THE LAW OF THE PRIESTS.
The rules concerning purity and purification, the expiations and
penances necessary to avert the Daevas, which we possess in the Vendidad
of the Avesta, are only the remnant of a far more comprehensive law.
From the list of books and chapters traditional among the Parsees, we
can see that it was intended to include not only all the invocations and
prayers which the worship required, the rules of sacrifice, and the
entire ritual, together with the Calendar of the year of the Church, but
also the arrangement of the process of law, the civil and criminal code,
and, moreover, rules for agriculture and medicine. If to this we add the
statements and quotations of the Greeks (p. 53), we may assume that the
scriptures of Eastern Iran comprised the whole sum of the knowledge of
the priests. In the Avesta the Athravas had sketched the ideal picture
of the correct conduct pleasing to Auramazda in every department of
life. How far the princes of Bactria and the viceroys of Cyaxares and
the Achaemenids, or even these princes themselves, and the judges, wished
or allowed themselves to be bound in their decisions by these
regulations of the priests, may be left out of the question. The priests
here, like the Brahmans in India, could only influence the action of
the State and those charged with it, so far as the reverence for the
principles of religion and the force of their own authority extended.
The existing part of the law has obviously arisen out of the questions
and considerations sketched above, which in consequence of the reform
must have forced themselves into the circles of the priests. The reform
also required above all things purity from men, but no supernatural
purity, such as the Brahmans demanded. The body is not in the Avesta, as
it was to the Brahmans and after them to the Buddhists, the impure
prison of the soul which must be abandoned; on the contrary the Avesta
rejoices in its health and vigour. It requires that the body should be
kept pure from filth, from contamination by the impure, which gives the
Daevas power over mankind, _i.e._ it demands the exclusion of the
harmful side of nature; it desires that the soul should be pure from
pollution, freed from untruthfulness, lying, and deceit, which are
contradictory to the nature of the clear bright gods, and Auramazda, and
make men companions of the Daevas, and sharers in their nature. In other
words, it demands the invigoration of the light and wholesome side of
man. The kingdom of the good spirits is truth, increase, and life; the
kingdom of the evil is deception and falsehood, lying, destruction, and
death. The Avesta praises Auramazda as purity itself; and next to him
Asha vahista, _i.e._ the best purity; the gods are chiefly extolled as
"the pure," and Zarathrustra as the master and teacher of purity. The
Avesta repeatedly declares "that purity after birth is the best thing
for men." Hence it is the foremost of all duties to keep the soul and
body pure. The worshipper of Auramazda must preserve his purity by good
thoughts, words, and works; truth is required in thinking, speaking,
and acting; uprightness and honesty in all the relations of life; the
sacredness of promises and pledges, and solemn assurances, at which
Mithra is summoned to bear witness. It is an old function of the god
which appears here. He is the guardian of the word, and the compact.
"Mithra is twenty-fold between friends and kinsmen, thirty-fold between
tradespeople, forty-fold between companions who live together,
fifty-fold between man and wife, sixty-fold between associates in
sacrifice, seventy-fold between scholar and teacher, eighty-fold between
step-son and step-parents, ninety-fold between brothers, a hundred-fold
between son and father." "Miserable are the houses, without descendants
the dwellings, inhabited by those who deceive Mithra. Miserably does the
cloven-footed cow go on the wrong path, which is oppressed by the burden
of Mithra-deceiving men."[342] In accordance with this view deception is
in the eyes of the law the worst offence; worse than robbery or theft.
Evil-speaking and calumny also are, according to the Vendidad, "lies and
sins" against Mithra. The gravest offence of this kind is the calumny by
which "a pure man" is disparaged "with a man of another religion," for
this sin is committed with full knowledge, and by a man's own
intelligence; and the worst of all lies is teaching a false law. "One
who teaches such a law," says the Vendidad, "does no better than if he
killed a thousand horses, slew the men in a village inhabited by
worshippers of Auramazda, or carried off the cows on the wrong
way."[343]
It is not the least proof of the currency of the doctrines of the Avesta
in the West of Iran that their ethical side, which gathers round the
command of truthfulness, was there most distinctly recognised. King
Darius has already told us that "the lie" had brought his kingdom into
rebellion; the leaders of the rebellious lands, who gave themselves out
to be descendants of the ancient royal families, he calls "liars against
the kingdom." From their youth up, Herodotus tells us, the children of
the Persians were instructed in truthfulness. He adds: Among the
Persians it was forbidden to speak of that which it was forbidden to do;
the Avesta requires truth "in thought, speech, and action." Lying and
borrowing, Herodotus says, passed with the Persians for the most
disgraceful acts, for they were of opinion that any one who contracted
debts was generally compelled to tell lies. The Avesta says: "He who
does not restore that which has been borrowed, seeks day and night to
deceive the creditor." Plato states that the heirs to the Persian throne
had, besides three others, a teacher whose special business it was to
instruct them in truth. Xenophon assures us that pledges and oaths were
religiously kept among the Persians; and Diodorus, that the pledge of
hands was the strongest security among them.[344] Practice in Persia
was, it is true, not equal to these injunctions, however sharply
expressed; on the contrary, we often find the two in the most glaring
contradiction.
Not falsehood and lies only, but also laziness and sloth pollute the
soul of man. The pious man must rise early. Craosha awakes the bird
Parodarsh, we are told in the book of the law. At the return of the
divine Ushahina, _i.e._ of the morning (p. 108), this bird speaks to
those who are in their beds: "Friend, up, arise. Praise purity, and the
Daevas will fly away. Long sleep, O man, is not good for thee. The
Bushyancta runs up to thee, who lays again in sleep the whole corporeal
world. Turn yourselves not away from the three best things: good
thinking, speaking, and acting. He who rises first will come into
Paradise; he who first brings pure, dry, old, well-hewn wood to the fire
of Auramazda, him will the fire bless (p. 122)."[345] The pious man
should be industrious and work; the best work is that which increases
nourishment and fruit for men and animals, which furthers the increase
and life of the world, and thus diminishes the kingdom of the evil, the
power of the dark spirits. For this reason running water and growing
fruits should be spread over the earth; "the field should be tilled, and
trees planted which produce food." "When there are shoots," the law-book
says, "the Daevas are in alarm; when there are stalks, the Daevas weep;
when there are ears, the Daevas hiss; when there are grains, the Daevas
fly."[346] "In the house where there are most ears, the Daevas are
smitten most heavily." "The earth is not glad which lies untilled. The
greatest pleasure is given to the earth where a pure man builds his
house, provided with fire and cattle, and good flocks, with wife and
child, where most corn, fodder, and grain is produced by husbandry,
where the dry land is most watered, where fruit-bearing trees are
planted, where cattle and beasts of draught leave the most urine."[347]
"He who plants fruits and trees, who gives water to the earth where it
is needed, and takes it away where too abundant, he worships the earth."
When a man tills the earth she bestows life upon him; "as a friend to a
beloved friend, she gives him descendants and wealth." To him who tills
her, the earth says: "O man, who tillest me with the left arm and the
right, with the right arm and the left, in love will I bear thee all
kinds of fruit." But to him who tills her not the earth says: "Thou wilt
go to the doors of others and there stand, in order to beg for food; in
idleness thou wilt ask for it and get but little." He who sows corn,
sows purity; the law of Auramazda increases with the fruits of the
field; they extend the law of Auramazda by 100, 1000, and 10,000
meritorious works.
