 5000
years before Christ; and the Zend and Sanskrit were then distinct and
fixed languages, and the Indo- and Bactro- or Medo-Aryans had long been
separate and distinct peoples, their common origin forgotten by each.
When the Hellenic stream flowed off, Dyaus, the sky, and the Devas, or
Heavenly bodies, were the gods of the race, and Jupiter, Venus and Mars,
the only bodies known as Planets or Wanderers, were adored as Varuna,
Mitra and Aryaman. Dyaus became Zeus, Dios and Deus; and Aryaman,
the god of the Aryan warrior, became the Greek Arés, or Mars; and
Varuna, Ouranos.
This simple and primitive faith had no doubt changed somewhat,
when Zarathustra appeared, and the last separation occurred. Fire was
become an object of worship, at least to the more intelligent, and Light
under the name of Indra. The Vedic religion could soon develop itself,
and many of the star gods be in no long time forgotten; but for the develop-
ment of the Zend and Sanskrit languages, a long succession of centuries
was needed.
It is quite possible that the Indo-Aryans had immigrated into Cabul
and Kandahar, and even across the Indus, before Zarathustrianism began;
and that this had its birth and grew to its full stature among those of the
race who had remained in Sogdiana or Bactria, and so that the Zend
language was fully matured there, before the Iranians left Bactria, and
while the Indo-Aryans were peopling the country west and perhaps that
east, of the Indus, perfecting for themselves the Sanskrit tongue. And
32 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
Bunsen, after discussing Miiller’s theory and that of Zoroaster living before
the Indo-Aryan emigration, says:
Lastly, the above cited Zendic record of the journeyings of the Aryans
would in that case be strictly historical, if, as it would seem, it represents them,
at the time of their first movement, as worshiprers of Ahura Mazda.
With all this, we cannot conceal the fact, that this establishment of these
views is not unattended with difficulties. But what is the objection to the second
hypothesis, that Zarathustra was posterior to the emigration to the Indus country?
In that case it would be perfectly natural that the Vedas should use Déva in its
original sense, and know nothing whatever of Ahura Mazda or Asura Medhah.
The circumstance of the whole tradition being connected with the revelation of
Ahura Mazda to Zarathustra is no argument against it, any more than it is against
the historical credibility of the traditional accounts of that migration, and its
results themselves.
In the absence of further information, therefore, we must adhere to the °
conclusion which recommends itself as the most natural and simple, and thus the
main theory is established: That Bactria is the cradle of the Zarathustrian
doctrine; and that Zarathustra belongs to a very early age.
We have tested and established the incontrovertible facts: That in the
year 1903 before Alexander, consequently B. C. 2234, a Median dynasty sat on
the throne of Babylon, which it retained for more than ten centuries, and that
the first of these rulers bore the name of Zoroaster, in the Babylonian annals.
At that time, therefore, the seat of Zarathustrianism was no longer in
Bactria, but in Media. It had already, indeed, taken a different shape from that
we find in the old Zarathustrian records. Chaldee Magism certainly dates from
the Median dynasty at Babylon. For in the Gathas of Yacna, the work of Zara-
thustra is called Maga, and those who promote it, Magava. But this ‘greatness’
or this ‘great work’ was really not the application of charmed formule and incan-
tations, but it is embodied in the great precept: ‘The Trinity is Thought, Word
and Deed.’ What a difference between this and the Magism in vogue at Babylon,
B. C. 2234, and which afterwards was mixed up with old Semitic traditions.
Thus, if so early as twenty-three centuries before our era, Zarathustrianism
occupied such a very different position, none but those who pay no attention to
what has taken place, and who see nothing in the great reality of history but
empty phrases and formule, will find it an unreasonable assumption that the date
of the foundation of the Zarathustrian doctrine reaches back between 4000 and
SU0ULVCarsue. Ge
At all events, we do not want any theory of a migration from India back
to Bactria; so far from it, it would lead us into inexplicable difficulties and
contradictions. The Aryan epochs, therefore, on the whole, will bear this relation
to the chronology of Egypt:
1. The emigration from Sogd to Bactria and beyond it, after they separated
from the rest of the Aryan people who shaped their course westward, took place
before 5000, B. C., consequently before the time of Menes.
2. The immigration into the Indus country, about 4000, B. C.
3. Zarathustra’s reform in Bactria, about the time of Menes (3623, B. C.),
or half a century later.
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 33
In volume iv., Bunsen makes the following conjectures in regard to dates:
Emigration of the Aryans.out of the country of the sources of the Oxus and
Jaxartes, 11000 to 10000, B. C.
Journey of the Aryans from Upa-Meru to Sogd and Bactria, 10000 to 7250,
BvG
The united races of the Aryans, and their gradual separation as Kelts,
Armenians, Iranians, Greeks, Sclaves, Germans, etc., 7250 to 5000, B. C.
Formation of the Aryan kingdom in Central Asia, as far as Northern Media
and to Kabul and Kandahar, 5000 to 4000, B. C.
The Aryans migrate into the Indus country, 4000, B. C.
Zarathustra, the seer and lawgiver of Bactria, 3500 to 3000.
In volume 772., the same writer says:
The Iranian development, after the immigration into India, did not come
into contact with the Indian. Lastly, the reform introduced by Zarathustra
produced no schism among the Iranian Aryans, still less had it any connexion with
the migration which terminated in the Punjab. No reaction, indeed, took place
from India upon Bactria.
