Zoroaster an historical person—The Parsees—Iranian branch of Aryan family—Zoroaster a religious reformer—Scene at Balkh—Conversion of Gushtasp—Doctrines of the ‘excellent religion’—Monotheism—Polarity—Dr. Haug’s description—Ormuzd and Ahriman—Anquetil du Perron—Approximation to modern thought—Absence of miracles—Code of morals—Its comprehensiveness—And liberality—Special rites—Fire-worship—Disposal of dead—Practical results—The Parsees of Bombay—Their probity, enterprise, respect for women—Zeal for education—Philanthropy and public spirit—Statistics—Death and birth rates. Zoroastrianism is commonly supposed to derive its name from its founder Zoroaster, a Bactrian sage or prophet, who lived in the reign of King Gushtasp the First. Zoroaster’s name has come down to us from antiquity in much the same relation to this form of religion as that of Moses to Judaism, or of Sakya-Mouni to Buddhism. As in those cases, certain learned commentators have endeavoured to show that the alleged founder was purely mythical and had no real historical existence, basing their argument mainly on the fact that a number of supernatural attributes, and embodiments of metaphysical and theological ideas, became attached to the name, just as a whole cycle of solar myths became associated with the name of Hercules. But this seems to be carrying scepticism too far. Experience shows that religions have generally[198] originated in the crystallisation of ideas floating in solution at certain periods of the evolution of societies, about the nucleus of some powerful personality. Nearly all the great religions of the world, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, clearly had historical founders, and it would be hypercritical to deny that such a man as Jesus of Nazareth really lived because many of his sayings and doings may be traced to applications, more or less erroneous, of ancient prophecies, or because his human nature became transfigured into the Logos and other metaphysical conceptions of the Alexandrian philosophy.
In the case of Zoroaster, the argument for his historical existence seems even stronger, for his name is connected with historical reigns and places, and his genuine early history contains nothing supernatural or improbable. He is represented as simply a deep thinker and powerful preacher, like Luther, who gave new form and expression to the vague religious and philosophical ideas of his age and nation, reformed its superstitions and abuses, and converted the leading minds of his day, including the monarch, by the earnestness and eloquence of his discourses. At any rate, for my purpose I shall assume his personality, for my object is not to write a critical essay on the origin and development of the Zoroastrian religion, but to show that in its fundamental ideas and essential spirit it approximates wonderfully to those of the most advanced modern thought, and gives the outline of a creed which goes further than any other to meet the practical wants of the present day, and to reconcile the conflict between faith and science. This will be most clearly and vividly shown by assuming the commonly accepted historical existence[199] of Zoroaster to be true, and by confining myself to the broad, leading principles of his religion, without dwelling on its varying phases, or on the mythical legends and ritualistic observances which, as in the case of all other old religions, have crystallised about the primitive idea and the primitive founder.
Zara-thustra, or, as he is commonly called, Zoroaster, and the religion which goes by his name, are known to us mainly from the sacred books which have been preserved by the modern Parsees. The Parsees, a small remnant of the Persians who under Cyrus founded one of the mightiest empires of the ancient world, flying from their native country to escape from persecution after the Mahometan conquest, formed a colony in India, and are now settled at Bombay. They form a small but highly intelligent community, who have preserved their ancient religion, and, fortunately, some considerable fragments of their sacred scriptures. The oldest of these are written in the Gata dialect of the Avesta or Zend language, which is contemporary with Sanskrit, and bears much the same relation to it as Latin does to Greek. The primitive Aryan family at some very remote period became divided into two branches, and radiated from their Central Asian home in two directions. The Hindoo branch migrated to the south into the Punjaub and Hindostan; the Iranian westwards, into Bactria and Persia; while other successive waves of Aryan migration in prehistoric times rolled still further westwards over Europe, obliterating all but a few traces of the aboriginal population.
The period of this separation of the Iranian and Hindoo races must be very remote, for the Rig-Veda is probably at least 4,000 years old, and the divergence[200] between its form of Sanskrit and the Gata dialect of the Zend is already as great as that between two kindred European languages such as Greek and Latin. The divergence of religious ideas is also evidently of very early date. In the Hindoo, and all other races of the primitive Aryan stock, the word used for gods and good spirits is taken from the root ‘div,’ to shine. Thus, Daeva in Sanskrit, Zeus and Theos in Greek, Deus in Latin, Tius in German, Diews in Lutheranism, Dia in Irish, Dew in Kymric, all mean the bright or shining one represented by the vault of heaven. But in Iranian the word has an opposite sense, and the ‘deevs’ correspond to our ‘devils.’
The primitive Aryan religions were evidently all derived from a contemplation of the powers and phenomena of nature. The sky, with its flood of light and vault of ethereal blue, was considered to be the highest manifestation of a Supreme Power; while the sun and moon, the stars and planets, the winds and clouds, the earth and waters, were personified, either as symbols of the Deity or as subordinate gods. The original simple faith was thus apt to degenerate into a system of polytheism, and, as the gods came to be represented by visible forms, into idolatry.