These regulations of the Avesta were fully accepted in the West. The
great reverence paid to splendid trees by the Achaemenids is shown by
Herodotus' story of Xerxes, that he furnished a beautiful plane tree,
which he saw in Lydia, with golden ornaments, and appointed a perpetual
guardian for it.[348] Ameretat, as already observed, was the special
protecting spirit of trees (p. 164). Xenophon tells us that the Persian
kings gave special attention to agriculture; on their journeys they
inquired into the tillage of the land, and demanded similar attention
from their satraps. Round their palaces and wherever they came they
caused the most beautiful gardens to be laid out, planted with trees and
all the most excellent shrubs in the world.[349] The satraps also had
gardens of this kind (_pairidaeza_) round their residences, and the
younger Cyrus assures Lysander, "in the name of Mithra," that he never
took food before he had induced perspiration by work in the garden or
exercise in arms.[350] The satraps, says Xenophon, whose provinces were
found deficient in population and poorly cultivated, were punished and
removed from their office, while those whose provinces were in good
order, were rewarded by presents. When the king of the Persians
conferred distinctions, those were summoned first who had distinguished
themselves in war, and next came those whose districts were best
cultivated.[351] Respect and reverence for trees was so deeply rooted in
Iran, that even Islam did not extirpate the feeling. To this day in
Shiraz old trees are presented with dedicatory offerings, and hung with
amulets; and the pious prefer to pray under tall trees rather than in
the neighbouring mosques; while in the barren regions of Iran even
groups of bushes receive offerings.[352]
Besides the care of trees, plants, and the soil, the labour of mankind
must be directed to the care of the flocks, to the increase of the
animals of the good god, and the destruction of the Khrafctras, or
animals belonging to the evil spirit (p. 171). Cows are not held in such
veneration in Iran as beyond the Indus, yet even here the "cow is not to
be driven on the wrong way," and gomez (the urine of oxen) is the most
effectual means of purification; in the theory of the priests Auramazda
began the creation of living things with the bull. We have already
mentioned the rank taken among the animals of Auramazda by the cock and
dog. In the Vendidad Auramazda says: "I have created the dog with
clothes and shoes of his own, with keen scent and sharp teeth, attached
to men, savage against the enemy, for the protection of the flocks. No
thief or wolf comes to the village or the fold and carries away anything
unobserved, if the dog is healthy, in good voice, and among the flocks.
The houses would not stand firm upon the earth if there were not dogs in
the villages and flocks. The dog is patient, contented, and satisfied
with little food, like a priest; he goes forward, and is before and
behind the house, like a warrior; he sleeps less than the husbandmen, is
talkative like a child, and friendly as a mistress."[353] The dogs are
to receive good food, "for of all the creatures of Auramazda old age
comes upon them the most quickly;" especially must the watch-dog be
provided with milk, fat, and flesh, "the proper food" for a dog; and a
dog must never be among those who are eating without receiving something
to eat. Any one who gives unbroken bones or hot food to a sheep-dog or
house-dog, and the bones injure him, and the hot food burns his mouth
and tongue, so that he dies--is worthy of death.[354] Dogs with young
are treated with the same care as pregnant women. It is a sin to chase
or beat a dog which has brought forth; if she is injured or dies in
running the sinner is worthy of death; and any one who beats a pregnant
dog is to receive twice seven hundred stripes. It is the duty of every
man to bring up for six months the dogs born on his ground, until they
are able to run round in a circuit of twice seven houses.[355] Sick dogs
are treated with the same remedies as rich men; and to the question of
Zarathrustra--"If the dog will not take the remedies?" Auramazda answers
that in this case "the dog can be tied, and its mouth opened with a flat
piece of wood."[356] Wounds inflicted on dogs are to be punished with
stripes to the number of twice eight hundred;[357] and besides this,
compensation is to be given for the damage which thieves or wolves do to
the village so long as the dog is prevented by his injuries from keeping
watch. The book of the law everywhere threatens all those men who beat
dogs that their souls will go from this world full of terror, and sick.
To kill a water-dog is the greatest crime;[358] and is menaced with the
worst penalties and expiations known to the Vendidad. As a general rule
punishments do not go beyond 2000 stripes, or the necessity of killing
2000 noxious animals; but the slayer of the water-dog is to receive
10,000 stripes. Besides this, if he would save his soul, he must give
10,000 parcels of hard wood, well hewn and dried, for the fire of
Auramazda, and also 10,000 parcels of soft, fragrant wood; he must kill
10,000 snakes, and an equal number of tortoises, lizards, and
water-lizards, ants, flies, and rats. He must fill up 10,000 impure
holes in the earth; give to the priests all the utensils required for
the holy rites; to a warrior a complete set of armour; to a husbandman
he must give all that is needed for agriculture: a house, provided with
a beautiful mat, and arable land for tillage. In addition, he must give,
as an expiation for his soul, fourteen head of small cattle to the "pure
men," and bring up fourteen young dogs, and build fourteen bridges over
running water. He must cleanse eighteen dogs from fleas, and make
eighteen bones into edible food; and satisfy eighteen "pure men" with
wine and flesh. If he does not perform these expiations he will go into
the dwelling of the Druj, and "the heat which is injurious to the
pasture will not depart from his dwelling until he has offered sacrifice
for three days and nights for the pure soul of the water-dog, on the
burning fire, with bound rods and uplifted Haoma."[359]
In order to extirpate the animals of Angromainyu, the priest is to be
provided with a stick, the Khrafctra-killer. Herodotus has already told
us, that the Magians held it a duty to kill serpents, ants, and other
creeping and winged insects. For the expiation of sins the Avesta
universally requires the killing of serpents, lizards, and ants; rats
and mice, which do harm to the crops; flies, midges, fleas, lice, and
other vermin. Plutarch tells us that the Persians count him a happy man
who slays most water-mice; Agathias observes that in honour of the chief
festival in Persia every one killed as many snakes, and beasts of prey,
and animals living in the desert, as possible, and then brought them to
the Magians as a proof of his piety. In this way they believed that they
did what was pleasing to the good god, while they injured and distressed
Arimanes.[360]
According to the Avesta, the soul of man is kept pure by truthfulness,
industry, and diligence, by good thoughts, good words and acts, which
advance the kingdom of life; the body is to be kept free from dirt and
the house from filth and dead creatures; from all that belongs to the
evil spirits and is in their power. The soul of man is created pure; but
from the first the body has certain impure parts, and the defilement
which Angromainyu brought into the bodies of men. This defilement
consists in the spittle, the excrements, dead skin, sores, etc; in
everything that has an unpleasant smell, or is removed from the living
body, like the hair and nails. These when cut are dead, and therefore
belong to the kingdom of darkness; hence in Iran as in India they are
impure things. "Wherever cut hair and nails lie," says the book of the
law, "there the Daevas gather to these unholy places; there the impure
animals come, which men call lice. Therefore carry away--so saith
Auramazda--cut hair and nails, ten paces from the pure men, twenty from
the fire, thirty from the water, fifty from the sacred bundle of rods.