The Vedic language is stereotyped Bactrian. The Zend is the continuation
of this old Bactrian tongue in Bactria and Media, with two phases of which we
are acquainted; one of them the language of the Zend books, the other, that of
the cuneiform inscriptions from Cyrus and Darius down to Artaxerxes II.
The Sanskrit, lastly, is the weakened prose form of the old Bactrian, the
poetical form of which exists in the hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns were
transmitted orally. Literature proper only commences with the Sanskrit, and,
indeed, after it had become a learned language. Both Vedic and Sanskrit were,
in the first instance, living languages spoken by the people, and Sanskrit only
became the sacred language at the beginning of the fourth age, or about the year
1000, BC.
Sanskrit is the learned language of the Brahmins of the fourth era, but was
originally the deposite of the popular language of the third, as contrasted with the
Veda or old Bactrian language of the Indus country, which ceased to be spoken
at the end of the second era. When the hymns of the three old Vedas were collected,
the oldest written composition sprang up, and the second phase of it was avowedly
a contrast, as the popular Aryan tongue. Midway betwéen the two stand the
Iranian-Bactrian or Zend, which might, therefore, be called middle-Bactrian, if
the whole development on both sides the Hindu-Kush be considered as one.
The oldest records and traditions of the Bactrian foretime, and of that of
the “Five Rivers’ or Indus country which grew out of it, are in harmony. We
mean by this the record of the wanderings of the Aryans, of the immigration to
Bactria from the primitive country, down to the immigration to the country of
the Five Rivers to the east of the Indus; then the oldest traditions of the Zend
books, of which the hymns only can be referred to Zarathustra himself; and
lastly, the historical hymns of the Rig Veda.
If the Zarathustrian religion were Median as early as the 23d century
before Christ, and were advancing towards the second stage of language, as com-
pared with the Vedic, Zarathustra the Bactrian cannot be placed later than 3000,
B.C. Nor can we venture to place him further back than 4000, if the immigration
into India cannot have taken place earlier than this period; and consequently the
34 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
exodus to the south of Bactria cannot be placed higher than 5000. For between
it and the passage of the Indus, not only must the conquest of the intervening
countries have taken place, but twelve vast countries were gradually peopled, and
kingdoms founded on the road towards India; besides which, a body of settlers
pushed on toward the Caspian, and laid the foundation of what was subsequently
the Median kingdom, and through it of the Aryan kingdoms of Persia, which grew
out of Media. All of this part of Asia became so thoroughly Aryan, by the expul-
sion or extermination of the aboriginal Turanian population, that it has remained
so to this hour, the nucleus of it, at least, as being the oldest inhabitants.
In volume z., Bunsen says further (p. 431):.
The same earliest reminiscences of the primitive times of their race, which
we have met with among the Bactrians, exist indeed among the Indians. Neither
the recollection of the great catastrophe in the primeval country, nor that of the
historical migrations of their Aryan fathers from their northern home, has been |
lost.
Bunsen sees in the First Fargard of the Vendidad evidence of a
tradition of an immense change of climate in the primitive home of the
Aryans, caused by some tremendous convulsion of nature. I do not see
in it anything of the sort. The two verses on which he relies are these:
3. As the first best of regions and countries, I, who am Ahura Mazda,
create Airyana Vaéj6 of good capability; whereupon, in opposition to him, Angré
Mainyfis, the Death-Dealing, created a mighty serpent and snow, the work of
the Devas.
4. Ten months of winter and then . . . . two months of summer.
This is the translation of Dr. Haug, adopted by Bunsen. Spiegel’s,
as translated into English by Bleeck, is
5. The first and best of regions and places have I created, I who am
Ahura Mazda.
6. The Airyana Vaéja of the good creation.
7. Then Anra Mainyfis, who is full of death; created an opposition to
the same.
8. A great serpent and winter which the Devas have created.
9. Ten winter months are there, two summer months.
On this Bunsen had said (iii. 459):
The fathers of the Aryans originally, therefore, inhabited aboriginal Iran
proper, the land of pleasantness, and they only left it in consequence of a convul-
sion of nature, by which a great alteration in the climate was effected. The
expression ‘serpent’ is obscure. It may possibly mean volcanic eruptions which
can only have played a subordinate part in the great convulsion, although they
made a permanent impression. . . . When the climate was altered by some
vast disturbance of nature, the Aryans emigrated. . . . As regards its present
climate, it is precisely what our record describes it as having been when the change
produced by the above commotion took place; it has only two months of warm
weather.
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 35
In every country enumerated, Afra Mainyfis created some evil or
nuisance; in one, a cattle pestilence; in another, noxious insects; in another,
war and pillage; in another, hail and poverty; in another, unbelief. The
second Fargard reckons the years of Yima, in Airyana-Vaéj6, by winters,
and portrays the course of winter in the strongest coloring. No doubt the
Iranians came from a cold country. I imagine that the meaning simply
was that the more elevated and mountainous part of the country was
afflicted withintense cold. As to any change of climate, by any convulsion
of nature, there is not a word that indicates it.
It seems still more unreasonable to identify this imaginary convul-
sion with the flood of Noah, a deep overflow of the alluvial plain of
Mesopotamia. No change of climate anywhere is hinted at as a conse-
quence of that flood; and any convulsion of nature, great enough to change
a tropical into an Arctic climate, would hardly leave people alive to tell
the tale to their children.
