PERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THE name of Zoroaster is connected, either as author or as
reviser, with that remarkable system of rites and doctrines which
constituted the religion of the ancient Iranians, and which yet
finds adherents in the Ghebers of Persia and the Parsees of India.
Pliny, following the affirmation of Aristotle, asserts that he
flourished six thousand years before Plato. Moyle, Gibbon, Volney,
Rhode, concur in throwing him back into this vast antiquity.
Foucher, Holty, Heeren, Tychsen, Guizot, assign his birth to the
beginning of the seventh century before Christ. Hyde, Prideaux, Du
Perron, Kleuker, Herder, Klaproth, and others, bring him down to
about a hundred and fifty years later. Meanwhile, several weighty
names press the scale in favor of the hypothesis of two or three
Zoroasters, living at separate epochs. So the learned men differ,
and the genuine date in question cannot, at present at least, be
decided. It is comparatively certain that, if he was the author of
the work attributed to him, he must have flourished as early as
the sixth century before Christ. The probabilities seem, upon the
whole, that he lived four or five centuries earlier than that,
even, "in the pre historic time," as Spiegel says. However, the
settlement of the era of Zoroaster is not a necessary condition of
discovering the era when the religion commonly traced to him was
in full prevalence as the established faith of the Persian empire.
The latter may be conclusively fixed without clearing up the
former. And it is known, without disputation, that that religion
whether it was primarily Persian, Median, Assyrian, or Chaldean
was flourishing at Babylon in the maturity of its power in the
time of the Hebrew prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel,
twenty five hundred years ago.
The celebrated work on the religion of the ancient Medes and
Persians by Dr. Hyde, published in 1700, must be followed with
much caution and be taken with many qualifications. The author was
biassed by unsound theories of the relation of the Hebrew theology
to the Persian, and was, of course, ignorant of the most
authoritative ancient documents afterwards brought to light. His
work, therefore, though learned and valuable, considering the time
when it was written, is vitiated by numerous mistakes and defects.
In 1762, Anquetil du Perron, returning to France from protracted
journeying and abode in the East, brought home, among the fruits
of his researches, manuscripts purporting to be parts of the old
Persian Bible composed or collected by Zoroaster. It was written
in a language hitherto unknown to European scholars, one of the
primitive dialects of Persia. This work, of which he soon
published a French version at Paris was entitled by him the "Zend
Avesta." It confirmed all that was previously known of the
Zoroastrian religion, and, by its allusions, statements, and
implications, threw great additional light upon the subject.
A furious controversy, stimulated by personal rivalries and
national jealousy, immediately arose. Du Perron was denounced as
an impostor or an ignoramus, and his publication stigmatized as a
wretched forgery of his own, or a gross imposition palmed upon him
by some lying pundit. Sir William Jones and John Richardson, both
distinguished English Orientalists, and Meiners in Germany, were
the chief impugners of the document in hand. Richardson
obstinately went beyond his data, and did not live long enough to
retract; but Sir William, upon an increase of information, changed
his views, and regretted his first inconsiderate zeal and somewhat
mistaken championship. The ablest defender of Du Perron was
Kleuker, who translated the whole work from French into German,
adding many corrections, new arguments, and researches of great
ability. His work was printed at Riga, in seven quarto volumes,
from 1777 to 1783. The progress and results of the whole
discussion are well enough indicated in the various papers which
the subject drew forth in the volumes of the "Asiatic Researches"
and the numbers of the "Asiatic Journal." The conclusion was that,
while Du Perron had indeed betrayed partial ignorance and crudity,
and had committed some glaring errors, there was not the least
ground for doubt that his asserted discovery was in every
essential what it claimed to be. It is a sort of litany; a
collection of prayers and of sacred dialogues held between Ormuzd
and Zoroaster, from which the Persian system of theology may be
inferred and constructed with some approach to completeness.
The assailants of the genuineness of the "Zend Avesta" were
effectually silenced when, some thirty years later, Professor
Rask, a well known Danish linguist, during his inquiries in the
East, found other copies of it, and gave to the world such
information and proofs as could not be suspected. He, discovering
the close affinities of the Zend with Sanscrit, led the way to the
most brilliant triumph yet achieved by comparative philology.
Portions of the work in the original character were published in
1829, under the supervision of Burnouf at Paris and of Olshausen
at Hamburg. The question of the genuineness of the dialect
exhibited in these specimens, once so freely mooted, has been
discussed, and definitively settled in the affirmative, by several
eminent scholars, among whom may be mentioned Bopp, whose
"Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend,
Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, and German Languages" is an