Dig a hole below the house in the earth, pronounce the prayer
Ahunavairya thrice, six times, nine times, and then say: To thee, O
bird, Asho-zusta, I show these nails. These nails I dedicate to thee;
may they be thy lances, thy swords, thy bow, thy swift-flying arrows,
thy sling-stones against the Mazanian Daevas. If these nails are not
announced to the bird Asho-zusta, they are weapons for, not against, the
Daevas."[361] Spittle is among the worst impurities. The priests could
only approach the fire with veiled mouth, and even now the Parsees
invariably cover the mouth in praying. They eat in silence, and two
never use the same spoon, because the food would then be polluted by
spittle. The removal of the excrements requires as much care in the
Avesta as it did in the Brahmanic law, and the Vendidad gives minute
regulations in regard to these matters.[362] A man is rendered impure by
excess and debauchery; a woman by her courses, "by marks and blood," and
by the birth of a child. She must be carried to an elevated place in the
dwelling, which is strewn with dry sand, fifteen paces from the fire,
from water, and the sacred bundle of rods, "at a distance also from the
trees," and so placed that she cannot see the fire on the hearth. No one
may touch her. Only a definite amount of certain kinds of food can be
given to her, and that in metal jars, because these contract the least
amount of impurity, and are most easily cleansed; the person who brings
the food must remain three paces distant from her bed. After childbirth
a woman is unclean for three days; then she must wash her body with
water and gomez. If she has had a miscarriage her body is also polluted
by the dead child: she must be placed thirty paces away from the fire
and the sacred objects of the house, and must pass a longer period on
her dust-bed--at the present time forty-one days are required. The first
thing she is allowed to taste is ashes mixed with gomez--three, six, and
then nine drops. The nine apertures of her body--that number is common
to the Indians and Iranians--must be washed with ashes and gomez. She
may not drink any water out of her impure hand; if she does so, she must
receive two hundred blows with the rod, and two hundred with the
whip.[363] Fire and water, springs, streams and rivers, the best gifts
of the good gods, must, like the human body, be carefully preserved from
all filth and defilement. The accounts of Western writers prove that the
Persians and Medes observed the rules of purification given in the Book
of the Law; it was not the custom among the Persians to spit in the
presence of another, still less to sneeze, etc. They avoided the
defilement of a river, or of the shadow of a man; and it was forbidden
to uncover in the sight of the sun or moon.[364]
"The sun, the moon, the stars shine unwillingly," we are told in the
Vendidad, "on the polluted man."[365] "The impure takes away prosperity
and increase; he brings sickness and death; after death he will not go
into heaven."[366] "But whatever pollution a man has contracted, and
whatever sin he has committed, the good law quenches all impurity and
sin, if the purifications, expiations, and penalties which it
prescribes are performed and paid; for the good law of Auramazda
surpasses all others in greatness, goodness, and salvation, as far as
the heaven rises above the earth, and as the sea of Vourukasha includes
all other waters."[367] "The good law of Auramazda takes from the man
who praises it and commits no evil actions afterwards, his deception; it
takes away the murder of the pure man, and the burial of the dead; it
takes away inexpiable actions, and accumulated guilt; it takes away all
evil words, thoughts, and actions, even as the strong swift wind
purifies heaven from the right side."[368]
Slight pollution is removed by washing with pure water accompanied by
certain prayers and imprecations on the Daevas, such as: "I contend with
thee, O evil Angromainyu; away from this dwelling, away from the fire,
the water, from this place, from all the blessings which Auramazda has
created. I contend against pollution, direct and indirect; against the
unclean spirits; I contend against the Daeva Andra, Caurva, Zairicha (p.
169); against the Pairika, who goes to the water, the earth, cattle, and
trees," etc.[369] More serious impurities require ablutions with gomez,
which in certain cases have to be repeated thirty times, with various
prayers.[370] The most efficacious purification, which removes even the
worst taint, is that of the nine nights. This can only be performed by a
priest, who knows the law accurately, can repeat the sacred word by
heart, and speaks the truth. A special place must be constructed for it;
thirty paces (which are equal to ninety times the length of the foot)
from the fire, the water, and the sacred bundle of rods. In the middle
of this space nine pits are dug in the earth, and round them twelve
furrows are drawn with a metal instrument. The purifier sprinkles the
person who requires cleansing (who is entirely naked) with gomez, from a
leaden vessel, with many prayers. He is then rubbed fifteen times with
earth; he must then wash himself at each of the nine pits once, twice,
thrice with water, after which he is fumigated with fragrant wood. Then
follow washings with water and gomez in the third, sixth, and ninth
night. "After this," says the book, "the purified person shall bring
water of purification to the fire, hard wood, and perfumes; he is to
utter praises to Auramazda, to the Amesha Cpentas, and to the rest of
the pure ones--so will the man be purified." The purifier must be
rewarded for this purification; according to the measure of the man's
property the payment rises from small cattle and cows to camels; "in
order that the purifier may go away contented and without hatred."
Instead of cattle, goods of another description can be given. "But if
the purifier goes away discontented, the wicked spirit of impurity comes
again into the purified persons, and they are impure for evermore."[371]
In the view of the Avesta impurity consists essentially in that which is
opposed to life; hence there is no worse form of uncleanness than that
caused by the corpse. The body, as soon as the soul has left it, belongs
to Angromainyu. The fiend of death, the Druj Nacu, obtains possession of
it, and from it she springs on all who touch it, or come near it. If a
man dies, or a dog--and in this matter dogs are put quite on a level
with men--and other men and women are in the same house--two, five,
fifty, or a hundred--the Druj Nacu comes immediately from the north in
the form of a fly, and settles on all the inhabitants of the house and
makes them impure with infection, pollution, and uncleanness.[372] In
the first instance she is to be met by incantations--the Gathas,
Bisamruta, Thrisamruta, Chathrasamruta, must be repeated; then the fiend
falls to pieces like grass that has been dead a year.[373] After this
the hearth-fire must be removed from the house of the dead, and the
sacred utensils--the mortar, the cup, the sacred bundle of rods, and the
Haoma. In winter the fire can be kindled again upon the hearth after
nine nights; in summer, when the need for warmth and cooked food is less
pressing, after a month; any one who does not observe these periods is
to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[374] After purification
the kinsmen are to utter prayers for the departed, and the number of
these is fixed, in the Vendidad, in the same fanciful manner which is so
often met with in the book of Manu. The number decreases according to
the degree of relationship; for the nearest kinsmen thirty prayers are
spoken; for the most remote, five; if the dead man has led an impure
life the number of prayers is doubled in order to give efficacy to the
petition.[375]
The preservation and increase of life is the foundation of the teaching
of the Avesta. The good life of nature is promoted by planting and
agriculture, by tending the useful and destroying the pernicious
animals; and by posterity provision is to be made for the life of men.
From this point of view the Vendidad lays especial weight on marriage.
"I declare," Auramazda says, "that the married is before the unmarried,
and he that has a house before him that has none, and the father of
children before the childless."[376] We can only ascertain very
incompletely from the remaining fragments of the Avesta the rules which
it prescribed for family life. We see that bringing about a marriage was
regarded as a meritorious work, and marriage between close relations was
considered happy. Yet maidens are not to be given in marriage before
their fifteenth year.[377] To those who have long remained unmarried the
god Haoma, the special protector of life, sends truthful, active
husbands, gifted with good understanding (p. 125). We never hear of any
difference of the orders in contracting marriage; nor is there the least
hint that the priest can only marry a wife of priestly blood, or the
husbandman a wife of his own class. On the other hand, the strictest
directions are given that the worshippers of Auramazda are only to marry
among themselves; marriage with those of an alien religion is severely
reprobated. "A man who mingles the seed of the faithful and the
unbelievers, the seed of the worshippers of the Daevas with the
worshippers of Mazda, keeps back a third part of the flowing water, a
third part of the increase of the blooming plants, and their golden
fruits; he annihilates a third part of the clothing of Cpenta Armaiti
(the Earth); he robs the just men of a third part of their power, their
merits, their purity. They who do this are more destructive than forked
serpents, than howling wolves, than the she-wolf which rushes on the
flocks, than the thousand-fold brood of the lizard, which pollutes the
water."[378] The Vendidad gives the house-father a similar power over
his wife and children to that given in Manu's law--so far as we can
conclude from certain indications. He is to be spoken of with the same
reverence as the house-father on the Ganges; the wife is to be honoured,
but is to "be watched perpetually, like the fire of Auramazda."[379]
With regard to the education of children, we can only gather from the
Vendidad they were to be tended for seven years; "protect dogs for six
months, children for seven years;"[380] and boys are to be invested in
their fifteenth year with the sacred girdle.[381] We remember the sacred
girdle which the three upper castes wore and still wear beyond the
Ganges; the investiture with this, and adoption into the family and
caste--"the second birth" takes place, according to Manu's law, among
the Brahman boys in the eighth year, among the Kshatryas, in the
eleventh, and the Vaicyas in the twelfth. The habit of wearing the
girdle, which prevails on both sides of the Indus, proves that this
custom was in use before the two branches of the Arians separated.