The North, with the mountains of Meru, is also the sacred primeval land
of the Indians. Pamir is merely the country about Meru (Upa-Meru). Some
geographical tradition about it, indeed, must have existed, in which its limits
were defined. The Ottorokourrha of Ptolemy are evidently and by general
admission the Uttara-Kuru, i. e., the northern Kuru. He describes them in his
geography as inhabiting a district in the extreme north of Central Asia, of which
he gives the latitude and longitude. This he could only have learned from the
Indians. Hecatzus also mentions them in his history; and his information must
have been derived from the Persians. From the notices contained in the Zara-
thustrian record, it cannot be matter of surprise that the two statements tally.
The concordance, therefore, between the Indian and the Iranian traditions
is complete. The journey to Sogd was not from north to south; but rather from
east to west. [Would this have been the course taken, if a great convulsion of .
nature had changed the climate so greatly, making but two summer months; and
if the change had only then taken place, what induced the Kelts, Germans,
Sclaves and others to leave a temperate climate, and emigrate to the north of
Europe?] The paradise of. Bactria is direct northeast, as their descendants who
came to India were well aware. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Indians
acquired their knowledge of this north-eastern primeval country through Alex-
ander.
The first movement of mankind, therefore, came from the mountains of
the north. This, however, is not to be confounded with the historical migration
of the Aryans to India, which manifestly was from the westward, through Kabul
(The Bolor Pass), and by Kandahar (The Khyber Pass); two conquests and settle-
ments, which, as we have seen, preceded the passage of the Indus.
(iv. 557). The cradle of our race was in northern Asia. There it arose at
the most favorable period for our northern hemisphere, in that region now for the
most part uninhabitable, which extends southward as far as the 40th degree of
north latitude, and from the 60th to the 100th degree of longitude. On the north
this district was bounded at about the 53d degree by what was then the open
North Sea, with the Ural as an island; on the east it was surrounded by the Altai
and the Chinese Himalaya, on the south by the chain of the Paropamisus, extend-
36 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
ing from Asia Minor to Eastern Asia; and on the west by the Caucasus and
Ararat. We have, therefore, primeval country, containing on an average 11
degrees of latitude, and 40 degrees of longitude.
In this garden of delight (Eden), with its four’ streams, the Euphrates and
Tigris on the west, the Oxus and Jaxartes on the east, during thousands of years
man had soared above the first stage of consciousness.
From this source, Bunsen imagines, went the Turanian, Khamitic
and Semitic races, at periods variously and immensely remote; but of all
this there is no other proof than the fancied authority of the collection of
legends known as Genesis. Nothing in language, labour as philologists
may to prove it, even tends to show the common origin of the Chinese,
Egyptian, Phoenician and Aryan languages, of the Negro dialects of Africa,
the Turanian languages of Asia, and the multitude of tongues of the
American Indians. The Book Barasith itself does not teach the unity of
the whole human race; for who were the Sons of God, that intermarried
with the daughters of men? And who were those by whom Cain was
afraid of being killed, and to prevent whom killing him, a mark was set
upon him; when he and his father and mother (for it is not even said that
Eve had daughters, though Cain had or found a wife), were all the human
beings in all the world? And, finally, how could Cain build a city, without
people to inhabit it?
As to the Garden of Eden and the four rivers, the notion of Bunsen
is utterly irrational. The river that went out of Eden was one, which
watered the garden, ‘‘and from thence it was parted and became into
four heads”’ or streams, one of which ran round the whole land of Ethiopia,
and another was the Euphrates. Besides, Adam was expelled from Eden
and the cradle of the human race was not there, but wherever Noah lived
after the flood. The Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, and the vine
and olive grew in the land where Noah lived.
One wearies of the jargon of Khamism, Semitism and Turanism.
Why are there no Japhetic languages? Khamism is the language of Egypt;
Semitism, the family consisting of Pheenician, Canaanitish, Hebrew, Arabic,
Chaldee; and everything else, except the Aryan tongues, is Turanian, so
called from a name given the aborigines conquered in Asia by the Aryans.
But in Chapter x. of Genesis, which, in form genealogical, is merely
ethnological, Mitzraim (the name of the Egyptians), and Canaan, are
both sons of Ham; and Nimrod, who built Babylon, was grandson of Ham;
so that, although the Canaanites and Hebrews were of one race and spoke
the same language, they are part of Khamism, as the Assyrians are; and
yet these are called Semitic. Sidon is son of Canaan, and Asshur, who
built Nineveh, a descendant of Kham: and yet Shem was the ancestor of
Abram and the Israelites, though these were of one race with the Phcenicians
and had the same letters and language.
a
—— i i
BIRTHPLACE OF ZARATHUSTRIANISM 37
I am somewhat acquainted with a dozen Indian languages, and have
taken pains to collect extensive vocabularies of six or eight. Of the Chero-
kee, Choctaw, Muskoki, Yiichi, Nachis, ShAwAno, Oudsdachi, Tawaihdsh,
Alabamiis, Aionai, Sid@ or CAdohadAcho, and Netim or ComAanché, no
two resemble one another, at all. It is impossible to pretend that they
had a common origin. I could as readily believe that all the grasshoppers
or cotton-worms or house-flies in the world came from a single pair, as
that all human beings did. And if the Negro, Hottentot or Esquimau
race last a million years, no process of natural selection, or any other, will
ever develop a single white man from any of them. Besides, I am not
fond of believing that the whole human race is the fruit of incest.
