Achaemenids and Magi

Hitherto we have been exclusively concerned with the religion of the Avesta, that is, with the religion that developed after Zoroaster's death in the eastern part of what was to become the Persian Empire. In the Avesta plenty of place-names occur, but there is no mention of any place west of Rhages which was approximately on the site of the modern Tehran; it is, then, certain that the Avestan religion not only began but also developed in Eastern Iranian lands. For the development of Iranian religion in the West we have to rely on the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings and the Greek accounts of the Iranian religion, particularly Herodotus. There are probably no two problems in Zoroastrian studies more vexed than that of the religion of the Achaemenian kings and that of the part played by the Magi in the development of Zoroastrianism. Yet both Darius and Xerxes have left us inscriptions which give us a pretty clear idea of what their religion was, and the problem, therefore, really boils down to this: What do we, in fact, mean by Zoroastrianism? Primitive and 'Catholic' Zoroastrianism We have seenthat the Zoroastrians themselves used four terms to define their religion: ahura-tkaesha, 'holding to the doctrine of Ahura or the ahuras'; vidaeva, 'opposed to the daevas'; Zarathushtri, 'follower of Zoroaster'; and mazdayasni, 'worshipper of Mazdah'. The last term became standardized as the official designation of the religion. The Achaemenian kings, from the time of Darius at least, were certainly ahura-tkaesha and mazdayasni, for they were worshippers of Ahura Mazdah, and neither Darius nor Xerxes mentions any other god by name. Xerxes was certainly vidaeva, for he seems to have proscribed the cult of the daevas throughout the Empire. All that is in doubt, then, is whether they were also zarathushtri, confessed disciples of the Prophet Zoroaster. The fact that none of the inscriptions mentions Zoroaster by name proves absolutely nothing, for even the Indian Emperor Ashoka, a devout Buddhist if ever there was one, mentions the Buddha only once. Moreover, we can now be certain that primitive Zoroastrianism differed very widely from the later 'catholic' variety, and the change is so marked that we cannot help feeling that the Prophet's original teaching was radically altered in order to fall more in line with the popular religion of the Iranian masses owing to considerable pressure from above, and this can only have been exercised by the Achaemenian kings themselves. Of only one fact can we be reasonably certain, and that is that during the reign of Artaxerxes I, round about 441 BC, the calendar of the Persian Empire was reformed and that in this reformed calendar the months were named after the leading deities of 'catholic' Zoroastrianism. Hence it would seem reasonably certain that from Artaxerxes I (465-25 BC) on, the official religion of the Empire was 'catholic' Zoroastrianism of the later Avesta, whereas Xerxes' edict proscribing the worship of the daevas makes it probable that he too followed, in some respects at least, the teachings of Zoroaster.

The God of Darius the Great The god of the Achaemenian house, at least from the time of Darius, was Ahura Mazdah, spelt in one word in the inscriptions which, in this respect, differ from the Gathas where the two component parts -Ahura and Mazdah- still appear in separation. This Gathic usage has led us to believe that the god Ahura Mazdah, the Wise Lord, was Zoroaster's own invention, and, if that is so, Darius' exclusive devotion to this deity would mean that that monarch followed the teaching of the Prophet to the extent at least that he worshipped the Prophet's god and acknowledged him alone as creator and Lord. For whether he was consciously a Zoroastrian or not, Darius was every bit as much a monotheist as was Zoroaster himself. Bearing in mind that Darius' inscriptions were hewn out of the rock for mainly political reasons, it is surprising how much space he devotes to his personal religion. Darius does not attribute the fact that he is king to any merit of his own. 'By the will of Ahura Mazdah am I king,' he says. 'On me did Ahura Mazdah bestow the kingdom.' Ahura Mazdah 'created me and made me king'. 'Such was Ahura Mazdah's will; he chose me a man, out of the whole earth and made me king of the whole earth. I worshipped Ahura Mazdah and he brought me aid. What I was commanded to do, that he made easy for me. Whatever I did, I did in accordance with his will.' Just as Zoroaster had recognized the existence of other ahuras or 'lords' besides the Wise Lord who alone is creator, so did Darius recognize the existence of other gods besides his own 'Wise Lord': he calls them 'the other gods who exist', but they are not considered to be of sufficient importance to be invoked or even mentioned by name. Again like Zoroaster, Darius does not feel himself to be a stranger to his God: 'to me,' he says, 'Ahura Mazdah was a friend.' Like Zoroaster's God, too, Darius' God is the creator of heaven and earth. 'A great god is Ahura Mazdah who created this earth, who created younger sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Darius king, one king among many, one ruler among many.' Darius' great inscription at Behistan is an account of the rebellions he put down throughout the Empire, and it is significant that he equates rebellion with the Lie. The rebels lie in that they claim to be kings, when in fact they are no such thing. 'Lying', then, means much the same for Darius as it did for Zoroaster: it is a violent onslaught against the established order as well as an offence against Truth. The order of Ahura Mazdah is based on rectitude, peace, and prosperity, and it is his intention for man that he should prosper and be happy in a peaceful society. So Darius prays to him and 'all the gods' to keep enemy hoards, famine, and the Lie away from the Empire. The source from which these evils proceed is not mentioned but it is certainly not God, for he makes only 'what is excellent on this earth'; he does not originate evil. True, he chastises those who oppose or conceal the truth, but this is no more than the manifestation of his justice. He is the source of all good things, both physical and moral, and Darius sees all his good qualities as deriving from God. It is through God's grace that he is a 'friend of Truth (rasta), not of falsehood', and it is God who bestows on him wisdom and virtue

and the ability to control his impulses by his mind; and here Darius uses the word manah in very much the same way as Zoroaster might have spoken of his own vohumanah, the 'good mind'. Both spiritual and material gifts are in the hand of God, and Darius is grateful for both, for it is thanks to him that he excels at horsemanship and is expert at handling both bow and spear. The 'Zoroastrianism' of Darius Darius' religion, then, agrees with that of Zoroaster in that it recognizes Ahura Mazdah as the supreme Lord, 'great, the greatest of the gods', but does not deny the existence of other gods. Ahura Mazdah is the creator of heaven and earth and of man; and he is man's friend so long as he holds to the Truth. He protects from evil, for his will is that man should be happy and at peace. He is the author of Righteousness or Truth and of all legally constituted authority, and man, on his side, is required to follow the straight path and to fight untruth wherever it may be found. 'Do not leave the straight (rasta) path,' Darius admonishes his subjects, 'and do not rebel.' Similarly the Zoroastrian liturgy ends with the words: 'One is the path of Truth, the paths of others are no paths.' In its bare essentials, then, the religion of Darius is very closely akin to that of Zoroaster. The supreme God is the same and has the same name, there is the same insistence on Truth and Righteousness, and the same diagnosis of evil as being the manifestation of the Lie. Of course the emphasis differs in the two cases. For Darius the Lie manifests itself as rebellion against the royal authority, but the royal authority itself is in the gift of the Wise Lord, and rebellion against the King amounts to rebelion against God. For Zoroaster the Lie manifests itself primarily in the rejection of his prophetic mission, in violence and in injustice; but in both cases the Lie is basically the same concept: it is the violation of a divinely appointed order of Truth, incorporated in the one case in the Prophet, in the other in the King. The dualism between Truth and the Lie is as sharply etched in Darius' inscriptions as it is in the Gathas of Zoroaster, except that for Darius the field is narrower: he sees this cosmic conflict only as it is manifested in his own Empire, whereas Zoroaster sees it both in the political and economic sphere and as a universally valid cosmic principle. The pattern of thought that underlies Darius' inscriptions is that of primitive Zoroastrianism. The fact that he neither mentions the Destructive Spirit nor any of the Bounteous Immortals by name and that his terminology is not that of the Gathas and that there is no reference to Zoroaster himself, can scarcely be advanced as a serious argument that he was ignorant of the Zoroastrian reform. His exclusive devotion to Ahura Mazdah, his constant emphasis on the opposition that exists between Truth and the Lie, and his acknowledgement of Ahura Mazdah as the creator of heaven and earth, show that he was familiar with the main tenets of primitive Zoroastrianism. He does not show himself familiar with the more abstruse aspects of Zoroaster's teaching, and this is scarcely surprising since his teaching as it was propounded in the western half of the Persian Empire may well have been in a simplified form; and, as we have seen the Bounteous Immortals, which scholars have too long regarded as being an essential feature of primitive Zoroastrianism, were very soon relegated to

a position of exalted irrelevance. In Darius' inscriptions -except for the 'Kingdom' -they are never mentioned by name; but Asha, the Truth, is clearly present in Darius' rasta, 'Right' or 'Truth', and vohumanah, the 'Good Mind', is as clearly the same mind present to the King, by which he fights down his own impulsiveness. For the King the 'Kingdom' is, of course, his own kingdom, the Persian Empire; but this kingdom is only his because the Wise Lord has bestowed it on him; he hold it from him on trust. And since in the last analysis it is God's, he must promulgate God's law of Truth and Righteosness and Right-Mindedness within it -and in practice this means that he must repress all manifestations of the Lie, all haughty attempts to wrest God's earthly kingdom from the hands into which God has entrusted it. Darius would thus appear to have accepted the vital core of Zoroaster's teaching without thereby supporting any form of organized Zoroastrianism, if indeed such organized forms at the time. He does not boast, as the Sassanian kings were later to do, of his pious foundations; he boasts only of his own moral stature which he sees as the gift of God. Darius speaks to us in the spirit of Zoroaster in a way that no so-called Zoroastrian text does except the Gathas themselves. This much must, I think, be conceded. Whether or not we should take the further step and declare that he was a 'Zoroastrian' is a matter of how we wish to define our terms. It is a waste of time. Yet though Darius adhered to the essential Zoroastrian beliefs, he did nothing to destroy any national cult. We are told that he restored the places of worship that the usurper Gaumata, the Magian, had destroyed, and in his he shows himself to be totally lacking in the prophetic intolerance of Zoroaster; but this is simply because God had made him king, and the King's first duty is to repress hostile armies. His interpretation of the scope of the Lie is a king's, not a priest's or a prophet's. For Zoroaster kingship and prophecy were interconnected, but Darius, as King, regarded the pacification and reconstruction of his Empire as his first duty. In an empire that was, in any case, only partly Iranian, he was not prepared to interfere with traditional religion. This is not merely his private interpretation of the duties of the king of kings: it is God's will. 'When Ahura Mazdah saw that this earth was in turmoil, he bestowed it on me. He made me king. I am King. By the will of Ahura Mazdah I restored it to its [proper] state.' God's will for this earth is not turmoil, but peace, prosperity, and government. 'Much that was ill done,' the Great King declares, 'I made good. The provinces were in turmoil and one man slew another. By the will of Ahura Mazdah I brought it about that one man should not slay another. Each man [was to be] in his own place. My law do they fear, so that the stronger does not smite the weak.' In this respect, too, Darius conforms to a trend that runs through the whole history of Zoroastrianism -by rebuilding, by constructive and productive work he pleases God because by so doing he imitates God's own creative activity. Truth is productive, the Lie destroys. The Daiva-Inscription of Xerxes So much, then, can we deduce about Darius' religious policy from his inscriptions. His son, Xerxes, left no comparable evidence of the quality of his personal

religion, but one inscription which only came to light in the nineteen-thirties, shows that he had a religious policy of his own. Like his father he was a worshipper of Ahura Mazdah, but not to the exclusion of other gods, and, again like his father, he acknowledged him to be creator of heaven and earth, of man and of man's happiness. In addition, however, he tells us that whereas previously the daevas had been worshipped within the Empire, this must stop. This is what he says: 'Within these provinces there were places where previously the daivas had been worshipped. Then by the will of Ahura Mazdah I uprooted that cult of the daivas, and I made a proclamation [saying]: "The daivas shall not be worshipped." Where the daivas had previously been worshipped, there did I worship Ahura Mazdah in accordance with Truth and using the proper rite. Much else that was ill done did I make good. All that I did, I did by the will of Ahura Mazdah. Ahura Mazdah brought me aid until I finished my work. O thou who shalt come after me, if thou wouldst be happy when alive and blessed when dead, have respect for the law which Ahura Mazdah has established, and worship Ahura Mazda in accordance with Truth and using the proper rite. The man who has respect for the law which Ahura Mazdah has established and who worships Ahura Mazdah in accordance with Truth and using the proper rite, may he be both happy when alive and blessed when dead.' The daivas mentioned in the inscription can scarcely be other than the daevas whom Zoroaster so vigorously attacks in the Gathas, a class of Indo-Iranian deity which had come to be associated with violence. This does not necessarily mean that Xerxes was a professed Zoroastrian, for it is perfectly possible that there were communities before Zoroaster which did not worship the daevas, nor does the 'law which Ahura Mazdah has established' necessarily mean his revelation to Zoroaster, for in the Avesta there are two laws -the law against the daevas and the law of Zoroaster- and it is quite possible, as we have clearly seen, that Zoroaster was born into a community in which the daevas were no longer worshipped. On the other hand, the command to worship Ahura Mazdah 'in accordance with Truth and using the proper rite' must refer to come kind of already existing orthodoxy which made Truth (arta =Avestan asha) central in the worship of Ahura Mazdah; and such a form of worship can scarcely have been any other than that of the Zoroastrians. The use of the word artavan (= Avestan ashavan) to refer to the state of the blessed dead confirms this, for it is commonly so used in the later Zoroastrian texts and on the Sassanian inscriptions. It is not used by Darius when he speaks of the happiness the righteous dead were supposed to enjoy; he merely says: 'Whoso shall worship Ahura Mazdah so long as he has strength, may he enjoy happiness both when alive and when he is dead.' The terminology is not yet Zoroastrian; with Xerxes it is. It can then be assumed that during the reign of Xerxes Zoroastrianism became almost a state cult. Xerxes' 'Un-Zoroastrian' Acts But what sort of Zoroastrianism? Xerxes, like his father, did not deny the existence of gods other than Ahura Mazdah, but, again like his father, he does not

bother to mention them by name. Yet Herodotus reports religious acts performed by Xerxes which do not seem compatible with the practice of the Zoroastrian religion as commonly understood. He is said to have lashed the Hellespont in a fit of pique, and scholars have thought that this was scarcely compatible with the reverence of the waters that is so typical of the Zoroastrians. Again he is said to have sacrificed a thousand oxen to 'Ilian Athene', while the Magi, who seem to have been fully in control of religious affairs during his reign, sacrificed white horses on the river Strymon and also offered sacrifice to the Winds, 'Thetis', and the 'Nereids'. Herodotus even accuses the Persian -though not the Magi or the King himself- of human sacrifice. Yet none of this is very surprising if our own account of the development of Zoroastrianism is at all correct. Zoroaster may have condemned animal sacrifice out of hand; on the other hand he may have condemned only a specific form of it. We do not know. But we do know that the Zoroastrian liturgy as preserved in the Yasna included the sacrifice of a bull or cow and the ritual consumption of the Haoma juice, possibly replaced by wine in Western Iran. The performance of animal sacrifice, then, both by Xerxes and by the Magi, so far from being surprising, is precisely what one would expect. Similarly his chastisement of the Hellespont (of which he is in any case said to have repented) does not necessarily conflict with the Zoroastrian reverence for water, for Xerxes upbraids it as bitter water, and we learn from one of the later Zoroastrian texts that when the Destructive Spirit defiled the waters, he made them brackish. There is, then, no reason at all why Xerxes should not chastise a form of water that had been contaminated by the Devil. Again, there is nothing surprising in his or the Magi's sacrificing to the Winds, 'Athene', 'Thetis', or the 'Nereids', for Xerxes himself mentions 'gods' other than Ahura Mazdah; and if the form of Zoroastrianism he professed was rather 'catholic' than 'primitive', as we would expect it to be, he would almost certainly honour the 'Winds', that is, Vayu, who, as patron of the warrior caste, would be a most potent ally in battle. 'Athene' and 'Thetis' would be hellenizations of the Iranian goddess Anahita, and the 'Nereids' may well represent the ahuranis, the 'wives of Ahura Mazdah', whom we met in the Gatha of the Seven Chapters and who are the waters. There is, then, nothing in Xerxes' behaviour as reported by Herodotus that conflicts with the 'catholic' Zoroastrianism we have studied in the later Avestan texts. In spirit Xerxes is further removed from Zoroaster than was his father, but he seems to have consciously adhered to the later and admittedly distorted form of the Prophet's religion as interpreted to him by the Magi. Artaxerxes II and III Xerxes is the last of the Achaemenian kings to have left us any considerably legacy of inscriptions. After him only Artaxerxes II and III need to be mentioned, and they for no other reason than that they mention Mithra and Anahita by name in addition to Ahura Mazdah, and that Artaxerxes II on one occasion invokes the protection of Mithra alone. By this time 'catholic' Zoroastrianism had probably captured not only the royal house but also the bulk of western Iran.

