Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
beauty lying in close proximity."
The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
a day.
There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
heroes of the Middle Ages.
There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
involved in hopeless obscurity.
The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gâthâs,
supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
this subject.
Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
he could do was to baffle him.
These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
and demons.
Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gâthâs. "I worship,"
said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
servants of the Supreme.
"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
eternal triumph." [1]
[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But
in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
glories, their most formidable enemies.
Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
* * * * *
AUTHORITIES.
Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
ancient religions is very large.
RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
rather than the founder of a religion.
Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max Müller is
one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
belonged to the same great Aryan race.
The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
again pantheistic.
Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Müller's
"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
is most distinctly recognized:--
"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
established, and the earth created."
But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
Assyrians and Egyptians.
[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]