Zoroastrianism

“ Its key beliefs center on a transcendent creator God, Ahura Mazda, and the concept of free will. The key ethical tenets of Zoroastrianism expressed in its scripture, the Avesta, are based on a dualistic worldview where one may prevent chaos if one chooses to serve God and exercises good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Zoroastrianism is generally a closed religion and members are almost always born to Zoroastrian parents. Prior to the spread of Islam, Zoroastrianism dominated greater Iran. Today, though a minority, Zoroastrians remain primarily in Iran, India, and Pakistan. ”

“ But the radical difference between Zoroastrianism and other religions is that it does not conceive of this one God as an omnipotent Creator, who might make the universe as he chose, and therefore was directly responsible for all the evil in it; but as a Being acting by certain fixed laws, one of which was, for reasons totally inscrutable to us, that existence implied polarity, and therefore that there could be no good without corresponding evil. ”

“ The affinity between Zoroastrianism and art is easily explained when we consider that in one respect it has a manifest advantage over most Christian forms of religion. Christianity in its early origins received a taint of Oriental asceticism which it never shook off, and which in the declining centuries of the Roman empire, and in the barbarism and superstition of the Middle Ages, developed into what may be almost called a devil-worship of the ugly and repulsive. ”

“ Several of the Eranian kings incurred the censure involved in the nickname of "idolaters" in consequence of the favour they extended to the preachers of Nirvana. [164] No religion of antiquity was less favourable to a life of passive contemplation than Zoroastrianism, which defined life as a continuous struggle, and considered virtue as a successful battle with the powers of darkness; and yet little by little Zoroastrian monasteries sprang up by the side of the Fire Temples, and offered a quiet refuge from the turmoil of the world to the pious worshippers of Ahura Mazda. ”

“ There are only 100,000 of these followers of Zoroaster in the world. 90,000 of them are in India; and nearly all of these reside in Bombay and its vicinity. Their faith, Zoroastrianism, is the purest of ethnic religions. It has preserved its ancient integrity and high tone much better than its sister faith, Brahmanism. Among the members of this religion are found men possessed of great enterprise, much wealth, the spirit of progress and of philanthropy and culture. ”

“ It is generally believed that Zoroaster was a real person and the founder of this religion, which is called after his name, Zoroastrianism. There is, however, great uncertainty about the period of his existence; some would make him contemporary with David or Solomon. It is probable that he lived in a much later time than these Israelitish kings.
The religion of Zoroaster is dualistic. It teaches that there are two uncreated beings. Ormazd, the supreme good, and Ahriman, the evil; that Ormazd created the earth, the heavens, and man, and that [Pg 64] man is created free ”

“ If society suffers for the faults of its units, it is because the individuals are human; but even these faults and these sufferings turn out to be incentives for the sure and steady work of advancement. Zarathushtra is the first to give meaning to human history. There is the great design, the stupendous purpose, the onward march towards making a new world, a perfect world. Progress is the Zoroastrian watchword. Man's birth is an ascent to the state of final perfection. Each individual has to join hands with the rest of his fellows in this great and noble undertaking ”

“ The strict logic of the doctrine of Zoroastrian eschatology and the symmetry of the entire system demand a place where the souls whose good and evil deeds exactly balance and who cannot ascend to heaven because of the heaviness of their sins, and yet are not so weighed down by sin as to descend into hell, and find their resting-place till the final judgment. ”

“ The fact that the odd numbers are put above the even has been emphasised by Gladisch in his comparison of the Pythagorian with the Chinese doctrine, and the fact, moreover, that among the oppositions we find those of light and darkness, good and evil, has induced many, in ancient and modern times, to suppose that they were borrowed from Zoroastrianism. ”

“ Some creation-myths of the world relate that the earthly creatures have sprung from the bodies of the primeval man or of the cosmic cow killed by the gods or, as in the case of the later Zoroastrianism, by the Evil Spirit. ”

