Philip Lake, Albert Houtum-Schindler, Eduard Meyer, Karl F. Geldner and Karl H. Ethé

“ These gāthās are what they claim to be, and what they are honoured in the whole Avesta as being—the actual productions of the prophet himself or of his time. They bear in themselves irrefutable proofs of their authenticity, bringing us face to face not with the Zoroaster of the legends but with a real person, announcing a new doctrine and way of salvation, no supernatural Being assured of victory, but a mere man, struggling with human conflicts of every sort, in the midst of a society of fellow-believers yet in its earliest infancy. ”

“ For the provinces remaining unsubdued on the extreme frontiers to the west, the north and the east are in their view almost negligible quantities. And far removed as the Persians are from disavowing their proud sense of nationality (“a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan stock” says Darius of himself in the inscription on his tomb) —yet equally vivid is the feeling that they rule the whole civilized world, that their task is to reduce it to unity, and that by the will of Ahuramazda they are pledged to govern it aright. ”

“ The Persian sought to protect himself against danger, by employing Greeks in the national service and turning Greek policy to the interests of the empire. In the Greek world itself the disgrace that a people, called to universal dominion and capable of wielding it, should be dependent on the mandate of an impotent Asiatic monarchy, was keenly felt by all who were not yet absorbed in the rivalry of city with city. ”

“ It is idle, however, to read definite historical events into such traits, or to attempt, with some scholars, to convert them into history itself. We cannot deduce from them a conquest of Iran from Babylon: for the Babylonians never set foot in Iran, and even the Assyrians merely conquered the western portion of Media. Nor yet can we make the favourite assumption of a great empire in Bactria. On the contrary, it is historically evident that before the Achaemenids there were in Bactria. ”

“ The greatest punishment to an untrustworthy slave is to give him his liberty and let him earn his living. They vary in colour and value: the ‘Habashi’ or Abyssinian is the most valued; the Suhali or Somali, next in blackness, is next in price; the Bombassi, or coal-black negro of the interior, being of much less price, and usually only used as a cook. The prices of slaves in Shiraz are, a good Habashi girl of twelve to fourteen £40, a good Somali same age, half as much; while a Bombassi is to be got for £14, being chosen merely for physical strength. ”

“ Thus it is explicable that all the Sassanids, as many of the Arsacids before them, include the designation of “god” in their formal style. From this developed (as already under the Arsacids) that strict principle of legitimacy which is still vigorous in Firdousi. It applies, however, to the whole royal house, precisely as in the Ottoman Empire of to-day. The person of the individual ruler is, on the other hand, a matter of indifference. He can readily be removed and replaced by another; but no usurper who was not of the legitimate blood can hope no become the genuine king. ”

“ The Persian kings—none more so than Darius, whose religious convictions are enshrined in his inscriptions—and, with the kings, their people, were ardent professors of the pure doctrine of Zoroaster; and the Persians settled in the provinces diffused his creed throughout the whole empire. Thus a strong Persian propagandism arose especially in Armenia and Cappadocia, where the religion took deep root among the people, but also in Lydia and Lycia. ”

“ In this world, two groups of powers confront each other in a truceless war, the powers of Good, of Light, of creative Strength, of Life and of Truth, and the powers of Evil, of Darkness, Destruction, Death and Deceit. ”

“ The character of the Persian is that of an easy-going man with a wish to make things pleasant generally. He is hospitable, obliging, and specially well disposed to the foreigner. His home virtues are many: he is very kind and indulgent to his children and, as a son, his respect for both parents is excessive, developed in a greater degree to his father, in whose presence he will rarely sit, and whom he is in the habit of addressing and speaking of as ‘master.’ The full stream of his love and reverence is reserved for his mother; he never leaves her to starve, and her wishes are laws to him. ”

“ The definite erection of a single, vast, world-empire cost them their original connexion with the state, and compelled them in future to address themselves, not to the community at large, but to individuals, to promise, not political success nor the independence of the people, Religion. ”

“ Mahmud entered Isfahan in triumph with the captive shah on his left hand, and, seating himself on the throne in the royal palace, he was saluted as sovereign of Persia by the unfortunate Ḥosain. When Ṭahmasp, the fugitive prince, received tidings of the abdication of his father, he at once assumed the title of shah at Kazvin.
Turkey and Russia were not slow to take advantage of the calamities of Persia. The Turks seized on Tiflis, Tabriz and Hamadan, while Peter the Great, whose aid had been sought by the friendless Ṭahmasp, fitted out a fleet on the Caspian. ”