Magi
The Magi The acceptance of Zoroastrianism in the western half of the Persian Empire, its propagation, and its transformation into something quite unlike the Prophet's original message, seems to have been the work of the Magi who enjoyed a monopoly of religious affairs not only in their native Media but also in Persis and the whole western half of the Achaemenian Empire. There are few subjects on which scholars have differed more than on what part the Magi played in the dissemination of Zoroastrianism. For Moulton, whose zeal for the Prophet burned a little too brightly, the Magi were the villains of the piece, and they were not even allowed to belong to either the Aryan or the Semitic race, so repulsive did their peculiar doctrines appear to him to be. For Messina, on the other hand, it was the Magi themselves who were the true heirs of Zoroaster and who alone faithfully transmitted his doctrines. That scholars can differ so widely can only be atrributed to a rather one-sided reading of the available sources. Moulton's view bases itself mainly on Herodotus, while Messina reaches a perhaps too favourable view of these strange people by discounting the reliability of Herodotus' sources. Throughout antiquity the Magi were notorious for two things: they did not bury their dead, but exposed them to be devoured by vultures and wild animals, and they considered incestuous marriages to be exceptionally meritorious. 'The Magi,' says Herodotus, 'are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and suchlike flying and creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.' This custom of the Magi which Herodotus found so peculiar is, in fact, typical of later Zoroastrianism, particularly the Videvdat. The slaying of noxious beasts, the exposure of the dead, which according to Herodotus, the Magi practised openly, and incestuous marriages are all attested of the Magi in our Greek sources, and they are also typical of the latest stratum of the Avesta. It is, then, fair to conclude that it was the Magi who were responsible for the drawing up of the Videvdat, the 'law against the daevas'; and this would go a long way to account for the appalling grammatical confusion that characterizes that not very admirable work. What hand they had in the compilation of the rest of the Avesta, however, is less certain, though it is unlikely that they had any direct share in the compilation of the great Yashts which, on the whole, adhere to grammatical rule. It cannot therefore be legitimately argued that because the Achaemenian kings were buried and not exposed, they cannot have been Zoroastrian, since we do not know how the Zoroastrians disposed of their dead until they came into contact with them but were also deeply influenced by them. One can, perhaps, go a lttle further than this, for the extraordinary zest with which the Magi are alleged to have killed 'with

their own hands' flying and creeping things, can scarcely be accounted for except on the supposition that they thought such creatures to be the handiwork of an evil power. It is they, then, who would be responsible for the cut-and-dried division of creation into two mutually antagonistic halves -the creatures of the Holy Spirit on the one hand and the creatures of the Destructive Spirit on the other. Thus they can be regarded as the true authors of that rigid dualism that was to characterize the Zoroastrianism of a later period, but which is only implicit in the Gathas of Zoroaster. According to Herodotus the Magi were one of six Median tribes, though Messina and many other scholars prefer to see in them a caste. Certainly, if they were ever a tribe, they were also very much more than that, since they made themselves indispensable at any form of religious ceremony, whether Zoroastrian or otherwise. Their presence was necessary even to the rite described by Plutarch in which an offering was made to Ahriman and which must therefore be regarded as a sacrifice performed by the worshippers of the daevas. It would be quite wrong to suppose that the Magi represented any kind of orthodoxy, for we sometimes find them officiating at sacrifices, and sometimes we are told that they execrate sacrifice as such or that they merely stand by while others offer sacrifice. Their position would seem to correspond to that of the Levites among the Jews or, even more closely, to that of the Brahmans in India: they were a hereditary caste entrusted with the supervision of the national religion, whatever form it might take and in whatever part of the Empire it might be practised. How they attained to this privileged position remains quite obscure, but there seems to be no doubt that their functions passed from father to son right up to the Muslim conquest and after. Zoroaster and the Magi It was Messina's contention that the Magi were the original followers of Zoroaster; and this view deserves serious consideration, though there are obvious objections to it. First, the word for 'Magus' (Avestan mogu) occurs only once in the Avesta, and this would be surprising if the Magi were responsible for the final redaction of that scripture. Secondly, Herodotus says that they were a Median tribe, and it can no longer be seriously maintained that the Avesta was a product of Media. From the whole of Herodotus' history, however, and from all subsequent accounts of them, it is quite clear that the Magi were in fact a sacerdotal caste whose ethnic origin is never again so much as mentioned. We hear of Magi not only in Persia, Parthia, Bactria, Chorasmia, Aria, Media, and among the Sakas, but also in non-Iranian lands like Arabia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Their influence was also widespread throughout Asia Minor. It is, therefore, quite likely that the sacerdotal caste of the Magi was distinct from the Median tribe of the same name. Magavan The Old Persian form of the word rendered into Greek as magos is magu. In the Gathas we meet with a noun maga and an adjective formed from it magavan; and

it is quite possible that the Old Persian magu is an adjectival derivative from this same word maga with a different suffix. Maga can scarcely be separated from the Vedic magha (together with its adjective maghavan) meaning 'riches' or 'gift'. Messina, taking each passage in which the word occurs separately, has shown that 'gift' makes good sense in all the contexts. Maga, however, must have been a semi-technical term meaning God's 'gift' of the Good Religion to Zoroaster. The Pahlavi translators, for once, bear this out, for they translate the word as 'purity' or 'pure goodness'. In this they were probably following a live tradition, for when they simply do not know the meaning of an Avestan word they content themselves with a near-transliteration. Moreover, the adjectival form of the word in the form maghvand survives in Pahlavi and seems to mean something like 'adorning'. In the Gathas the word seems to mean both the teaching of Zoroaster and the community that accepted that teaching, but there is no reason to suppose that the western Iranian form magu (Magus) has exactly the same meaning despite the fact that in the Greek sources Zoroaster himself appears as a Magus and that he was claimed as such by the Magi who had emigrated outside Iran. Herodotus, however, knows nothing of Zoroaster and speaks of the Magi as officiating at religious ceremonies that seem to have little in common with Zoroastrianism in any form we know or indeed with the religion of the Achaemenian kings. According to Porphyry the word 'Magus' means 'one who is wise in the things of God and serves the divine', and there is plenty of evidence to support this view. The Magi were considered to be philosophers, they were the teachers of the Achaemenian kings, they were the best of the Persians and strove to lead a holy life, and so on. The 'Magus', then, would be the man possessed of maga -the man who enjoys God's 'gift' or 'grace'; and he is in receipt of this 'gift' simply by virtue of belonging to the priestly caste. We have an exactly parallel case in India where the Brahmans who constitute the hereditary priesthood are sacrosanct simply because they inherit the brahman or 'sacred power' of which their caste is the vehicle. So it would seem that both the western Magi and the magavans of Zoroaster's community were members of a sacerdotal caste, but that they differed in this, that the Magi claimed priestly functions throughout the Empire and in association with all cults, while Zoroaster's magavans derived their authority solely from what they considered to be a direct irruption of the divine in the person of Zoroaster. At some stage the Zoroastrian priesthood must have made contact with the Magi known to the West, and the latter then adopted the name of 'Zoroastrian' and transformed Zoroaster himself into a Magus, though they may have meant no more by that term than a 'holy man'. That some of the Magi became profoundly influenced by Chaldaean astrology in the course of their migration to the West, and that they were commonly accused of 'magic' (i.e. the art peculiar to a Magus) and socery, has little or nothing to do with the religious situation in Iran. It can be assumed that even the 'worshippers of the daevas' and the 'followers of the Lie' had Magi of their own, but their authority would not have been accepted by any Zoroastrian. It is fairly clear that during the early Achaemenian period the Magi gained control of Zoroastrianism in the West, for as early as Plato Zoroaster is spoken of as a Magus. Thus Zoroastrianism fell

under the influence of a hereditary priestly caste that ministered to the spiritual needs of not only the Zoroastrianism but also the entire Iranian nation. What the specific contribution of the Magi to Zoroastrianism was is largely a matter of guesswork and need not detain us for long. It does, however, seem fairly certain that it was the Magi who were responsible for introducing three new elements into Zoroastrianism -the exposure of the dead to be devoured by vultures and dogs, the practice of incestuous marriages, and the extension of the dualist view of the world to material things and particularly the animal kingdom. It is not to be supposed, however, that with the conversion of a majority of the Magi and of the royal family itself to Zoroastrianism anything like religious uniformity was produced within the Persian Empire, for the type of religion described by Herodotus differs considerably from Zoroastrianism as we know it and probably reflects a more primitive and popular form of religion. Popular Religion in Western Iran 'The customs which I know the Persians to observe [writes Herodotus] are the following. They have no images of the gods, no temples or altars, and consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I think, from their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine. Their wont, however, is to ascend the summits of the loftiest mountains, and there to offer sacrifice to Zeus, which is the name they give to the whole circuit of the firmament. They likewise offer to the sun and moon, to the earth, to fire, to water, and to the winds. These are the only gods whose worship has come down to them from ancient times. At a later period they began the worship of Urania, which they borrowed from the Arabians and Assyrians. Mylitta is the name by which the Assyrians know this goddess whom the Arabians call Alilat, and the Persians Mitra. 'To these gods the Persians offer sacrifice in the following manner: they raise no altar, light no fire, pour no libations; there is no sound of the flute, no putting on of chaplets, no consecrated barely-cake; but the man who wishes to sacrifice brings his victim to a spot of ground which is pure from pollution, and there calls upon the name of the god to whom he intends to offer. It is usual to have the turban encircled with a wreath, most commonly of myrtle. The sacrificer is not allowed to pray for blessings on himself alone, but he prays for the welfare of the king, and of the whole Persian people, among whom he is of necessity included. He cuts the victim in pieces, and having boiled the flesh, he lays it out upon tenderest herbage that he can find, trefoil especially. When all is ready, one of the Magi comes forward and chants a theogony, for such the Persians allege the chant to be. It is not lawful to offer sacrifice unless there is a Magus present. After waiting a short time the sacrificer carries the flesh of the victim away with him, and makes whatever use of it he may please.... 'Next to prowess in arms, it is regarded as the greatest proof of manly excellence to be the father of many sons. Every year the king sends rich gifts to the man who can show the largest number: for they hold that number is strength. Their sons are

carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year in three things alone -to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth.... 'They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a dept: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies. If a Persian has the leprosy he is not allowed to enter into a city, or to have any dealings with other Persians; he must, they say, have sinned against the sun....They never defile a river with the secretions of their bodies, nor even wash their hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers.... 'Thus much I can declare of the Persians with entire certainly, from my own actual knowledge. There is another custom which is spoken of with reserve, and not openly, concerning their dead. It is said that the body of a male Persian is never buried, until it has been torn either by a dog or a bird of prey. That the Magi have this custom is beyond a doubt, for they practise it without any concealment.' Much of this is familiar and is pan-Iranian, such as the veneration of the natural elements -fire, water, wind, and earth- and of the sun and moon. Herodotus is, of course, mistaken is supposing that the Iranian goddess of the sky was Mithra. His mistake, however, shows that his informant was well acquainted with both Mithra and Anahita, both of whom are for the first time mentioned in the inscriptions of Artaxerxes II. The 'whole circuit of the firmament' which Herodotus identifies with Zeus may either be the ancient Ahura, the 'Lord' par excellence, or the Ahura Mazdah of the Seven Chapters. The sacrifice Herodotus describes, however, differs from any known Zoroastrian rite, for he explicitlystates that they light no fire and pour no libations, whereas the Zoroastrian rite must, from the beginning, have been associated with the sacred fire, and libations have a vital part to play in the Avestan ritual. The laying of flesh on tender herbage, however, would point to an ancient Indo-Iranian usage, for this type of sacrifice is found in the Veda, and the Avesta itself speaks of the barsom or bundle of twigs which the priest holds in his hands, as being strewn, thereby indicating an earlier usage when the twigs were laid out on the ground. That a Magus had to be present at this sacrifice shows either that all the Magi were not Zoroastrians or that, though Zoroastrians, they were quite happy to officiate at non-Zoroastrian ceremonies. The sacrifice described by Herodotus bears a curious resemblance to the sacrifice of Mashye and Mashyane which we have had occasion to discuss above. According to Herodotus the sacrificer carries the flesh of the sacrificial animal away with him and does with it whatever he likes, and Strabo explicitly states that no portion of it is given to the gods, since 'the deity needs the soul of the victim and nothing more'. Similarly Mashye and Mashyane give only a portion of the victim to the gods and the fire, and this the gods deem to be an act of ingratitude. Such practices, moreover, are condemned in the Avesta itself, for in the Yasna the sacrificial bull indignantly complains of the man who is stingy enough to keep all the sacrificial flesh for himself and his family, and in any case the jaws, the tongue, and the left eye should be reserved for Haoma. Perhaps it was this practice of withholding the sacrificial meat from the gods that constituted the sin

of Yima 'who gave to our people portions of [the flesh of] the ox to eat'. If this is so, then it is perfectly possible that the rite described by Herodotus was that of the still-surviving daeva-worshippers. The extreme veneration for water which Herodotus describes, though quite typical of the Gatha of the Seven Chapters and the later Avesta, is foreign to the primitive Zoroastrianism of the Gathas proper where the only element that is explicitly venerated is fire. Zoroastrianism and the Popular Cults The bulk of the people of Western Iran at the time of Herodotus would not seem to have been greatly influenced by any recognizable form of Zoroastrianism and only a portion of the Magi would seem to have adhered to the new cult. Moreover, when the new Zoroastrian calendar was introduced by Artaxerxes I, the form of Zoroastrianism adopted was the 'catholic' Zoroastrianism of the later Avesta, and even after Xerxes had proscribed the worship of the daevas, it would seem that the people were allowed the widest latitude of cult and were no doubt free to carry on traditional forms of worship so long as they did not invoke the daevas by name. Zoroastrianism by this time must have become fully polytheistic, and Artaxerxes II was only following the popular trend when he associated Mithra and Anahita with the Wise Lord. There must, however, have been a party within the Zoroastrian community which regarded the strict dualism between Truth and the Lie, the Holy Spirit and the Destructive Spirit, as being the essence of the Prophet's message. Otherwise the re-emergence of this strictly dualist form of Zoroastrianism some six centuries after the collapse of the Achaemenian Empire could not be readily explained. There must have been a zealous minority that busied itself with defining what they considered the Prophet's true message to be; there must have been an 'orthodox' party within the 'Church'. This minority, concerned now with theology no less than with ritual, would be found among the Magi, and it is, in fact, to the Magi that Aristotle and other early Greek writers attribute the fully dualist doctrine of two independent principles -Oromasdes and Areimanios. Further, the founder of the Magian order was now said to be Zoroaster himself. The fall of the Achaemenian Empire, however, must have been disastrous for the Zoroastrian religion, and the fact that the Magi were able to retain as much if it as they did and restore it in a form that was not too strikingly different from the Prophet's original message after the lapse of some 600 years proves their devotion to his memory. It is, indeed, true to say that the Zoroastrian orthodoxy of the Sassanian period is nearer to the spirit of Zoroaster than is the thinly disguised polytheism of the Yashts. Mithra and Anahita were to make great conquests in non-Iranian lands, but in the reformed Zoroastrianism which was inaugurated in the second Persian Empire, their wings were severly clipped, and they were never again allowed to usurp a position of near-equality with the Wise Lord. They became, again, as they had originally been for the Prophet, largely irrelevant figures, archangels at best, but not comparable in any way to the Creator. As the 'gods' receded into the background, the dualism between Creator and Destroyer, the Wise Lord and the Destructive Spirit, Ohrmazd and Ahriman

as they came to be called, became ever more sharply emphasized, and this was in the spirit of the Prophet himself, not of his epigones who so radically altered his religion during the Achaemenian period. According to one of the Pahlavi books the fall of the Achaemenids resulted in a dearth of properly qualified religious teachers, and heresy of every kind was rife. This would account for the great variety of views attributed to the Magi by the Greek and Latin sources. There was no longer any Xerxes to punish those who continued to worship the daevas, and though a minority might cling to their own orthodoxy, the civil power was for long not in Iranian hands, and even the Parthians seem to have cared little for the Prophet's faith. The Religion Described by Strabo Of the classical accounts of the Iranian religion after Herodotus, Strabo's is the most important because it shows how Iranian religion in general was approximating more and more to the type of Zoroastrianism we know from the Avesta and the Pahlavi books. It is true that Strabo distinguishes separate fire and water sacrifices among the Magians, but this is not surprising, for the Yasna as we have it today would seem to be composed of one main sacrifice which must originally have included the slaying of a sacrificial bull as well as the ritual immolation of the Haoma, and of a subsidiary rite which follows the recitation of the Gathas and which is mainly concerned with the propitiation of the waters. Both the sacrifices described by Strabo reflect genuine Zoroastrian practices. He describes how only dry wood may be used, how the fire may only be fanned, not blown upon, and how anyone impious enough to defile the fire with dead matter or dung was put to death. All this is consonant with the extreme care Zoroastrians have always taken not to defile their most sacred element, and Parsee priests to this day wear a cloth over the nose and mouth to prevent them blowing on the fire. Again, in the water sacrifice the Magi are said to have held a bundle of rods, a practice among the Zoroastrians that still survives. In Cappadocia, where the Magi were numerous, he notes other peculiarities which tally nicely with genuine Zoroastrian practice. The Magian priests are called pyraithoi, 'fire-priests', an exact translation of the Avestan athaurvan. Moreover, they did not kill the sacrificial victim with a knife but by striking it with a log of wood on the forehead -a custom that we meet with again in the Pahlavi books. Sacrifices are no longer celebrated in the open air as they were in Herodotus' time, but in a fire-temple 'in the middle of which is an altar with a great deal of ashes on it; there the Magi guard a fire which is never allowed to go out. They enter these [temples] by day and chant for almost an hour in front of the fire, holding a bundle of rods, wearing felt head-gear which falls down on both sides so that the cheek-pieces cover the lips'. All this might be said of the present-day Zoroastrianism and it is strange that Strabo should report this rite as taking place in Cappadocia rather than in Persis. Declin and Fall of 'Catholic' Zoroastrianism In the first part of this book we have attempted to give an account of Zoroastrianism as it developed before and during the Achaemenian period, and

we have seen that the Prophet's message became increasingly adulterated, probably as a result of political pressures. Yet, however much Darius' religious opinions may have approximated to those of the Prophet, and however zealous Xerxes may have been in his suppression of the cult of the daevas, neither is remembered in the later Zoroastrian tradition, nor, for that matter, is Artaxerxes I who introduced a Zoroastrian calendar. This can surely only mean that the Zoroastrian reformers of the early Sassanian period did not look back on the Achaemenian dynasty with any favour: indeed, they did not so much as remember the names of the ancient kings, and speak only of 'Darius, son of Darius', by whom they presumably mean Darius III who allegedly 'commanded that two copies of all the Avesta and Zand should be written even as Zoroaster had received them from Ohrmazd, and that one should be preserved in the Royal Treasury and one in the National Archives'. This total ignorance of the greatest Empire it has fallen to the lot of an imperial race to rule displayed by the theologians of the later Empire can only mean that the 'orthodox' never regarded the Achaemenian period as being a particularly glorious one for the Zoroastrian religion. It must have been regarded as a period of laxness and compromise in which the message of the Prophet had become obscured, and the Good Religion had come to terms with much that was not good. Thus while King Vishtaspa who befriended the Prophet and all his other associates are remembered, the far greater glories of the house of Achaemenians are totally forgotten. If they were Zoroastrians, then their Zoroastrianism was not of a kind that appealed to their successors. The antipathy of the later Zoroastrians towards the polytheism of the Yashts in which the Wise Lord suffers the humiliation of having to worship other gods and is incapable of preserving his own handiwork without the all-powerful aid of the external souls of men, is illustrated by the fact that no Pahlavi translation of the Yashts survives. This excessive aggrandisement of created spirits was not regarded as being consonant with the majesty of God, and the Yashts -with the notable exception of those addressed to Sraosha and Haoma -were quietly allowed to fall into disuse. During the period of the later Avesta, Zoroastrianism, the only prophetic religion ever produced by the Aryan race, very nearly lapsed right back into being a nature religion pure and simple, and was only revived in something approaching its original form by the royal protection of a self-consciously Persian dynasty, which sought to impose unity on its racially heterogeneous Empire through religious uniformity. Of all the great religions of the world Zoroastrianism was the least well served. Zoroaster himself has every right to the title he claimed: he was a prophet and his claim to be such deserves to be taken as seriously as is that of Moses or Muhammad; but his successors never fully understood his message, nor had they a living and authentic tradition to guide them. During the Achaemenian period and after, they seem to have indulged in a liberalism and an indifferentism that was wholly at variance with the Prophet's spirit while, in the Sassanian period, they went to the other extreme and tried to impose a strict orthodoxy which few could tolerate. Moreover, they interpreted the Prophet's message so dualistically that their God was made to appear very much less than all-powerful and all-wise.