“ The great advantage of this form of religious hypothesis, which for want of a better name I call Zoroastrianism, is that, in the first place, it gets rid of the antagonism between religion and science, for there is no possible discovery of science which is irreconcilable with the fact that there is a necessary and inevitable polarity of good and evil, and in the background a great unknown, which may be regarded with those feelings and aspirations which are inseparable from human nature. ”

“ Zoroastrian teaching represents Ormuzed as the all-knowing and the holy creator of the world. He cannot create evil. He is the source of all purity, order and righteousness. Wrong and misery have come into the world from Ahriman, the opposite contending power in the universe. Zoroastrianism thus gives the world-system a moral foundation and law of order. The moral life is a holy conflict with the forces of evil within human nature and assailing it. The supreme end of life is to increase the ascendency of righteousness and establish its everlasting reign of truth and goodness. ”

“ It is the only privileged priestly class that the Avesta recognizes.
Spread of Zoroastrianism in remote lands. The Zoroastrian missionaries travelled to distant lands for the purpose of promulgating the religion, and their homeward return from their sacred missions is celebrated by the faithful. [53] The promulgating zeal on the part of the Zoroastrian priests seems to have provoked opposition from non-believers. Keresani, a powerful ruler of a foreign land, we are informed, prevented the fire-priests of Iran from visiting his country to preach the Zoroastrian doctrines. ”

“ In this creed of Zoroastrianism three important points are especially to be emphasized: for on them depend its peculiar characteristics and historical significance:—
1. The abstractions which it preaches are not products of metaphysical speculation, as in India, but rather the ethical forces which dominate human life. They impose a duty upon man, and enjoin on him a positive line of action—a definite activity in the world. And this world he is not to eschew, like the Brahman and the Buddhist, but to work in it, enjoying existence and life to the full. ”

“ These followers of an eclectic philosophy, and interpreters of the divine scriptures through a claimed knowledge of occult and hidden meanings, applied the theosophic principles of explanation to the teachings of Zoroaster, and adapted them to the Zoroastrian theology. Such an interpretation, however, led them to credit the religion of Zoroaster with ideas that in no period of its religious history were ever included in its sphere. ”

“ We find no traces of such open disregard of the genuine teachings of the faith, when the priesthood firmly established its influence. Orthodox Zoroastrianism never sanctioned any form of idol-worship in Iran. ”

“ Peoples of diverse faiths and nationalities have, likewise, written about Zoroaster and his teachings from the earliest to the modern times. Greeks and Romans and Christians in the Occident and Indians, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, and Chinese in the Orient have contributed to the fund of information on the subject. ”

“ Literary Iran has known him as her arch-enemy, and the Pahlavi writers have branded him 'accursed,' 'evil-destined,' and an envoy of Ahriman. After a long period of darkness, following his ill-destined invasion of Persia, Iran once more recovered her political autonomy, but she never regained, in their pristine fulness, the holy works of her great prophet.
Zoroastrianism thrives better under the Parthians than under the Seleucids. The premature death of the great conqueror brought the end of his ambition of hellenizing Persia. ”

“ In Zoroastrianism not only was continuance of life recognized, but a strict retribution was taught. Heaven and hell were very clearly distinguished, and each soul according to its works passed to the one or to the other. ”

“ The races that formed the Zoroastrian fold were the Bactrians, the Medes, and the Persians, who successively rose to political independence in Ancient Iran. The Bactrians of the Northeast, the Medians of the Northwest, and the Persians of the Southwest, were politically welded into one Persian nation, under the Achaemenian empire. This process of blending these different peoples into one homogeneous nation under the creed of Zoroaster was completed by the time of the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. ”

“ The faithful may infer from the spirit that runs through the Zoroastrian scriptures that there are no breaks in the life story of humanity. Each individual is a unit in the long line of countless generations between the first and the last man. He realizes his individuality in his own age and place. Each generation is the product of the past and parent of the future. It finds itself placed in the midst of religious, social, economical, and political institutions of the past and inherits the accumulated heritage of the wisdom and civilization of the collective humanity that has lived before it. ”