I pass by, therefore, Bunsen’s notions in regard to Sinism, Khamism,
Semism and Turanism, and come to this:
The history of our Iranian languages likewise carries us back to those
remote periods. . . . When the Aryans separated, they possessed an orderly
system of family life; they tended their flocks, they practised husbandry,
and had a language teeming with the germs of mythological representations of
nature. The whole grammatical structure, and the terms for designating all
parts of this domestic life, are common to Bactrians (Aryans), Indians, Greeks,
Latins, Germans, Sclavonics. The last emigration was probably that of the
Aryans to the country of the Five Rivers. Their oldest hymns in the Punjab go
back to the year 3000 [5000], B. C. This community of life and language must
then at all events be supposed to have existed much earlier than 3000, B. C.
And wherever they went, they found nations and tribes of other
indigenous people, numerous and fierce, contesting their advance, and
when conquered, fusing and blending with them, and by like fusion of
languages forming the origins of the Sanskrit, Persian, Lithuanian, Greek,
Latin, German, Sclavonic and Keltic tongues; precisely as French, Spanish
and Italian were formed by the blending of many other and different
languages with the Latin.
THE ARMENIAN THEORY.
Mr. George Rawlinson, in his “Essay v., on the Religion of the
Ancient Persians’’, (Ed. of Herodotus, 1. 426), advances a very different
theory in regard to Magism and to Zarathustra. I will copy the essay,
almost or quite entire.
It has long been felt as a difficulty of no ordinary magnitude to reconcile
the account which Herodotus, Dino and others give of the ancient Persian
religion, with the primitive traditions of the Persian race, embodied in the first
Fargard of the Vendidad, which are now found to agree remarkably with the
authentic historical notices contained in the Achemenian monuments. In the
one case, we have a religion, the special characteristic of which is the worship of
all the elements, and of Fire in particular; in the other, one, the essence of which
is dualism, the belief in two first Principles, the authors respectively of Good and
Evil, Ormazd and Ahriman [Ahura Mazda and Anra Mainyfis]. Attempts have
been made from time to time to represent these two conflicting systems as in
reality harmonious, and as constituting together the most ancient religion of
Persia; but it is impossible, on such a theory to account, on the one hand for the
omission by the early Greek writers of all mention of the two great antagonistic
Principles of Light and Darkness, and on the other for the absence from the
monuments, and from the most ancient portions of the Vendidad, of any distinct
notice of the Fire-worship.
It gives scant promise of correct conclusions when the very basis
of a theory is an immense error. The Vendidad is of much later date
than the Gathdas, these being repeatedly referred to in some of the Far-
gards; and in the Gathdas, Asha Vahista (Ardibehest), Genius of Fire, the
second Amésha-Cpénta (Amshaspand) or hypostasis of Ahura Mazda, with
the other Amésha-Cpéntas, is continually spoken of. In the Gatha
Ahunavaiti (Yacna xxviii.) this relation of substance and hypostasis is
expressly stated in the phrase, ‘‘Thou who hast the same will with Asha
Vahista.’”’ We need only quote these other phrases: |
We will also not grieve Ahura Mazda and Asha: . ... Whom thou
knowest, O Asha, as the creatures of Vohii Mané: . .. . Asha, when shall
I behold thee and Vohfi Mané with knowledge? . . . . Come with Vohfi Mand:
give, O Asha, as a gift, long life: . . . . Let me know through Vohi Mandé_
: . Mazda, father of Vohfi Mané: . . . . Mazda Ahura, ruling through)
Vohfi Mand... . . the very friendly with the shining Asha: . .. . With]
these prayers of my soul entreat I you, Mazda and Asha . . . . Asha and
Vohii Mané who are to be praised before the greatest: . . . . So offer we7
Myazda to thee with prayer, O Ahura, and to Asha: . . . . Teach us, Asha, 7
the paths: . . . . O Fire, son of Ahura Mazda, we draw near to thee: offering |
and praise I vow to thee, son of Ahura Mazda, O Fire: The Fire, the son of
Ahura Mazda, the Pure, Lord of Purity, we praise. [And, at the same time, |
ae
THE ARMENIAN THEORY 39
in Yagna xxx., the Heavenly Beings, the Twins, are spoken of as creating, one
the Good and the other the Evil.]
But Mr. Rawlinson, setting out with this error, continues thus:
It cannot indeed be denied that in later times a mongrel religion did exist,
the result of the contact of the two systems, to which the accounts of modern
writers would very fairly apply. But the further we go back, the fewer traces
do we find of any such intermixture . . . . the more manifestly does the
religion described, or otherwise indicated, belong unmistakeably to one or the
other of the two types. Throughout Herodotus we have not a single trace of
dualism; we have not even any mention of Ormazd; the religion depicted is purely
and entirely elemental, the worship of the sun and moon, of fire, earth, water,
and the winds or air. Conversely, in the inscriptions there is nothing elemental;
but the worship of one supreme God, under the name of Ormazd, with an occa-
sional mention of an Evil Principle.
The Evil Principle is not often named or mentioned in the GathAs.
But, in them, the worship of Ahura Mazda is incessantly connected with
that of Vohu Mané, Asha Vahista and the other hypostases; and fire and
water are also worshipped with much emphasis. The Sun and Moon are
worshipped, and are the two eyes of Ahura Mazda; and Fire is worshipped
as Asha-Vahista, precisely as it was worshipped as Agni by the Vaidik
Aryans.