“ In the person of his son, the throne was occupied by a soldier and statesman of genius, saturated with Greek culture and Greek thought, and intolerant of every goal but the highest. To conquer the whole world for Hellenic civilization by the aid of Macedonian spears, and to reduce the whole earth to unity, was the task that this heir of Heracles and Achilles saw before him. ”

“ The development of Persian poetry under these first native dynasties was slow. Arabic language and literature had gained too firm a footing to be supplanted at once by a new literary idiom still in its infancy; nevertheless the few poets who arose under the Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids show already the germs of the characteristic tendency of all later Persian literature, which aims at amalgamating the enforced spirit of Islamism with their own Aryan feelings, and reconciling the strict deism of the Mahommedan religion with their inborn loftier and more or less pantheistic ideas ”

“ Not strong enough to break up the nobility, with its great estates, they were forced to utilize its services and still further to promote its interests; while their dependence on its good-will and assistance led inevitably to incessant gifts of money, lands and men. This state of affairs had also prevailed under the later Achaemenids, and had materially contributed to the disintegration of the empire and the numerous insurrections of the satraps. ”

“ The gorgeous cult of the gods of civilization (especially of Babylon) , with their host of temples, images and festivals, exercised a corresponding influence on the mother-country. Moreover, the unadulterated doctrine of Zoroaster could no more become a permanent popular religion than can Christianity. For the masses can make little of abstractions and an omnipotent, omnipresent deity; they need concrete divine powers, standing nearer to themselves and their lot. Thus the old figures of the Aryan folk-religion return to the foreground, there to be amalgamated with the Babylonian divinities. ”

“ The consequences of this development were that orthodoxy and literal obedience to all priestly injunctions now assumed an importance far greater than previously; henceforward, the great commandment of Zoroastrianism, as of Judaism, is to combat the heresies of the heathen, a movement which had already had an energetic representative in the prophet himself. Heathenish cults and forbidden manners and customs are a pollution to the land and a deep insult to the true God. Therefore the duty of the believer is to combat and destroy the unbeliever and the heretic. ”

“ For twenty years a profound peace prevailed throughout the empire, but it was the precursor of a terrible storm destined to destroy the Safawid dynasty and scatter calamity broadcast over Persia. In the mountainous districts of Kandahar and Kabul the hardy tribes of Afghans had for centuries led a wild and almost independent life. They were divided into two great branches—the Ghilzais of Ghazni and Kabul and the Saduzais of Kandahar and Herat. ”

“ None the less Mani found means to diffuse his creed far and wide over the whole empire. Even the heir to the throne, Hormizd I. (reigned 272–273) , was favourably disposed to him; but Shapur’s younger son, Bahram I (273–276) , yielded to sacerdotal pressure, and Mani was executed. After that Manichaeism was persecuted and extirpated in Iran. Yet it maintained itself not merely in the west, where its head resided at Babylon—propagating thence far into the Roman Empire—but also in the east, in Khorasan and beyond the bounds of the Sassanian dominion. ”

“ Physical Geography.—Modern Persia occupies the western and larger half of the great Iranian plateau which, rising to a height of from 4000 to 8000 ft. between the valleys of the Indus and Tigris, covers more than a million square miles. Taking the Kuren Dagh or Kopet Dagh to form the northern scarp of this plateau east of the Caspian, we find a prolongation of it in the highlands north of the political frontier on the Aras, and even in the Caucasus itself. On the north-west Persia is united by the highlands of Armenia to the mountains of Asia Minor ”

“ Every Persian able to bear arms is bound to serve the king—the great landowners on horseback, the commonalty on foot. The noble and well-to-do, who need not till their fields in person, are pledged to appear at court as frequently as possible. ”

“ Not only amongst Iranian languages, but amongst all the languages of the Indo-European group, Zend takes one of the very highest places in importance for the comparative philologist. In age it almost rivals Sanskrit; in primitiveness it surpasses that language in many points; it is inferior only in respect of its less extensive literature, and because it has not been made the subject of systematic grammatical treatment. The age of Zend must be examined in connexion with the age of the Avesta. ”