Reasonable as so absolute a dualism might appear from a purely intellectual point of view, it had neither the appeal of a real monotheism nor had it any mystical element with which to nourish its inner life. The Gathas of Zoroaster, despite our relative ignorance of the language in which they are written and despite the difficulty of the Prophet's own thought, do make an impact: they have a direct and urgent message to convey: they are spiritually alive. The later Avesta, and particularly the Yashts, has its moment of freshness and beauty, but it neither fascinates nor awes, while the Videvdat, the latest production of the Avestan age, shows so spiritual life at all, only a futile legalistic dualism which, if it had ever been put into practice, would have tried the patience of even the most credulous. The productions of the Sassanian and post-Sassanian age are little better: they neither inspire nor please. One is tempted to say that all that was vital in Zoroaster's message passed into Christianity through the Jewish exiles, whereas all that was less than essential was codified and pigeon-holded by the Sassanian theologians so that it died of sheer inanition. In the long run the fall of the Sassanian dynasty had a far more lasting effect on Iran's destinies than did the fall of the far greater house of Achaemenians, for it not only smashed Zoroastrianism as a national power, but also destroyed it as a cultural influence: for the Muhammadan conquest resulted in the re-emergence from the ruins of defeat of a culture not at all Zoroastrian but wholly Muslim in content, which was to make Iran for the first time a cultural as well as a political power of the first magnitude. Islam did not succeed in Iran simply because it was the religion of the conqueror; it succeeded because Zoroastrianism, in its reformed as much as in its catholic form, had been tried and found wanting. All this does not detract on whit from the stature of the Iranian Prophet himself, who remains one of the greatest religious geniuses of all time. It merely shows how political vicissitudes can strangle the life out of even a great religion with a vital message for man, and turn it into something wholly different from what the founder had intended. Also it must be said that Zoroastrianism lacked what all other religions have had -a living and continuous tradition. When the religion was revived under the Sassanians, it must have become lamentably apparent to the reformers that they could, in fact, make nothing of their own sacred texts and had to rely, very much more than the modern scholar has to do, on mere guesswork. It is impossible to revive a religion once the well-springs of the original revelation have been allowed to dry up, and once the sacred language itself has become so sacred that it is no longer understood even by those who set themselves up as its official interpreters. The Teachings of the Magi The subject-matter of these pages is the Zoroastrinism of the later Sassanian period as it has come down to us in the so-called Pahlavi books. These books, written in a language arbitrarily called Pahlavi, that is Parthian, but which is in sober fact a dialect of Middle Persian, were, in all cases in which a date is

definitely assignable, written after the Muhammadan conquest of Persian in the middle of the seventh century. In matter, however, they almost go back to the reign of Khusraw I (A.D. 531-578), and the orthodoxy re-established during that reign in turn goes back to the reign of Shapur II. 1) A Catechism As our first text we reproduce a short treatise entitled 'Selected Counsels of the Ancient Sages,' also know as 'The Book of Counsel of Zartusht.' Though the date is uncertain it seems likely that it was written after the fall of the Sassanian Empire, for the pessimistic utterances of 54 would seem to be a direct reflexion of the decline of the Zoroastrian 'Church', that followed the terrible blow of the Muhammadan conquest. The text sums up succintly the whole of Zoroastrian doctrine: it is what every boy and girl of fifteen must know before he or she is invested with the sacred girdle, a ceremony which, coinciding with the age of puberty, may be compared with the Christian rite of Confirmation. It is, in fact, the Zoroastrian's catechism. All religions necessarily start with man and his relationship to the world. So the first questions the catechumen asks are, 'Who am I? To whom do I belong? From whence have I come?' and 'Whither do I return?' The answers given in the rest of the text set out to situate man in his relationship to this world and the next, to God (Ohrmazd) and the Devil (Ahriman). Man is, by origin, a spiritual being, and his soul, in the shape of what the Zoroastrians call his Fravashi or Fravahr pre-exist his body. Both body and soul, however, are creatures of Ohrmazd, and the soul is not eternally pre-existent as in many Eastern religions. Man, then, belongs to God and to God is his return. Over against God stands the Devil, Ahriman. He, like God, is a pure spirit: he and Ohrmazd are eternal antagonists and sooner or later a struggle between them becomes inevitable. God (Ohrmazd) is all goodness and light, Ahriman all wickedness and death, darkness and deceit. We shall see later how god is forced to create the universe as a weapon with which to defeat Ahriman. Creation is for him a necessity in his fight with the Fiend, and man is in the forefront of the fray, -not that he is driven to it by God, but because he freely accepts this role when it is offered to him. On earth each individual is free to choose good or evil, and if he chooses evil, he is acting unnaturally because his 'father' is Ohrmazd; he is a son of God by nature being begotten of Ohrmazd and born of Spandarmat, the Earth. Thus for the Zoroastrians neither evil nor creation is a mystery. There is no problem of evil because it is a separate principle and substance standing over against the good God and threatening to destroy him. There is, then, nothing mysterious about creation, for God needs Man's help in his battle with the 'Lie' as the principle of evil is frequently called in our texts. Being God's creation Man belongs to him, but God none-the-less depends on Man's help in order to defeat his eternal Adversary.

Evil is not by any means identified with matter as was the case with the Manichees. On the other hand, the material world is the handiwork of God, a weapon fashioned by the Deity with which to smite the Evil One. It is the trap God sets for the Devil, -a trap in which the latter is enmeshed and which so weakens him that in the end Ohrmazd is enabled to deal him the death-blow. God is eternal, for 'Ohrmazd and the Space, Religion, and Time of Ohrmazd were and are and evermore shall be. Ahriman, on the other hand, has no beginning but has an end: 'he was and is, yet shall not be': 'he will be forever powerless and, as it were, slain, and henceforth neither the Destructive Spirit nor his creation will exist.' Both Ohrmazd and Ahriman are accompanied by subsidiary created spirits. Ohrmazd is helped by the six Amahraspands or Bounteous Immortals and by the Yazatan or gods, both of which roughly correspond to what we would call angels. Ahriman, on his side, is served by a host of demons, most of which are personified vices like concupiscence, anger, sloth, and heresy. The battlefield is this material universe created by Ohrmazd as a lure for Ahriman and in which Ahriman and his demons struggle for victory. As this little text shows Man's role in this world is to co-operate with nature on the natural plane and to lead a virtuous life of 'good thoughts, good words, and good deeds' on the moral plane. Thus no religion has been as strongly opposed to all forms of asceticism and monasticism as was Zoroastrianism. It is man's bounden duty to take to himself a wife and to rear up for himself sons and daughters for the very simple reason that human life on earth is a sheer necessity if Ahriman is to be finally defeated. Similarly, no other religion makes a positive virtue of agriculture, making the earth fruitful, strong, and abundant in order to resist the onslaught of the Enemy who is the author of disease and death. On the natural plane, then, virtue is synonymous with fruitfulness, vice with sterility: celibacy, therefore, is both unnatural and wicked. On the moral plane all the emphasis is on righteousness or truth,- for evil is personified as the 'Lie,'- and the doing of good works in which Ohrmazd himself 'has his dwelling,' -for, as the author of our little text sensibly remarks, deeds are the criterion by which alone a man can be judged. Such, then, is Man's place in the universal order and such are the duties he has to perform. Our text then goes on to summarize as briefly as possible the Zoroastrian doctrine of the future life. This is strikingly similar to Christian teaching, and it has been maintained, with some reason, that Christianity is here indepted to the 'Good Religion', as the Zoroastrians habitually call their faith. At death the departed soul is judged by the gods: this is the 'three nights judgement' mentioned in 16. We shall have more to say about this in chapter IX.

At the end of Time men's bodies will be resurrected again and will participate in what is called the 'Final Body,' the restored macrocosmos from which all evil will have been expelled. The transformation is brought about by the 'Soshyans' or Saviour who appears at the end of time to initiate the reign of eternal beatitude after there has been a final purification of all souls, whether just or sinful, and when the denizens of Hell, having suffered the temporal punishment due to their sins, emerge again to partake in everlasting life and everlasting bliss. With these few introductory remarks the text is best left to speak for itself. Select counsels of the ancient Sages '(1) In conformity with the revelation of the Religion the ancient sages, in their primeval wisdom, have said that on reaching the age of fifteen every man and woman must know the answer to these questions: "Who am I? To whom do I belong? From whence have I come? and whither do I return? From what stock and lineage am I? What is my function and duty on earth? and what is my reward in the world to come? Did I come forth from the unseen world? or was I (always) of this world? Do I belong to Ohrmazd or to Ahriman? Do I belong to the gods or to the demons? Do I belong to the good or to the wicked? Am I a man or a demon? How many paths are there (to salvation)? What is my religion? Where does my profit lie, and where my loss? Who is my friend, and who is my enemy? Is there one first principle oe are there two? From whom is goodness, and from whom evil? From whom is light, and from whom darkness? From whom is fragrance, and from whom stench? From whom is order, and from whom disorder? From whom is mercy, and from whom pitilessness?" (2) it is faith that searches out causes, palpable and as they are, and then, acting as mediator by means of reason (passes them on). So this must one know without venturing to doubt: "I have come from the unseen world, nor was I (always) of this world. I was created and have not (always) been. I belong to Ohrmazd, not to Ahriman. I belong to the gods, not to the demons, to the good, not to the wicked. I am a man, not a demon, a creature of Ohrmazd, not of Ahriman. My stock and lineage is from Gayomart. My mother is Spandarmat, (the Earth), and my father is Ohrmazd. My humanity is from Mahre and Mahrane who were the first seed and offspring of Gayomart. (3) To perform my function and to do my duty means that I should believe that Ohrmazd is, was, and evermore shall be, that his Kingdom is undying, and that he is infinite and pure; and that Ahriman is not, and is destructible; that I myself belong to Ohrmazd and his Bounteous Immortals, and that I have no connexion with Ahriman, the demons, and their associates. (4) My first (duty) on earth is to confess the Religion, to practise it, and to take part in its worship and to be steadfast in it, to keep the Faith in the Good Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd ever in my mind, and to distinguish profit from

loss, sin from good works, goodness from evil, light from darkness, and the worship of Ohrmazd from the worship of the demons. (5) My second (duty) is to take a wife and to procreate earthly offspring, and to be strenuous and steadfast in this. (6) My third (duty) is to cultivate and till the soil; (7) my fourth to treat all livestock justly; (8) my fifth to spend a third of my days and nights in attending the seminary and consulting the wisdom of holy men, to spend a third of my days and nights in tilling the soil and in making it fruitful, and to spend (the remaining) third of my days and nights in eating, rest, and enjoyment. (9) I must have no doubt but that profit arises from good works, and loss from sin, that my friend is Ohrmazd and my enemy Ahriman, and that there is only one religious way. (10) (This) one way (is that) of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, (the way of) Heaven, of light of purity, of the Infinite Creator, Ohrmazd, who was always and will ever be. (11) (There is also) the other way of evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds, (the way of) darkness, and of the finiteness, utter misery, death, and wickedness which belong to the accursed Destructive Spirit (Ahriman) who once was not in this creation, and again will not be in the creation of Ohrmazd, and who in the end will be destroyed. (12) I must have no doubt but that there are two first principles, one the Creator and the other Destroyer. (13) The Creator is Ohrmazd who is all goodness and all light: (14) and the Destroyer is the accursed Destructive Spirit who is all wickedness and full of death, a liar and a deceiver. (15) Equally I must have no doubt that all men are mortal except only Soshyans and the seven kings (who help him). (16) I must have no doubt but that the soul (jan) will be served (from the body) and that the body (itself) will be dissolved. (Nor may I doubt) the three nights judgement (of the soul at death), [the raising of the dead and the final Body] the crossing of the Requiter, the coming of the Soshyans, the raising of the dead and the Final Body. (17) I must (further) observe the law of chivalry (erih) and the Religion of the Ancients, and (I must) preserve my thoughts in righteousness, my tongue in truth, and my hands in doing what is good. (18) With all good men I must observe the law of chivalry, (19) peace and concord in all good deeds I do. (20) In my dealing with the good (I must) always behave according to justice and the dictates of the Good Religion. (21) With whomsoever it may be, in past, present, and future time, I must act in a common virtue and in a common righteousness (ham-dastan). (22) Good deeds performed for the sake of the Law are of a higher value than those performed for one's own sake, and by them is salvation most assured. (23) I declare than I have received the Good Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd and have no doubts concerning it not for any bodily or spiritual comfort (that it may bring), not for a pleasant life or for a long life, nor yet because (I know that) my consciousness must needs part company with my body. I shall

never apostatize from the Good Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd, and I have no doubts concerning it. I neither approve of nor respect other religious, nor do I lend them credence. (24) For it is plain that of thoughts, words, and deeds it is deeds (only) that are the creation: (25) for the will is unstable, thought is impalpable, but deeds are palpable indeed, (26) and by the deeds that men do [are they made known]. In Man's body three roads have been laid out. (27) On these three roads three gods (menok) have their dwelling, and three demons (druj) seek to waylay. In thought Vahuman, (the Good Mind), has his dwelling, and Wrath seeks to waylay; in words Wisdom has its dwelling, and Heresy (varan) seeks to waylay; but in deeds the Bounteous Spirit (Ohrmazd) has his dwelling, and the destructive Spirit (Ahriman) seeks to waylay. (28) On these three roads Man must stand firm, nor may he give up his heavenly (menok) reward for the sake of worldly goods, wealth, or earthly desire. (29) For the man who does [not] guard these three bastions within his body which I have mentioned, -his thoughts proceed from evil thought, his words from evil speech, and his deeds from evil deeds. (30) Next must I be thankful; and by thankfulness (I mean gratitude) for that it is within my power that my soul (ruvan) may not go to Hell. (31) For when a man passes from the loins of his father into the womb of his mother, then does Astvihat, ('the Dissolver of Bones' and demon of death), secretly (menokiha) cast a halter round his neck which for his whole life's span cannot be shaken off, not through the power of a good spirit and not through the power of an evil spirit; (32) but after he has passed away, that halter falls from off the neck of the man who is saved through the good deeds that he has done, but the man who is damned is dragged to Hell by that very halter." (33) Whosoever is in the world must perform the office a certain number of times and must know what sins (he is liable to commit) with hand or foot, -unless he be deaf or dumb: in that case he cannot be accounted guilty. Should (a deaf or dumb man) perform (a religious office), then it should be the erpatastan, and he should know the commentary on it. (34) Fathers and mothers must teach their children this much concerning good works before they reach their fifteenth year. If they have taught them this much concerning good works, the parents may claim credit(?) for any good deed the child does; but if the child has not been (properly) instructed, then the parents are responsible for any sin it may commit on attaining majority. (35) Be agreeble to good works and do not have any part in sin. Be grateful for good things, contented in adversity, long-suffering in affliction (astanak) , zealous in the performance of your duty. (36) Repent of all your sins, and do not allow any sin that brings punishment with it to remain (unconfessed) for even a moment. (37) Overcome doubts (varan) and unrighteous desires with reason (khrat). (38) Overcome concupiscence (az) with contentment, anger with serenity