Originally the girdle was intended to be a protection or amulet against
the evil spirits.[382] In the girdle which the priests prepare with
traditional ceremonies, and put on boys in their seventh or tenth year,
the modern Parsees see the bond which encloses and unites the
worshippers of Auramazda.
If I attempt to supplement the scanty hints of the Avesta on family life
from the accounts preserved to us on this subject by Western writers, it
must be remembered that the more ancient of these statements hold good
only of the West of Iran. But as we have hitherto found the worship and
manners of the Persians and Medes, as described by the Greeks, agreeing
with the rules of the Avesta, we may suppose that in this province also
East and West were in agreement. Herodotus states that the Persians
married many wives, and had concubines in addition. They considered it
honourable and right to have as many children as possible; next to
bravery in war it was the greatest merit to have many children, and the
king sent presents every year to the man who had most.[383] Of all days
the Persians celebrated most the day on which they were born. A more
abundant meal was served on this day: among the wealthy an ox, a horse,
or a camel was roasted whole; and smaller animals among those who were
poorer. Plato adds: "When the first son, the heir of the kingdom, was
born to the king of Persia, all the subjects of the king celebrated the
day, and on the birthday of the king there were festivals and sacrifices
throughout all Asia."[384] Herodotus observes, that the respect of
children for their parents was great. The Persians regarded the murder
of parents by a son as impossible; if such a thing happened they
believed that the child was supposititious.[385] Aristotle tells us that
the power of the father over the sons among the Persians was tyrannical,
_i.e._ unlimited; he treated them as slaves.[386] That the mother was
also treated with respect follows from the statement that the son might
not remain seated when the mother entered, and could only resume his
seat at her permission. At the court of the Achaemenids the mother of the
king had the first place, the king the second.[387] That the
queen-mother often exercised great influence is shown by the history of
this ruling family. Of the careful education of the heir to the throne,
the other princes, and the sons of the wealthy Persians, both in the
exercise and strengthening of their bodies and in moral training, the
Western writers had much to tell.
What the Greeks narrate respecting the celebration of the birthday among
the Persians, the distinction of the satraps whose provinces were best
cultivated and populated, and the rewards given to those who had most
children, agrees entirely with the delight in life which runs through
the Avesta, and the exhortations to increase life everywhere present in
that book. The Avesta always speaks of one wife only. The polygamy
noticed by the Greeks was limited to the rich (the number of wives among
the Persians, says Ammian, was regulated by property[388]); in
consequence of the religious feeling just noticed, it prevailed, no
doubt, far more extensively among the Arians of Iran than among the
Indians. Yet the harems of the Indian princes were large. However
numerous the harems of the Achaemenids, only one wife was the lawful
wife; and she alone, as in India, bore the name of queen: only her sons
could be considered heirs to the throne. The other wives greeted the
queen on their knees: the queen must belong to the race of the
Achaemenids, or at any rate to one of the six tribal princes.[389] The
same was the case among the rest of the Persians who had several wives;
one only was the house-wife. The Avesta told us above that the wife must
be watched. According to Plutarch the Persians were more strict in this
matter than the rest of the barbarians; they kept not only the wife but
the concubines shut up, and they left the houses in covered cars
only.[390] Manu's law also requires that women should be watched (IV.
263). The power of the father, and the respectful attitude of the
children to the mother, correspond to the principles of family life
which we have seen beyond the Indus. Yet, so far as we can see, marriage
was not in Iran so close and firmly established a relation as among the
Arians of India, where the wife belonged absolutely to the man, and
surrendered herself in complete devotion to him; nor did the relation of
children to parents in Iran experience that excellent and happy
development which on the whole attended it in India, and of which we can
still perceive the results. If Western writers maintain that it was the
custom among the Persians to take the nearest relations in marriage, so
that even the brother married the sister (of which Herodotus gives an
example in Cambyses) and the son the mother after the father's death
(the latter is said to have prevailed especially among the
Magi)[391]--the Avesta, as we have seen, declared marriages between near
relations to be good, and the history of the Achaemenids mentions
marriage with sisters more than once. The more extreme assertions,
especially in regard to the Magi, are to be regarded as exaggerations of
the Greeks, and owed their origin to their astonishment at a custom
which was more than revolting. On the relation of the sexes both before
and after marriage, and other matters connected with procreation, the
Vendidad supplies a number of minute regulations.[392]
The preservation of life also receives great attention in the Avesta. We
remember the incantations of the Rigveda which banish sickness into
thrushes and woodpeckers, and the sentences of the Atharvaveda against
sickness and death (IV. 281). The remedies of the Veda are water and
plants. All remedies are in water; the waters of the springs and the
waters of the rivers drive away sickness. The plants said, when they
came from heaven, that they descended from the water of the sky. "The
mortal whom we touch will suffer no harm." "May Agni protect me with the
waters, and Soma with the plants," we are told in the Veda; and again:
"The plants whose king is Soma, have rescued me from death."[393] The
priest who knows the sentences is at the same time the physician, though
the Rigveda has a separate name for the latter (IV. 35). How highly the
Indians respected doctors and physicians at a later time, in spite of
the theory of the Brahmans of the unworthiness of the body, and how it
was the custom there in the sixth century B.C. to send for the physician
in every sickness, has been mentioned in its place (IV. 323). Proceeding
from precisely the same conceptions, the Avesta went on to fill several
books with medical remedies. The best mode of healing is that by charms,
and the sacred word. In such incantations of the Avesta we are told: "I
contend against sickness, I contend against death, I contend against
pain, I contend against fever, I contend against the corruption and
pollution which Angromainyu has created in the body of men. Sickness, I
curse thee; fever, I curse thee; death, I curse thee."[394] The sacred
word is invoked to heal by its power. "Mayst thou heal me, O Manthra
Cpenta. As a recompense I will give to thee a thousand stall-fed oxen, a
thousand spotless cattle, a thousand swiftly-running horses, a thousand
camels, swift and with strong backs. I will bless thee with beautiful,
pious blessings; with dear, pious blessings, which make the deficient
full, and the full to overflow, which bind the friend and make the bond
firm."[395] As in the Veda, the remedies are water and plants, "Draw up,
ye clouds, draw up," we are told in the Vendidad; "Let the water fall as
thousand-fold, ten thousand-fold rain, to drive away sickness, to drive
away corruption, to drive away death. May it rain for the renewal of the
waters, the earth, the plants, the means of healing."[396] As in the
Veda Soma is the king of plants, so in Iran Haoma, the god of life, is
the lord of plants.[397] The white heavenly Haoma grows, as we have
seen, on the Gaokerena, the tree of heaven; from it springs the earthly
Haoma and all plants of which the seed falls from the tree Vicpotaokhma
in Vourukasha, which the bird Chamru carries where Tistrya collects the
clouds, in order to let the seed fall down from them to the earth.[398]
"I, who am the giver of all blessings," says Auramazda, "created this
dwelling (the earth), the beautiful, brilliant, and noteworthy; then
Angromainyu, who is full of death, created nine diseases, ninety
diseases, nine hundred diseases, nine thousand diseases, nine and ninety
thousand diseases. Thrita desired as a favour a means to withstand
death, to withstand pain, to withstand the heat of fever, and the evil
corruptions and filth which Angromainyu has brought into the body of
men. Then I, who am Auramazda, brought forth the healing plants, many
hundreds, many thousands, many tens of thousands, around the one
Gaokerena." The invocation then follows: "We bless thee, we invoke thee,
we worship thee for the healing of the body of men, in order to drive
away sickness, in order to drive away death, the hot fever and the cold
fever."[399]
Thrita, a spirit of heaven, who has a place among the sages and
sacrificers of old time (p. 42) was, in the Avesta, the first physician
who kept back disease and death; and every one who follows in his
course, every physician, must appear as a willing combatant, an active
co-operator against the evil spirits, from whom death and disease
proceed. According to the Vendidad, those have the first place among the
physicians who heal by charms, _i.e._ by the sacred word, the words of
the law; these are the "physicians of physicians;" next come the
physicians who heal by remedies; and last of all, those who heal by the
knife.[400] These latter must first use the knife on the worshippers of
the Daevas; when they have done so three times, and the patient has died
each time, they are incapable for ever of practising the art of healing.