Zoroaster appears to us, like Mahomet at a later age and among a ruder people, as a prophet or reformer who abolished these abuses and restored the ancient faith in a loftier and more intellectual form, adapted to the use of an advanced and civilised society. The records of his life and teaching have fortunately been preserved in so authentic a form, that distant as he is from us we can form a singularly accurate idea of who he was and what he taught.
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Some 3,200 years ago a sight might have been seen in the ancient city of Balkh—the famous capital of Bactria, the ‘Mother of Cities’—very like that witnessed some fourteen centuries later at our own Canterbury. The king and his chief nobles and courtiers were assembled to hear the discourse of a preacher who proposed to teach them a better religion. Gushtasp listened to Zoroaster, as Ethelbert listened to Augustine, and in each case reason and eloquence carried conviction, and the nation became converts to the new doctrine.
This conversion was effected without miracles, for it is expressly stated in the celebrated speech of the prophet, preserved in the 30th chapter of the Yasna, that he relied solely on persuasion and argument. Ferdousi, the Persian Homer, thus describes the first interview between Zoroaster and Gushtasp: ‘Learn,’ he said, ‘the rites and doctrines of the religion of excellence. For without religion there cannot be any worth in a king. When the mighty monarch heard him speak of the excellent religion, he accepted from him the excellent rites and doctrines.’
The doctrines of this ‘excellent religion’ are extremely simple. The leading idea is that of monotheism, but the one God has far fewer anthropomorphic attributes, and is relegated much farther back into the vague and infinite, than the god of any other monotheistic religion. Ahura-Mazda, of which the more familiar appellation Ormuzd is an abbreviation, means the ‘All-knowing Lord;’ he is said sometimes to dwell in the infinite luminous space, and sometimes to be identical with it. He is, in fact, not unlike the inscrutable First Cause, whom we may regard with awe and reverence, with love and hope, but whom we cannot[202] pretend to define or to understand. 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.
Dr. Haug, who is the greatest authority on all questions connected with the Zend scriptures, says: ‘Having arrived at the grand idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, Zoroaster undertook to solve the great problem which has engaged the attention of so many wise men of antiquity and even in modern times, viz. how are the imperfections discernible in the world, the various kind of evils, wickedness, and baseness, compatible with the goodness, holiness, and justness of God? This great thinker of remote antiquity solved this difficult question philosophically, by the supposition of two prim?val causes, which, though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of spirit. These two prim?val principles are the two moving causes in the universe, united from the beginning, and therefore called twins. They are present everywhere—in the Ahura Mazda, or Supreme Deity, as well as in man.’
They are called in the Vendidad Spento Mainyush, or the ‘beneficent spirit,’ and Angro Mainyush, or the ‘hurtful spirit.’ The latter is generally known as Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness; and the former as Ormuzd, is identified with Ahura Mazda, the good God, though, strictly speaking, Ahura Mazda is the great[203] unknown First Cause, who comprehends within himself both principles as a necessary law of existence, and in whom believers may hope that evil and good will ultimately be reconciled.
Anquetil du Perron, the first translator of the Zendavesta, in his ‘Critical View of the Theological and Ceremonial System of Zar-thurst,’ thus sums up the Parsee creed: ‘The first point in the theological system of Zoroaster is to recognise and adore the Master of all that is good, the Principle of all righteousness, Ormuzd, according to the form of worship prescribed by him, and with purity of thought, of word, and of action, a purity which is marked and preserved by purity of body. Next, to have a respect, accompanied by gratitude, for the intelligence to which Ormuzd has committed the care of nature (i.e. to the laws of nature), to take in our actions their attributes for models, to copy in our conduct the harmony which reigns in the different parts of the universe, and generally to honour Ormuzd in all that he has produced. The second part of their religion consists in detesting the author of all evil, moral and physical, Ahriman—his productions, and his works; and to contribute, as far as in us lies, to exalt the glory of Ormuzd by enfeebling the tyranny which the Evil Principle exercises over the world.’
It is evident that this simple and sublime religion is one to which, by whatever name we may call it, the best modern thought is fast approximating. Men of science like Huxley, philosophers like Herbert Spencer, poets like Tennyson, might all subscribe to it; and even enlightened Christian divines, like Dr. Temple, are not very far from it when they admit the idea of a Creator behind the atoms and energies, whose original impress,[204] given in the form of laws of nature, was so perfect as to require no secondary interference. Admit that Christ is the best personification of the Spenta Mainyush, or good principle in the inscrutable Divine polarity of existence, and a man may be at the same time a Christian and a Zoroastrian.