(srosh), envy with benevolence (huchashmih), want with vigilance, strife (anashtih) with peace, falsehood with truth. (39) Know that Heaven is the best place, that the kingdom of the Spirit (menok) is the most pleasureable, that the mansions (deh) of the sky are the most luminous, that Paradise (Garodhman) is a shining house, and the doing of good works brings great hope of the Final Body which passes not away. (40) So far as lies within your power, do not pay respect to evil men, for by commending what is wrong evil enters into your body and good is driven out. (41) Be diligent in the acquisition of learning (frahang), for learning is the seed of knowledge, and its fruit is wisdom, and wisdom rules both worlds. (42) Concerning this it has been said that learning is an adornment in prosperity, a protection in hard times, a ready helper in affliction (astanak), a guide in distress. (43) Do not make mock of anyone at all; for the man who mocks will himself be mocked, will lose his dignity (khwarr) and be execrated; and rarely indeed will he have a decent or warlike son. (44) Seek every day the company of good men to ask their advice, for he who makes a habit of seeking the company of good men, will be blessed with a greater share of virtue and holiness. (45) Go three times a day to the Fire Temple and do homage to the Fire; for he who makes a habit of going to the Fire Temple and of doing homage to the Fire, will be blessed with a greater share of both worldly wealth and of holiness. (46) Take great care never to vex your father and mother or your superior lest your body become ill-famed (thereby) and your soul see damnation. (47) Know that of all the countless adversities that the accursed Destructive Spirit devised these three are the most grievous, -the obstruction of the sight of the eye, deafness of the ear, and thirdly the Lie of discord (anashtih). (48) For it is revealed that for this reason does the Sun issue his command to men on earth three times a day. (49) At dawn he says, "Ohrmazd ever bids you who are men to be diligent in the doing of good works so that I may bestow earthly life upon you." (50) At midday he says, "Be diligent in seeking out a wife, in the procreation of children, and in your other duties, for until the Final Body (comes to pass) the Destructive Spirit and his abortions will not be separated from this world." (51) At eventide he says, "Repent of the sins you have committed that I may have compassion on you." For it is revealed that just as the light of the Sun comes down to earth, so do his words come to earth. (52) In this material world do not think, say, or do what is wrong (false) in thought, word, or deed. (53) Through the power of the gods, and by way of wisdom and by consultation with the Religion be vigilant and zealous (for good works), and consider that since the value of good works is so great and limitless, the Destructive Spirit strives his utmost to conceal (this truth) and to cause you misery, and Ohrmazd strives his utmost to reveal (the truth). Whosoever has

knowledge of the Religion, let him be diligent in the doing of good works and be forever steadfast therein. (54) At the end of this millennium when the wickedness of the demons knows no limit and the Religion of Ohrmazd is much reduced and that of the unrighteous is predominant, when discussions concerning the Law and Religion between good and righteous men who know their duty have ceased, when the deeds of Ahriman and the demons are done openly, -and the sign of this will be that there will be a (general) retrogression when creatures will be destroyed, those who break contracts and who have taken the part of the demons and opposed the religion will go free, and when throughout the length and breadth of the lands which acknowledge the Law of Ohrmazd (all) good creatures will despair on account of wicked tyrants (azhidahakan), -then every man must add to his (inner) peace through (the power of) Vohuman, (the Good Mind), consult with Wisdom through the Religion, search out the way of holiness by wisdom, rejoice his soul by means of generosity, show honour to rank by benevolence, seek a good name by manliness, collect friends by humility, make hope acceptable by long-suffering, store up (for himself) goodness by temperance (khem), and prepare the way to bright heaven by righteousness; for there shall he enjoy the fruits of his good works. (55) The body is mortal but the soul is immortal. Do good works, for the soul is (real), not the body, the next world is (real), not this world. (56) Do not abandon the care of the soul and forget it for the body's sake. (57) Out of respect for persons (and out of forgetfulness) that all the goods of this world must perish, do not lust after anything that will bring punishment on your body and retribution on your soul. Desire rather those things whose fruit is an everlasting joy. (58) Doing good is born of zeal, [zeal] of prayers(?), prayer of desire, desire of intellect, intellect of knowledge of the other world; and knowledge (of the other world) is a weapon that was and is and (evermore) shall be. By it He is known Who creates all things anew, Who teaches (all) things, Who ordains all that should be done, Who wills the good (sud) of all in this world and the next.' 2) The two primeval Spirits and creation The story of the two primeval Spirits and the creation of the world is recounted in greatest detail in the first chapter of a ninth century book usually known as the Bundahishn or '(Book of) the primal Creation.' This survives in a longer and a shorter version. The text which we reproduce below follows the shorter version as far as 18 where it stops: from there we follow the longer. It seemed better to confine ourselves in the main to the shorter version because it is straightforward and is the 'orthodox' account. Between 15 and 16 the longer version, generally known as the Greater Bundahishn, interpolates a long passage which cannot be reconciled either with what goes before or with what follows. The confusion is appalling, and I have therefore refrained from reproducing it here.

An apparent inconsistency appears right at the beginning. If Ahriman is an independent substance and co-eternal with Ohrmazd, it follows that Ohrmazd himself cannot be infinite since he is limited by his rival. This is clearly recognized in 4 where it is said that 'both Spirit in themselves are finite.' Yet in 1 it is stated that 'Ohrmazd and the Space, Religion, and Time of Ohrmazd were and are and evermore shall be.' The contradiction, however, is perhaps only apparent, in that here Ohrmazd is identified only with infinite Time, not with infinite Space. In Time he is infinite, in Space, he is limited. Originally, then, he is eternal but not infinite, -unbounded by time, yet bounded by space which he must share with Ahriman and the Void which lies between the two kingdoms. Ahriman, however, is bounded by both Space and Time. Specially he is bounded on the upper side by the Void: temporarily 'he was and is, yet will not be.' Hence it was possible for the author of the text we reproduced in chapter I to say that 'Ahriman is not' (3), for at the end of time he will be destroyed. Ahriman is, then, spatially finite in that his domain extends to an unlimited extent in a downward direction but is bounded on the upper side by the Void; and he is finite also in time since he and his kingdom will in the end be utterly destroyed. Ohrmazd is originally spatially finite, but ultimately infinite both in space and time, for with the destruction of Ahriman Ohrmazd is no longer spatially restricted: 'he knows the norm that exists between the two Spirits until the creation of Ohrmazd shall rule supreme at the Final Body for ever and ever; that is the infinite.' Thus Zoroastrianism God is originally finite, limited as he is by the opposite principle Ahriman. So he would have remained for all eternity had not Ahriman been what he is, an Aggressor, and an ill-informed aggressor at that. The mere fact that Ahriman attacks makes it possible for God to become infinite, for this enables Ohrmazd to counter-attack in self-defence. It is the unordered attack of Ahriman that evokes the ordered defence of Ohrmazd, and it is the disorder in Ahriman himself that finally brings about his own overthrow. This story of the cosmic struggle results not only in the destruction of Ahriman, but in the perfecting of an imperfect God: the good Spirit who was finite emerges as finite. Ahriman, too, could have been immortal, had he so willed, but being the principle of death he could not will it so. Man, then, in fighting on the side of Ohrmazd, is fighting for his own immortality, his share in the Final Body which is the infinite. So, in the beginning, the two antagonists are poised for battle, the one 'omniscient and good,' and the other the Aggressor 'whose will is to smite.' Ohrmazd foresees the attack and creates an 'ideal' or spiritual creation 'without thought, withought movement, without touch' with which to defend himself, 'such creation as was needful for his instrument' (5). One may well ask who or what this 'instrument' is. In fact it appears to be Vay or the Void, for Vay who appears both as a deity and as the Void is elsewhere described as 'the instrument he (Ohrmazd) needed for the deed.' The Void, then, is enlisted by Ohrmazd in advance on his side. Creation and the Void are complementary, and once the battle begins, Vay, the Void, is galvanized into life, it is the force which breaks down opposition, 'for he

pursues the enemy from behind that he may smite the Aggressor and protect creation.' Meanwhile Ahriman is not idle. He has seen the light and would destroy it, so he sets about forging his own weapons in the shape of demons. Ohrmazd offers peace which is summarily rejected. As a compromise, then, the two Spirits agree to do battle for 9,000 years at the end of which, as Ohrmazd knows, Ahriman will be utterly destroyed. So passed the first three thousand years of the great 'Cosmic Year' which lasts for 12,000 years. The battle proper begins with Ohrmazd chanting the Ahunavar, the key prayer of the Zoroastrians which corresponds, in the importance they attach to it, to our own 'Our Father.' The mere recital of this prayer reveals to Ahriman that all is already over, and that his ultimate annihilation is certain. He swoons and falls back into the Darkness where he lies unconscious for three thousand years. During Ahriman's indisposition Ohrmazd quietly proceeds to create the two worlds, the world of spirit and the world of matter. The two creations are complementary. On the spiritual side stand Ohrmazd and the six Amahraspands, the Bounteous Immortals, his archangels who are at the same time aspects of himself; on the other side stand Man and the six other material creations which are there to help him. Man himself is Ohrmazd's deputy on earth, for 'of material creatures he took to himself the Original Man.' Each of the six Amahraspands also takes one of the material creations under his special patronage. The names of the Amahraspands are Vohuman (Good Mind), Artvahisht (the Best Righteousness or Truth), Shahrevar (the Choice Kingdom), Spandarmat (Bounteous RightMindedness who is in fact identical with the earth), Hurdat (Wholeness or Salvation), and Amurdat (Immortality). The six material creations are, in the order that they were created, the sky, water, the earth, plants, the Primal Bull, and Gayomart, the Primal Man, -and lastly fire which 'permeated all six elements.' In the third chapter of the Bundahishn each of the Amahraspands adopts one material creation; Ohrmazd adopts Man, Vohuman cattle, Artvahisht fire, Spandarmat the Earth, Hurdat water, and Amurdat plants. Shahrevar one would expect to adopt the sky, the only remaining member of the seven original creations. In fact he adopts metals which in our text are included in the creation of the earth. This discrepancy, however, disappears when he read that the sky is made of 'shining metal that has the substance of steel.' Each material creation, then, stands under a tutelary deity. The two worlds are connected, and in close co-operation they both stand ready to face Ahriman again. So far, then, there is no real inconsistency in this creation myth which is the orthodox Zoroastrian account. At this point, however, we meet with a distinct anomaly. We have seen that Ahriman was totally immobilized for three thousand years by the chanting of the Ahunavar. Yet in 16 we read: 'While Ahriman lay crushed Ohrmazd created his creation. First he fashioned forth Vohuman by

whom movement was given to the creation of Ohrmazd. The Destructive Spirit first created the Lying Word and then Akoman (the Evil Mind).' How could Ahriman do this if he were unconscious? I have suggested elsewhere that during the first three thousand years of the Cosmic Year of 12,000 years Ahriman may have gained in initial victory, -at least in the unorthodox account of the so-called Zervanites who, as we have seen, differed from the orthodox in that they made Zurvan or Infinite Time the supreme principle and as such father of Ohrmazd and Ahriman. Now the discrepancy in our present passage seems to show that something has been altered in the original myth. Plainly Ahriman could not create the Lying Word, Akoman, the Evil Mind, and the other demons mentioned in 17 if he were totally unconscious as, according to our text, he was. The episode, then, must have been transferred from the first three millennia when Ohrmazd was content to create a wholly spiritual creation 'without thought, without movement, without touch' and thereby, one might have thought, singularly ill-adapted to resist any kind of attack whereas Ahriman fashioned something that seems far more effective,- 'many demons, a creation destructive and meet for battle.' This demonic creation is surely the same as the demonic creation detailed later on. Moreover, the Lying Word is the exact opposite of the Ahunavar, the Word of Truth which Ohrmazd pronounces with such devastating effect. Since, then, it would be impossible for Ahriman to pronounce the 'Lying Word' or to create his demonic creation while he was unconscious, we must conclude that this fearful falsehood was uttered and this unholy host devised at an earlier stage. But though there is evidence that in heretical Zoroastrianism this lie was as effective against Ohrmazd as the Ahunavar was later to be against Ahriman, given the text as we have it, we can only say that for the orthodox the lie in question must have been Ahriman's foolish boast in 9, 'I shall incline all thy creatures to hatred of thee and love of me.' In orthodox Zoroastrianism, then, Ahriman's first attack is the assault of falsehood, and it fails hopelessly because Ohrmazd knows it to be untrue and is therefore undismayed. He counter-attacks with the Ahunavar, True Speech, and thereby incapacitates Ahriman for a full three thousand years. During this period he fashions forth his own creation with which he will resist all further attacks. Ahriman's second attack will furnish us with the theme for our next chapter. For the present we will leave the Bundahishn to speak for itself. Bundahishn, chapter I '(1) Thus is it revealed in the Good Religion. Ohrmazd was on high in omniscience and goodness: for infinite time he was ever in the light. The light is the space and place of Ohrmazd: some call it the Endless Light. Omniscience and goodness are the permanent disposition of Ohrmazd: some call them "Religion." The interpretation of both is the same, namely the permanent disposition of Infinite Time, for Ohrmazd and the Space, Religion, and Time of Ohrmazd were and are and evermore shall be.

(2) Ahriman, slow in knowledge, whose will is to smite, was deep down in the darkness: [he was] and is, yet will not be. The will to smite is his permanent disposition, and darkness is his place: some call it the Endless Darkness. (3) Between them was the Void: some call it Vay in which the two Spirits mingle. (4) Concerning the finite and finite: the heights which are called the Endless Light (since they have no end) and the depths which are the Endless Darkness, these are infinite. On the border both are finite since between them is the Void, and there is no contact between the two. Again both Spirits in themselves are finite. Again concerning the omniscience of Ohrmazd -everything that is within the knowledge of Ohrmazd is finite; that is he knows the norm that exists between the two Spirits until the creation of Ohrmazd shall rule supreme at the final Body for ever and ever; that is the infinite. At that time when the Final Body comes to pass, the creation of Ahriman will be destroyed: that again is the finite. (5) Ohrmazd, in his omniscience, knew that the Destructive Spirit existed, that he would attack and, since his will is envy, would mingle with him; and from beginning to end (he knew) with what and how many instruments he would accomplish his purpose. In ideal form he fashioned forth such creation as was needful for his instrument. For three thousand years creation stayed in this ideal state, for it was without thought, without movement, without touch. (6) The Destructive Spirit, ever slow to know, was unaware of the existence of Ohrmazd. Then he rose up from the depths and went to the border whence the lights are seen. When he saw the light of Ohrmazd intangible, he rushed forward. Because his will is to smite and his substance is envy, he made haste to destroy it. Seeing valour and supremacy superior to his own, he fled back to the darkness and fashioned many demons, a creation destructive and meet for battle. (7) When Ohrmazd beheld the creation of the Destructive Spirit, it seemed not good to him, -a frightful putrid, bad, and evil creation: and he revered it not. Then the Destructive Spirit beheld the creation of Ohrmazd and it seemed good to him, -a creation most profound, victorious, informed of all: and he revered the creation of Ohrmazd. (8) Then Ohrmazd, knowing in what manner the end would be, offered peace to the Destructive Spirit, saying, "O Destructive Spirit, bring aid to my creation and give it praise that in reward therefor thou mayst be deathless and unageing, uncorrupting and undecaying. And the reason is this that if thou dost not provoke a battle, then shalt thou not thyself be powerless, and to both of us there shall be benefit abounding." (9) But the Destructive Spirit cried out, "I shall not go forth, nor shall I anymore give aid to thy creation; nor shall I give praise to thy creation nor shall I agree with thee in any good thing: but I shall destroy thee and thy creation for ever and ever; yea, I shall incline all thy creatures to hatred of thee and love of me." And the interpretation thereof is this, that he thought Ohrmazd was helpless against him and that therefore did he offer peace. He accepted not

but uttered thereats. (10) And Ohrmazd said, "Thou canst not, O Sestructive Spirit, accomplish all; for thou canst not destroy me, nor canst thou bring it about that my creation should not return to my possession." (11) Then Ohrmazd, in his omniscience, knew that if he did not fix a time for battle against him, then Ahriman would do unto his creation even as he had threatened; and the struggle and the mixture would be everlasting; and Ahriman could settle in the mixed state of creation and take it to himself.... (12) And Ohrmazd said to the Destructive Spirit, "Fix a time so that by this pact we may extend the battle for nine thousand years." For he knew that by fixing a time in this wise the Destructive Spirit would be made powerless. Then the Destructive Spirit, not seeing the end, agreed to that treaty, just as two men who fight a duel fix a term (saying), "Let us on such a day do battle till night (falls)." (13) This too did Ohrmazd know in his omniscience, that within these nine thousand years three thousand would pass entirely according to the will of Ohrmazd, three thousand years in mixture would pass according to the will of both Ohrmazd and Ahriman, and that in the last battle the Destructive Spirit would be made powerless and that he himself would save creation from aggression. (14) Then Ohrmazd chanted the Ahunavar, that is he recited the twenty-one words of the Yatha ahu vairyo: and he showed to the Destructive Spirit his own final victory, the powerlessness of the Destructive Spirit, the destruction of the demons, the resurrection, the Final Body, and the freedom of creation from all aggression for ever and ever. (15) When the Destructive Spirit beheld his own powerlessness and the destruction of the demons, he was laid low, swooned, and fell back into the darkness; even as it is said in the Religion, "When one third thereof is recited, the Destructive Spirit shudders for fear; when two thirds are recited, he falls on his knees; when the prayer is finished, he is powerless." Unable to do harm to the creatures of Ohrmazd, for three thousand years the Destructive Spirit lay crushed. (16) While Ahriman lay crushed Ohrmazd created his creation. First he fashioned forth Vohuman (the Good Mind) by whom movement was given to the creation of Ohrmazd. The Destructive Spirit first created the Lying Word and then Akoman (the Evil Mind). Of material creatures Ohrmazd first fashioned the sky, and from the goodly movement of material light he fashioned forth Vohuman with whom the Good Religion of the Worshippers of Ohrmazd dwelt; that is to say that Vohuman knew what would befall creation even up to its rehabilitation. Then he fashioned Artvahisht, then Shahrevar, then Spandarmat, the Hurdat, and then Amurdat. (17) From the material darkness Ahriman fashioned forth Akoman and Indar, then Savul, then Nanghaith, then Tarich and Zerich.