But if they have healed three worshippers of the Daevas, they are
capable of "healing the worshippers of Auramazda, and they can try their
skill upon them as they please." The physician is not only to heal sick
men, but sick animals also, and above all the sick dog. The Vendidad
fixes the sum which the physician is to receive for his services. He is
to heal a priest, and ask for no more than his blessing. For healing the
overseer of a district he is to receive a yoke of four oxen, and for his
wife a she-camel; the overseer of a canton is to pay a large beast of
draught, and his wife a mare; the head of a village pays a smaller
beast, and his wife a cow; the head of a house a small beast, and his
wife a she-ass. For healing a large beast of draught the price is a
beast of moderate size; and for one of moderate size, a head of small
cattle, etc.[401] Pliny quotes a number of remedies and means of cure
used by the Magi, some of them of an extraordinary character; indeed,
the impression made on Pliny by the importance ascribed to medicine in
the doctrine of Zarathrustra was so great, that he maintained that the
Magism of Zoroaster had arisen out of the art of healing, and had
introduced, as it were, a higher and sacred medicine. To this was
subsequently added the power of religion, and the mathematical arts of
investigating the future by the heavens, so that Zoroaster's doctrine
had taken possession of the mind of men by a three-fold bond.[402] How
greatly he is mistaken in ascribing to the Magians the astrology of the
Chaldaeans, has been remarked above; the mistake is explained by the
fact, that the Avesta includes the astronomical knowledge of the priests
of Iran in the books which treated of medicine (p. 52).
The astronomical chapters are lost as well as those on medicine. From
our fragments we cannot so much as fix the year by which the Avesta
reckons. We merely perceive that it counted by nights, not by days. It
is from the Bundehesh that we first learn that the year of Eastern Iran
is made up of 360 days in twelve months of thirty days, with five
additional days. This year is said to have begun with the vernal
equinox, _i.e._ the period when the vigour of nature again shows itself.
In the last five nights of the old year, and the first five nights of
the new one, the spirits of the forefathers, the Fravashis, come to
their descendants in the houses; they awake with nature to new life (p.
179). The first month is called Farvardin after these spirits; of the
remaining eleven, six are called after the Amesha Cpentas, and the
remaining five, which are inserted between the six, after Mithra,
Tistrya, the spirits of fire and water, and lastly after the law (Din).
The inscriptions of the Achaemenids give us nine names of months entirely
different from these. Hence the West had its own calendar, as well as
its own alphabet, and made use of it as early as the year 500 B.C. In
the East the calendar of the Avesta was in use; and this seems to have
been current in the West also in the first half of the fourth century
B.C. There is no doubt whatever that it was the standard for all Iran at
the time of the Sassanids.[403]
We have already set forth in detail what weight the Avesta lays on
purity, and the avoidance of contact with dead matter, which has fallen
into the power of the Daevas. From these points of view, in consequence
of the reform, the priests in Iran came to adopt a peculiar mode of
burial. Among the Arians of the Panjab the oldest form of burial was
interment, and in time cremation came into use (IV. 62). But could the
Athravas allow anything so unclean as a corpse to be laid on fire, the
pure "son of Auramazda"? If the corpse was thrown into water the pure
water was defiled; if buried in the earth pollution was cast on the
beautiful, submissive daughter of Auramazda. Nothing therefore remained
for the priests but to leave the corpse above the earth; in this case it
served the pure animals, the birds and dogs, for nourishment, and was
thus destroyed in the best manner. To throw a corpse into water, to bury
or burn it, are great sins, actions which do not admit of
expiation,[404] and those who do such things "help the drought which
destroys the pasture, and the evil onsweeping winter, which kills the
flock, and is full of snow; such men are impure for ever."[405] Any one
who buries a dead dog or a dead man in the earth, and does not dig the
body up again within half a year, is to receive twice five hundred
stripes; any one who allows it to remain in the earth for a year, is to
receive twice a thousand stripes; but if a man leaves a corpse in the
earth for more than two years, there is for him neither penalty, nor
expiation, nor purification.[406]
The dead are to be carried away on peculiarly dry paths, little trodden
by cattle, beasts of draught, and pure men, and laid on the driest and
barest places in the earth, on the highest eminences where carnivorous
birds and dogs may most easily see them.[407] The soil is to be dug out,
waist deep, if the earth is soft; if hard, to the depth of half a foot,
and this depression is to be filled with tiles, stones, and dust; for
damp earth contracts pollution most readily, whereas stones, tiles, and
dust contract it very slowly. To this place (Dakhma) the naked corpse is
to be taken on a bier, which has a foundation of stones or tiles, by
two strong men--never by one: one bearer would pollute himself for ever,
and the Druj Nacu would never leave him. Any one who throws a cloth on
the dead must be punished with twice four hundred, or twice a thousand
stripes, according to the size of the cloth. The corpse is to be placed
on the Dakhma, with the face turned to the sun (any one who does not
place the body with its face to the sun, is to pay the same penalty as
is prescribed for the murder of a pure man[408]): the corpse is then to
be secured in its place by iron, stones, or lead, attached to the feet
or hair, in order that the birds and dogs may not carry away the bones
and remains to water and trees: the neglect of these fastenings is to be
punished with twice two hundred stripes.[409] If it rains or snows, or
the wind is strong, so that the necessary preparations cannot be made on
the day of death, the corpse can be carried on its own bed and mat to
the Dakhma.[410]
At these burial-places the Daevas hold their meetings; there they
propagate and assemble, "in order to bring to death, fifty, a hundred, a
thousand, ten thousand, an innumerable host of men;" there the Daevas
are most dangerous and deadly to men: for in the places of burial are
"infection, disease, fever, impurity, ague, trembling, and old hair." A
Dakhma is not pure till the body has been eaten by dogs and birds, till
the remains have entirely changed into dust, and become utterly mixed up
with the foundation of mortar, tiles, and stones. When this point has
been reached, the Dakhma should be levelled. Such destruction of the
place of burial is regarded by the law-book as the annihilation of death
itself; as one of the highest virtues of the faithful. "He who levels
only so much as the size of his own body of a burial-place," says the
book of the law, "has repented of all his sins which he has committed in
thought, speech, and action; he has not only repented of them, but he
has expiated them, and the two heavenly powers will not begin a contest
about his entrance into paradise."[411]
The prescriptions of the law for the purification of the vessels and
clothes which have touched the corpse, are given from regard to utility,
and from the point of view of a certain simple rationalism, which forms
an advantageous contrast between Iran and India. Vessels of lead, wood,
and earth, are impure for ever; vessels of gold and silver can be taken
into use again after a number of washings with gomez. Garments on which
spittle, moisture, or dung have fallen are to be cut in pieces and
buried; in other cases they can be purified with gomez, water, and
earth, and aired, and then again taken into use for women at the time of
impurity. The house of the dead is pure when the period for the
extinction of the fire is over, when the prayers appointed for the dead
have been said, and the inhabitants of the house have had their bodies
and clothes washed three times, and the sacred hymns have been sung (p.
