be supposed to have taken with them, what was the religion? The early
Aryans had a Nature-cult more spiritualised under the form of Varuna and
more materialised under the form of Indra. Some students of the Avesta
have thought that here could be found the elements of the Dualism which
formed the essential doctrine of Mazdaism. But it is almost certain that
no real Dualism existed in oldest Iran. The Avesta once contrasts the
worshippers of God with the worshippers of Daevas, of those who breed
the cow and have the care of it with those who ill-treat it and
slaughter it at their sacrifices. But Indra-worship has no connexion
with devil-worship, nor does this or similar texts prove that
devil-worship, properly so called, ever flourished in Iran. Other
religious reformers than Zoroaster have named the devotees of former
religions “devil-worshippers.” For the rest, there is reason to think
that in the Avesta the term was applied to Turanian raiders, not to true
Iranians.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Mansell._
ASSYRIAN GOD CARRYING ANTELOPE AND WHEAT-EAR.
British Museum.]
In an Assyrian inscription, Ahura Mazda is said to have created joy for
_all_ creatures: a belief which Mazdean Dualism impugns. So far as can
be guessed, the earliest Iranian faith was the worship of good
spirits—of a Good Spirit. Less pure extra-beliefs may, or rather must,
have existed contemporaneously, but they remained in the second rank.
The cult of good spirits was the home-cult of shepherd and herdsman
offered to the genii of their flocks and herds. While these genii
answered the purpose of the lares or little saints everywhere dear to
humble hearts, it is probable that in character they already resembled
the Fravashis or archetypes that were to play so great a part in Mazdean
doctrine. The cult of the Good Spirit, the national and kingly cult, was
the worship of one God whose most worthy symbol, before Zoroaster as
after, was the sun and whose sacrament with men was fire. The early
Iranian had no temple, no altar: he went up into a high place and
offered his prayer and sacrifice without priest or pomp. If we wish to
trace his faith back to an Indian source, instead of bringing on the
scene Varuna and Indra, it will be better to inquire whether there were
elements of the same faith underlying the unwieldy fabric of Vedic
religion. The answer is, that there were. The grandest text in the
Rig-Veda, the one text recognised from farthest antiquity as of
incalculable value, is the old Persian religion contained in a formula:
“That Sun’s supremacy—God—let us adore Which may well direct.”
“Enable with perpetual light,
The dulness of our blinded sight.”
So great a virtue was attributed to the Gayatri that the mind which
thought it was supposed to unite with the object of thought: the eyes of
the soul looked on Truth, of which all else is but the shadow. This is
the spirit in which it is still repeated every day by every Hindu. The
sacrosanct words were “Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva,” or, yet more often,
they are described as “the mother of the Vedas,” which, if it means
anything, means that they are older than the Vedas. The point most to be
noticed about the Gayatri is that its importance cannot be set aside by
saying that this text is to be explained by Henotheism: the habit of
referring to each god immediately addressed as supreme. Nor was the text
selected arbitrarily by Western monotheists: for thousands of years
before any European knew it, the natives of India had singled it out as
the most solemn affirmation of man’s belief in the Unseen.
It is open to argument, though not to proof, that the Gayatri
crystallises a creed which the Iranians took with them in their
migration. Peoples then moved in clans, not in a motley crowd gathered
on an emigrant steamer. The clan or clans to which the Iranians belonged
may have clung to a primordial faith, not yet overlaid by myths which
materialised symbols and mysteries which made truth a secret.
Such speculations are guess-work, but that the primitive religion of
Persia was essentially monotheistic is an opinion which is likely to
survive all attacks upon it. On less sure grounds stands the
identification of that primitive religion with Zoroastrianism. The great
authorities of a former generation, and amongst them my distinguished
old friend, Professor Jules Oppert, believed that Cyrus was a Mazdean.
But there is a good deal to support the view that Zoroastrianism did not
become the State religion till the time of the Sásánians, who, as a new
dynasty, grasped the political importance of having under them a strong
and organised priesthood. Before that time the Magians seem to have been
rather a sort of Salvation Army or Society of Jesus than the directors
of a national Church.