(18) Of the material creation Ohrmazd [fashioned forth] first the sky, second water, third the earth, fourth plants, fifth cattle, and sixth Man. (19) First he created the sky as a defence. Some call it "the first." Second he created water to smite down the Lie of thirst: third he created the all-solid earth: fourth he created plants to help the useful cattle: fifth cattle to help the Blessed Man: sixth he created the Blessed Man to smite the Destructive Spirit and his demons and to make them powerless. Then he created fire, a flame; and its brilliance derived from the Endless Light, a goodly form even as fire desires. Then he fashioned the wind in the form of a stripling, fifteen years of age, which fosters and keeps the water, the plants, and the cattle, the Blessed Man and all things that are. (20) Now I shall describe their properties. First he created the sky, bright and manifest, its ends exceeding far apart, in the form of an egg, of shiningmetal that is the substance of steel, male. The top of it reached to the Endless Light; and all creation was created within the sky -like a castle or fortress in which every weapon that is needed for tha battle is stored, or like a house in which all things remain. The vault of the sky's width is equal to its length, its length to its height, and its height to its depth: the proportions are the same and fit exceeding well(?). Like a husbandman the Spirit of the Sky is possessed of thought and speech and deeds, knows, produces much, discerns. (21) And it received durability as a bulwark against the Destructive Spirit that he might not be suffered to return (to whence he came). Like a valiant warrior who dons his armour that fearless he may return from battle, so is the Spirit of the Sky clad in the sky. And to help the sky (Ohrmazd) gave it joy, for he fashioned joy for its sake: for even now in the mixed state creation is in joy. (22) Second from the substance of the sky he fashioned water, as much as when a man puts his hands on the ground and walks on his hands and feet, and the water rises to his belly and flows to that height. And as helpmates he gave it wind, rain, mist, storm, and snow. (23) Third from water he created the earth, round, with far flung passage-ways, without hill or dale, its length equal to its breadth, and its breadth to its depth, poised in the middle of the sky: as it is said, "The first third of this earth he fashioned as hard as granite(?); the second third of this earth he fashioned of sandstone(?); the third third of this earth he fashioned as soft as clay." (24) And he created minerals within the earth, and mountains which afterwards sprang forth and grew out of the earth. And to aid the earth he gave it iron, copper, sulphur, and borax, and all the other hard substances of the earth except..(?).., for that is of a different substance. And he made and fashioned the earth like a man when he tightly covers his body on all sides with all manner of raiment. Beneath this earth there is water everywhere.

(25) Fourth he created plants. First they grew in the middle of this earth to the height of a foot, without branches, back, or thorn, moist and sweet: and every manner of plant life was in their seed. And to aid the plants he gave them water and fire; for the stem of every plant has a drop of water at its tip and fire for (the breadth of) four figures before (the tip). By the power of these they grew. (26) Fifth he fashioned the lone-created Bull in Eranvej in the middle of the earth, on the banks of the river Veh Daite, for that is the middle of the earth. He was white and shining like the Moon and his height was about three cubits. And to aid him he gave him water and plants, for in the mixed state he derives strength and growth from these. (27) Sixth he fashioned Gayomart (the Blessed Man), shining like the Sun, and his height was about four cubits and his breadth equal to his height, on the banks of the river Daite, for that is the middle of the earth, -Gayomart on the felt side, the Bull on the right side; and their distance one from the other and their distance from the water of the Daite was as much as their height. They had eyes and ears, tongue and distinguishing mark. The distinguishing mark of Gayomart is this, that men have in this wise been born from his seed. (28) And to aid him he gave him sleep, the repose of the Creator; for Ohrmazd fashioned forth sleep in the form of a man, tall and bright, and fifteen years of age. He fashioned Gayomart and the Bull from the earth. And from the light and freshness of the sky he fashioned forth the seed of men and bulls; for these two seeds have their origin in fire, not in water: and he put them in the bodies of Gayomart and the Bull that from them there might be progeny abundant for men and cattle.' With the completion of his spiritual and material creations Ohrmazd is ready for the coming struggle. At the same time, it appears, the souls or Fravahrs (Fravashis) of all men were created in the unseen world. Only it they would consent to descend to earth to carry on the struggle could Ohrmazd be assured of final victory. So Ohrmazd 'took counsel with the consciousness and Fravahr of men and infused omniscient wisdom into them, saying, "Which seemeth more profitable to you, whether that I should fashion you forth in material from and that you should strive incarnate with the Lie and destroy it, and that we should resurrect you at the end, whole and immortal, and recreate you in material form, and that you should eternally be immortal unageing, and without enemies; or that you should eternally be preserved from the Aggressor?" And the Fravahrs of suffer evil from the Lie and Ahriman in the world, but because at the end (which is the Final Body), they would be resurrected free from the enmity of the Adversary, whole and immortal for ever and ever, they agreed to go into the material world.' 3) The Devil's onslaught Ahriman's attack on the world of Spirit has failed, and he has been thrown back into the darkness by the recitation of the sacred formula. For three thousand years he lies in a stupor, unable to move. The demons vainly seek to revive him, 'but the

accursed Destructive Spirit was not comforted... for fear of the Blessed Man.' It is, then, not only the magic power of the sacred formula that keeps Ahriman at bay, but the First Man whom he dare not attack, so holy is he. There now follows a very strange episode which begins the text we reproduce in this chapter and which is form the fourth chapter of the Bundahishn. Nothing the demons say or do can revive their stricken captain until a character described as 'the Whore' makes her appearance on the scene and boasts that she will 'take away the dignity of the Blessed Man.' At this Ahriman instantly revives, and the attack on the material world begins. This, surprisingly enough, is the last we hear of the 'demon Whore' whose intervention seems to have been so very decisive. Another text, however, tells us how she succeeded in corrupting the unfortunate Gayomart, the 'Blessed Man.' This text, from the Selections of Zatsparam, tells us this:'When Ahriman rushed into creation, he had the brood of the demon Whore of evil religion as his companion even as a man has a whore woman as his bedfellow; for verily the whore is a demon: and he appointed the demon Whore queen of her brood, that is the chief of all the whore demons, the most grievous adversary of the Blessed Man. And [the demon Whore] of evil religion joined herself to [the Blessed Man]; for the defilement of females she joined herself to him, that she might defile females; and the females, because they were defiled, might defile the males, and (the males) would turn aside from their proper work.' All this seems very un-Zoroastrian, for as we have seen in chapter I, the reproduction of the species is one of the first duties of man. It is clear, however, from this and other passages that woman was held in slight esteem by the Zoroastrian, or at least by a sect of them, -for there are passages which exalt the virtues of the housewife, -and that the reproduction of males, not of females, was the essential element in the defeat of the Evil One. Ohrmazd himself makes this quite clear in that he says:'I created thee whose adversary is the whore species, and thou wast created with a mouth close to thy buttocks, and coition seems to thee even as the state of the sweetest food to the mouth; for thou art a helper to me, for from thee is man born, but thou dost grieve me who am Ohrmazd. But had I found another vessel from which to make man, never would I have created thee, whose adversary is the whore species. But I sought in the waters and in the earth, in plants and cattle, in the highest mountains and deep valleys, but I did not find a vessel from which blessed man might proceed except woman whose adversary is the whore.' It would seem clear, then, that the 'Whore' is the First Woman just as Gayomart is the First Man. It seems that she was created by Ohrmazd and fled to Ahriman whose consort she then became. The Devil's kiss causes menstruation, a condition abhorred by the Zoroastrians as being in the highest possible degree impure. Thus Man is defiled by Woman and ever will be so till the final Resurrection when both

sexes are called to share in the universal bliss. Through Woman who, though created by Ohrmazd, chose to play the harlot with Ahriman, Man and all his descendants are defiled. But Ahriman's victory in this respect is only partial, for not only does the union of man and woman make the reproduction of the race of men possible, but woman remains forever subject to man. As always the stratagems of Ahriman ultimately turn to his own undoing. Ahriman, then, revived by the demon Whore's promise to destroy the dignity of the Blessed Man, delivers his attack on the material creation of Ohrmazd. He burst through the periphery of the sky and rends it, he defiles the waters and makes them brackish, he attacks the earth by letting loose upon it all manner of filthy and creeping things, he poisons the plants and brings disease upon the 'lonecreated Bull' so that he sickens and dies. Next he attacks Gayomart, the Blessed Man himself, with the Demon of Death and 'a thousand death-dealing demons' (11), with 'concupiscence and want, with bane and pain, with disease and lust and sloth.' Yet Gayomart is suffered by a decree of Time to live for thirty years after the attack was launched. During these thirty years, it must be assumed, his unholy union with the 'demon Whore' was consummated. Lastly Ahriman attacks the holy fire and befouls it with smoke. At this point Ahriman achieves his highest power. One thing, however, he had forgotten. Though he had rent the sky and come upon the earth from its lower side, the sky was able to close up the fissure and Ahriman found himself entrapped in the material universe till the end of time. 'And the Spirit of the Sky said to the Destructive Spirit, "[Till] the end of Time must I watch (over thee) so as not to suffer thee to escape"' (5). Trapped then as he is in the snare of the sky, he is set upon by the powers of light until he and his demon host 'were routed and hurled into Hell' which is in the middle of the earth. Creation, however, has been definitively corrupted, and Ahriman remains within it to continue his abominable works until the Resurrection and the Final Body when all is made good 'and neither the Destructive Spirit nor his creation will exist.' Bundahishn, chapter IV '(1) It is said in the Religion that when the Destructive Spirit saw that he himself and the demons were powerless on account of the Blessed Man, he was thrown into a stupor. For three thousand years he lay in a stupor. And when he was thus languishing, the demons with monstrous heads cried out one by one (saying), "Arise, O our father, for we would join battle in the material world that Ohrmazd and the Amahraspands may suffer straitness and misery thereby." One by one they minutely related their own evil deeds. But the accursed Destructive Spirit was not comforted, nor did he rise out of his stupor for fear of the Blessed Man, till the accursed Whore came after three thousand years had run their course, and she cried out (saying), "Arise, O our father, for in that battle I shall let loose so much affliction on the Blessed Man and the toiling Bull that, because of my deeds, they will not be fit to live. I shall take away their dignity (khwarr); I shall afflict the water, I shall afflict the earth, I shall afflict the fire, I shall afflict the

plants, I shall afflict all the creation which Ohrmazd has created." And she related her wvil deeds so minutely that the destructive Spirit was comforted and, throwing aside his stupor, leapt forth and kissed the head of the Whore; and the pollution which is called menstruation appeared on the Whore. And the Destructive Spirit cried out to the demon Whore, "Whatsoever is thy desire, do thou ask, that I may give it thee." (2) Then Ohrmazd in his omniscient wisdom knew that at that time the Destructive Spirit could give whatever the demon Whore asked and that there would be great profit to him thereby. The appearance of the body of the Destructive Spirit was in the form of a frog. And (Ohrmazd) showed one like unto a young man of fifteen years of age to the demon Whore; and the demon Whore fastened her thoughts on him. And the demon Whore cried out to the Destructive Spirit (saying), "Give me desire for man that I may seat him in the house as my lord." And the Destructive Spirit cried out unto her (saying), "I do not bid thee ask anything, for thou knowest (only) to ask for what is profitless and bad." But the time had passed when he was in a position not to give what she asked. (3) Then the Destructive Spirit rose up together with his demons and his weapons to attack the lights. For he had seen the sky when it appeared to him in its ideal form before it was created in corporeal shape. I envious desire he rushed upon it, -and the sky was in the station of the stars, -and he dragged it down into the Void as I have (already) written above, for (the Void) lay between the first principles of Light and Darkness. One third of the sky was above the station of the stars on the inner side. (4) (And Ahriman) leapt forth in the form of a serpent and trampled on as much of the sky as was beneath the earth and rended it. In the month of Fravartin on the day of Ohrmazd at midday he made his attack. And the sky shrank from him in terror even as a ewe shrinks from a wolf. (5) Then he came upon the waters which, as I have said, are established beneath the earth; and he bored a hole in the middle of the earth and entered in thereby. And he came upon the plants, and then upon the Bull and Gayomart, and lastly he came upon the fire in the form of a fly. All creation did he assail. At midday he trampled upon all the world and make it as dark as the darkest night. He darkened the sky which is above and which is beneath the earth; and the Spirit of the Sky said to the Destructive Spirit, "[Till] the end of time must I mount guard (over thee) so as not to suffer thee to escape." (6) And upon the waters he brought brackishness (lit. "different taste"). And the Spirit of the Waters said "...(corrupt)..." (7) And upon the earth he let loose reptiles in corporeal form, -and they mingled with each other,- reptiles, biting and poisonous, -the serpent-dragon, scorpion, venomous lizard, tortoise, and frog, so that not so much as a needle's point on (the

whole) earth remained free from reptiles. And the Earth said, "May an avenger come upon these vengeful beings (in return) for this creation which they have created." (8) And upon the plants he brought so much poison that in a moment they dried up. And the Spirit of the Plants said, "By the moisture (that is his) Ohrmazd will cause the plants to grow." (9) And upon the Bull and Gayomart he brought concupiscence and want, bane and pain, disease and lust (varan) and sloth. Before he assailed the Bull Ohrmazd gave him healing mang (Indian hemp) which some call bang to eat and rubbed it on his eyes, so that he might suffer less from the smiting and the wickedness and the tortue. In a moment he weakened and sickened, but his pain was short-lived, for straightway he died. And the Bull said, "Let the actions and deeds (of men) consist in a perfect rulership over the animal creation." (10) Before (Ahriman) came upon Gayomart, Ohrmazd brought sleep upon him (lasting) as long as it takes to say a short prayer; for Ohrmazd created sleep in the form of a stripling of fifteen years of age, bright and tall. When Gayomart awoke from that sleep, he saw the world was dark as night, and that on (the whole) earth there was not so much as a needle's point that remained free from the crawling of reptiles. The heavenly sphere began to revolve and the Sun and Moon to move, and the earth was all amazed(?) at the thundering of gigantic demons and their battle with the stars. (11) Then the Destructive Spirit thought, "All the creatures of Ohrmazd have I made of no effect save (only) Gayomart." And he let loose upon Gayomart Astvihat, (the Demon of Death,) and a thousand death-dealing demons, yet because of the decree of Time they found no means of slaying him; for it is said that at the beginning of creation when Ahriman started to attack, Time extended Gayomart's life and kingdom for thirty years, [he said] so that Gayomart lived for thirty years after the assault was delivered. And Gayomart said, "Now that the Aggressor has come, men will arise from my seed, and it is best for them to do good works." (12) Then (Ahriman) came upon the fire and he mingled it with darkness and smoke; and the Seven Planets together with many demons and henchmen mingled with the heavenly sphere to do battle with the constellations. All creation did he befoul even as if smoke were to rise from fire (burning) everywhere. And ( these demons) corrupted the place of (the gods) on high and strove with them. (13) For ninety days and nights did the spiritual gods do battle in the material world with the Destructive Spirit and the demons until they were routed and hurled into Hell. And the sky was made a fortress so that they could not mingle with it. Hell is in the middle of the earth at the point where the Destructive Spirit bored a hole in it and rushed in. So it is that in all the things of this world a dual

operation can be seen, antagonism and strife, rising and sinking, and mixture everywhere.' Ahriman has now succeeded in contaminating and defiling the whole of Ohrmazd's material creation. Though he himself has been cast into Hell, this is the hour of his greatest triumph. He is, however, reckoning without Ohrmazd's master-plan; for Ahriman, by breaking into the sky, has allowed himself to be caught in a trap from which he cannot escape; and the more he struggles, the more hopelessly enmeshed does he become. His predicament is described in the Shikand Gumani Vazar, another of our Middle Persian books, where we find the Evil One compared to a noxious beast who unwittingly falls into a trap set for him by the wise gardener who is Ohrmazd. Shikand Gumani Vazar, chapter IV (63) (Ohrmazd) is like the owner of a garden or a wise gardener whose garden noxious and destructive beasts and the birds are intent on spoiling by doing harm to its fruits and trees. (64) And the wise gardener, to save himself trouble and to keep those noxious beasts out of his garden, devises means whereby to capture them, (65) like gins and snares and bird-traps, (66) so that when the beast sees the trap and strives to escape from it, it is ensnared inside it, not knowing (the nature of) the gin or snare. (67-8) It is obvious that when the beast falls into the snare, it is caught in it not because of the superiority of the snare (itself) but because of (the superiority of) the maker of the snare. (69) The man who is the owner of the garden and maker of the snare knows in his wisdom just how great the beast's strength is and for how long (it can hold out). (70) The strength and power which the beast has within its body is neutralized by its own struggles and is expended in the proportion that it has enough power to trample on the snare and to rend the gin and to strive to destroy it. (71) Since its strength is insufficient, its power to resist diminishes and it is put out of action. Then the wise gardener, putting his plan into effect and knowing (the needs of) his own produce, drives the beast out of the snare; and the beast's substance remains but its faculties are put out of action. (72) And the gardener returns his snare and gin undamaged to his store-house where he will refit it. (73) So the Creator Ohrmazd, the Saviour of his creatures and Ordainer of creation, the (God) who puts the Principle of Evil out of action is like [a gardener] who protects his garden from what is harmful to it. (74) And that noxious beast which ruins the garden is the accursed Ahriman who disrupts and assails creation. (75) The goodly snare is the sky in which the good creations are (like) guests, (76) and in which the Destructive Spirit and his abortions are entrapped. (77) And the gin and trap which prevents the noxious beast from achieving its desire (78) is the time set for the battle with Ahriman and his powers and weapons (known as) Time of the long Dominion, (79) which, by struggling with the beast in the gin and snare, destroys its power. (80) Only the Creator of creation (himself) can bring about again the salvation of his [creatures] from eternal adversity and can

reconstitute its goodly progress, just as the wise owner of the garden (reconstitutes) his gin and snare.' 4) The Necessity of dualism Ahriman's shortlived triumph after his assault on Ohrmazd's material creation, the first stage in the cosmic battle between the two primeval Spirits, is now over: and this would seem a good moment to pause for a while to consider the philosophical basis on which Zoroastrian dualism rests. The principal philosophical Zoroastrian text that has survived is the Denkart, a sizeable corpus of theological, mythological, and exegetic material dating from the ninth century A.D. The text of this work, however, is so difficult and corrupt that it would serve no useful purpose to reproduce any large portion of it in a work that is primarily intended for a non-specialist public. We will, then, again turn to the Shikand Gumani Vazar the text of which is in a far better state of preservation and which presents the arguments in favour of a dualist solution to the cosmic riddle both clearly and well. The author, Mardan-Farrukh by name, who lived well after the Muhammadan conquest at a time when to be a Zoroastrian involved political disabilities, was a Zoroastrian not so much because this was the religion of his Iranian forbears, as because he was convinced that it was the true religion. In the tenth chapter of the Shikand he says: 'Now, as I have said above, I have always been earnestly anxious to know God and have been curious in searching out his religion and his will. In this spirit of enquiry I have travelled to foreign countries and (even) to India and have frequented many sects: for I did not choose my religion simply because I inherited it, but I wanted (only the religion) which was mostly firmly bassed on reason and evidence and which was most acceptable (on these grounds). So I frequented many different sects until, by the grace of God and the power and glory and strength of the Good Religion, I escaped from the abyss of darkness and of doubts that were with difficulty dispelled. By the force of this religious knowledge... I was saved from much doubt and from the sophistries, deceptions, and evils of the sects, and particularly from that greatest and most monstrous of deceivers, the worst of false teachers, the "intellectually intoxicated" Mani.' Mardan-Farrukh, then, was a Zoroastrian by conviction, and he was confirmed in this religion because it seemed to him to offer the only reasonable explanation for those perennial religious enigmas, creation and the undoubted existence of evil. From the seventh to the tenth chapters of his Shikand he marshals his arguments in favour of a dualist solution. It is no accident that he singles out the religion of Mani for his especial condemnation though, at first sight, this may seem strange. For Manichaeism is as uncompromisingly dualistic as is Zoroastrianism, -but with what a difference! Manichaeism equates evil with matter, good with spirit, and is therefore particularly suitable as a doctrinal basis for every form of asceticism and many