If then these two systems are in their origin so distinct, it becomes necessary
to consider, first of all, which of them in reality constituted the ancient Persian
religion, and which was intruded upon it afterwards. Did the Aryan nations
bring with them dualism from the east, or was the religion which accompanied
them from beyond the Indus, that mere elemental worship which Herodotus and
Dino describe, and which, in the later times of Greece and Rome, was especially
regarded as Magism?
Thus Mr. Rawlinson, considers that the Iranian emigration was from
the Punjab. I agree with Bunsen that there was no ground or founda-
tion for this notion. And as to the two systems, undoubtedly dualism
had its origin at a much later period than the fire, star and element
worship. But the religion of Zarathustra included both; and to the truth
of this, every page of the Gathds bears emphatic witness.
In favour of the latter supposition it may be urged that the religion of the
Eastern or Indo-Aryans appears from the Vedas to have been entirely free from
any dualistic leaven, while it possessed to some extent the character of a worship
of the powers of Nature. [It was simply nothing else than that, and having no
conception of a creative Cause, could not speak of twin creators or of two Princi-
ples.} It may therefore seem to be improbable, that a branch of the Aryan nation,
which separated from the main body at a comparatively recent period, should
have brought with them into their new settlement, a religion opposed entirely to
that of their brethren whom they left behind; and far more likely that they should
40 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
have merely modified their religion into the peculiar form of elemental worship
which has been ascribed to them. But the elemental worship in question is not
merely a modification of the Vedic creed, but a distinct and independent religion.
The religion of the Vedas is spiritual and personal; that which Herodotus
describes, is material and pantheistic. Again, it is clear that some special reason
must have caused a division of the Aryan nations; and the conjecture is plausible,
that it was in fact the dualistic heresy which separated the Zend or Persian
branch of the Aryans, from their Vedic brethren, and compelled them to migrate
to the westward.
Not the ‘‘dualistic ‘heresy,’’ but the advance by the teaching of
Zarathustra, ages before the Vedic period, and not in the Punjab, but in
Bactria, from the worship of the Host of Heaven and the Powers and
Elements of Nature, to the conception and worship of a beneficent Intelli-
gence, Sole Creative Cause of the material universe, coupled with the
idea and abhorrence of a Twin Evil Intelligence, not creator of anything
material, but only of Evil and of the spirits, influences and potencies of
Evil—tthe very doctrines so long the orthodoxy of the Christian world—
God the Father being but Ahura Mazda, and the Devil Afra Mainyfis.
Certainly, if we throw ourselves upon the ancient monuments of the Aryan
people, we must believe that dualism was not a religion which they adopted after
their migration was accomplished, but the faith which they brought with them
from beyond the Indus. In that most ancient account of the Aryan exodus,
which is contained in the first chapter of the Vendidad, the whole series of Aryan
triumphs and reverses is depicted as the effect of the struggle between Ormazd
and Ahriman. Elemental worship nowhere appears, and there is not even any
trace of that reverential regard of the sun and moon, which was undoubtedly a
part, though a subordinate one, of the ancient religion. Similarly, in the
Achemenian monuments, while the name of Ormazd is continually invoked, and
Ahriman appears as “the god of Lies,’ in at least one passage, the elements
receive no respect. Even Mithras is unmentioned until the time of Artaxerxes
Mnemon, when his name occurs in a single inscription, in conjunction with Tanat
or Anaitis. Nothing is more plain than that the faith of the early Achzemenian
kings was mere dualism, without the slightest admixture of Fire-worship or
elemental religion.
[The first Fargard seems originally not to have belonged to the Vendidad
itself, though it was early prefixed to it as a historical introduction. Spvegel.]
It is not doctrinal or religious; but recites the creation by Ahura
Mazda of various countries, and by Anra Mainyitis of ‘‘opposition”’ in-
each—cold, disease, flies, unbelief, particular vices, sloth, poverty, wild
beasts, and the like. No worship appears in it. In the third Fargard,
lying to Mithra is reprobated as a sin. In the fifth, Fire is the son
of Ahura Mazda, as in the Gathas. In the eighth, Fire is again the son
of Ahura Mazda, and verse 54 reads, ‘‘Besides thee, the Fire and Vohf
Mand, if I walk after thy works, O Holy One, O Ahura.”’ In Fargard x71., the
direction, ‘‘Praise the Fire’ is many times repeated, as one of the means
THE ARMENIAN THEORY 41
of obtaining purification. And in the nineteenth, the Amésha Cpéntas are
“creators, good rulers, and wise;’’ Mithra, “the creator of the pure crea-
tion,’ is praised; the Holy Word, Heaven, the Air, the Wind, ‘‘the Lights
without a beginning, the self-created,’’ the star Tistar and Verethraghna
and Haetumat. These Fargards treat almost exclusively of crimes and
vices, punishments and purifications, and deal almost not at all with the
doctrines or deities of the Iranian faith. For all that, they refer to the
Gathas, in which the elements are adored, and the Powers of Nature appear
as hypostases of Ahura Mazda.
The symbols of the wise always become the idols of the vulgar.
Fire was, to Zarathustra, the manifestation in action, and visible, of
the Fire-Principle or Essence, which itself was a hypostasis of Ahura
Mazda, Asha Vahista, one of the Amésha-Cpéntas, who were the equiva-
lents of the Hebraic Alohim, and more than the archangels of the seven
planets. A philosophical conception like this is as far beyond the reach
of the vulgar intellect, as that of the Logos of Plato and Philo, and that
of the Sephiroth of the Kabalah; and, of course, the Iranian and Indo-
Aryan common people worshipped the visible Fire and Light, and the
orbs from which light flowed, and not the Asha Vahista, Agni and Indra
of the intellect. But it certainly is not true that the Iranian, Zarathustrian
or early Achemenian religion was ‘‘mere dualism, without the slightest
admixture of fire-worship or elemental religion.”