As late as the reign of Darius the Persians frequently buried their
dead, a practice utterly repugnant to the Mazdean. Again, from Greek
sources we know that the Persian kings sacrificed hecatombs of animals;
thousands of oxen, asses, stags, &c., were immolated every day. Darius
ordered one hundred bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs to be
given to the Jews on the dedication of the new Temple (as well as twelve
he-goats as sin-offerings for the twelve tribes) so that they might
offer “sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven and pray for
the life of the king and his sons.” Evidently Darius considered profuse
animal sacrifices as a natural part of any great religious ceremony. Can
it be supposed that such slaughter would have pleased a strict
Zoroastrian? The Mazdeans retained the sacrifice of flesh as food: a
small piece of the cooked meat eaten at table was included in the daily
offering with bread, grain, fruits and the Homa juice, which was first
drunk by the officiating priest, then by the worshippers, and finally
thrown on the sacred fire. The small meat-offering was not animal
sacrifice or anything at all like it. The Parsis substitute milk even
for this small piece of meat, perhaps because the meat was usually beef,
which would have caused offence to their Hindu fellow-citizens. I asked
a Parsi High Priest who lunched with me at Basle during the second
Congress for the History of Religions, what viands were eschewed by his
community? He replied that they avoided both beef and the flesh of
swine, but only out of respect for their neighbours’ rules: to them oil
alone was forbidden—probably because of its virtue as a light-giver. In
the Zoroastrian sacrifice it was never lost sight of that the outward
act was but one of piety and obedience; the true sacrifice was of the
heart: “I offer good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” It is hardly
needful to say that the Mithraic taurobolium was in sheer contradiction
to Mazdean law. Heretical sects were the bane of Zoroastrianism, and
with one of these sprang up the strange practices which the Romans
brought into Europe. Possibly its origin should be sought in some
infiltration from the West, for it is more suggestive of Orphic rites
than of any form of Eastern ceremonies. A Christian writer of the name
of Socrates, who lived in the fifth century, said that at Alexandria, in
a cavern consecrated to Mithra, human skulls and bones were found, the
inference being that human sacrifice was the real rite, symbolised by
the slaying of the bull. The source of this information is suspect, but
even if not guilty of such excesses, the Mithra-worshippers of Western
Persia must have been rank corrupters of the faith. In the Avesta,
Mithra is the luminous æther; sometimes he appears as an intercessor;
sometimes he dispenses the mercy or wields the vengeance of God. But in
reality he is an attribute, about the nature of which members of the
faith had less excuse for making mistakes than we have. It is difficult
for the Indian or Japanese not to make analogous mistakes concerning
some forms of worship in Southern Europe.
In Old Iran the Sacred Fire was kept perpetually alight. Sweet perfumes
were spread around the place of prayer, for which a little eminence was
chosen, but there were no images and no temples. Archæologists have
failed to find traces of a building set apart for religious worship
among the splendid ruins of Persepolis: the “forty towers” only tell of
the pleasure-palace of an Eastern king. Was it that the profound
spirituality of this people shrank not only from carving a graven image
of the deity, but also from giving him a house made with hands? What
could the maker of the firmament want with human fanes? Some such
thought may have caused the Iranians to suppress for so long a time the
instinct which impels man to build temples. In any case, it seems as if
Cyrus and after him Darius threw themselves into the scheme for
rebuilding the Hebrew temple with all the more enthusiasm from the fact
that immemorial custom held them back from temple-building at home. The
cuneiform inscriptions bear witness that these kings were monotheists:
they believed in one sole creator of heaven and earth, by whose will
kings reign and govern, and if they invoked the aid of heavenly
hierarchs they never confused the creatures, however powerful, with the
creator. That Creator they called by the name of Ahura Mazda, but they
recognised that he was one, whatever the name might be by which he was
called. “Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia: the Lord God of Heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He hath charged me to build
Him a house at Jerusalem, which is Judah.” In the uncanonical Book of
Esdras, it is said more significantly that King Cyrus “commanded to have
the house of the Lord in Jerusalem built where they should worship with
eternal fire.” The recently deciphered Babylonian inscriptions have been
brought forward to show that the Jews were mistaken in thinking that
Cyrus was a monotheist, because he honoured Merodach in Babylon just as
he had honoured Jehovah at Jerusalem. He was, it is said, a “polytheist
at heart.” If he was, his honouring Merodach does not prove it. To my
mind it proves exactly the reverse. Cyrus understood the monotheism
which was at the bottom of the Babylonian religious system and which
these very tablets have revealed to modern scholarship. He understood
that “however numerous and diversified the nations of the earth may be,
the God who reigns over them all can never be more than one.”[2]
Footnote 2:
Words written by a Japanese reformer named Okubo about fifty years
ago.