forms of mysticism. It profoundly affected Islamic mysticism, and through St Augustine has left traces in Christianity itself. Its basic doctrine that this world was constructed from the substance of Satan was profoundly abhorrent to the Zoroastrians whose attitude to the things of this world was essentially what William James called 'healthy-minded.' Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, as religious types, stand at opposite poles: they are both, in their own way, extremes. Zoroastrianism sees the whole physical creation as in itself good; what corruption there is was subsequently introduced by Ahriman, as we have seen. The world of spirit is the exemplar of this world but not essentially different from it; and the future life is a natural paradise in which there is neither death nor old age nor disease nor any of the things that make life on earth difficult and tedious. These evils are finally destroyed in the last days when Ahriman is either annihilated or totally incapacitated. For the Zoroastrian the body has its own essential dignity, inferior, it is true, to that of the soul, but dignity none the less. The Manichaean view that the body is composed of the substance of evil, that it is a prison and a carcase, is, to the Zoroastrian, unnatural, perverted, and blasphemous. Thus because the Zoroastrian sees man not as an immortal soul imprisoned in a mortal and diabolical body but as a harmonious whole the unity of which is temporarily disruped by death, but fully restored and glorified at the final Resurrection, he is bitterly averse to any form of asceticism and has, as a matter of historical fact, never developed any form of mysticism. For him there is no dualism of matter and spirit; there is only a dualism of good and evil which is quite another matter. His hatred of the Manichee is instinctive and profound and, given the dogmas of each, absolutely reasonable. His opposition to Islam and Christianity is on quite other grounds: they are not reasonable. For not only is he thoroughly at home in this world, he also dislikes mysteries and mystification. Further it is no accident that he himself calls his religion 'the Good Religion,' for there is one dogma on which he firmly takes his stand, -God is good. According to the Zoroastrian the Moslem God is not good, neither does he pretend to be, while the Christian God advertises Himself as Good, and plainly is not. Once you admit the reality of evil, then God is responsible for it unless Evil is an eternal principle co-existent with God and irreconcileably opposed to Him. Evil is not a privation as the Christian would have it, but a substance, and it does not need, therefore, to be explained away. It is not the world, nor even of the world, as the Manichaeans hold; it is rather a pure spirit, the negation of life, and naked aggression; it is wrong-mindedness, stupidity, blind self-assertiveness, error. There is no unity in the Cosmos as it is, nor is there unity in eternity. How could there be? since evil is a fact, not a problem. The Zoroastrians claim to face the fact rationally, and it is because they have consistently done so that they have not survived as a world religion, for 'religions are based on certain fundamental assumptions which, of their nature, do not admit of logical proof,' and one of these is the unity of the creative principle. This Zoroastrianism flatly denies.

If, then, one accepts a fundamental duality in Being itself, the classic problems of religion disappear. Evil exists from all eternity: it is aggressive by nature and the good principle who is omniscient must, therefore, defend himself against it. There is no mystery about creation either. 'David said, "O king, since thou hadst no need of us, Say, then, what wisdom was there in creating the two worlds?" God said to him, "O temporal man, I was a hidden treasure; I sought that that treasure of loving-kindness and bounty should be revealed".' So said the Moslem mystic, Jalal-al-Din Rumi. Pure verbiage to the Zoroastrian. God needs his creation as much as creation needs God, for his creation is his defence against Ahriman. Monotheism cannot 'explain' creation. There is no straight answer to the enigma of why a perfect and self-sufficing Being should create an imperfect world in which his creatures, as often as not, suffer torment. On the other hand 'creation' can be 'explained' as a hard necessity if God has to protect himself against a pitiless enemy who is co-existent with himself. God did not, according to the Zoroastrians, bungle his creation, nor does he 'repent' of it as Jevovah habitually does: he devised it as a trap in which to ensnare his enemy and as a machine in which the latter would be finally destroyed. He foresaw that Ahriman would temporarily corrupt his whole creation, including Man, his masterpiece; and foreseeing this and because he is good he did not send Man into the front line without first obtaining his consent. Man is the instrument of his victory and through Man's co-operation with God the Adversary is finally and utterly overthrown. Man suffers at the hands of Ahriman but at least he has the comfort of knowing that he is not being tormented by an all-powerful Being who is his own creator. The Zoroastrian does not know the predicament of Job. God is good: that is the first Zoroastrian dogma, and to this Mardan-Farrukh returns again and again. In the chapter a translation of which follows, he develops three main lines of thought. First the existence of good and evil is empirically verifiable and this dichotomy is traceable to first causes. Secondly since God is by definition a rational (and omniscient) being his creation must have a rational motive. Thirdly, if it is admitted that God is good, then it necessarily follows that evil cannot proceed from Him, however indirectly. Good and evil, he argues, are contrary realities just as much as are darkness and light, fragrance and stench, sickness and health, and so on. They are differing and antagonistic substances, not merely different in the function they have to perform as, for example, are the opposites of male and female. This is shown by the fact that they cannot co-exist and are mutually destructive. Mardan-Farrukh then goes on to argue that since good and evil are demonstrable facts in the material world and since the latter derives from a spiritual or unseen prototype, it follows that there is a dichotomy in that world too, -a dichotomy that leads inevitably to two first causes which are mutually antagonistic and irreconcileable.

Now, granted that there are two independent principles one of which is by nature aggressive and the other of which is by nature pacific and wise, it follows that the wise principle will do everything in its power to ward off the attack which cannot fail to materialize. God, moreover, is wholly good, and it is therefore impossible that any goodness can be added to him: he is not capable of improvement or increase. He is, moreover, also a rational Being, and the actions of rational beings are motivated either by a desire to obtain a good which is not yet theirs, or to repel a hurt. The universe is a fact, and according to Zoroastrian dogma it is not eternal but has an origin, and it is God who has originated it, not Ahriman. Therefore, since God is a rational Being, it follows that it can only have been created in order to repel the injury that God might himself suffer from Ahriman's malice. Thus creation is God's plan for bringing evil to nought, and with the destruction of the evil principle God can become 'all in all,' which he never was before. For, according to the Zoroastrians, God, though perfectly good, is not infinite, for he is limited by the contrary principle. The good, though not susceptible of any addition, could nevertheless be harmed and therefor diminished by the onslaught of evil. So God exteriorizes the spiritual and material worlds from himself, ensnares Ahriman in this 'exteriorization' which is his creation and destroys him in it. Ahriman, when the battle is over, is not destroyed as a substance,- for a substance is by definition indestructible, -but he is, to use the Pahlavi word a-karenit, he is 'put out of action' or 'deprived of actuality': he is relegated to an eternal potency which can never be actualized again, or in more everyday language for people unfamiliar with the Aristotelian jargon, 'they drag Ahriman outside the sky and cut off his head.' Only so does Ohrmazd himself achieve wholeness and infinity, 'for so long as evil is not annihilated, he whose will is good has not perfectly fulfilled what he wills' (56). Mardan-Farrukh's last argument used to demonstrate that God cannot, however indirectly, originate evil, is that a perfect being cannot originate what is imperfect. The imperfection that undoubtedly exists in creation must then be due to an agency other than God, and that is Ahriman. Were God capable of producing anything imperfect, it would imply imperfection in himself, and he should not therefore 'be worshipped as God or as perfectly good': in fact by ceasing to be perfectly good he ceases to be God. This, then, is the case for Zoroastrian dualism. Its great merit is that it absolves God from any breath of evil and explains how it could be that creation was actually necessary. It stands wholly opposed to Islam which was to supersede it and there could not really be any modus vivendi between the two, since Zoroastrianism stands squarely on the goodness of God and cares not at all for his unity whereas Islam asserts above all things the absolute unity and unicity of God, his absolute transcendance and total incomprehensibility; and since the Moslem God is as capable of leading astray as he is of guidance, it is no accident that among his ninety-nine names that of 'good' is absent. The Zoroastrian God is reasonable as well as good; there is nothing 'numinous' about him. Ohrmazd and

Allah are not compatible, and inevitably the good God of reason was forcibly ejected by the mysterium tremendum imported by the Semites. Shikand Gumani Vazar, chapter VIII '(1) Another proof that a contrary principle exists is (2) that good and evil are observable in the world, (3) and more particularly in so far as both good [and bad] conduct are defineable as such, (4) as are darkness and light, (5) right knowledge and wrong knowledge, (6) fragrance and stench, (7) life and death, (8) sickness and health, (9) justice and injustice, (10) slavery and freedom, (11) and all the other contrary activities which indisputably exist and are visible in every country and land at all times; (12) for no country or land exists, has existed, or ever will exist (13) in which the name of good and evil and what that name signifies has not existed or does not exist. (14) Nor can any time or place be mentioned in which good and evil change their nature essentially. (15) There are also other contraries whose antagonism is not [one of essence but] one of function, species, or nature. (16) Such is the mutual antagonism of things of like nature as (for example) male and female, (17) (the different) scents, tastes and colours; the Sun, Moon, and stars whose dissimilarity is not one of substance but one of function, nature, and constitution, each being adapted to its own particular work. (18) But the dissimilarity of good and evil, light and darkness, and other contrary substances is not one of function but one of substance. (19) This can be seen from the fact that their natures cannot combine and are mutually destructive. (20) For where there is good, there cannot possibly be evil. (21) Where light is admitted, darkness is driven away. (22) Similarly with other contraries, the fact that they cannot combine and are mutually destructive is caused by their dissimilarity in substance. (23) This substantial dissimilarity and mutual destructiveness is observable in phenomena in the material world. (24) The material world is the effect of the spiritual, and the spiritual is its cause, (25) for the effect is understood through the cause. (26) That the former gives testimony of the latter is obvious to ant expert in these matters. (27) That the material is an effect and the spiritual the cause can be proved by the fact that (28) every visible and tangible thing emerges from an unmanifest to a manifest state. This is perfectly clear. (29) Thus man and all other visible and tangible creatures are known to proceed from the spiritual world which is invisible and intangible. (30) So too the mass, shape, length, and breadth (of a man) are those of his parent. (31) The body of man and of other creatures is the manifestation which derives from the unmanifest and invisible thing which is in the seed of their fathers, (32) and the seed itself which was in the fathers' loins becomes manifest, visible, and tangible. (33) So we must know with a necessary knowledge that this visible and tangible material world was created from an invisible and intangible spiritual world and had its origin there. (34) Similarly there can be no doubt that the visible and tangible (material world) indicates the existence of an invisible and intangible world which is spiritual.

(35) Since we have seen that in the material world contrary substance exist and that they are sometimes mutually co-operative and sometimes mutually destructive, so (must it also be) in the spiritual world (36) which is the cause of the material, (37) and material things are its effects. That this is so is not open to doubt (38) and follows from the very nature of contrary substances. (39-40) I have shown above that the reason and occasion for the wise activity of the Creator which is exemplified in the creative act is the existence of an Adversary. (41) For it is a known fact that activity proceeds from an agent in two ways; it is either voluntary or natural. (42) The voluntary is of three kinds. (43) Two kinds are attributable to knowing and wise (agents), (44) (that is) either actions aimed at appropriating what is advantageous and good (45) or (actions) aimed at repelling and warding off what is disadvantageous and harmful and (which comes) from an external source. (46) One kind is attributable to agents of perverted intellect who are without (real) knowledge. (47) Such actions are haphazard and irrational. (48) Actions proceeding from knowing and wise persons cannot be irrational or unmotivated. (49) Since the wise, omniscient, and omnipotent Creator is self-sufficing, his perfection consists in his having no need for any advantage or increase which he might desire from outside. (50) So we must conclude that the reason and the occasion for his actions must all be of one kind, (51) (namely) to repel and ward off whatever damage might accrue to him from an external adversary who could harm him; and this is the whole reason and occasion for the act of creation. (52) This too (must be considered): the wise Creator desires (only) what is good; (53) his will is wholly good, (54) and his creative activity is in accordance with his will, (55) and the will of a wise One who wills only what is good can only achieve its full fruition by destroying and annihilating evil; (56) for so long as evil is not annihilated, he whose will is good has not perfectly fulfilled what he wills. (57) Now the goodness of the wise Creator can be inferred from the act of creation and from the fact that he cherishes and protects (his creatures), that he ordains and teaches a way and method by which evil can be repelled and sin averted, (58-60) and that he repels and wards off the Adversary who attacks the body; (it can be inferred too) from the organs and faculties of the body (afflicted as they are) by pain and sickness (which come to them) from outside and (which also are) inside the body. All animals and plants are sustained and brought to frution and made to increase by the sustaining and nutritive power called in Religion the Fravahr which co-operates with nature (61) and by the four assimilative(?) faculties, the attractive, retentive, digestive, and excretory. (62) Through the Creator's great wisdom these faculties co-operate harmoniously in repelling all manner of pain and sickness (brought on) by the Adversary who strikes at random and whose will is evil. (63) There are other faculties too which co-operate. (From all this) it can be concluded that the Creator wills (only) what is good.

(64) It is suffering and death that destroy the body, not the Creator whose will is good and who preserves and maintains the body. (65) This is clearly so because a wise Creator does not regret or repent of what he has done, (66) nor does he destroy his creatures or make them of no effect, (67) for he is wise and omniscient. (68) It is only possible to attribute regret and repentance for what one has done to one whose knowledge is defective, whose reason is imperfect, and who is ignorant of the final outcome, (69) for knowing and wise persons do not commit actions without cause or occasion. (70) Similarly the actions of ignorant men of perverted intelligence who are ignorant of the final outcome will be haphazard, without cause or occasion. (71) But the wise (Creator) will dispose wisely and act in accordance with discrimination in warding off from his creatures (the Adversary) whose actions are haphazard and who does not know the final outcome. (72) He, the (demon) whose actions are haphazard, is walled up and circumscribed within a trap and a snare; (73) for it is plain that a moving and living substance cannot be warded off or destroyed in an infinite void, nor is there any security against his harmfulness (74) unless he is circumscribed, uprooted, and made captive. (75) When he is circumscribed and made captive, he is susceptible to suffering and heavy chastisement. (76) But until he is completely conscious of his suffering and fully aware that his actions are based on a wrong knowledge, he continues to have utterly false views of what has befallen him. (77) His experience of suffering (is due to) the complete power of the omnipotent Creator. (78) When once he has reached full realization of what he suffers at the hands of omnipotence, the wise Creator puts him out of action and hurls him into the infinite Void. (79) Then the good creation will have no fear of him; it will be immortal and free from adversity. (80) Perfect is the wisdom and discrimination of the omniscient Creator of the good and (perfect is) his foreknowledge of what needs to be done. (81) The dissimilarity of things is proved by looking at them. (82) Dissimilarity is of two kinds as has been stated above; (83) one is dissimilarity in function, the other dissimilarity in substance. (84) Dissimilarity of function involves cooperation and likeness of faculties, (85) but dissimilarity of substance involves incompatibility and opposition. (86) It is obvious that [substantially dissimilar] things cannot co-exist in one place. (87) If (all) things were one, this One would be nameless, (88) for it is only through the possession of a name that one thing can be distinguished from another. (89) That evil is principially distinct from good can be inferred from the fact that neither is the cause of the other. (90) That each exists in and by its own essence (91) is proved by the eternal antagonism and opposition between the two. (92) If it should be objected that since there is a multiplicity of contraries (93) e.g. good and evil, darkness and light, fragrance and stench, life and death, sickness and health, pleasure and pain (94) etc., then there must also be a multiplicity and a

diversity of principles, (95) the reply is (96) that although the contraries may go by many names and be of many kinds, yet they are all subsumed under two names, (97) and these two names which are (like) a seed which comprises all the rest, are good and evil. (98) The various names and species (apart from these) are (only) branches (deriving) from these two seeds; (99) and nothing exists that is not included in these two names. (100) There never has been anything nor will there be anything which is neither good nor evil a mixture of the two. (101) Thus it is abundantly clear that there are two first principles, not more, (102) and that good cannot arise from evil nor evil from good. (103) From this we must infer (104) that what is perfect and complete in its goodness cannot produce evil. (105) If it could, then it would not be perfect, (106) for when a thing is described as perfect, there is no room for anything else (in it); (107) and if there is no room for anything else, nothing else can proceed from it. (108) If God is perfect in goodness and knowledge, plainly ignorance and evil cannot proceed from Him; (109) or if it can, then he is not perfect; (110) and if he is not perfect, then he should not be worshipped as God or as perfectly good. (111) If (on the other hand) both good and evil originate in God, then he is imperfected so far as goodness is concerned. (112) If he is imperfect in respect of goodness, then he is imperfect in respect of right knowledge. (113) And if he is imperfect in respect of right knowledge, then he is imperfect in respect of reason, consciousness, knowledge, wit, and in all the faculties of knowing. (114) And if he is imperfect in reason, consciousness, wit, and knowledge, he must be imperfect in respect of health; (115) and if he is imperfect in respect of health, he must be sick; (116) and if he must be sick, then he is imperfect in respect of life. (117) Should it be objected that a single substance like man is seen to originate both good and evil actions, (118) the reason is that man is not perfect in any single respect; (119) and because he is not perfect in respect of goodness, he gives rise to evil. (120) (So too) because he is not perfect in respect of health, he is subject to sickness, (121) and for the same reason he dies: (122) for the cause of death is the conflict of two contrary accidents in one substance, (123) and where there are two contrary accidents in one substance, there are sickness and death to be observed. (124) Should it be objected that good and bad actions have no (real) existence until they are (actually) performed, (125) the reply is (126) that is no more possible for an action to exist without an agent than it is for an accident to exist without a substance in which it can inhere; (127) for it is an acknowledged fact that it cannot exist in its own essence or by its own devising. (128) So when a man is angry, Vohuman (the Good Mind) is far from him, (120) and when Vohuman is present within him, anger is not; (130) and when a man tells a lie, truth is far from him, (131) and when he speaks the truth, falsehood has no place in him and such a man is called truthful. (132) Similarly when sickness attacks (a man), health is not in him; (133) and when health supervenes, sickness departs,