“ Thus the creed became a powerful factor in the development of an united Iranian nationality.
That a religion, which lays its chief stress upon moral precepts, may readily develop into casuistry and external formalism, with an infinity of minute prescriptions, injunctions on purity and the like, is well known. In the Avesta all these recur ad nauseam, so much so that the primitive spirit of the religion is stifled beneath them, as the doctrine of the ancient prophets was stifled in Judaism and the Talmud. The Sassanid Empire, indeed, is completely dominated by this formalism and ritualism ”

“ The outcome of his teaching was a division of Mahommedanism vitally momentous to the world of Islam. The Persian mind was peculiarly adapted to receive the form of religion prepared for it by the philosophers of Ardebil. The doctrines presented were dreamy and mystic; they rejected the infallibility of human wisdom, and threw suspicion on the order and arrangement of human orthodoxy. There was free scope given for the indulgence of that political imagination which revels in revolution and chafes at prescriptive bondage. As Malcolm remarks, “the very essence of Sufi-ism is poetry.” ”

“ In its present form the Avesta is not the work of a single author or of any one age, but embraces collections produced during a long period. The view which became current through Anquetil Duperron, that the Avesta is throughout the work of Zoroaster (in Zend, Zarathushtra) , the founder of the religion, has long been abandoned as untenable. But the opposite view, that not a single word in the book can lay claim to the authorship of Zoroaster, also appears on closer study too sweeping. In the Avesta two stages of the language are plainly distinguishable. ”

“ In inner Persia the air is exceptionally dry, and in many districts polished steel may be exposed in the open during a great part of the year without becoming tarnished. Along the shores of the Caspian, particularly in Gilan and Mazandaran, and of the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the Shatt el Arab down to Bander Abbasi, the air during a great part of the year contains much moisture—dry- and wet-bulb thermometers at times indicating the same temperature—and at nights there are heavy falls of dew. ”

“ Here, then, we have a perfect example of syncretism; as in the Mithras cult in Armenia, Asia Minor, and still further in the Roman Empire. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism have been wedded in the state religion, and, in characteristic Indian fashion, are on the best of terms with one another, precisely as, in the Chinese Empire at the present day, we find the most varied religions, side by side, and on an equal footing. ”

“ All who approach fling themselves to the ground, life and death depend on his nod. Among his people he is accounted the fairest, strongest and wisest man of the empire; and from him is required the practice of all piety and virtue, as well as skill in the chase and in arms—especially the bow. Ardashir I., moreover, and his successors endeavoured to establish the validity of the royal will by absorbing the vassal states and instituting a firmer organization. Nevertheless they failed to attain the complete independence and power of the Achaemenids. ”

“ Many new characters—Siyawush, Rustam, &c.—have swelled the original list: among them is King Gushtasp (Vishtaspa) , the patron of Zoroaster, who was known from the poems of the prophet and is placed at the close of the legendary age. The old gods and mythical figures reappear as heroes and kings, and their battles are fought no longer in heaven but upon earth, where they are localized for the most part in the east of Iran. In other words, the war of the gods has degenerated to the war between Iranian civilization and the Turanians. ”

“ To wield a peaceful authority over all the subjects of the empire, to reward merit, and to punish transgression—such is the highest task of king and officials.
On his native soil Cyrus built himself a town, with a palace and a tomb, in the district of Pasargadae (now the ruins of Royal Residences. Murghab) . This Darius replaced by a new capital, deeper in the centre of the country, which bore the name “Persian” (Pārsa) , the Persepolis (q.v.) of the later Greeks. But the district of Persis was too remote to be the administrative centre of a world-empire. ”

“ Only the evil serpent Azhi Dahaka (Azhdahak) is domiciled by the Avesta in Babylon (Bawri) and depicted on the model of Babylonian gods and demons: he is a king in human form with a serpent growing from either shoulder and feeding on the brains of men. In these traits are engrained the general conditions of history and culture, under which the Iranians lived: on the one hand, the contrast between Iranian and Turanian; on the other, the dominating position of Babylon, which influenced most strongly the civilization and religion of Iran. ”

“ The powers of the Shah (Shahanshah, [16] or “king of kings”) over his subjects and their property were absolute, but only in so far as they were not opposed to the shar’, or “divine law,” which consists of the doctrines of the Mahommedan religion, as laid down in the Koran, the oral commentaries and sayings of the Prophet, and the interpretations by his successors and the high priesthood. ”