He was governed by expediency in his respect for the faiths of his
subject peoples, but he was governed also by something higher than
expediency. That Darius Hystaspis, who is allowed to have been a
monotheist, continued his policy, shows that it was not thought to
involve disloyalty to Ahura Mazda since of such disloyalty Darius would
have been incapable.
If we grant that the Iranians were, in the main, monotheistic at a date
when not more than a part of the population professed Zoroastrianism,
the question follows, of what was the difference between the reformed
and the unreformed religion? To answer this satisfactorily, we must
remember that the paramount object of Zoroaster was less change than
conservation. Like Moses whom an attractive if not well-founded theory
makes his contemporary, he saw around a world full of idolatry, and he
feared lest the purer faith of Iran should be swamped by the
encroachments of polytheism and atheism (for, strangely enough, the
Avesta abounds in references to sheer negation). The aim of every
doctrine or practice which he introduced was to revivify, to render more
comprehensible, more consistent, the old monotheistic faith.
With regard to practice, the most remarkable innovation was that which
concerned the disposal of the dead. It cannot be explained as a relic of
barbarism: it was introduced with deliberation and with the knowledge
that it would shock human sensibility then, just as much as it does now.
The avowed reason for giving the dead to vultures or animals is that
burial defiles the earth. It was recognised that this argument was open
to the objection that birds or beasts were likely to drop portions of
dead bodies on the earth. The objection was met with scholastic
resourcefulness not to say casuistry: it was declared that “accidents”
do not count. Though so strongly insisted on in the Avesta, the practice
only became general at a late period: even after Mazdeism had made
headway, bodies were often enveloped in wax to avoid defilement of the
earth while evading the prescribed rite. Cremation, the natural
alternative to burial, would have polluted the sacred fire. It was
observed, no doubt, that the consumption of the dead by living animals
was the means employed by Nature for disposing of the dead. Why do we so
rarely see a dead bird or hare or rabbit or squirrel? The fact is not
mysterious when we come to look into it. It may have been thought that
what Nature does must be well done. The Parsis themselves seem to
suppose that this and other prescriptions of their religious law were
inspired by sanitary considerations, and they attribute to them their
comparative immunity from plague during the recent epidemics at Bombay.
Defilement of water by throwing any impurity into rivers is as severely
forbidden as the defilement of the earth. Possibly another reason
against burial was the desire to prevent anything like the material cult
of the dead and the association of the fortunes of the immortal soul
with those of the mortal body, such as prevailed among the Egyptians,
whose practices doubtless were known to the Magi by whom, rather than by
any one man, the Mazdean law was framed. Finally, the last rites
provided a recurrent object-lesson conducive to the mental habit of
separating the pure from the impure. They reminded the Mazdean that life
is pure because given by Ormuzd; death impure because inflicted by
Ahriman. The rule of every religion is designed largely, if not chiefly,
as a moral discipline.[3]
Footnote 3:
Among the Buddhists of Thibet the dead are given to dogs and birds of
prey as a last act of charity—to feed the hungry.
The true originality of Zoroastrianism as a religious system lies in the
dualistic conception of creation which is the nexus that connects all
its parts. This was seen at once, when the Avesta became known in
Europe, but the idea was so entirely misunderstood and even travestied,
that Zoroaster was represented as a believer in two gods whose power was
equal, if, indeed, the power of the evil one were not the greater.