astonishing monument of erudition and toil. It is the conviction
of Major Rawlinson that the Zoroastrian books of the Parsees were
imported to Bombay from Persia in their present state in the
seventh century of our era, but that they were written at least
twelve centuries earlier.1
But the two scholars whose opinions upon any subject within this
department of learning are now the most authoritative are
Professor Spiegel of Erlangen, and Professor Westergaard of
Copenhagen. Their investigations, still in progress, made with all
the aids furnished by their predecessors, and also with the
advantage of newly discovered materials and processes, are of
course to be relied on in preference to the earlier, and in some
respects necessarily cruder, researches. It appears that the
proper Zoroastrian Scriptures namely, the Yasna, the Vispered, the
Vendidad, the Yashts, the Nyaish, the Afrigans, the Gahs, the
Sirozah, and a few other fragments were composed in an ancient
Iranian dialect, which may as Professor
W. D. Whitney suggests in his very lucid and able article in vol.
v. of the Journal of the American Oriental Society most fitly be
called the Avestan dialect. (No other book in this dialect, we
believe, is known to be in existence now.) It is difficult to say
when these
1 Wilson, Parsi Religion Unfolded, p. 405.
documents were written; but in view of all the relevant
information now possessed, including that drawn from the
deciphered cuneiform inscriptions, the most probable date is about
a thousand years before Christ. Professor R. Roth of Tubingen
whose authority herein as an original investigator is perhaps
hardly second to any other man's says the books of the Zoroastrian
faith were written a considerable time before the rise of the
Achamenian dynasty. He is convinced that the whole substantial
contents of the Zend Avesta are many centuries older than the
Christian era.2 Professor Muller of Oxford also holds the same
opinion.3 And even those who set the date of the literary record a
few centuries later, as Spiegel does, freely admit the great
antiquity of the doctrines and usages then first committed to
manuscript. In the fourth century before Christ, Alexander of
Macedon overran the Persian empire. With the new rule new
influences prevailed, and the old national faith and ritual fell
into decay and neglect. Early in the third century of the
Christian era, Ardeshir overthrew the Parthian dominion in Persia
and established the Sassanian dynasty. One of his first acts was,
stimulated doubtless by the surviving Magi and the old piety of
the people, to reinaugurate the ancient religion. A fresh zeal of
loyalty broke out, and all the prestige and vigor of the long
suppressed worship were restored. The Zoroastrian Scriptures were
now sought for, whether in manuscript or in the memories of the
priests. It would seem that only remnants were found. The
collection, such as it was, was in the Avestan dialect, which had
grown partially obsolete and unintelligible. The authorities
accordingly had a translation of it made in the speech of the
time, Pehlevi. This translation most of which has reached us
written in with the original, sentence after sentence forms the
real Zend language, often confounded by the literary public with
Avestan. The translation of the Avestan books, probably made under
these circumstances as early as A. D. 350, is called the
Huzvaresch. In regard to some of these particulars there are
questions still under investigation, but upon which it is not
worth our while to pause here. For example, Spiegel thinks the
Zend identical with the Pehlevi of the fourth century; Westergaard
believes it entirely distinct from Pehlevi, and in truth only a
disguised mode of writing Parsee, the oldest form of the modern
Persian language.
The source from which the fullest and clearest knowledge of the
Zoroastrian faith, as it is now held by the Parsees, is drawn, is
the Desatir and the Bundehesh. The former work is the unique
vestige of an extinct dialect called the Mahabadian, accompanied
by a Persian translation and commentary. It is impossible to
ascertain the century when the Mahabadian text was written; but
the translation into Persian was, most probably, made in the
seventh century of the Christian era.4 Spiegel, in 1847, says
there can be no doubt of the spuriousness of the Desatir; but he
gives no reasons for the statement, and we do not know that it is
based on any other arguments than those which, advanced by De
Sacy, were refuted by Von Hammer. The Bundehesh is in the Pehlevi
or Zend language, and was written, it is
2 Ueber die Heiligen Schriften der Arier. Jahrbucher fur Deutsche
Theologie, 1857, band ii. ss. 146, 147.
3 Essay on the Veda and the Zend Avesta, p. 24. See also Bunsen's
Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii. p. 114.
4 Baron von Hammer, in Heidelberger Jabrbucher der Literatur,
1823. Id. in Journal Asiatique, Juillet, 1833. Dabistan,
Preliminary Discourse, pp. xix. lxv.
thought, about the seventh century, but was derived, it is
claimed, from a more ancient work.5 The book entitled "Revelations
of Ardai Viraf" exists in Pehlevi probably of the fourth century,
according to Troyer,6 and is believed to have been originally
written in the Avestan tongue, though this is extremely doubtful.
It gives a detailed narrative of the scenery of heaven and hell,
as seen by Ardai Viraf during a visit of a week which his soul
leaving his body for that length of time paid to those regions.
Many later and enlarged versions of this have appeared. One of
them, dating from the sixteenth century, was translated into
English by T. A. Pope and published in 1816. Sanscrit translations
of several of the before named writings are also in existence. And
several other comparatively recent works, scarcely needing mention
here, although considered as somewhat authoritative by the modern
followers of Zoroaster, are to be found in Guzeratee, the present
dialect of the Indian Parsees. A full exposition of the
Zoroastrian religion, with satisfactory proofs of its antiquity
and documentary genuineness, is presented in the Preliminary
Discourse and Notes to the Dabistan. This curious and entertaining
work, a fund of strange and valuable lore, is an historico
critical view of the principal religions of the world, especially
of the Oriental sects, schools, and manners. It was composed in
Persian, apparently by Mohsan Fani, about the year 1645. An
English translation, with elaborate explanatory matter, by David
Shea and Anthony Troyer, was published at London and at Paris in
1843.7
In these records there are obscurities, incongruities, and chasms,
as might naturally be anticipated, admitting them to be strictly
what they would pass for. These faults may be accounted for in
several ways. First, in a rude stage of philosophical culture,
incompleteness of theory, inconsistent conceptions in different
parts of a system, are not unusual, but are rather to be expected,
and are slow to become troublesome to its adherents. Secondly,
distinct contemporary thinkers or sects may give expression to
their various views in literary productions of the same date and
possessing a balanced authority. Or, thirdly, the heterogeneous
conceptions in some particulars met with in these scriptures may
be a result of the fact that the collection contains writings of
distinct ages, when the same problems had been differently
approached and had given birth to opposing or divergent
speculations. The later works of course cannot have the authority
of the earlier in deciding questions of ancient belief: they are
to be taken rather as commentaries, interpreting and carrying out
in detail many points that lie only in obscure hints and allusions
in the primary documents. But it is a significant fact that, in
the generic germs of doctrine and custom, in the essential
outlines of substance, in rhetorical imagery, in practical morals,
the statements of all these books are alike: they only vary in
subordinate matters and in degrees of fulness.