(134) for a substance cannot change (lit. "move"), but there can be no movement except in a substance.' 5) Man's first parents We must now leave the rationalist and philosophic climate of Mardan-Farrukh's Shikand Gumani Vazar and his justification of dualism as the only system which adequately accounts for the problem of evil and the creation of the world which must otherwise remain a mystery. In this chapter we must consider what happens to the world after its corruption by the powers of evil. In previous chapters we have had an opportunity of contemplating the two Spirits as they were in the beginning; we have seen how the Evil One initiated hostilities on the intellectual and spiritual plane and how he was hurled back by the utterance of Truth. W have seen how Ohrmazd profited by his discomfiture and how he created both an ideal and a material creation to be a bulwark against the Aggressor when he returned to the assault; and we have seen how this act of creation was forced on the deity as a measure of self-defence, and how the material creation which is bounded by the sky acts as a snare in which Ahriman kicks and struggles like a trapped beast, for he is 'without knowledge, without method.' Finally we witnessed Ahriman's attack on the material creation, his introduction into a perfect world of death and disease, poison and noxious beasts, lust, anger, envy, concupiscence, and all their attendant vices, and last of his destruction of Gayomart, the Blessed Man, at the instigation and with the assistance of that strange figure, the Whore, who seems to be nothing other than the Eternal Feminine in its evil aspect. The passage we have selected as the text for our present chapter forms the beginning part of the fourteenth chapter of the Greater Bundahishn which is entitled 'On the nature of Man.' It is not edifying. The chapter also appears in the shorter or 'Indian' version of the Bundahishn and I have followed the text of the latter in many instances. Gayomart, as we have seen, is the first father of the human race. He is the First Man in that all human beings proceed from him, but he is himself semi-divine, being the son of Ohrmazd and Spandarmat, the Earth; and in shape he is round and 'shining like the Sun.' He is the First Man in that he is the prototype of man, but he is not the first man in the strict sense of being the first recognizably human being with arms and legs and other distinctively human features. He resembles much more those primitive beings described in Plato's Symposium who were spherical in shape and androgynous in sex. The text we have translated in this chapter tells us of the first man proper, Mashye (or Mahre) and his sister Mashyane (or Mahrane), how they came into being, what they did, and how they fell from grace. Thirty years after Ahriman invaded the material cosmos Gayomart died, but in dying, he prophesied, 'Now that the Aggressor has come, men will arise from my seed, and it is best for them to do good works.' God's plan was not to be defeated

and 'the Blessed Man' was to live on in the human race; Man, God's masterpiece, was to fight in the front line against the Aggressor held prisoner in the sky. In our third chapter we saw that there almost certainly existed a myth in which the 'Blessed Man,' Gayomart was, as it were, forced into union with Ahriman's consort, the Primal Whore, who can scarcely be anything but the feminine principle just as Gayomart himself is the male principle. But whereas there is no ambiguity about the male principle, there is considerable ambiguity about the female. Gayomart himself is said to have sprung from Spandarmat, the Earth, and the seed from which he grows was planted by Ohrmazd himself, Spandarmat's own father. Spandarmat is, as daughter and wife of Ohrmazd, 'the Queen of Heaven and Mother of Creation': she is, basically, Mother Earth. So in the text we are analysing we find that the seed of the dying Gayomart falls into his mother, the Earth, and in due course the first human couple, Mashye and Mashyane, arise from her in the form of a rhubarb plant. The female principle, then, appears both as the terrible 'Whore' who lets loose 'so much affliction on the Blessed Man and the toiling Bull... that they will not be fit to live,' and as the good mother, the gentle Spandarmat whose ver name means 'bounteous harmony or devotion.' The Whore, then, is simply the terrible aspect of the female principle just as the Good Mother, Spandarmat, the Earth, is its kindly and benefit beneficent aspect. Spandarmat is what Professor C.G. Jung and his school call the Great Mother, the Whore is the 'Terrible Mother.' They are aspects of one and the same principle, the eternal female, just as Ohrmazd and Ahriman are the two aspects of the eternal male, -in Zoroastrianism eternally divided and in no wise to be reconciled. The apparent confusion, then, introduced by the myth of the Whore is simply due to the division of the female principle into an Ohrmazdean and an Ahriman half. Thus it is natural that, beside the myth of Gayomart's union in death with the Earth Goddess, we find traces of an involuntary union with an impure female fiend which results in his death. She too, presumably, is an aspect of the Earth Goddess, and this goes far to explain how it is possible for Mashye and Mashyane, the children of the 'Blessed Man' and Good Mother Earth, to behave in the reprehensible manner described later on in this chapter. To resume our story. The two of them grew up from the earth in the form of a single and undifferentiated rhubarb stalk. Later they separated and assumed a fully human form. The position of Mashye and Mashyane in a world that has now tasted evil is analogous to that of Adam and Eve when they were expelled from the garden. Admittedly by this time the powers of evil have been brought under some sort of control, and Mashye and Mashyane no longer have to stand the full brunt of Ahriman's attack as was the case of the helpless Gayomart. The moment they become self-conscious they are sternly admonished by Ohrmazd to do only what is good and on no account to worship the demons. So, dutifully, they acknowledge Ohrmazd as Creator, but no sooner is temptation put in their way than they proclaim Ahriman creator of water, the earth, and plants, -beings,

significantly enough in view of what has been said, regarded by the Zoroastrians as being of the female sex. For this, according to the standards of orthodoxy, appalling blasphemy 'both were damned; and their souls (shall remain) in Hell till the Final Body.' Now it is not clear whether Mashye and Mashyane were intended to live on earth without taking food. According to Zoroastrian orthodoxy this seems unlikely though it is possible that the more ascetic wing of the Zoroastrian Church thought otherwise. Be that as it may, they remained for thirty days without taking nourishment of any kind. Only then did they venture to try a little goat's milk, but after drinking it they complained that they felt ill. 'This was their second lie; and the demons obtained strength (thereby)' (7). Now, in Zoroastrian parlance 'lying' means sinning, and it is therefore implied that either the drinking of the milk was sinful or the feeling of nausea that followed it. Here again there is a certain ambivalence, for the text would naturally be interpreted by the orthodox as meaning that they were condemned for their ingratitude, but by the more ascetically minded heterodox as indicating that they never should have eaten at all, just as in the last days the human race gives up eating and drinking altogether. Their next physical action is again capable of two interpretations. They slew an animal (either an ox or a sheep, for the word gospand is ambiguous in Pahlavi) and roasted it on a fire which they had made 'on a sign from the spiritual gods.' With the skin of the animal they clothed themselves and with its hair they made rugs thereby learning the art of weaving; they further learnt how to make weapons out of iron and how to carve wood work with them. They were, in fact, becoming rational and civilized human beings, yet once again are they upraided. 'Through the ingratitude that they had shown the demons became emboldened' (11). What wrong had they done? Plainly the lighting of the fire which they had done at the instigation of the gods cannot have been wrong, nor can the making of clothes from animal hair nor yet the making of implements. In what, then, did their ingratitude consist? Presumably in the slaughter of an innocent beast, in the consumption of its flesh, and in the offering of the sacrificial meat to the fire and to the gods on high. If the gift were acceptable, it would scarcely have been intercepted by a vulture as in fact it was. Similarly the first flesh to be consumed on earth was consumed by a dog, -an indication, perhaps, that God did not mean man to be carnivorous. We shall be dealing very briefly with the question of animal sacrifice in a later chapter. Suffice it to say here that the practice was vigorously attacked by Zoroaster himself, but it was subsequently admitted in the later Avesta where whole holocausts are mentioned. Throughout the Sassanian period there seems to have been no agreement between the authorities as to whether such sacrifices were admissible or not. Adhurbadh, son of Mahraspand, however, whom the Pahlavi books regard as the great orthodox teacher, bid the faithful 'abstain from

the unjust slaughter of oxen and sheep,' but there are many instances of kings and princes offering hecatombs of victims. What is, however, interesting in this initial sacrifice performed by Mashye is that it corresponds closely to the sacrifice portrayed on the Mithraic monuments. The presence of a bird, -in this case a vulture, on the monuments a raven,- and the dog in both cases is interesting: for in the Mithraic representations it is the dog which laps up the blood of the slaughtered bull, and the bird which stands between Mithra and the Sun, just as in our text the vulture intercepts the portion of the sacrifice destined for the gods and the dog apparently consumes the portion destined for the fire. This, then, would represent an ancient pre-Zoroastrian form of sacrifice which later became incorporated into Zoroastrianism itself but which later still was again abrogated, being only symbolically offered in bloodless form as it is to this day. In Mithraism, it may be assumed, the sacrifice survived intact. How Mithra-Mithras came to be associated with this sacrifice is here irrelevant. However we choose to interpret the sacrifice offered by Mashye and Mashyane, the fact remains that the demons were emboldened, and that our first parents attacked each other savagely, disputing, one may assume, over the distribution of their new-found treasures. Yielding to temptation again, they now made an offering of milk to the demons, a gesture which greatly increased the latter's strength. Thus Mashye and Mashyane proved themselves singularly inept in carrying out their pre-ordained role in Ohrmazd's plan. Unlike Gayomart who was himself sinless, his son and daughter had blasphered against their Creator, and as if that were not enough, had sought to propriate his deadly enemies by offering them sacrifice. So heinous was this sin and so greatly were the demons strengthened by it that they were able to make this stiff-necked couple sexually impotent for fifty years. We saw in our first chapter what great stress the Zoroastrians laid on the propagation of the species as a sacred duty. That the first couple should remain childless for fifty years, then, shows how grievously they had failed in fulfilling the divine purpose. When finally they produced a pair of twins, they once again did a monstrous thing. 'So sweet were the children that the mother devoured the one and the father the other. Then Ohrmazd took away the sweetness of children from them so that they might rear them and that their children might survive'! (14). The legend of Mashye and Mashyane is told in other sources too, and does not vary much. It is the Zoroastrian version of the Fall. Gayomart is man's prototype and perfect exemplar: he does not fall in any theological sense, he is simply overpowered by overwhelming force and dies. Mashye and Mashyane, on the other hand, fall repeatedly; they blaspheme, they worship the demons, and they devour their own children. Their basic corruption does not seem to be explicable

if they are regarded as the children of Gayomart and Spandarmat, the Earth, as the text clearly states. The story is only comprehensible if we regard them as having sprung from Gayomart, the 'Blessed Man,' on the one hand, and from the 'Whore,' the evil side of the feminine principle, on the other. Only so can their innate perversity be explained. Their fall shows that human nature is already basically corrupt, and the power of the demons which they did so much to augment can only be curbed by the bringing of the Good Religion by the Prophet, Zoroaster. Thus the Zoroastrianism of Sassanian times regards the history of the material cosmos as a perpetual looking forward to the frashkart or final Rehabilitation at the end of time. The first onslaught is the worst, and the gods themselves have to intervene to retrieve the situation. Mashye and Mashyane then make a lamentable beginning and Ohrmazd has to reduce the natural pleasure they take in their food so monstrously excessive does it prove to be. With the establishment of the Good Religion with its doctrine of moderation in all things the worst excesses of the demons of concupiscence are held at bay until the time is ripe for all things to be made new and for the final counter-offensive against Ahriman which destroys his power for ever. Greater Bundahishn (chapter XIV), Indian Bundahishn (chapter XV) '(1) (Ohrmazd) says in the Religion, "I created man in ten species. First was he who is bright and white-eyed, even Gayomart. Of the ten species one is Gayomart, and the (other) nine proceeded from him. The tenth is the monkey, the lowest of men." He says (further), "When Gayomart was assailed with sickness, he fell on his left side. From his head came forth, from his blood zinc, from his marrow silver, from his feet iron, from his bones brass, from his fat crystal, from his arms steel, and from his soul (jan) as it departed, gold which even to-day men will only give up with their very life on account of its great value. Because of that portion of death which entered into the body of Gayomart death will come upon all (living) creatures until the final Rehabilitation." (2) When Gayomart passed away and let fall his seed, that seed was purified by the light of the Sun: two parts of it were preserved by Neryosang and one part was received by Spandarmat, (the Earth). For forty years it remained in the earth. When the forty years had elapsed, Mashye and Mashyane grew out of the earth in the form of a rhubarb plant: one stalk it had and fifteen sprouts. It was as if their hands were clapped to their ears, and they were joined the one to the other, joined in limb and form, and over the two hovered their khwarr. So closely were they linked together that it was not clear which was the male and which the female. The khwarr which had been created by Ohrmazd and which accompanied them and is the khwarr (soul and dignity) of mankind, was given to them. (3) For it is said (in the Religion), "Which did (Ohrmazd) create first, the khwarr or the body?" And Ohrmazd said, "The khwarr was created first and and the body afterwards." (The khwarr) was put in the body of him for whom it was created,

for man's function was fashioned (first) and the body was created for the function. The interpretation of this is that the soul (ruvan) was created first, then the body. The soul directs the function within the body. (4) Then the two of them, (Mashye and Mashyane), developed from plant form into human form, and the khwarr which is their soul entered into them secretly (menokiha). Even to-day do trees grow up in this wise.- trees whose fruit is the ten species of man (sic). (5) Ohrmazd said to Mashye and Mashyane: "Ye are men, the father (and mother) of the world: do ye your works in accordance with righteous order (datastan) and a perfect mind. Think, speak, and do what is good. Worship not the demons." Thus did the twain first think when each considered the other, "He is a human being." The first deed that they performed was that they moved and blinked their eyes. And the first thing they said was this: "Ohrmazd created water, the earth, plants, cattle, the stars, the Moon and the Sun, and all fertile things" which in the righteous revelation are called root and fruit. (6) Then the Aggressor assailed their mind and corrupted it; and they cried out: "The Destructive Spirit created water, the earth, plants, and other things." When they pronounced this first lie which ruined them, they spoke in accordance with the will of the demons. This first joy did the Destructive Spirit (steal) from them (and) make his own. For this lie both were damned; and their souls (shall remain) in Hell till the Final Body. (7) For thirty days they refrained from food and clothed themselves in grass. After thirty days in the wilderness they came upon a white haired goat and they sucked the milk of its udders. And when they had drunk the milk, Mashye said to Mashyane: "I had greater joy when I had not drunk the milk than I have now when I have drunk it: my body is ill." This was their second lie; and the demons obtain strength (thereby). (8) And the sweet taste of food was taken from them so that only one hundredth part of it remained. (9) And after thirty more days and nights (had passed) they came upon a head of cattle, orange (in colour), with white jaws, and they slew it; and on a sign from the spiritual gods they built a fire from the wood of the lote and box, for these two trees are the most productive of fire. And they made the fire to blaze with (the breath of) their mouth, and the first fuel they burnt upon it was straw and olive and stems of mastic and branches of the date-palm. And they roast the beast on a spit and left a quantity of meat (equal to) three handfuls in the fire saying: "(This is) the portion of the fire." And they threw another portion towards the sky, saying: "This is the portion of the gods." And a vulture passed above them and carried it off from them: for (sic) the first flesh (to be consumed) was consumed by the dog.

(10) Next they clothed themselves in garments made of skins. Then they wove a rug in the desert and made woven cloth with which to clothe themselves. And they fixed a stone in the earth and smelted iron and beat out the iron on the stone and a knife of it; and with this they cut wood and made a wooden dish. (11) Through the ingratitude that they had shown the demons became emboldened. And of their own accord (Mashye and Mashyane) became wickedly jealous of each other, attacked each other, struck and rent each other and ripped out each other's hair. (12) Then the demons cried out from the darkness (saying): "Ye are men: worship the demons that your envy may subside." And Mashyane arose and milked the milk of a cow and poured it out to the Northern quarter. Through the worship that was thus offered to them the demons waxed mightly. (13) And (Mashye and Mashyane's) sexual parts became so dried up that for fifty years they had no desire to have intercourse with each other; and had they had intercourse together, no offspring would have been born to them. And at the end of (these) fifty years they began to think of begetting offspring, first Mashye and then Mashyane. Then they consummated their desires, and in the act of fulfilling their desire they though: "During the last fifty years this is the deed we should have done." (14) After nine months a pair of twins was born to them, a girl and a boy. So sweet were the children that the mother devoured the one and the father the other. Then Ohrmazd took away the sweetness of children from them so that they might rear them and that their children might survive. Seven pairs of twins were born to them, male and female. Each brother took his sister to wife and all six couples stayed with Mashye and Mashyane; and from each was born offspring after fifty years, and in a hundred years they all died.' 6) The good religion 'In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life: and the life was the light of men....And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.' So does St. John describe the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Word of God which is at the same time His Wisdom and His Reason is, of course, not peculiar to Christianity. What makes Christianity unique is not the doctrine of the Eternal Word but the incarnation of that Word in a human being.