Recently among the manuscripts of Leopardi were found these opening
lines of an unfinished “Hymn to Ahriman”:—
“Re delle cose, autor del mondo, arcana
Malvagità, sommo potere e somma
Intelligenza, eterno
Dator de’ mali e regitor del moto....”
They are fine lines, but if Anro-Mainyus might fitly be called “arcana
malvagità” and “dator de’ mali,” nothing could be farther removed from
the Zoroastrian idea than the rest of the description. Ahriman possessed
neither supreme power nor supreme intelligence, nor was he author of the
world, but only of a small portion of it. To this day, however, it has
pleased pessimists to claim Zoroaster, the most optimist of prophets, as
one of their fraternity.
The real Ahriman gains in tremendous force from the vagueness of his
personality. Sometimes he _acts_ as a person: as in the Temptation of
Zoroaster when he offers him the kingdoms of the world if he will but
serve him. But no artist would have dared to give him human form. And
surely no one in Iran would have alluded to him by mild or good-humoured
euphemisms. He shares this, however, with the mediæval devil, that he
works at an eternally pre-destined disadvantage. He is fore-doomed to
failure. Good is stronger than Evil, and Good is lasting, Evil is
passing. In the end, Evil must cease to be.
Though not immortal, Ahriman was primordial. Unlike the fallen star of
the morning, what he is, that he was. He did not choose Evil: he _is_
Evil as Ormuzd _is_ Good. He can create, but only things like himself.
The notion that both Ormuzd and Ahriman proceeded from a prior entity,
Boundless Time, is a late legend. Ormuzd and Ahriman existed always, the
one in eternal light, the other in beginningless darkness. An immense
vacuum divided the light from the darkness and Ahriman knew not Ormuzd,
Evil knew not Good, till Good was externalised in the beneficent
creation.
“Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods and the echoing
mountains,
Wandered bleating in valleys and warbled on blossoming branches.”
The sight of created things gave Ahriman the will to create
corresponding things, evil instead of good. He made sin, disease, death,
the flood, the earthquake, famine, slaughter, noxious animals. So the
pieces were set down on the chess-board of being, and, as in all
religions, man’s soul was the stake.
The difference from other religions lay in the determined effort to
grapple with the problem of the origin of evil. The tribe of divine
students among whom Mazdeism sprang up saw in that unsolved problem the
great cause of unbelief, and they set themselves to solve it by the
theory which J. S. Mill said was the only one which could reconcile
philosophy with religion—the theory of primal forces at war. The Indian
did not attempt to fathom it; the Egyptian and Assyrian set it aside; we
know the offered Hebrew solution: “I form the light and create darkness;
I make peace and create evil, I, the Lord, do all these things.” But
this is a statement, not a solution, because though it may be believed,
it cannot be thought. The attraction of the dualistic conception is
shown by nothing more clearly than by the extraordinary vitality of
Manichæism in the face of every kind of persecution both in the East and
West, although Manichæism, with its ascription of the creation of
mankind to the Evil Principle, its depreciation of woman, its
out-and-out asceticism which included abstinence from animal food (a
rule borrowed by Mani from the Buddhists in his journey in India)
contrasts unfavourably with the faith that did not make a single demand
on human nature except to be good, even as its Creator was good.
The origin of the Magians was Semitic, or, as some think, præ-Semitic
and præ-Aryan. Travellers brought tales of them to the ancient world
which listened with a fascinated interest, while it failed to see the
importance of the mighty religious phenomenon of Israel. The “Wise men
of the East” had a charm for antiquity, as they were to have for the
Infant Church which never tired of depicting them in its earliest art.