The charge has repeatedly been urged that the materials of the
more recent of the Parsee Scriptures the Desatir and the
Bundehesh were drawn from Christian and Mohammedan sources. No
evidence of value for sustaining such assertions has been adduced.
Under the circumstances, scarcely any motive for such an
imposition appears. In view of the whole case,
5 Dabistan, vol. i. p. 226, note.
6 Ibid. p. 185, note.
7 Reviewed in Asiatic Journal, 1844, pp. 582-595.
the reverse supposition is rather to be credited. In the first
place, we have ample evidence for the existence of the general
Zoroastrian system long anterior to the rise of Christianity. The
testimony of the classic authors to say nothing of the known
antiquity of the language in which the system is preserved is
demonstrative on this point. Secondly, the striking agreement in
regard to fundamental doctrines, pervading spirit, and ritual
forms between the accounts in the classics and those in the
Avestan books, and of both these with the later writings and
traditional practice of the Parsees, furnishes powerful
presumption that the religion was a connected development,
possessing the same essential features from the time of its
national establishment. Thirdly, we have unquestionable proofs
that, during the period from the Babylonish captivity to the
advent of Christ, the Jews borrowed and adapted a great deal from
the Persian theology, but no proof that the Persians took any
thing from the Jewish theology. This is abundantly confessed by
such scholars as Gesenius, Rosenmuller, Stuart, Lucke, De Wette,
Neander; and it will hardly be challenged by any one who has
investigated the subject. But the Jewish theology being thus
impregnated with germs from the Persian faith, and being in a
sense the historic mother of Christian theology, it is far more
reasonable, in seeking the origin of dogmas common to Parsees and
Christians, to trace them through the Pharisees to Zoroaster, than
to imagine them suddenly foisted upon the former by forgery on the
part of the latter at a late period. Fourthly, it is notorious
that Mohammed, in forming his religion, made wholesale draughts
upon previously existing faiths, that their adherents might more
readily accept his teachings, finding them largely in unison with
their own. It is altogether more likely, aside from historic
evidence which we possess, that he drew from the tenets and
imagery of the Ghebers, than that they, when subdued by his armies
and persecuted by his rule from their native land, introduced new
doctrines from the Koran into the ancestral creed which they so
revered that neither exile nor death could make them abjure it.
For, driven by those fierce proselytes, the victorious Arabs, to
the mountains of Kirman and to the Indian coast, they clung with
unconquerable tenacity to their religion, still scrupulously
practising its rites, proudly mindful of the time when every
village, from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the outlet of the
Persian Gulf, had its splendid fire temple,
"And Iran like a sunflower turn'd Where'er the eye of Mithra
burn'd."
We therefore see no reason for believing that important Christian
or Mohammedan ideas have been interpolated into the old
Zoroastrian religion. The influence has been in the other
direction. Relying then, though with caution, on what Dr. Edward
Roth says, that "the certainty of our possessing a correct
knowledge of the leading ancient doctrines of the Persians is now
beyond all question," we will try to exhibit so much of the system
as is necessary for appreciating its doctrine of a future life.
In the deep background of the Magian theology looms, in mysterious
obscurity, the belief in an infinite First Principle, Zeruana
Akerana. According to most of the scholars who have investigated
it, the meaning of this term is "Time without Bounds," or absolute
duration. But Bohlen says it signifies the "Untreated Whole;" and
Schlegel thinksit denotes the "Indivisible One." The conception
seems to have been to the people mostly an unapplied abstraction,
too vast and remote to become prominent in their speculation or
influential in their faith. Spiegel, indeed, thinks the conception
was derived from Babylon, and added to the system at a later
period than the other doctrines. The beginning of vital theology,
the source of actual ethics to the Zoroastrians, was in the idea
of the two antagonist powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the first
emanations of Zeruana, who divide between them in unresting strife
the empire of the universe. The former is the Principle of Good,
the perfection of intelligence, beneficence, and light, the source
of all reflected excellence. The latter is the Principle of Evil,
the contriver of misery and death, the king of darkness, the
instigator of all wrong. With sublime beauty the ancient Persian
said, "Light is the body of Ormuzd; Darkness is the body of
Ahriman." There has been much dispute whether the Persian theology
grew out of the idea of an essential and eternal dualism, or was
based on the conception of a partial and temporary battle; in
other words, whether Ahriman was originally and necessarily evil,
or fell from a divine estate.
In the fragmentary documents which have reached us, the whole
subject lies in confusion. It is scarcely possible to unravel the
tangled mesh. Sometimes it seems to be taught that Ahriman was at
first good, an angel of light who, through envy of his great
compeer, sank from his primal purity, darkened into hatred, and
became the rancorous enemy of truth and love. At other times he
appears to be considered as the pure primordial essence of evil.
