Persian mythology

“ Persia was a land of extremes, and the richest part of her dominions was fated to lie beneath the early snows, and feel the severity of winter, while the central portion of the country was one vast desert, whose scorching simoons were as much to be dreaded as the snows of her northern table-lands. The early settlers of Īrān, therefore, were forced to win their bread and develop their resources by the most arduous labor, and the dreamy mythology of the Hindūs gave way in their minds to the sterner conflict between good and evil. ”

“ V—PERSIAN FOLK-LORE
The Persian and Arabian folk-lore is really one, and stands quite by itself. It is unusually rich in well developed stories, many well worth study. The original myths of light and darkness were typified under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Zend-Avesta embodied their religion and literature, and is full of beauty. Later, however, the early and simple mythology degenerated into something complicated and almost puerile. The legends, preserved for us in The Thousand and One Nights, are marked by Oriental splendor. ”

“ In Persia the Aryans acquired, for the first time, a kind of collective freedom, but not yet an individual consciousness as free agents. The Indian language and Indian metaphysics, in the garb of mythology, were undoubtedly components of Egyptian, Persian, Assyrian, Chaldæan, and Babylonian art, and the forms thus produced, in their turn, became the direct elements out of which Grecian art in its infancy developed itself. ”

“ Hence it is that Ormazd and Ahriman, in their continual strife, form the background of the national mythology, although Persia took the sun for her emblem, and called her kings by his royal name; a flashing globe 88was the signal light above the imperial tent, and the golden eagle was perched upon the ensign that led the Persian troops to victory.
MYTHICAL MOUNTAINS. The silent mountains standing calmly beneath the skies of blue, while the ages come and go, always command the reverence of the human heart. ”

“ HISTORIC OUTLINE. ORIGIN OF PERSIAN LITERATURE—ACCAD AND SUMER—LITERATURE OF NINEVEH—BABYLON—ĪRĀN OR PERSIA—PHYSICAL FEATURES—PERSIAN ART—MANUSCRIPTS—EARLY LITERATURE—THE ARABIAN CONQUEST—LITERATURE OF MODERN PERSIA—PERSIAN ROMANCE.
Every nation has a literature peculiarly her own, even though it may find its sources in foreign fields. As Persia was founded upon the ruins of more ancient monarchies, as she gathered into the halls of her kings the spoils of conquered nations, so also her literature was enriched by the philosophy and science, the poetry and mythology of her predecessors. ”

“ ORIENTAL ROMANCE. [22]
Sadee.
All human beings must in beauty yield
To you; a Peri I have ne'er beheld.
PERSIAN ROMANCE.
The pure and simple religion of ancient Persia, originating, it is said, with a pastoral and hunting race among the lofty hills of Aderbijân, or, as others think, in the elevated plains of Bactria, in a region where light appears in all its splendour, took as its fundamental principle the opposition between light and darkness, and viewed that opposition as a conflict. Light was happiness; and the people of Irân, the land of light, were the favourites of Heaven ”

“ There is always the grand uprising of the king of day and the endless cycle of the stars—for this poetic people cannot forget the teaching of the Pārsī and the Sabean. In the literature found on the banks of these southern seas there is also the restfulness of night, with its coolness and dews, to be followed by the glory of the morning and the fragrance from the hearts of the roses.
Persian literature rings with voices from ruined cities, and mingles the story of the past with the dreams of her future. Her treasures are drawn from the records of Chaldean kings ”

“ No poetry has ever been more peculiarly national than that of Persia, for three centuries her lyre has been virtually silent, and yet her people cherish with peculiar fondness the memory of her poets. The finest odes of Hāfiz and the most beautiful passages of her Shāh Nāmah still live, even in the memory of her peasants; and the sorrows of Lailī and Majnūn will be chanted by Persian and Arab as long as the sons of the desert are found amidst the roses of Īrān. ”

“ O walls and towers of all the Asian realm,
O Persian land, O treasure-house of gold!
How, by one stroke, down to destruction, down,
Hath sunk our pride, and all the flower of war
That once was Persia's, lieth in the dust!
Woe on the man who first announceth woe—
Yet must I all the tale of death unroll!
Hark to me, Persians! Persia's host lies low.
Chorus
O ruin manifold, and woe, and fear!
Let the wild tears run down, for the great doom is here! ”

“ In opposition, therefore, to the god of that light which he looked upon as the visible embodiment of the Good, the Persian conceived the existence of a god of darkness, a god of evil, a god of the under-world, a god of death. ”

“ But it did add the element of fierce revenge and the tragedy of violent death, represented by the pitiless simoon and the shifting sand column, the hopeless wastes, the bitter waters, and the dry bones of perished caravans. It added the life-springs of the oasis, as well as the rushing whirlwind; it added the palm tree of the desert, with her feet in 28the burning sand and her head in the morning light—a symbol of the watch-fires of faith above the desert places of life. The best literature of Persia in our own age is largely the reproduction in various forms of her standard poets ”

“ And consider the character of the engraving—it consists of a mythological animal, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way that the figure of the scarabaeus on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. ”

“ Under the hands of a host of editors, scribes and copyists, who have no scruples anent changing words, names and dates, abridging descriptions and attaching their own decorations, the florid and rhetorical Persian would readily be converted into the straight-forward, business-like, matter of fact Arabic. And what easier than to islamise the old Zoroasterism, to transform Ahriman into Iblis the Shaytan, Jan bin Jan into Father Adam, and the Divs and Peris of Kayomars and the olden Guebre Kings into the Jinns and Jinniyahs of Sulayman? ”

“ The Shah Nameh the original source of the story, and which purports to narrate the exploits of Persia's kings and champions over a space of thirty-six centuries, bears the same relation to Persian literature as the Iliad and Odyssey to the Greek, and the Aeneid to the Latin, though in structure it more nearly resembles Morte d'Arthur, [p.150] which records in order the achievements of various heroes. ”