Neither do I read Herodotus as depicting a religion “purely and
entirely elemental.’’ He says (7. 131), that the Persians have no images
of the gods, no temples nor altars, and adds, ‘This comes, I think, from
their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the
Greeks imagine.’ That is certainly saying that they considered them
spiritual beings, without human passions. They sacrifice to Jupiter, he
says,
which is the name they give to the whole circuit of the firmament; to the Sun and
Moon, to the Earth, to Fire, Water; and the Winds. This is the Vedic adoration
of Surya and Savitri, Agni and the Maruts; and Herodotus seems simply to have
misunderstood the adoration paid the Amésha-Cpéntas, of whom Vohii Mané was
Protector of all living creatures; Asha Vahista, the Genius of Fire; Kshathra-
Vairya, Lord of metals; €pénta-Armaiti, Goddess of the Earth; Haurvat, Lord
of waters; and Ameretat, of trees; while Mithra was the Sun; all, according to the
accepted interpretation.
If, then, it be asked [Rawlinson continues], how Herodotus came to
describe the Persian religious system as he did, and whence that elemental
worship originated, which undoubtedly formed a part of the later Persian religion,
it must be answered that that worship is Magism, and that it was from a remote
antiquity the religion of the Scythic tribes, who were thickly spread, in early
times, over the whole extent of Western Asia. That the Magian religion was
distinct from that of the early Persians, is clear from the Behistun inscription.
42 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
There we find that a complete religious revolution was accomplished by the —
Magian Pseudo-Smerdis; and that Darius, on his accession, had to rebuild temples |
which had been demolished, and re-establish a worship that had been put down. |
That the religion which Herodotus intended to describe was Magism, is manifest —
from his own account. It remains to show on what grounds that religion is
ascribed to the Scyths.
Now, in the first place, if we are right in assuming that there were in |
Western Asia, from the earliest times, three, and three only, great races— |
the Semitic, the Indo-European, and the Scyths, or Turanian—it will fol- |
low that the religion in question was that of the Scyths, since it certainly did '
not belong to either of the two other families. The religion of the Semites is well |
known to us. It was first the pure theism of Melchizedek and Abraham, whence I
it degenerated into the gross idolatry of the Phcenicians and Assyro-Babylonians. :
That of the Indo-European, or Japhetic tribes, is also sufficiently ascertained. ©
It was everywhere the worship of personal Gods, under distinct names; it allowed
of temples, represented the gods under sculptured figures or embiems, and in all —
respects differed widely in its character from the element worship of the Magians. |
If this includes the Vedic worship, nothing could be wider of the >
truth; for we have no hint in the Veda of the existence of temples, or of.
)
images of the gods; and natural objects were worshipped by the Indo- j
Aryans—not only the sun, moon, planets and stars, the dawn and winds, —
the Soma juice, food and fuel, but even lakes and rivers.
Magism, therefore, which crept into the religion of the Persians some time
after their great emigration to the West, cannot have been introduced among.
them either by Japhetic races, with whom they did not even come into con-|
tact, or by the Semitic people of the great plain at the foot of Zagros, whose,
worship was an idolatry of the grossest and most palpable character. Further, |
it may be noticed that Zoroaster, whose name is closely associated with primitive |
Magism, represented by various writers as an early Bactrian or Scythic king:
[quoting Cephalius in Eusebius, Berosus, Justin and Arnobius, neither of whom
could have had any information in regard to the matter, to make his statement
of the least value]; while‘:a multitude of ancient traditions identify him with the}
patriarch Ham, the great progenitor of the Turanians or Allophyllians. [These’
‘ancient traditions’ are simply absurd notions, born of the frenzy that once, -
appealing to the nonsense of men, displayed its antics in identifying the gods of
the heathen with the patriarchs of the legends of Genesis.] Scythic tribes, too,
seem clearly to have intermixed in great numbers with the Aryans on their arrival
in Western Asia, and to have formed a large, if not the preponderating element in —
the population of the Achemenian Empire. Corruption, therefore, would naturally
spread from this quarter, and it would have been strange indeed if the Persians —
—flexible and impressible people as they are known to have been—had not had
their religion affected by that of a race with whom their connection was so inti-_
mate.
To designate all the various indigenous tribes of Asia as ‘“The Tura-
nian Race’ is but to resort to a meaningless word and idle phrase, to”
hide utter want of knowledge. There is not the least evidence that these |
indigenous tribes were of one race, were all Scyths, or were descended from
THE ARMENIAN THEORY 43
Ham, who, as ancestor of Mitzraim has given his name to the Egyptians,
while the fact is conveniently ignored that he was also father of Canaan,
and that these were of one blood and tongue with the Hebrews and
Phoenicians, though these are styled Semites. If the term ‘Turanian’”’
means anything at all, it includes all the people of the earth, who are not
of the Indo-European, Semitic or Egyptian stock. It must include Man-
dingoes and Ashantees, Papuans and Patagonians, Esquimaux and Sioux,
Australasian savages and Hottentots, Malays and Japanese, and all the
other thousand tribes, of every gradation in the scale of humanity, and
in every part of the globe. Neither is it any more accurate to apply the
name of “‘Scythians” to the indigenous peoples of Asia generally. Many
of these in India still continue to exist, and so, no doubt, do many of those
in Persia, and certainly those of India were never Scythians. Scythia, in
ancient geography, was the northern part of Asia, on both sides of the
Smaus range of mountains, north of India and Sogdiana, and east of
Sarmatia; and the name was applied indifferently to any of the races of
that region. If the original home of the Aryans was north of Sogdiana,
they could with as much propriety as any other people, be said to have
been Scyths; and it could very well be said that Zarathustra was a Bactrian
ora Scyth. The true Scythians were probably Tatars, and it-is probable
that that is what the Aryans originally were, and we the remote relatives
of the Turks. Nothing is known of the origins of the Lydians and Lycians,
and as little of those of the multitude of tribes that peopled the various
countries into which the streams of Aryan emigration flowed. They were
probably as numerous and as distinct from each other, as the tribes of
the North and South American Indians are.