“ Dual nature of the Zoroastrian ancestor-worship. The commemoration of the Fravashis of the dead represents but one phase of ancestor- worship. As we have already seen, the spiritual prototype of man is something apart from and above his soul. ”

“ The hardest crux that confronts the Zoroastrian divines, as it does every theologian, is how Ahura Mazda, the father of goodness, can be made responsible for the existence of evil in this world. The prophet had already taught the existence of an independent power as the originator of evil. The idea inherent in this teaching is now elaborately worked out until every object that is branded by man as evil is ascribed to the agency of the Evil Spirit. ”

“ Incessant work for the Kingdom of Righteousness deepens man's life; uncompromising war against the Kindgom of Wickedness strengthens it. This two-fold activity makes life complete. To further righteousness is only half the duty; to combat wickedness is the other half. Both are indispensable to realize the Zoroastrian ideal of righteousness.
Every one can contribute his or her mite, in the manifold walks of life, to the grand end of bringing about the final victory of good and the utter defeat of evil. ”

“ The ideal of his life will be that he will endeavour to be like Ahura Mazda and Zarathushtra and Frashaoshtra and Jamaspa and all those that have proved themselves to be the righteous and true benefactors of mankind and even like the good waters and trees and cattle. [33] He undertakes to protect the Mazdayasnian settlements from harm and drought, [34] and neither for the love of his body nor his life will he ever be a source of harm to them. [35] By his thoughts, words, and deeds, does he abjure and hate the chieftainship of the daevas, sorcerers, and those addicted to sorcery. ”

“ Vast numbers of men and women have always believed in heaven and hell as certainties. The fear of punishment in the next world has had a great deterrent effect upon many wicked persons. They have dreaded death opening the door to their damnation.
Reward for the good and retribution for the evil. Looking to the history of the origin of this belief among the cultured peoples prior to the advent of Zarathushtra, we find that the growth of ethical concepts led the early Egyptians to believe in the judgment of the soul in the next world. ”

“ These modern votaries of Zrvan were, however, not to be confounded with the Zarvanite sect of old, which looked to Zrvan Akarana as a personality as much defined as Ormazd. We have already seen that, in postulating impersonated Time as the originator of Ormazd and Ahriman, the sect aimed at supplanting Zoroastrian dualism by monotheism, in order to save their religion from the so-called stigma of dualism. Not so the theosophists, who grafted this new feature on the pure teachings of Zoroaster. ”

“ One of the names for divinity in general is Bagha, literally meaning 'dispenser.' We have seen that its history goes far back to the Indo-European period. In the Rig Veda, Bhaga is one of the Adityas, and one hymn is dedicated to him. Unlike the term Yazata, which retains its place as a divine appellation throughout the history of Zoroastrianism, Bagha soon loses its significance in the Avestan texts. The inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings do not speak of the heavenly beings as Yazatas, but they speak of them under the designation Bagha, as noted below. ”

“ The theosophists attempted a readjustment of the Zoroastrian doctrine of a personal God, or rather in accordance with their theory of an impersonal God. Personality, they alleged implied limitation and was a characteristic of the finite. A personal God meant that the godhead was a limited God, and therefore an incomplete God. In Zrvan Akarana, or Boundless Time, the Parsi theosophists saw this impersonal neuter being of whom nothing could be predicated. ”

“ God fashions religion as an ideal aiming at cohesiveness, brotherhood, and unity among mankind. Man makes it disturbing, disruptive, and divisive. The great ideal recedes from the very inception of religion, until it grows dim and distant. It does not die, because ideals are immortal. Hope, ingrained in human heart, holds out the eternal assurance of its eventual realization.
Friendless and forlorn, Zarathushtra flees to Ahura Mazda. ”