215).
For the bearers, who have carried a corpse to the Dakhma, and those who
in any way have come into contact with a corpse, special forms of
purification are necessary. The washing of the bearers must be begun
immediately after the corpse has been deposited. For this purpose the
gomez of the nearest male and female relation of the dead is required as
well as that of "cattle and beasts of draught." At the last washing the
Druj Nacu springs out of the forehead between the eyebrows, from thence
to the shoulders and under the arms, until at length by continued
ablutions she is driven into the left toes, and is compelled to pass
away from there to the north in the form of a fly.[412] In order to
purify the way on which the dead has been carried to the Dakhma, a dog
must be led along it, three times, six times, and nine times. Then a
priest must walk along it, who pronounces the "victorious words," _i.e._
certain exorcisms. "I drive back the Daevi Druj, so that she flies to
the North. Avaunt! She must not slay the corporeal world of the pure.
May Auramazda and Cpenta Armaiti protect us from our enemies; may
Craosha come, and Vohumano."[413] The worst of all forms of pollution is
that contracted by touching a corpse in a distant place in solitude, for
here the power of the demon was greatest. Any one to whom this has
happened, is to wash himself fifteen times with water, and rub himself
an equal number of times with earth, to hurry away from the spot, and
call out to every one whom he meets: "I have touched a dead body,
without wishing it in thought, word, or deed; my desire is
purification." Every one is to avoid him unless he wishes to bring on
himself the guilt of the impure man.[414]
Pools and streams are polluted by corpses till the corpses have been
removed and rain has thrice fallen upon the water; after this cattle and
men can again drink of the water. So long as the corpse lies in a river,
the fiend of death extends over nine paces above and three paces below
it, and six paces on either side; in a pool the domain of the fiend is
six paces in every direction; in snow and ice-water it is three paces.
When Zarathrustra asks, whether the water which falls from heaven on the
corpse is impure, the god answers, "I, Auramazda, allow the water to go
forth from Lake Vourukasha, with storms and clouds, and to fall on a
corpse; I, Auramazda, and to flow upon a burial-place, and upon a
dung-heap, and carry away a bone, and wash all into Lake Puitika (the
pool of purification in heaven). When purified the waters flow from Lake
Puitika into Lake Vourukasha. I, Auramazda, rain down herbs of all
kinds, to be food for the pious men, food for the useful cattle. With
such speeches Auramazda appeased the just Zarathrustra."[415]
Zarathrustra further inquires, whether corpses which have been carried
by dogs, wolves, and panthers to a field make the field and men impure?
Auramazda, as frequently happens in such cases, argues from the point of
view of the possible and attainable. "If such corpses," says the god,
"rendered men impure, all mankind would quickly be rendered impure owing
to the multitude of the corpses which are upon the earth." But
Zarathrustra is not satisfied; he says: "A man dies in the hollow of a
valley; from the heights of the mountains a bird flies down to the
valley, and then back to the summit of a mountain, and alights on a tree
of hard or soft wood. There he is sick and voids excrements. Then a man
goes up from the valley to the summit of the mountain, and comes to the
tree, on which the bird has sat, and seeks fuel for his fire. He cuts
the tree down, splits it up, and kindles a fire with it. What is his
penalty?" Auramazda again replies that nothing carried away by wolves,
dogs, birds, flies, or winds pollutes men. But now it occurs to
Zarathrustra, or rather to the priests who have written these things
down, whether the animals which have eaten the corpses are not impure.
This difficulty Auramazda solves by declaring the animals pure; but no
flesh of such animals is to be eaten within a year, or offered for
sacrifice.[416]
With the exception of Herodotus, Strabo, and Agathias, the Western
writers give us only very exaggerated accounts of the peculiar mode of
burial in use among the Persians. Herodotus has already told us that the
corpses of the Magians were exposed to dogs and birds; with regard to
the corpses of the rest he had no accurate knowledge, for a mystery was
made of the matter.[417] Onesicritus relates that those Bactrians, who
were weakened by disease and age, were thrown to dogs brought up for the
purpose and called buriers of the dead; and Strabo says that among the
Caspians, parents, when they had reached seventy years of age, were shut
up by their children, and so killed by starvation;[418] though he also
observes that the Magians gave over the corpses to birds.[419] Cicero
narrates that it was not the custom of the Magians to bury the corpses
of their dead before they had been torn by wild animals: in Hyrcania a
peculiar kind of dog was reared--by the lower classes in common; of the
wealthier men each had his own--by which they might be torn after death,
and this was considered the best kind of burial.[420] From Eusebius we
hear that the Medes gave the dying to carefully-reared dogs; the
Hyrcanians and Caspians those who were still alive; the Bactrians the
old; others the dead.[421] Agathias, on the other hand, tells us, that
the dead among the Persians were carried out before the gates of the
cities naked and without a coffin, and eaten by dogs, so that the bones
lay about in the fields. If any man's corpse was not at once eaten, the
Persians believed that he had been of an unholy mind, that his soul was
unjust and wicked, and so had come into the power of the evil spirits,
and would be carried into hell. Such men were lamented by their friends,
because they had no part in the better lot. Those who were most quickly
eaten up, the Persians praised as fortunate; they called their souls the
best, and like the gods, and said of them that they had gone into the
good land.[422]
The Greeks maintained that the Achaemenids were buried at Pasargadae and
Persepolis, and that the corpse of Cyrus rested at Pasargadae.[423] Of
Darius we are told that even in his lifetime he caused his tomb to be
prepared on the summit of a mountain. The corpses of Artaxerxes I. of
Damaspia, and of his son Xerxes, were buried, according to Ctesias, in
Persia.[424] The last Darius was buried by Alexander in the royal
sepulchre, when he had already given the honours of burial to the
Persian queen Statera.[425] Diodorus tells us that these tombs were on
the eastern side of the citadel of Persepolis, at a distance of four
hundred feet, in the "royal mountain." The rock was hewn out, and
contained several chambers. But these tombs had no entrance; the corpses
were drawn up by machines to the summit, and so laid in them.[426]
The burial-places of the rulers of ancient Persia can still be
recognised. Some hundred paces to the east of the remains of the royal
palace at Persepolis, towards the rising of the sun, precisely as
Diodorus describes the place, are three stone pictures in Mount Rachmed.
Sculptures which begin three hundred feet above the ground on the
perpendicular front of the mountain form three high facades, with
pillars, which present a gateway with woodwork, supporting a large
canopy, on which are seen several rows of dogs; the same animals are to
be seen on the lower lines of ornamentation. Within this framework are
the pictures of the buried sovereigns. In the left hand is the bow
without a string; the right is raised in an attitude of prayer, and the
figures are standing before an altar of burning fire. The king is
supported on a foundation upheld by the arms of several rows of men, who
represent the conquered lands. Two leagues to the north of Persepolis
are four great sculptures, now called Naksh-i-Rustem, _i.e._ pictures of
Rustem, of a similar kind, but beginning only sixty or seventy feet from
the ground, deeply cut in the perpendicular wall of two hundred feet in
length. Three of these pictures are close together; the fourth is on a
spur of the rock, at right angles to the other three. The centre of the
three marks the tomb of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. It is the only one
among the seven monuments which has inscriptions.[427]
The corpses of the princes might have been exposed to the sun, the dogs,
and birds on the summit above these pictures. In that case they would
merely mark the place of exposure, and these rocks would be
burial-places like those of the modern Parsees in Bombay. But behind the
sculptures, though not accessible from them, sepulchral chambers have
been discovered. From this, and from the description which the Greeks
give us of the tomb of Cyrus, we must draw the conclusion that the
Persian custom of burial did not agree with the rule of the Avesta--with
the exception of the priests, whose corpses, as Herodotus expressly
states, were exposed. The Vendidad laments that in certain districts of
the East, Arachosia and Chakhra, the dead were burned, or buried.[428]
Under the Sassanids exposure was strictly observed both in the East and
West, as is clear from the account of Agathias already quoted, and all
the statements which relate to this later period.