During the long succession of ages occupied in the extension of the
Iranians from Bactria to Persia, and the long pauses necessarily made,
while their power was consolidated and their numbers increased so as to
demand further emigration, they no doubt incorporated with themselves
-he conquered people of each country; and their language was modified
and changed by the intermixture of foreign words from various sources,
is well as grammatically. There may have been large numbers of natives
called Scyths, by those who knew not nor cared to know their real names,
n Media. It is certain that the Persians, formed precisely as the Hindus
were, were, like them, a heterogeneous and composite people, and it is very
‘ertain that the native influence caused innovation in the ancient religion,
decause the Khurdah Avesta represents the stars as demanding to be
worshipped, and asserting their right to be sacrificed unto; but all this
Was many centuries after the time of Zarathustra.
!
; Perhaps, indeed, less was due to foreign influences than to the laws
shat control all religions. No one ever stands still. Metempsychosis is
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44 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
inevitable. The debasement of Zarathustrianism into Magism was as
natural as the ascent of Vedaism into the original spiritualism of the
Brahmanic doctrine, and as the descent from that into the absurdities o
the later Hinduism, with its hundred gods and thousand fables. The
revival of the worship of the stars was an inevitable sequence of Mazdaism)
The philosopher and priest, understanding his own conceptions, anc
worshipping them and not their visible symbols, always has to surrendel
the latter to the people, to be worshipped, as playthings are abandoned tc
children. Zarathustra had to compromise with the star-worshippers anc
adorers of the Fire, and permit their worship to continue, with only a thir!
disguise. To the vulgar, no doubt, Asha-Vahista was never anything more
than the visible fire of the sacrifice. In the same way, ceremonial ceases
to be merely symbolic, and is deemed to possess the efficacy of salvation.
and men hate and kill each other because they differ as to the precise mode
in which it should be performed.
The phrases and sayings of the Sages, taken literally, produce like
results, until it becomes an article of faith, essential to escape damnation,
to believe an absurdity and swear to an impossibility. Hence half the
religious belief in the world, and half the heresies; which have generally
been protests and revolts against preposterous absurdities. ‘“This is my
body,’’ and ‘‘This is my blood,” was said by Jesus, as He sat there in the
body, and could not be at once himself as body and himself as bread; nor
his blood at one and the same time be in his body and in the wine, and
from this Orientalism, which none but an idiot would now misunderstand,
came the doctrine of the real presence, and the murder of a quarter of a
million unregenerate persons who could not believe that they swallowed
the real body of Christ in swallowing a bit of bread, or drank his real
blood in the shape of wine.
If this can be required of human belief, why may not the Faithful
believe that his idol of wood, his bull, cat, ape or onion is really and actually
his God, his Creator, or his Saviour?
A like adherence to the figurative language of the Vedas was the
fruitful source not only of the most extravagant fables and the most
degrading idolatry among the Hindus; but all the abominations of the
Linga-worship probably came from one or two phrases used figuratively in
a hymn to Vishnu. We all know what the symbol originally meant, and
the consequences that resulted from the literal acceptance of it by the
people.
Mr. Rawlinson further says:
It would seem that the Aryans, when they came in contact with the Scyths.
in the West, were a simple and unlettered people. They possessed no hierarchy,
no sacred books, no learning, no science, no occult lore, no fixed ceremonial of
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THE ARMENIAN THEORY 45
religion. Besides their belief in Ormazd and Ahriman, which was the pith and
marrow of their religion, they worshipped the sun and moon, under the names of
Mithra and Homa, and acknowledged the existence of a number of lesser deities,
good and evil genii, the creatures respectively of the great Powers of Light and
Darkness. Their worship consisted chiefly in religious chaunts, analogous to the
Vedic Hymns of their Indian brethren, wherewith they hoped to gain the favour
and protection of Ormazd and the good spirits under his governance. In this
condition they fell under the influence of Magism, an ancient and venerable system,
possessing all the religious adjuncts in which they were deficient, and claiming a
mysterious and miraculous power, which, to the credulity of a simple people, is
always attractive and imposing. The first to be exposed and to yield to this
influence were the Medes, who had settled in Azerbijan, the country where the
fire-worship seems to have originated, and which was always regarded in early
times as the chief seat of the Zoroastrian religion. The Medes not only adopted
the religion of their subjects, but to a great extent blended with them, admitting
whole Scythic tribes into their nation. Magism entirely superseded among the
Medes the former Aryan faith, and it was only in the Persian branch of the nation
that Dualism maintained itself. In the struggle that shortly arose between the
two, great Aryan powers, the success of Persia under Cyrus made Dualism again
triumphant. The religion of Ormazd and Ahriman became the national and
dominant faith, but Magism and all beliefs were tolerated. After a single unsuc-
cessful effort to recover the supremacy, resulting in a fierce persecution, and
the establishment of the annual Mayodora, Magism submitted, but proceeded
almost immediately to corrupt the faith with which it could not openly contend.