The religion of Zoroaster has, however, this great advantage in the existing conditions of modern thought, that it is not dragged down by such a dead weight of traditional dogmas and miracles as still hangs upon the skirts of Christianity. Its dogmas are comprised in the statement that there is one supreme, unknown, First Cause, who manifests himself in the universe under fixed laws which involve the principle of polarity. This is hardly so much a dogma as a statement of fact, or of the ultimate and absolute truth at which it is possible for human faculty to arrive. No progress of science or philosophy conflicts with it, but rather they confirm it, by showing more and more clearly with every discovery that this is in very fact and deed the literal truth. Religion, or the feeling of reverence and love for the Great Unknown which lies beyond the sphere of human sense and reason, shines more brightly through this pure medium than through the fogs of misty metaphysics; and we can worship God in spirit and in truth without puzzling our brains as to the precise nature of the Logos, or exercising them on the insoluble problem how one can be equal to three, and at the same time three equal to one.
As regards miracles, which are another millstone about the neck of Catholic Christianity, the religion of Zoroaster is entirely free from them. There are, it is true, a few miraculous myths about him in some of the[205] later writings in the Pehlvi language, as of his conception by his mother drinking a cup of the sacred Homa, but these are of no authority and form no part of the religion. On the contrary, the original scriptures which profess to record his exact words and precepts disclaim all pretension to divine nature or miraculous power, and base the claims of the ‘excellent religion’ purely on reason. This is an immense advantage in the ‘struggle for life,’ when every day is making it more impossible for educated men to believe that real miracles ever actually occurred, and when the evidence on which they were accepted is crumbling to pieces under the light of critical enquiry. The Parsee has no reason to tremble for his faith if a Galileo invents the telescope or a Newton discovers the law of gravity. He has no occasion to argue for Noah’s deluge, or for the order of Creation described in Genesis. Nay even, he may remain undisturbed by that latest and most fatal discovery that man has existed on the earth for untold ages, and, instead of falling from a high estate, has risen continuously by slow and painful progress from the rudest origins. How many orthodox Christians can say the same, or deny that their faith in their sacred books and venerable traditions has been rudely shaken?
The code of morality enjoined by the Zoroastrian religion is as pure as its theory is perfect. Dr. Haug enumerates the following sins denounced by its code, and considered as such by the present Parsees: Murder, infanticide, poisoning, adultery on the part of men as well as women, sorcery, sodomy, cheating in weight and measure, breach of promise whether made to a Zoroastrian or non-Zoroastrian, telling lies and deceiving,[206] false covenants, slander and calumny, perjury, dishonest appropriation of wealth, taking bribes, keeping back the wages of labourers, misappropriation of religious property, removal of a boundary stone, turning people out of their property, maladministration and defrauding, apostasy, heresy, rebellion. These are positive injunctions. The following are condemnable from a religious point of view: Abandoning the husband; not acknowledging one’s children on the part of the father; cruelty towards subjects on the part of a ruler; avarice, laziness, illiberality and egotism, envy. In addition there are a number of special precepts adapted to the peculiar rites of the Zoroastrian religion which aim principally at the enforcement of sanitary rules, kindness to animals, hospitality to strangers and travellers, respect to superiors, and help to the poor and needy.
It is evident that this is the most complete and comprehensive code of morals to be found in any system of religion. It comprises all that is best in the codes of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, with a much more ample definition of many vices and virtues which, even in the Christian religion, are left to be drawn as inferences rather than inculcated as precepts. Thus, laziness, cheating, selfishness, and envy are distinctly defined as crimes, and their opposites as virtues, and not merely left to be inferred from the general maxims of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself,’ and ‘doing unto others as you would be done by.’ The comprehensiveness and liberal spirit of the code is also remarkable, for we are repeatedly told that these rules of morality apply to non-Zoroastrians as well as to Zoroastrians. The application of religious precepts to practical life is another distinguishing feature. Thus kindness to[207] animals is specially enjoined, and it is considered a sin to ill-treat animals of the good creation, such as cattle, sheep, horses, or dogs, by starving, beating, or unnecessarily killing them. With true practical wisdom, however, the ‘falsehood of extremes’ is avoided, and this precept is not, as in the case of Brahminism and Buddhism, carried so far as to prohibit altogether the taking of animal life, which is expressly sanctioned when necessary. This sober practical wisdom, or what Matthew Arnold calls ‘sweet reasonableness,’ is a very characteristic feature of Zoroaster’s religion, and very remarkable as having been taught at so early a period in the history of civilisation.
Another precept, which might well have been made by an English board of health in the nineteenth century, is not to pollute water by throwing impure matter into it.
The only special Parsee rites which would be unsuited for modern European society, are the worship of the sacred fire and the disposal of the dead. It is true that the former is distinctly understood to be merely a symbol of the Deity, and used exactly as water is in baptism, or as the ascending flame of candles and smoke from swinging incense are in the Catholic ritual, to bring more vividly before the minds of the worshippers the idea of the spirit soaring upwards towards heaven. Still, in modern society fire is too well understood as merely a particular ............