“ To account for this, the Persian creates a second spirit, whose nature is evil, and supposes a continual war between that and the god of good. In our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians image a similar demon. ”

“ The achievements of the Persians in art, literature and religion are by no means contemptible, but somewhat mixed and cosmopolitan. Owing to its position, the Persian state, when it from time to time became a conquering empire, overlapped Asia Minor, Babylon and India, and hence acted as an intermediary for transmitting art and ideas, sending for instance Greek sculpture to India and the cult of Mithra to western Europe. ”

“ Hence the heroes in the Shāh-Nāmah exhibit many of the traits of the Vedic deities—traits which have lived through the Zoroastrian period, the Achæmenian dynasty, the Macedonian rule, the Parthian wars, and even the Arabian conquest, to be reproduced in the poem of Firdusī.
The modern phase of their literature is emphatically an age of poetry; the Persians of these later centuries seem to have been born with a song on their lips, for their poets are numbered by thousands. ”

“ He might have added “by every reasoning being from prince to peasant, from Mullah to Badawi, between Marocco and Outer Ind.”
The Fairy Tale in The Nights is wholly and purely Persian. The gifted Iranian race, physically the noblest and the most beautiful of all known to me, has exercised upon the world-history an amount of influence which has not yet been fully recognised. It repeated for Babylonian art and literature what Greece had done for Egyptian, whose dominant idea was that of working for eternity a κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί. ”

“ The bodies of the dead may not be burned; it is said indeed that the corpse of a Persian cannot be buried till it has been torn by a dog or a bird, and among the Magians this is an acknowledged practice. It is a meritorious act among the Persians to have many children, and he who can show the most receives gifts each year from the king. Each man celebrates the day on which he was born above all other days. ”

“ There have been periods in the world’s history when the religion of the Pārsīs threatened to dominate over all others. If Persia had won the battles of Marathon and Salamis, and thus succeeded in the final conquest of Greece, the worship of Ormazd might have become the religion of the whole civilized world. Persia already ruled over the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were under her power, and the sacred monuments of Egypt had been mutilated by the Persian soldiery. ”

“ There are three principal love stories in Persia which, from the earliest times, have been the themes of every poet. Scarcely one of the great masters of Persian literature but has adopted and added celebrity to these beautiful and interesting legends, which can never be too often repeated to an Oriental ear. ”

“ The Magian who stands by sings the theogony over it, for such, according to the Persians, is the nature of the prayer. After some time, the person who has made the sacrifice carries the flesh away and uses it for a feast. The Magians, in whose control is [Pg 86] the worship by sacrifice, make it a great object to kill ants, serpents, and other creeping winged things: dogs and men only do they spare. No Persian may pollute a river, nor even wash in it, nor will they allow any one else to do so, for they have a great reverence for rivers. ”

“ And the Persians are naturally a religious people, and if their religious energy could be turned from dead works, formal prayers, fastings, pilgrimages, divining,—turned to the service of the true and living God, what a splendid people they might be again, what a force for God in Asia, and in the world. For the wave of true religious life would act again on us and help us on. God grant we may yet see the Persian, stunted as he is by Muhammadanism, grow up to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. ”

“ If, however, the ancients did less than justice to the efforts of the Persians in architecture, sculpture, and the kindred arts, moderns have, on the contrary, given them rather an undue prominence. From the middle of the seventeenth century, when Europeans first began freely to penetrate the East, the Persian ruins, especially those of Persepolis, drew the marked attention of travellers ”

“ SOHRAB AND RUSTEM RUSTEM The Persians have a great epic which is to them about what the Iliad and the Odyssey were to the Greeks and the Æneid was to the Romans. In character, however, the Persian epic is more like the English narrative Morte d’ Arthur, from which readings will be found elsewhere in these volumes. This wonderful poem, the Shah Nameh, relates exploits of the Shahs of Persia for a period that is supposed to extend over more than three thousand years. ”

“ THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS. EARLY LITERATURE—HISTORIC TABLETS—THE INSCRIPTIONS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR—THE FALL OF BABYLON—CYRUS, THE ACHÆMENIAN—BEHISTUN INSCRIPTIONS—DARIUS AT PERSEPOLIS—INSCRIPTIONS OF XERXES—ARTAXERXES—A LATER PERSIAN TABLET—RÉSUMÉ.
The early literature of Persia takes root in ancient soil, and the foundation of her world of letters must be sought for amidst the graven stones of forgotten tribes. ”

“ But a reckless policy led the Persian host to a sure defeat upon the plains of Marathon, and prepared the way for the humiliation of Xerxes, and the later triumphs of Alexander. Then the sons of the desert poured like a mountain torrent over the plains of Īrān, and the star and crescent flashed everywhere from banners on Persian soil, while to-day the Arab pitches his tent amidst the ruins of ancient cities, and only the spade of the explorer reveals their buried treasures. ”

“ There can be little doubt that, besides the cuneiform character, which was only suited for inscriptions, the Persians employed a cursive writing for common literary purposes. Ctesias informs us that the royal archives were written on parchment; and there is abundant evidence that writing was an art perfectly familiar to the educated Persian. ”

“ In every district from the Euxine to the Solway he brought a new message to heathendom. Pure from all grossness of myth, the Persian god of light came as the mediator and comforter, to soothe the poor and broken-hearted, and give the cleansing of the mystic blood. His hierarchy of the initiated, his soothing symbolic sacraments, his gorgeous ritual, and his promise of immortality to those who drank the mystic Haoma, gratified and stimulated religious longings which were to find their full satisfaction in the ministry of the Church. ”