The regulations of the book of the law with regard to the burial of
corpses and the places of exposure are still strictly observed by the
Parsees. Great care is taken at the erection of a Dakhma that the
rain-water can run off from the bier of the corpse. At the last moment a
dog is brought into the presence of the dying person, so that its eye
may be directed on him; and when a woman with child dies two dogs are
brought, because two lives are in question. The eye of the dog has the
power to keep the evil spirits at a distance. But every one must remain
at nine paces distance from the dying person. After death the two
corpse-bearers at once strip the body--their hands are protected from
immediate contact by napkins made of old clothes--and carry it on a bier
of iron--for metal contracts less pollution than wood--accompanied by
the prayers of the priests, to the place of burial. The kinspeople
follow the corpse in silence to within ninety paces of the Dakhma. For
the first three nights the priests and kinsmen repeat continually the
prescribed prayers for the soul of the dead; in the third night the
decision is made at the bridge of Chinvat (p. 178). The burial-places of
the Parsees at Bombay are situated on a mountain on the coast, on the
summit of which several hollows have been cut. From a distance the
relatives look eagerly to this summit, to see whether the vultures are
already attacking the corpse, and which part of it they first consume.
For the first year after death a prayer is said daily before meals for
the soul of the dead to the Fravashis of the pure,[429] and a service is
held on the day of the month on which the death took place. In the years
that follow, on the fourth, tenth, and thirtieth day of each month, as
the book prescribes, but above all on the festival of all souls--_i.e._
on the feast of the ten nights during which the Fravashis come down (p.
224)--prayers are said for the dead.
It is hardly possible to ascertain the arrangement and life of the state
from the very scanty and obscure traits in the existing fragments of the
law. We have no rules on the rights and duties of the monarchy, though
these were included in the Avesta, if we may trust the list of
contents.[430] But the splendour of majesty as it dwelt with the rulers
of old time, with Yima, Thraetaona, and Kerecacpa, and was imparted to
Cyavarshana and Vistacpa, is brought strongly into prominence; and among
the Amesha Cpentas we found the spirit of good order, of good
government. Of the position of the orders so much only is clear--that
the priests claimed precedence over the warriors and husbandmen; that
the Avesta allows them certain privileges of moderate extent (p. 187);
and that the priestly families did not form exclusive castes, though the
priestly functions were hereditary in them. Still less can we learn of
the families of the warriors. We do not hear that they enjoyed a
favoured position; they are merely mentioned before the husbandmen; and
the Vendidad also gives us some information about their armour. It
should consist of a coat of mail and helmet, a girdle and greaves, a bow
with thirty arrows, a sling with thirty stones, a sword, a club, and a
lance.[431] Under the Achaemenids there were rich families in Bactria and
Sogdiana, in which we may no doubt venture to find descendants of the
old military families, enjoying an influential position in politics;
under the Sassanids the knightly nobility of Iran comes plainly to the
front. The Avesta speaks of great and intermediate houses, of important
and unimportant inhabitants of the villages. We also read of rich and
poor, men who have property and beggars; and mention is made of
tradespeople and slaves. The Avesta rises from the lord of the house to
the lord of the village or community (_vic_), then to the lord of the
tribe or canton (_zantu_) and to the lord of the province (_danhu_); an
arrangement which corresponds to the Indian government as fixed by
Manu's regulations. When Alexander of Macedon forced his way to Bactria
and Sogdiana, he met with resistance from the native overseers of
cantons or chieftains, whom he had summoned to Zariaspa, "the largest
city" in Bactria (p. 12).[432] When the castles of the most powerful had
been taken, and their lords had submitted, he sought to gain them by
marrying their daughters to the captains of his army, while he himself
took to wife the daughter of the Bactrian Oxyartes.
The protection of property is obviously a matter of great importance in
the Avesta. The utility of dogs is frequently mentioned, which protect
flocks and villages from thieves and wolves. Theft is looked on as
especially wicked, because the thief leads a roving life, eats raw and
unprepared food, and carries on his evil work in the darkness.[433] In
regard to contracts the Vendidad distinguishes six kinds, according as
they are concluded by word, by the pledge of hands, and are concerned
with the value of a head of small cattle, a beast of draught, a man
(_i.e._ a slave), and a piece of land. Anyone who violates the first
kind is to receive 300 blows with the rod, and 300 with the whip, and
the punishment increases in the violation of the other kinds up to 1000
stripes with both instruments.[434] To check injury of the person the
Vendidad lays down the rule, that anyone who lifts up his weapon against
a man without beating him, is to receive twice five stripes the first
time, and twice two hundred on the seventh occasion of committing the
offence, if he has not expiated the preceding six offences; if he has
expiated them, the measure of the first offence is dealt out on each
occasion. Anyone who attacks another not in anger but with malice, is to
be punished with twice fifteen, and on the sixth occasion with 200
stripes, in case he has not expiated the former offences. Anyone who
inflicts a wound on another, is punished the first time with twice
thirty, the fifth time with twice two hundred stripes. The same
punishment is inflicted on a man who breaks the bones of another, if he
does not expiate the offence. If the wound proves fatal, he is to be
punished with twice ninety stripes, and on a second offence with twice
two hundred.[435]
We have but few indications in the Avesta from which to draw conclusions
as to the state of civilisation. The amounts to be paid to the purifier
and the physician are given in animals; the series of contracts is
determined according to the value of small cattle, beasts of draught,
slaves, and landed property. But other property may be given in place of
the animals; we find mention of money (_shaeta_),[436] and, as has been
observed, of tradespeople; of mats and carpets, vessels of earth,
silver, and gold, rich garments, palaces with pillars and turrets, ovens
for smelting and for glass. The art of the physician cannot have been in
a primitive stage, when so much space is devoted to remedies (p. 223),
and the physicians who heal with the knife are designated as a separate
class. So far as I can see, the Avesta betrays a state of civilisation,
which, beginning from the pastoral condition, has remained in close
connection with cattle-breeding and agriculture, but has also reached a
more advanced stage. The unions of the tribes seem dissolved, and
neither the previous importance of the warlike families nor their
present position is brought prominently forward. This, no less than the
liberal imposition of bodily punishment, shows that long before the
dominion of the Achaemenids, the East of Iran must have been in the hands
of princes who ruled with despotic power.
FOOTNOTES:
[342] "Mihr Yasht," 38, 116, 117.
[343] "Vend." 1, 18, 20; 18, 22-32.
[344] Herod. 1, 136; Plato, "Alcib. I." p. 122; Xen. "Cyri instit." 8,
8, 2; Diod. 16, 43.
[345] "Vend." 18, 35-42; 53-57.
[346] "Vend." 3, 105 ff.
[347] _Loc. cit._ 3, 1-20.
[348] Herod. 7, 31.
[349] "Oeconom." 4, 13 ff.
[350] Ibid. 4, 20-24.
[351] Ibid. 4, 8-12; "Cyri instit." 8, 6, 16.