Mention of the “Persarum Magos” is frequent from Herodotus to Cicero,
who speaks of them under that name. According to Herodotus the Magi sang
the Theogony, and Pausanias describes them as reading from a book which
was certainly the Avesta, though it must not be overlooked that never
but once does it contain the smallest reference to them. This tribe of
divine students enjoyed a high reputation at the Babylonian Court, which
seems less unexpected by the light of recent research than it did when
the Babylonians and Assyrians were thought to be destitute of any trace
of an esoteric religion tending to monotheism. That the Magians were
monotheists cannot be disputed. Probably they were skilled in astronomy
and in medicine, the two sciences which almost covered what was meant
then by learning in the East. Probably also they were astrologers like
other searchers of the heavens, but they were not magic-workers, a
calling that had a bad name. The Magi in the Gospel story are supposed
to have been guided by astronomical calculations; whatever these may
have been, they could not have been ignorant of the prophecy in their
own Scriptures of a Virgin who should give birth to the Saviour and
Judge of men. The ante-natal soul of this Virgin had been venerated for
centuries in Iran. An infiltration of Messianic prophecies might induce
them to conclude that the Child would be “King of the Jews.” It was not
likely that they would take so long a journey to do homage to any
new-born earthly king, but it was quite possible that they might go in
search of the promised Saviour.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Mansell._
COUNTING CATTLE.
British Museum.
(_Egyptian Fresco._)]
In Media we know that the people lived at one time in tribes, without
kings. In one form or another, the tribal organisation existed and
exists everywhere in the East. What is caste but a petrified tribal
system? The first discovery which a European makes on landing on the
skirts of the East, is that everything is done by tribes. The Algerian
conjurors who swallow fire, drive nails into their heads and do other
gruesome feats are a semi-religious tribe which has thrived from time
immemorial on the exercise of the same profession. The dwarfs of the
late Bey of Tunis, whom I saw at Bardo, belonged to a tribe which does
nothing but furnish dwarfs. Apply to a high or worthy end this corporate
pursuit of a given object and it must produce remarkable results.
The unanimous belief of the Greeks that Zoroaster was founder of the
Magians is held no longer, but he is still thought to have been one of
them. Moslem tradition made him the servant of a Hebrew prophet, and
even serious Western students were inclined to trace Mazdeism to the
Jewish prisoners who were brought into Media by the Assyrians. It is
unnecessary to say that at present the Jews are regarded as the debtors.
There is no figure of a religious teacher so elusive as that of
Zoroaster, and they are all elusive. But in the case of Zoroaster it is
not only the man that eludes us—it is also his environment. Brahmanical
India of to-day reflects as in a glass the society into which Sakya Muni
cast his seed; in fact, we understand the seed-sowing better than the
harvest; Buddhism at its apogee seems of the nature of an interlude in
the history of the changeless East. China still throws light on its
passionless sage, passionless in a sense so far deeper than the Indian
recluses, who, though they knew it not, did but substitute for the
passion of the flesh the more inebriating passion of the spirit. From
the splendid treasury of præ-Islamic poetry, we know that the Arab race
had acquired its specialised type before the Muezzin first called the
faithful to prayer. The moral petrifaction of the many and the religious
and patriotic ferment of the few which formed the _milieu_ of nascent
Christianity, can be realised without any stretch of the imagination.
Buddha, Confucius, and He that was greater than they, came into highly
civilised societies in organised states; Mohammed came into an
unorganised state which lacked political and religious cohesion, but the
unity of race was already developed: the Emirs of the Soudan whose star
set at Omdurman were the living pictures of the Arabs who first rallied
to the Prophet’s banner. Of the society of Old Iran to which Zoroaster
spoke, it is difficult to form a distinct idea and to judge how far it
had moved away from early Aryan simplicity. We gather that it was still
a society in which sheep-raising and dairy-farming played a preponderant
part. Those modern expressions may serve us better than to say
“shepherds” and “herdsmen,” since fixity of dwelling with the possession
of what then was considered wealth seems to have been a very common
case. Nomadic life lasted on, but it was held in disrepute. There
appears to have been nothing like a national or warlike spirit such as
that possessed by the Jews, though occasional Turanian incursions had to
be repelled. There were few towns and many scattered villages and
homesteads. We are conscious that these impressions derived from the
Avesta may be partially erroneous. Teachers of religion only take note
of political or other circumstances so far as it suits their purpose.