The various views may have prevailed in different ages or in
different schools. Upon the whole, however, we hold the opinion
that the real Zoroastrian idea of Ahriman was moral and free, not
physical and fatal. The whole basis of the universe was good; evil
was an after perversion, a foreign interpolation, a battling
mixture. First, the perfect Zeruana was once all in all: Ahriman,
as well as Ormuzd, proceeded from him; and the inference that he
was pure would seem to belong to the idea of his origin. Secondly,
so far as the account of Satan given in the book of Job perhaps
the earliest appearance of the Persian notion in Jewish
literature warrants any inference or supposition at all, it would
lead to the image of one who was originally a prince in heaven,
and who must have fallen thence to become the builder and
potentate of hell. Thirdly, that matter is not an essential core
of evil, the utter antagonist of spirit, and that Ahriman is not
evil by an intrinsic necessity, will appear from the two
conceptions lying at the base and crown of the Persian system:
that the creation, as it first came from the hands of Ormuzd, was
perfectly good; and that finally the purified material world shall
exist again unstained by a breath of evil, Ahriman himself
becoming like Ormuzd. He is not, then, aboriginal and
indestructible evil in substance. The conflict between Ormuzd and
him is the temporary ethical struggle of light and darkness, not
the internecine ontological war of spirit and matter. Roth says,
"Ahriman was originally good: his fall was a determination of his
will, not an inherent necessity of his nature." 8 Whatever other
conceptions may be found, whatever inconsistencies or
contradictions to this may appear, still, we believe the genuine
Zoroastrian view was such as we have now stated. The opposite
doctrine arose from the more abstruse lucubrations of a more
modern time, and is Manichaan, not Zoroastrian.
8 Zoroastrische Glaubenslehre, ss. 397, 398.
Ormuzd created a resplendent and happy world. Ahriman instantly
made deformity, impurity, and gloom, in opposition to it. All
beauty, virtue, harmony, truth, blessedness, were the work of the
former. All ugliness, vice, discord, falsehood, wretchedness,
belonged to the latter. They grappled and mixed in a million
hostile shapes. This universal battle is the ground of ethics, the
clarion call to marshal out the hostile hosts of good and ill; and
all other war is but a result and a symbol of it. The strife thus
indicated between a Deity and a Devil, both subordinate to the
unmoved ETERNAL, was the Persian solution of the problem of evil,
their answer to the staggering question, why pleasure and pain,
benevolence and malignity, are so conflictingly mingled in the
works of nature and in the soul of man. In the long struggle that
ensued, Ormuzd created multitudes of co operant angels to assail
his foe, stocking the clean empire of Light with celestial allies
of his holy banner, who hang from heaven in great numbers, ready
at the prayer of the righteous man to hie to his aid and work him
a thousandfold good. Ahriman, likewise, created an equal number of
assistant demons, peopling the filthy domain of Darkness with
counterbalancing swarms of infernal followers of his pirate flag,
who lurk at the summit of hell, watching to snatch every
opportunity to ply their vocation of sin and ruin. There are such
hosts of these invisible antagonists sown abroad, and incessantly
active, that every star is crowded and all space teems with them.
Each man has a good and a bad angel, a ferver and a dev, who are
endeavoring in every manner to acquire control over his conduct
and possession of his soul.
The Persians curiously personified the source of organic life in
the world under the emblem of a primeval bull. In this symbolic
beast were packed the seeds and germs of all the creatures
afterwards to people the earth. Ahriman, to ruin the creation of
which this animal was the life medium, sought to kill him. He set
upon him two of his devs, who are called "adepts of death." They
stung him in the breast, and plagued him until he died of rage.
But, as he was dying, from his right shoulder sprang the
androgynal Kaiomorts, who was the stock root of humanity. His body
was made from fire, air, water, and earth, to which Ormuzd added
an immortal soul, and bathed him with an elixir which rendered him
fair and glittering as a youth of fifteen, and would have
preserved him so perennially had it not been for the assaults of
the Evil One.9 Ahriman, the enemy of all life, determined to slay
him, and at last accomplished his object; but, as Kaiomorts fell,
from his seed, through the power of Ormuzd, originated Meschia and
Meschiane, male and female, the first human pair, from whom all
our race have descended. They would never have died,10 but
Ahriman, in the guise of a serpent, seduced them, and they sinned
and fell. This account is partly drawn from that later treatise,
the Bundehesh, whose mythological cosmogony reminds us of the
Scandinavian Ymer. But we conceive it to be strictly reliable as a
representation of the Zoroastrian faith in its essential
doctrines; for the earlier documents, the Yasna, the Yeshts, and
the Vendidad, contain the same things in obscure and undeveloped
expressions. They, too, make repeated mention of the mysterious
bull, and of Kaiomorts.11 They invariably represent death as
resulting
9 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band i. anhang 1, s. 263.
10 Ibid. band i. s. 27.
11 Yasna, 24th IIa.
from the hostility of Ahriman. The earliest Avestan account of the
earthly condition of men describes them as living in a garden
which Yima or Jemschid had enclosed at the command of Ormuzd.12
During the golden age of his reign they were free from heat and
cold, sickness and death. "In the garden which Yima made they led
a most beautiful life, and they bore none of the marks which
Ahriman has since made upon men." But Ahriman's envy and hatred
knew no rest until he and his devs had, by their wiles, broken
into this paradise, betrayed Yima and his people into falsehood,
and so, by introducing corruption into their hearts, put an end to
their glorious earthly immortality. This view is set forth in the
opening fargards of the Vendidad; and it has been clearly
illustrated in an elaborate contribution upon the "Old Iranian
Mythology" by Professor Westergaard.13 Death, like all other
evils, was an after effect, thrust into the purely good creation
of Ormuzd by the cunning malice of Ahriman. The Vendidad, at its
commencement, recounts the various products of Ormuzd's beneficent
power, and adds, after each particular, "Thereupon Ahriman, who is
full of death, made an opposition to the same."