[352] Darmesteter, "Haurvatat et Ameretat," p. 64 ff.
[353] "Vend." 13, 125-162.
[354] "Vend." 15, 2, 3, 4.
[355] "Vend." 15, 5, 20, 21, according to Goldner's translation. [Cf.
Darmesteter.]
[356] "Vend." 13, 97-105.
[357] "Vend." 13, 26-47.
[358] It is not certain whether the _udra_ of the Vendidad is the
water-dog (spaniel?) or the otter.
[359] "Vend." 13, 169-174; 14, 4-75.
[360] Agath. 2, 24.
[361] "Vend." Farg. 17.
[362] "Wer den Urin mit vorgestrecktem Fusse laesst macht die Drudsch
schwanger," so dass sie neue Unholde gebaeren.
[363] "Vend." 5, 45-55, 136-157; 7, 158-182.
[364] Herod. 1, 133; Xen. "Cyri instit." 1, 2, 16; 8, 9, 11; Plin. "H.
N." 28, 19.
[365] "Vend." 9, 161.
[366] "Vend." 9, 187.
[367] "Vend." 5, 23-25.
[368] "Vend." 3, 140-147; 8, 87.
[369] "Vend." 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 26-28.
[370] "Vend." 8, 275, 276.
[371] "Vend." 9, 119-158; 19, 69-80.
[372] "Vend." 5, 83-108; 7, 4 ff.
[373] "Vend." 9, 168-171; Farg. 10.
[374] "Vend." 5, 124-135.
[375] "Vend." 12, 1-59.
[376] "Vend." 4, 130-133.
[377] "Vend." 14, 64-66.
[378] "Vend." 18, 123-133, after Harlez' translation. [Cf. Darmesteter.]
[379] "Vend." 15, 126.
[380] "Vend." 15, 125.
[381] "Vend." 18, 115.
[382] "Vend." 18, 23.
[383] Herod. 1, 135, 136.
[384] Plato, "Aloib. I."; p. 121.
[385] Herod. 1, 137.
[386] "Ethic. Nicom." 8, 10, ed. Zell.
[387] Curt. 5, 9; Plut. "Artax." c. 5.
[388] Ammian, 23, 6.
[389] Herod. 3, 70, 88; Dinon. fragm. 17, ed. Mueller; Ctes. "Pers. Ecl."
44.
[390] Plut. "Themist." c. 26.
[391] Herod. 3, 31; Diogen. Laert. Prooem. 6; Plut. "Artax." c. 26;
Ctes. "Pers. Ecl." 44; Agathias, 2, 23; Heracl. Cum. fragm. 7 ed.
Mueller.
[392] The regulations respecting sexual intercourse, abortion, etc.,
which here follow in the German text will be found in "Vend." 16, 33-40;
18, 100-122, 136, 152; _ib._ 15, 9-17, 60; 18, 115; _ib._ 18, 115-119;
_ib._ 8, 74-82; _ib._ 8, 96-106.
[393] "Rigveda," 10, 97, 17; "Atharvaveda," 2, 10, 2; 8, 1, 18 in
Darmesteter _loc. cit._ 73, 76.
[394] "Vend." 20, 19, 25.
[395] "Vend." 22, 7-38.
[396] "Vend." 21, 3-19.
[397] Justi, "Bundehesh," c. 24.
[398] West, "Mainyo-i-Khard," c. 62. Above, p. 172.
[399] "Vend." 20, 11-20.
[400] "Vend." 7, 118, 121.
[401] "Vend." 7, 105, 117.
[402] "H. N." 30, 1.
[403] Von Gutschmid ("Das iranische Wandeljahr, Berichte der K.
Saechsischen Gesellschaft der Wiss." 1862) places the establishment of
the cycle, by which, in order to bring the year of 365 days into
agreement with the natural time, a month was inserted every 120 years,
and consequently the introduction of the East Iranian calendar into the
whole kingdom, in the year 411, or between 428 and 381 B.C. That the
beginning of the year was universally placed in the spring after the
introduction of this calendar, and fixed between March and the middle of
June, would follow from the importance of the Farvardin festival, even
if it were not sufficiently vouched for by other evidence. The Bundehesh
(c. 25) speaks of the year as fixed, inasmuch as it reckons the
shortening of the days from a certain day in the month of Tir, and puts
the shortest day on the 20th of the month of Din, yet it adds that the
priests reckoned on this basis, and that the lunar year did not
correspond to the year thus calculated. The Cappadocian names for the
months are those of the East Iranian calendar; and the Cappadocians
cannot have obtained these till the calendar was current throughout the
whole kingdom of the Achaemenids. On this ground also Von Gutschmid's
dates do not seem to be too high.
[404] "Vend." 1, 48; 6, 6 and _loc. cit._
[405] "Vend." 7, 65-71.
[406] "Vend." 3, 122-136.
[407] "Vend." 6, 93-95; 8, 13; 3, 50-54.
[408] "Vend." 5, 13, 14, 47, 48.
[409] "Vend." 6, 98 ff.
[410] "Vend." 6, 106.
[411] "Vend." 7, 126-147.
[412] "Vend." 8, 34-36; 130-228.
[413] "Vend." 8, 38-64.
[414] "Vend." 8, 271-310; 9, 164-166.
[415] "Vend." 5, 15-21, according to Geldner's rendering.
[416] "Vend." 5, 1-22; 7, 189-191.
[417] Herod. 1, 140; 3, 16.
[418] Strabo, p. 517.
[419] Strabo, p. 735. Cf. p. 520.
[420] "Quaest. Tuscul." 1, 45.
[421] Euseb. "Praep. Evang." p. 277.
[422] Agath. 2, 23.
[423] Diod. 17, 71; Arrian, "Anab." 3, 22; 6, 29.
[424] Ctes. "Pers. Ecl." 44, 46; Strabo, p. 730.
[425] Arrian, l. c.; Justin, 11, 15; Aelian, "Var. Hist." 6, 8; Plut.
"Alex." c. 30.
[426] Diod. 17, 71; cf. Ctes. "Pers. Ecl." 15.
[427] K. Niebuhr, "Reise," 2, 150 ff.
[428] "Vend." 1, 46, 48, 60, 64; cf. above, p. 137, 138.
[429] "Yacna," 26.
[430] Above, p. 52. The Mainyo-i-Khard contains some rules on the duties
of the king. The prince is to defend the city and land against enemies
and risings, to respect water and fire, to keep at a distance bad laws
and customs, and promote the worship of Auramazda, and good works, and
to bring back to the right way those who have left it. A king of this
kind is like the Yazatas and Amesha Cpentas: c. 15, 20, 33, 68, ed.
West.
[431] "Vend." 14, 32-40.
[432] Arrian, "Anab." 4, 1, 5.
[433] "Vend." 13, 143-145.
[434] "Vend." 4, 4-53 according to Harlez.
[435] "Vend." 4, 54-113. Even after all that has been advanced by De
Harlez, "Avesta," p. 101, I cannot convince myself that the stripes
appointed here and elsewhere in the Vendidad are to fall, not on the
guilty, but on animals of Angromainyu. If animals are to be killed, we
are told so expressly in the Vendidad, and this duty is often mentioned
along with the stripes (p. 209). To kill twice 90 or 200 flies or
lizards is no equivalent for murdering a man. I allow that no one could
endure blows by thousands, if they were given in earnest, yet in running
a "muck" five and six hundred very severe blows have been endured. In my
opinion the punishments of the Avesta are not intended for legal
penalties; they mark what was needed, in the opinion of the priests, to
expel the evil disposition, which could recur again and again.
[436] "Vend." 4, 120; "Astad Yasht," 1; Justi, "Handbuch," _sub. voc._