A mongrel religion grew up, wherein the Magian and Aryan creeds were blended
together, the latter predominating at the Court, and the former in the Provinces.
It is the provincial form of the Persian religion, which Herodotus describes, the
real Aryan or Achemenian creed being to all appearances unknown to him.
Colonel Rawlinson, quoted in a note by Mr. Rawlinson, says:
To discriminate the respective elements of this new faith is difficult, but
not impossible. The worship of Mithra and Homa, or of the Sun and Moon, had
been cherished by the Aryan colonists since their departure from Kurukhshetra;
their religious chaunts corresponded with the Vedic Hymns of their brethren
beyond the Sutlej. The antagonism of Oromazdes and Arimanes, or of Light and
Darkness, was their own peculiar and independent institution. On the other hand,
the origin of all things from Zerwan was essentially a Magian doctrine; the venera-
tion paid to fire and water came from the same source; and the barsam [baregma], of
the Zend-Avesta is the Magian divining-rod. The most important Magian modifi-
cation, however, was the personification of the old heresionym of the Scythic race,
and its immediate association with Oromazdes. Under the disguise of Zarathustra,
which was the nearest practicable Aryan form, Zira-Ishtar (or the seed of Venus)
became a Prophet and Lawgiver, receiving inspiration from Ahura Mazda, and
reforming the national religion. The pretended synchronism of this Zarathustra
with Vishtaspa, clearly marks the epoch from which it was designed that reformed
Magism should date, an epoch selected doubtless out of deference to the later
Achemenian kings, who derived their royalty from Darius.
Upon what historical authority all these confident assertions are
ased, and the real existence of Zarathustra denied, we do not learn; and
46 IRANO-ARYAN FAITH AND DOCTRINE
I decline to accept mere guesses as history, though put in the form of state
ments of fact. In the statements made by Mr. George Rawlinson ther
is some truth, and, I think, more error. In those of Col. Rawlinson |
find no truth at all.
It was these statements that led me carefully to examine the olde
portions of the Zend-Avesta, i. e., the Gathas and Vendidad, and to obtain
if I could, some clear idea of the real conceptions and dectrine taught b:
Zarathustra. If Colonel Rawlinson were to assert that Moses and Mahome
never existed, and were mere disguises, their names being this and that
and meaning this thing and the other, I should wish to be furnished witl
references to the authorities, or at least with the reasons for such con
clusions.
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The eleventh essay of Rawlinson (Herod. 1. 643), contains an inter
esting discussion of the ethnic affinities of the nations of Western Asia
In that
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i
the cradle of the human race; the several ethnic branches of the human famih
were more closely intermingled [he says], and more evenly balanced than in any
other portion of the ancient world. Semitic, Indo-European, and Tatar or Turania1
races, not only divided among them this portion of the earth’s surface, but lay
confused and interspersed upon it, in a most remarkable entanglement. It 1
symptomatic of this curious intermixture that the Persian monarchs, when they
wished to publish a communication to their Asiatic subjects in such a way tha.
it should be generally intelligible, had to put it out, not only in three languages
but in three languages belonging to the three principal divisions of human speech
Western Asia was, no doubt, the cradle of the Aryan race; but the
human race had many more cradles than one. It is now settled beyonce
any peradventure that the human race has existed on the earth a hundred
perhaps ten thousand, times as long as the ordinary chronology makes i
to have been since the creation. Originally, it is clearly established now
man everywhere was a savage. We know nothing about the process 0:
creation. Every few years some new insect makes its appearance, i
myriads at once, when the occasion for its existence arrives. The potate
had been cultivated in America for two centuries before, a year or two ago
the potato-bug appeared. The insect was apparently created for the fooc
that awaited it. The cotton, grown for many years, at length provokee
the creation of the cotton-worm, an insect before unknown in the world’
If you run a road across an Arkansas prairie, and let it be traveled unti
it is well worn, and the grass upon it killed out, and then disuse it for a
year or two, a kind of grass springs up all over it that is seen nowhere
else on the prairie. In Northern Europe, three kinds of trees have suc:
ceeded each other, at long intervals, the earlier kind wholly disappear:
ing,—the fir, the oak and the beech. In whatever mode the Deity
THE ARMENIAN THEORY 47
sreates, He does not commence with a single pair of anything. Darwin
nas only proven by his experiments, that species may be varied. All his
vacts get him no further than that. Paleontology shows us that many
saces of animals, fish and reptiles have disappeared all at once, and new
“aces and genera have as often been produced all at once. The same
inimal has undoubtedly been always produced in large numbers at different
nlaces, and of different species. Different varieties of the dog may be
produced by “‘natural selection,’’ but natural selection has never turned
volves into dogs, nor, I believe, made the mastiff, hilldog, greyhound and
errier and the little spaniel be produced of the descendants of a single
dair of dogs.
In every quarter of the globe, as soon as it was fitted for human habi-
ation, the great Bounteous Mother-Nature, the Deity in action and
‘xpression, produced man, as it produced other varieties of living creatures.
t would be ridiculous to pretend that the legend of the first man Adam,
ind Eve made of his rib, was any more historical than the legends of