According to the Zoroastrian modes of thought, what would have
been the fate of man had Ahriman not existed or not interfered?
Plainly, mankind would have lived on forever in innocence and joy.
They would have been blessed with all placid delights, exempt from
hate, sickness, pain, and every other ill; and, when the earth was
full of them, Ormuzd would have taken his sinless subjects to his
own realm of light on high. But when they forsook the true service
of Ormuzd, falling into deceit and defilement, they became
subjects of Ahriman; and he would inflict on them, as the
creatures of his hated rival, all the calamities in his power,
dissolve the masterly workmanship of their bodies in death, and
then take their souls as prisoners into his own dark abode. "Had
Meschia continued to bring meet praises, it would have happened
that when the time of man, created pure, had come, his soul,
created pure and immortal, would immediately have gone to the seat
of bliss."14 "Heaven was destined for man upon condition that he
was humble of heart, obedient to the law, and pure in thought,
word, and deed." But "by believing the lies of Ahriman they became
sinners, and their souls must remain in his nether kingdom until
the resurrection of their bodies."15 Ahriman's triumph thus
culminates in the death of man and that banishment of the
disembodied soul into hell which takes the place of its
originally intended reception into heaven.
The law of Ormuzd, revealed through Zoroaster, furnishes to all
who faithfully observe it in purity of thought, speech, and
action, "when body and soul have separated, attainment of paradise
in the next world,"16 while the neglecters of it "will pass into
the dwelling of the devs,"17 "after death will have no part in
paradise, but will occupy the place of darkness
12 Die Sage von Dschemschid. Von Professor R. Roth. In Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgeulandischen Gesellschaft, band iv. ss. 417-431.
13 Weber, Indische Studien, band iii. 8. 411.
14 Yesht LXXXVII. Kleuker, band ii. sect. 211.
15 Bundehesh, ch. xv.
16 Avesta die Heiligen Schriften der Parsen. Von Dr. F. Spiegel,
band i. s, 171.
17 Ibid. s. 158.
destined for the wicked."18 The third day after death, the soul
advances upon "the way created by Ormuzd for good and bad," to be
examined as to its conduct. The pure soul passes up from this
evanescent world, over the bridge Chinevad, to the world of
Ormuzd, and joins the angels. The sinful soul is bound and led
over the way made for the godless, and finds its place at the
bottom of gloomy hell.19 An Avestan fragment 20 and the Viraf
Nameh give the same account, only with more picturesque fulness.
On the soaring bridge the soul meets Rashne rast, the angel of
justice, who tries those that present themselves before him. If
the merits prevail, a figure of dazzling substance, radiating
glory and fragrance, advances and accosts the justified soul,
saying, "I am thy good angel: I was pure at the first, but thy
good deeds have made me purer;" and the happy one is straightway
led to Paradise. But when the vices outweigh the virtues, a dark
and frightful image, featured with ugliness and exhaling a noisome
smell, meets the condemned soul, and cries, "I am thy evil spirit:
bad myself, thy crimes have made me worse." Then the culprit
staggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from the dizzy
causeway, and precipitated into the gulf which yawns horribly
below. A sufficient reason for believing these last details no
late and foreign interpolation, is that the Vendidad itself
contains all that is essential in them, Garotman, the heaven of
Ormuzd, open to the pure, Dutsakh, the abode of devs, ready for
the wicked, Chinevad, the bridge of ordeal, upon which all must
enter.21
Some authors have claimed that the ancient disciples of Zoroaster
believed in a purifying, intermediate state for the dead. Passages
stating such a doctrine are found in the Yeshts, Sades, and in
later Parsee works. But whether the translations we now possess of
these passages are accurate, and whether the passages themselves
are authoritative to establish the ancient prevalence of such a
belief, we have not yet the means for deciding. There was a yearly
solemnity, called the "Festival for the Dead," still observed by
the Parsees, held at the season when it was thought that that
portion of the sinful departed who had ended their penance were
raised from Dutsakh to earth, from earth to Garotman. Du Perron
says that this took place only during the last five days of the
year, when the souls of all the deceased sinners who were
undergoing punishment had permission to leave their confinement
and visit their relatives; after which, those not yet purified
were to return, but those for whom a sufficient atonement had been
made were to proceed to Paradise. For proof that this doctrine was
held, reference is made to the following passage, with others:
"During these five days Ormuzd empties hell. The imprisoned souls
shall be freed from Ahriman's plagues when they pay penance and
are ashamed of their sins; and they shall receive a heavenly
nature; the meritorious deeds of themselves and of their families
cause this liberation: all the rest must return to Dutsakh."22
Rhode thinks this was a part of the old Persian faith, and the
source of
18 Ibid. s. 127.
19 Ibid. ss. 248-252. Vendidad, Fargard XIX.
20 Kleuker, band i. ss. xxxi. xxxv.
21 Spiegel, Vendidad, ss. 207, 229, 233, 250.
22 Kleuker, band ii. s. 173.
the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.23 But, whether so or
not, it is certain that the Zoroastrians regarded the whole
residence of the departed souls in hell as temporary.
The duration of the present order of the world was fixed at twelve
thousand years, divided into four equal epochs. In the first three
thousand years, Ormuzd creates and reigns triumphantly over his
empire. Through the next cycle, Ahriman is constructing and
carrying on his hostile works. The third epoch is occupied with a
drawn battle between the upper and lower kings and their
adherents. During the fourth period, Ahriman is to be victorious,
and a state of things inconceivably dreadful is to prevail. The
brightness of all clear things will be shrouded, the happiness of
all joyful creatures be destroyed, innocence disappear, religion
be scoffed from the world, and crime, horror, and war be rampant.
Famine will spread, pests and plagues stalk over the earth, and
showers of black rain fall. But at last Ormuzd will rise in his
might and put an end to these awful scenes. He will send on earth
a savior. Sosiosch, to deliver mankind, to wind up the final
period of time, and to bring the arch enemy to judgment. At the
sound of the voice of Sosiosch the dead will come forth. Good,
bad, indifferent, all alike will rise, each in his order.
Kaiomorts, the original single ancestor of men, will be the
firstling. Next, Meschia and Meschiane, the primal parent pair,
will appear. And then the whole multitudinous family of mankind
will throng up. The genii of the elements will render up the
sacred materials intrusted to them, and rebuild the decomposed
bodies. Each soul will recognise, and hasten to reoccupy, its old
tenement of flesh, now renewed, improved, immortalized. Former
acquaintances will then know each other. "Behold, my father! my
mother! my brother! my wife! they shall exclaim." 24
In this exposition we have following the guidance of Du Perron,
Foucher, Kleuker, J. G. Muller, and other early scholars in this
field attributed the doctrine of a general and bodily resurrection
of the dead to the ancient Zoroastrians. The subsequent researches
of Burnouf, Roth, and others, have shown that several, at least,
of the passages which Anquetil supposed to teach such a doctrine
were erroneously translated by him, and do not really contain it.
And recently the ground has been often assumed that the doctrine
of the resurrection does not belong to the Avesta, but is a more
modern dogma, derived by the Parsees from the Jews or the
Christians, and only forced upon the old text by misinterpretation
through the Pehlevi version and the Parsee commentary. A question
of so grave importance demands careful examination. In the absence
of that reliable translation of the entire original documents, and
that thorough elaboration of all the extant materials, which we
are awaiting from the hands of Professor Spiegel, whose second
volume has long been due, and Professor Westergaard, whose second
and third volumes are eagerly looked for, we must make the best
use of the resources actually available, and then leave the point
in such plausible light as existing testimony and fair reasoning
can throw upon it. In the first place, it should be observed that,
admitting the doctrine to be nowhere mentioned in the Avesta,
still, it does not follow that the belief was not prevalent when
the
23 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 410.
24 Bundehesh, ch. xxxi.
Avesta was written. We know that the Christians of the first two
centuries believed a great many things of which there is no
statement in the New Testament. Spiegel holds that the doctrine in
debate is not in the Avesta, the text of which in its present form
he thinks was written after the time of Alexander.25 But he
confesses that the resurrection theory was in existence long
before that time.26 Now, if the Avesta, committed to writing three
hundred years before Christ, at a time when the doctrine of the
resurrection is known to have been believed, contains no reference
to it, the same relation of facts may just as well have existed if
we date the record seven centuries earlier. We possess only a
small and broken portion of the original Zoroastrian Scriptures;
as Roth says, "songs, invocations, prayers, snatches of
traditions, parts of a code, the shattered fragments of a once
stately building." If we could recover the complete documents in
their earliest condition, it might appear that the now lost parts
contained the doctrine of the general resurrection fully formed.
We have many explicit references to many ancient Zoroastrian books
no longer in existence. For example, the Parsees have a very early
account that the Avesta at first consisted of twenty one Nosks. Of
these but one has been preserved complete, and small parts of
three or four others. The rest are utterly wanting. The fifth
Nosk, whereof not any portion remains to us, was called the Do az
ah Hamast. It contained thirty two chapters, treating, among other
things, "of the upper and nether world, of the resurrection, of
the bridge Chinevad, and of the fate after death." 27 If this
evidence be true, and we know of no reason for not crediting it,
it is perfectly decisive. But, at all events, the absence from the
extant parts of the Zend Avesta of the doctrine under examination
would be no proof that that doctrine was not received when those
documents were penned.
Secondly, we have the unequivocal assertion of Theopompus, in the
fourth century before Christ, that the Magi taught the doctrine of
a general resurrection.28 "At the appointed epoch Ahriman shall be
subdued," and "men shall live again and shall be immortal." And
Diogenes adds, "Eudemus of Rhodes affirms the same things."
Aristotle calls Ormuzd Zeus, and Ahriman Haides, the Greek names
respectively of the lord of the starry Olympians above, and the
monarch of the Stygian ghosts beneath. Another form also in which
the early Greek authors betray their acquaintance with the Persian
conception of a conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman is in the
idea expressed by Xenophon in his Cyropadia, in the dialogue
between Araspes and Cyrus of two souls in man, one a brilliant
efflux of good, the other a dusky emanation of evil, each bearing
the likeness of its parent.29 Since we know from Theopompus that
certain conceptions, illustrated in the Bundehesh and not
contained in the fragmentary Avestan books which have reached us,
were actually received Zoroastrian
25 Studien uber das Zend Avesta, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1855, band ix. s. 192.
26 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. s. 16.
27 Dabistan, vol. i. pp. 272-274.
28 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, Introduction,
sect. vi. Plutarch, concerning Isis and Osiris.
29 Lib. vi. cap. i. sect. 41.
tenets four centuries before Christ, we are strongly supported in
giving credence to the doctrinal statements of that book as
affording, in spite of its lateness, a correct epitome of the old
Persian theology.
Thirdly, we are still further warranted in admitting the antiquity
of the Zoroastrian system as including the resurrection theory,
when we consider the internal harmony and organic connection of
parts in it; how the doctrines all fit together, and imply each
other, and could scarcely have existed apart. Men were the
creatures of Ormuzd. They should have lived immortally under his
favor and in his realm. But Ahriman, by treachery, obtained
possession of a large portion of them. Now, when, at the end of
the fourth period into which the world course was divided by the
Magian theory, as Theopompus testifies, Ormuzd overcomes this
arch adversary, will he not rescue his own unfortunate creatures
from the realm of darkness in which they have been imprisoned?
When a king storms an enemy's castle, he delivers from the
dungeons his own soldiers who were taken captives in a former
defeat. The expectation of a great prophet, Sosiosch, to come and
vanquish Ahriman and his swarms, unquestionably appears in the
Avesta itself.30 With this notion, in inseparable union, the
Parsee tradition, running continuously back, as is claimed, to a
very remote time, joins the doctrine of a general resurrection; a
doctrine literally stated in the Vendidad,31 and in many other
places in the Avesta,32 where it has not yet been shown to be an
interpolation, but only supposed so by very questionable
constructive inferences. The consent of intrinsic adjustment and
of historic evidence would, therefore, lead to the conclusion that
this was an old Zoroastrian dogma. In disproof of this conclusion
we believe there is no direct positive evidence whatever, and no
inferential argument cogent enough to produce conviction.
There are sufficient reasons for the belief that the doctrine of a
resurrection was quite early adopted from the Persians by the
Jews, not borrowed at a much later time from the Jews by the
Parsees. The conception of Ahriman, the evil serpent, bearing
death, (die Schlange Angramainyus der voll Tod ist,) is
interwrought from the first throughout the Zoroastrian scheme. In
the Hebrew records, on the contrary, such an idea appears but
incidentally, briefly, rarely, and only in the later books. The
account of the introduction of sin and death by the serpent in the
garden of Eden dates from a time subsequent to the commencement of
the Captivity. Von Bohlen, in his Introduction to the Book of
Genesis, says the narrative was drawn from the Zend Avesta.
Rosenmuller, in his commentary on the passage, says the narrator
had in view the Zoroastrian notions of the serpent Ahriman and his
deeds. Dr. Martin Haug an acute and learned writer, whose opinion
is entitled to great weight, as he is the freshest scholar
acquainted with this whole field in the light of all that others
have done thinks it certain that Zoroaster lived in a remote
antiquity, from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before
Christ. He says that Judaism after the exile and, through Judaism,
Christianity afterwards received an important influence from
Zoroastrianism,
30 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. ss. 16, 244.
31 Fargard XVIII, Spiegel's Uebersetzung, s. 236.
32 Kleuker, band ii. ss. 123, 124, 164.
an influence which, in regard to the doctrine of angels, Satan,
and the resurrection of the dead, cannot be mistaken.33 The Hebrew
theology had no demonology, no Satan, until after the residence at
Babylon. This is admitted. Well, is not the resurrection a pendant
to the doctrine of Satan? Without the idea of a Satan there would
be no idea of a retributive banishment of souls into hell, and of
course no occasion for a vindicating restoration of them thence to
their former or a superior state.
On this point the theory of Rawlinson is very important. He
argues, with various proofs, that the Dualistic doctrine was a
heresy which broke out very early among the primitive Aryans, who
then were the single ancestry of the subsequent Iranians and
Indians. This heresy was forcibly suppressed. Its adherents,
driven out of India, went to Persia, and, after severe conflicts
and final admixture with the Magians, there established their
faith.34 The sole passage in the Old Testament teaching the
resurrection is in the so called Book of Daniel, a book full of
Chaldean and Persian allusions, written less than two centuries
before Christ, long after we know it was a received Zoroastrian
tenet, and long after the Hebrews had been exposed to the whole
tide and atmosphere of the triumphant Persian power. The
unchangeable tenacity of the Medes and Persians is a proverb. How
often the Hebrew people lapsed into idolatry, accepting Pagan
gods, doctrines, and ritual, is notorious. And, in particular, how
completely subject they were to Persian influence appears clearly
in large parts of the Biblical history, especially in the Books of
Esther and Ezekiel. The origin of the term Beelzebub, too, in the
New Testament, is plain. To say that the Persians derived the
doctrine of the resurrection from the Jews seems to us as
arbitrary as it would be to affirm that they also borrowed from
them the custom, mentioned by Ezekiel, of weeping for Tammuz in
the gates of the temple.
In view of the whole case as it stands, until further researches
either strengthen it or put a different aspect upon it, we feel
forced to think that the doctrine of a general resurrection was a
component element in the ancient Avestan religion. A further
question of considerable interest arises as to the nature of this
resurrection, whether it was conceived as physical or as
spiritual. We have no data to furnish a determinate answer.
Plutarch quotes from Theopompus the opinion of the Magi, that
when, at the subdual of Ahriman, men are restored to life, "they
will need no nourishment and cast no shadow." It would appear,
then, that they must be spirits. The inference is not reliable;
for the idea may be that all causes of decay will be removed, so
that no food will be necessary to supply the wasting processes
which no longer exist; and that the entire creation will be so
full of light that a shadow will be impossible. It might be
thought that the familiar Persian conception of angels, both good
and evil, fervers and devs, and the reception of departed souls
into their company, with Ormuzd in Garotman, or with Ahriman in
Dutsakh, would exclude the belief in a future bodily resurrection.
But Christians and Mohammedans at this day believe in immaterial
angels and devils, and in the immediate entrance of disembodied
souls upon reward or
33 Die Lehre Zoroasters nach den alten Liedern des Zendavesta.
Zeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band ix. ss. 286,
683-692.
34 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 426-431.
punishment in their society, and still believe in their final
return to the earth, and in a restoration to them of their former
tabernacles of flesh. Discordant, incoherent, as the two beliefs
may be, if their coexistence is a fact with cultivated and
reasonable people now, much more was it possible with an
undisciplined and credulous populace three thousand years in the
past. Again, it has been argued that the indignity with which the
ancient Persians treated the dead body, refusing to bury it or to
burn it, lest the earth or the fire should be polluted, is
incompatible with the supposition that they expected a
resurrection of the flesh. In the first place, it is difficult to
reason safely to any dogmatic conclusions from the funeral customs
of a people. These usages are so much a matter of capricious
priestly ritual, ancestral tradition, unreasoning instinct, blind
or morbid superstition, that any consistent doctrinal construction
is not fairly to be put upon them. Secondly, the Zoroastrians did
not express scorn or loathing for the corpse by their manner of
disposing of it. The greatest pains were taken to keep it from
disgusting decay, by placing it in "the driest, purest, openest
place," upon a summit where fresh winds blew, and where certain
beasts and birds, accounted most sacred, might eat the corruptible
portion: then the clean bones were carefully buried. The dead body
had yielded to the hostile working of Ahriman, and become his
possession. The priests bore it out on a bed or a carpet, and
exposed it to the light of the sun. The demon was thus exorcised;
and the body became further purified in being eaten by the sacred
animals, and no putrescence was left to contaminate earth, water,
or fire.35 Furthermore, it is to be noticed that the modern
Parsees dispose of their dead in exactly the same manner depicted
in the earliest accounts; yet they zealously hold to a literal
resurrection of the body. If the giving of the flesh to the dog
and the vulture in their case exists with this belief, it may have
done so with their ancestors before Nebuchadnezzar swept the Jews
to Babylon. Finally, it is quite reasonable to conclude that the
old Persian doctrine of a resurrection did include the physical
body, when we recollect that in the Zoroastrian scheme of thought
there is no hostility to matter or to earthly life, but all is
regarded as pure and good except so far as the serpent Ahriman has
introduced evil. The expulsion of this evil with his ultimate
overthrow, the restoration of all as it was at first, in purity,
gladness, and eternal life, would be the obvious and consistent
carrying out of the system. Hatred of earthly life, contempt for
the flesh, the notion of an essential and irreconcilable warfare
of soul against body, are Brahmanic and Manichaan, not
Zoroastrian. Still, the ground plan and style of thought may not
have been consistently adhered to. The expectation that the very
same body would be restored was known to the Jews a century or two
before Christ. One of the martyrs whose history is told in the
Second Book of Maccabees, in the agonies of death plucked out his
own bowels, and called on the Lord to restore them to him again at
the resurrection. Considering the notion of a resurrection of the
body as a sensuous burden on the idea of a resurrection of the
soul, it may have been a later development originating with the
Jews. But it seems to us decidedly more probable that the Magi
held it as a part of their creed before they came in contact with
the children of Israel. Such an opinion may be modestly held until
further information is
35 Spiegel, Avesta, ss. 82, 104, 109, 111, 122.
afforded 36 or some new and fatal objection brought.
After this resurrection a thorough separation will be made of the
good from the bad. "Father shall be divided from child, sister
from brother, friend from friend. The innocent one shall weep over
the guilty one, the guilty one shall weep for himself. Of two
sisters one shall be pure, one corrupt: they shall be treated
according to their deeds." 37 Those who have not, in the
intermediate state, fully expiated their sins, will, in sight of
the whole creation, be remanded to the pit of punishment. But the
author of evil shall not exult over them forever. Their prison
house will soon be thrown open. The pangs of three terrible days
and nights, equal to the agonies of nine thousand years, will
purify all, even the worst of the demons. The anguished cry of the
damned, as they writhe in the lurid caldron of torture, rising to
heaven, will find pity in the soul of Ormuzd, and he will release
them from their sufferings. A blazing star, the comet Gurtzscher,
will fall upon the earth. In the heat of its conflagration, great
and small mountains will melt and flow together as liquid metal.
Through this glowing flood all human kind must pass. To the
righteous it will prove as a pleasant bath, of the temperature of
milk; but on the wicked the flame will inflict terrific pain.
Ahriman will run up and down Chinevad in the perplexities of
anguish and despair. The earth wide stream of fire, flowing on,
will cleanse every spot and every thing. Even the loathsome realm
of darkness and torment shall be burnished and made a part of the
all inclusive Paradise. Ahriman himself, reclaimed to virtue,
replenished with primal light, abjuring the memories of his
envious ways, and furling thenceforth the sable standard of his
rebellion, shall become a ministering spirit of the Most High,
and, together with Ormuzd, chant the praises of Time without
Bounds. All darkness, falsehood, suffering, shall flee utterly
away, and the whole universe be filled by the illumination of good
spirits blessed with fruitions of eternal delight. In regard to
the fate of man,
Such are the parables Zartushi address'd To Iran's faith, in the
ancient Zend Avest.
36 Windischmann has now (1863) fully proved this, in his
Zoroastrische Studien. Spiegel frankly avows it: Avesta, band
iii., einleitung, s. lxxv.
37 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 467.