Islam too has its doctrine of the Word of God and of the irruption of that Word into the temporal and created world. But whereas in Christianity the Word becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ so that Christ, not the Bible, is by right and nature the prime object of devotion to the Christian, in Islam the Eternal Word breaks into time not as the Prophet Muhammad, but as the Koran which, for Moslem, is the eternal and consubstantial Word of God. The Prophet Muhammad is merely the vehicle through which the Word is transmitted to man. If, then, the Christians believe in the Word made flesh, the Muhammadans believe equally in the Word made Book. We must now consider whether the Zoroastrians had any such doctrine, and, if so, what they believed the Word to be in this material and temporal world. We have already seen that 'omniscience and goodness' make up the permanent disposition of Ohrmazd and that these were also called 'the Religion.' 'The interpretation of both is the same, namely the permanent disposition of Infinite Time, for Ohrmazd and the Space, Religion, and Time of Ohrmazd were and are and evermore shall be.' Thus God's omniscience which is identified with 'the Religion,' that is Zoroastrian religion, seems to be the Zoroastrian version of the doctrine of the Logos or Word. This Religion is itself the very Wisdom of God, his thought through which he creates. Thus in the book of the Menok i Khrat or 'Spirit of Wisdom' we find Wisdom saying: 'From the first among spiritual and material beings was I who am Innate Wisdom with Ohrmazd. And the Creator Ohrmazd fashioned and created, maintains and orders (all) spiritual and material creatures, the gods and all the rest of creation through the power and valour, wisdom and experience of Innate Wisdom. And at the end of the Rehabilitation he will destroy and smite Ahriman and his abortions chiefly by the power of Wisdom. And Soshyans and Kay-Khusraw and all the others who bring about the Resurrection and the Final Body, will bring it about chiefly by the power and help of Wisdom. '(All) knowledge and experience on earth, education, and the learning of all trades, and every occupation practised by men in this temporal world, are by Wisdom. The souls of the blessed escape from Hell and go to Heaven chiefly through the power and protection of Wisdom. And men on earth should seek a good life and happiness and a good name and all good things through the power of Wisdom.' Similarly it is through Wisdom that the embryo is safely preserved in the womb, that the plants grow and the world is full of good things, that the Sun, Moon, and stars follow their appointed courses, that the rains rain, and finally that Man recognizes the truth of the Good Religion. Wisdom, then, is God's Word which gives the world its being and which maintains it in existence; and this Word is identical with the Den, the Religion. As the creative Word of God the Religion is summed up in the Ahunavar prayer, which, as we have seen, Ohrmazd pronounces at the very beginning of creation

and which has the effect of precipitating Ahriman back into his own kingdom of darkness for three thousand years. By pronouncing his Eternal Word God reveals to his Enemy his final defeat and destruction, the creation of the world and its final rehabilitation at the end of time. Ohrmazd's first pronouncement of the Ahunavar is the first manifestation of the godhead: it sets the whole creative process in motion and marks the beginning of finite Time. Creation, indeed, is the 'manifestation' of God's eternal Wisdom in the Religion and of his temporal infinity beyond finite Time. Substantially God's Wisdom and his Religion are one. The Religion is both the unmanifest Wisdom of God, its manifestation in the Ahunavar prayer at the beginning of time, and finally, in the form of the Avesta, its full and detailed formulation which the Zoroastrians believe was transmitted by God to Zoroaster. In an interesting passage which Fr. J. de Menasce has recently brought to light, Ohrmazd says, 'I, the Religion, and the Word (exist eternally). The Religion is the act of Ohrmazd; the Word is his faith.... The Religion is superior to the Word because the act is superior to speech.' The passage, though the exact sense is uncertain, seems to imply that the Religion is a larger concept than the word (by which is meant the Ahunavar) and that it has eternal as well as temporal existence. The Avesta, then, as being the Religion manifested on earth, is the earthly copy of the divine and eternal exemplar in Heaven: it is the divine Wisdom 'manifested' to Zoroaster on earth. Zoroaster himself is a prophet and no more than a prophet. Like Muhammad he is simply the vehicle through which the divine Word is transmitted to man. The 'Good Religion,' however, of which he was the vehicle, is not quite identical with the Avesta: it is not so much a book, it is rather a principle. It can be summed up in the following words, -order, righteousness or justice, and the Mean. For the later Zoroastrians the sum of wisdom was the Aristotelian 'Mean.' So wholly did they accept the Greek idea that they claimed it as being specifically Iranian. 'Iran has always commended the Mean,' we are informed, 'and censured excess and deficiency. In the Byzantine Empire the philosophers, in India the learned, and elsewhere the specialists have in general commended the man whose argument showed subtlety, but the kingdom of Iran has shown approval of the (truly) wise.' The Zoroastrians, then, adopted and enthusiastically proclaimed Aristotle's famous doctrine of the Mean (as indeed they did the equally typically Aristotelian doctrines of matter and form, and potentiality and actuality); and the whole of their ethics in the late Sassanian period is based on this doctrine which sees in virtue a mean between the two extremes of excess and deficiency, between the 'opposite' (hamestar) and the 'kindred' or 'related' (bratarot) vice. The essence then of the Zoroastrian ethic is 'nothing in excess': it is essentially a gentleman's ethical code, a code of moderation and good manners. Opposition to the 'Lie' means opposition to the two extremes of excess and deficiency which are in turn two aspects of varan, a term which may mean either concupiscence or heresy. In the theological texts, extracts from which we reproduce in this chapter, varan is

used exclusively in the sense of heresy, the opposite of Den, the Religion, and we have so translated it. Characteristic of varan or heresy is that it ascribes evil, directly or indirectly, to the supreme God. The term, then, does not only cover the Zoroastrian heresies such as the Zervanite which placed the principle of Infinite Time above Ohrmazd and Ahriman, and indeed made him their father, but also the non-Zoroastrian religions, and particularly Christianity and Islam, -religions which, in Zoroastrian eyes, imputed evil to God. Such a god, they say, is no god at all, he is a demon, and his worshippers are therefore classed among the 'worshippers of the demons,' a term that originally applied only to the worshippers of the old Aryan gods whom Zoroaster had dethroned. The Good Religion, then, is God's Word made manifest on earth: all other religions derive from varan 'heresy' 'the original word' of which 'is that evil comes from the Creator'. The Good Religion is the golden mean between excess and deficiency; the other religions all derive from these two and are therefore, each in its own way, distortions of the truth which is the Zoroastrian via media. Our first extract in this chapter compares the Good Religion to a tree: its trunk is the Mean; its two great boughs the religious commands and prohibitions (action and abstention), its three branches the famous triad of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, its four offbranches the four castes, and its five roots the five degrees of government. Over all stands the King of Kings, 'the Governor of the whole world.' This brings us to another aspect of the Good Religion. It is the most perfect example of Erastianism to be found on the face of the globe. Church and State are mutually interdependent, and the symbol and crown of both is the King of Kings, the Sassanian monarch who is the guardian of religion as he is of justice and order. Religion indeed, in the Zoroastrian sense, is almost synonymous with justice and order by which is understood the socially stratified order of the Sassanian Empire exemplified in the four castes of priests, warriors, peasants, and artisans, -with the priesthood standing at the top. 'Know,' Ardashir I is reported as saying, 'that religion and kingship are two brothers, and neither can dispense with the other. Religion is the foundation of kingship and kingship protects religion. For whatever lacks a foundation must perish, and whatever lacks a protector disappears.' When the two are perfectly conjoined in one person, the final Rehabilitation will come to pass, for such a combination cannot be resisted by Ahriman and the demons who concentrate all their efforts on separating the two. Thus, according to one of our texts, had Yam (that is, the mythical king Jamshid) who is here represented as the ideal ruler, agreed to accept the Good Religion as well as kingship, or had Zoroaster been endowed with kingship as well as granted the Religion, the millennium would have set in. Only in the Soshyans, the promised Saviour who, in the last days, will arise from the seed of Zoroaster, are the two united; and it is he who is destined to restore the world.

The comparatively rapid disappearance of Zoroastrianism after the Muhammadan conquest has always remained somewhat of a puzzle. There is, however, a very cogent psychological reason for this. The fall of the dynasty and the conquest of Iran by 'worshippers of a demon' meant the final end of the marriage of Church and state; and to the Zoroastrian mind the one could not exist apart from the other. Once the world had been deprived of the Great King, the Religion he protected must necessarily succumb, 'for whatever lacks a protector disappears.' Thus the Zoroastrians could only look forward to the coming of the Soshyans who, by once again bringing together the Religion and the Crown, would be the architect of a new world in which Iran would once again assume her rightful hegemony. Shikand Gumani Vazar, chapter I '... The Religion of omniscience (is) like a mighty tree (12) with one trunk, two great boughs, three branches, four off-branches, and five roots. (13) And the one trunk is the Mean, (14) the two great boughs are action and abstention, (15) the three branches are humat, hukht, and huvarsht, that is, good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. (16) The four-branches are the four religious castes by which the Religion and secular life are (both) maintained, (17) the priesthood, the warrior caste, the caste of husbandmen, and the caste of artisans. (18) The five roots are the five (degrees of) government whose names in Religion are manpat (householder), vispat (village headman), zandpat (tribal chieftain), dehpat (provincial governor) and the Zarathrushtotom (the highest religious authority and representative of Zoroaster on earth). (19) (Over and above these) is another, the Chief of all chiefs, that is the King of Kings, the governor of the (whole) world. (20) And in the microcosm which is Man [four things] are seen to correspond to these four earthly castes, (21) the head to priesthood, (22) the hands to the warrior caste, (23) the belly to the caste of husbandmen, (24) and the feet to the caste of husbandmen, (24) and the feet to the caste of artisans. (25) So too the four virtues indwelling Man, that is, temperance, fortitude, reason, and energy. (26) Priesthood corresponds to temperance, for temperance is the highest duty of the priests, for through temperance they do not commit sin for very shame and fear. (27) The warrior caste corresponds to fortitude, for fortitude is the sovereign adornment of the warriors; it is explained (as meaning) "innate manliness." (28) Reason corresponds to the caste of husbandmen, for the function of *reason is the tilling of the soil and the promotion of a continuous evolution towards the final Rehabilitation. (29) Energy corresponds to the caste of artisans, for it is the greatest stimulant of their trade. (30) All these diverse functions (are based) on the one trunk of righteousness (truth) and the Mean (and are) opposed to the Lie and its organs which are their opposites.'

On Innate Wisdom, Denkart 'The Good Religion is Innate Wisdom (or reason): and the forms and virtues of Innate Wisdom are of the same stock as Innate Wisdom itself. These forms and virtues are begotten of Vohuman (the Good Mind) and the Bounteous Spirit (Ohrmazd). False religion is ruinous heresy: and the forms and vices of ruinous heresy are of the same vile stock as ruinous heresy itself. These forms and vices of ruinous heresy are misbegotten of Akoman (the Evil Mind) and the Destructive Spirit. For the original seed of the Good Religion is the Bounteous Spirit, and the original seed of false religion is the Destructive Spirit. The Good Religion is manifested in wisdom, conformity with wisdom, in that which has wisdom for its matter and wisdom for its form, in wise action, in good progress that conforms to wisdom, in light which is analogous to wisdom, and in all the benefit that accrues to the good creations in virtue of its being begotten of the Bounteous Spirit. False religion is manifested in heresy, conformity with heresy, in that which has heresy for its matter and heresy for its form, in heretical (self-opinionated) action, in evil progress that conforms to heresy, in darkness which is analogous to heresy, and in the universal harm that accrues to the good creations in virtue of its being misbegotten of the Destructive Spirit. (Now we must speak of) the spheres of influence (ravakih) of both. In its pure state (i.e. uncontaminated with evil) the sphere of influence of the Good Religion consists in its inhering, by its goodness and purity, [in] the Amahraspands where Innate Wisdom exercises absolute sovereignty, and where ruinous heresy is altogether without jurisdiction. The sphere of influence of false religion is among the demons where ruinous heresy exercises full sovereignty and from where Innate Wisdom is most remote. In the mixed state (the sphere of influence of) both is in the material world in which Innate Wisdom and ruinous heresy struggle for supremacy. In the mixed state the degree in which Innate Wisdom is strong and sovereign corresponds exactly to the degree in which the Good Religion is accepted, believed, and propagated, the gods reign, the good is great, and the temporal world prospers. (So too) the degree in which ruinous heresy is strong and great corresponds exactly to the degree in which false religion is accepted and spread abroad, the demons hold violent sway, evil men are great, and the temporal world declines. (Now we must speak of) the fruits of these influences. The fruit of the Good Religion is the benefit of creatures, that of false religion is their harm. The fruit of the benefit (brought) by the Good Religion whose sphere of influence in the pure state is among the Amahraspands, consists in the protection (extended) by them to creatures [against] the disruption caused by the Aggressor, the

emanation of the power of their goodness into human nature by guarding the will in purity, by disciplining (anitan) the character, by establishing in man his very humanity which is his salvation and his adornment, by increasing and multiplying virtue in the world, and by ordering the world in goodness. (The fruits and benefits of the Good Religion) whose sphere of influence in the mixed state is in Man consist in the strengthening of good character and of the virtues in Man, in the overcoming and conquest of the Lie, in the sanctification (kirpakenitan) of (Man's) actions so that his soul may be saved, in its total diffusion throughout the human race, the defeat of the hosts of the Lie, the destruction (and expulsion) of the Aggressor from creation, and the gift of immortality and sovereignty in freedom to all the good creation. The fruit of the harm of false religion whose evil sphere of influence in the pure state is among the demons, consists in their puring out adversity in order to destroy the material world and to damage creatures. And (the fruit of the harm of false religion) whose sphere of influence in the mixed state is in Man, consists in the strengthening of the vices and weakening of the virtues, in the destruction of Man's very humanity and in sowing devilry in him, in the vitiating of his actions and the damnation of his soul, in doing damage to the earth and in laying it waste by injustice through the corruption of Man's humanity by devilry. Injustice gives strength to the demons in their ruining of the material world. Were evil allowed to run its course, unmixed and wholly unrestrained, and were goodness to be annihilated in the world (completely), it would mean that creation, in such a state of total evil unmixed with goodness, could not exist or endure even for a moment.' The essence of the Good Religion, Denkart 'The essence of the Good Religion is the Wisdom of Ohrmazd, and his wisdom (consists in) bestowing, knowing, and doing. Its matter is omniscience, righteousness (truth) towards all things, and giving to all things what is proper to them: this is the character of Ohrmazd. Its function is to heal creation. Its operation is summed up in recognizing by knowledge the potentialities that are created in things, and by action in putting them to their proper use. Its power to act consists in putting the potentialities which are created in things to their proper use, in removing the corruption which is inherent in creatures owing to their being mixed with the Aggressive Power, and in healing creatures both materially and spiritually. The benefit (derived from) its quantitative knowledge (of particulars) and from its operations in time is its (continuous) forward movement and its control (of the world) for the duration of the millennia (which leads) up to the final Rehabilitation. By recognizing the potentialities that are in things, by putting the whole creation to its full use through action, and by healing it (and saving it) from the Adversary, it attains to the eternal order, perfect, entire, and full of bliss.'

The religion as the Mean, Denkart 'The Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd is Wisdom (danakih). Its being is from the Mean which is the essence of the Religion and the opposite of which is excess and deficiency. Of the antagonists of Wisdom excess is the related opposite and deficiency the contrary opposite. Because noble and right knowledge belongs to the Good Religion the (qualities) most hospitable to it are chiefly faith and knowledge. All (necessary knowledge) about the being of the Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd and about what one who professes that Religion should know in the sphere of thought, word, and deed, and about anything that may not have been codified(?), is revealed through the being and manifestation of the Religion.' Denkart The usefulness of all actions and things is through the Mean. They are spoilt and made ineffective by excess and deficiency. The Mean is under the control of the Innate Wisdom of the Creator (operating) in his creatures. Lack of order is specifically excess and deficiency, diabolical heresy, the opposite (pityarak) of Innate Wisdom. Whenever the divine Innate Wisdom triumphs over diabolical heresy among men, the Mean and order are victorious, excess and deficiency are weakened, and creation prospers. So far as men are concerned the Creator (Ohrmazd) made Innate Wisdom supreme in the King (dahyupat) so that he might vanquish heresy, the most violent Lie, thereby, and by munificience backed by physical force and by good government of men might arouse their innate wisdom after it had been extinguished by heresy so that their minds might be open to reasonable advice and that order and the Mean might be spread among them and that creation might be well governed.' The Religion in Action, Denkart 'The action of the Good Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd is summed up in the bringing of the excess and deficiency caused by the Aggressor in creation back to the Mean, and in the salvation and comfort of all creation. And since the Creator Ohrmazd sent the Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd for the purpose of vanquishing the Aggressor and of bringing comfort to his creation, and since his will is to vanquish the Aggressor and to perfect his creatures, his total Wisdom, though it (appears as) the individual direction of individual creatures, is summed up in one thing, the all-powerful Mean. The Aggressor, (on the other hand,) disrupts creation by means of two (weapons) which contain the whole power of the Lie, -excess and deficiency, the one being a tendency to go beyond the Mean, the other being a tendency to lag behind it. Both bring death and destruction on the creation of Ohrmazd. When creation is brought back to the Mean in cases where there is excess, or brought forward to the Mean in cases where there is deficiency, then does the Religion of the worshippers of Ohrmazd, in its wisdom, save all things (lit. action) from all evil and bring them back to a total goodness and a perfect equilibrium (datakih). So have the ancient sages said when expounding the Good Religion that the Religion of Ohrmazd is one single word, the Mean, and that the religion of Ahriman is two words, excess and deficiency.'

The fruits of the Religion, Denkart 'The original Word of the Good Religion is that all good comes from the Creator and that no evil comes from him: in this is contained all the good that creatures enjoy from the original creation till the final Rehabilitation. Thus from belief in this original Word of the Good Religion proceeds the formation of character, from the formation of character the Mean: from the Mean is justice born, from justice good thoughts, good words, and good deeds; from good thoughts, good words, and good deeds the welfare of Man. By the welfare of Man are the gods well pleased and strengthened and the demons distressed and vanquished. When the gods are well pleased and strengthened and the demons distressed and vanquished, the spiritual world is made straight and the material world brought into order. When the spiritual world is thus made straight and the material world put in order, creation is ripe for the final Rehabilitation and merge into it, the Rehabilitation is brought about and all creation is administered in purity and goodness. The original word of false religion is that evil comes from the Creator: in this is contained all the evil that creatures suffer from the original creation till the final Rehabilitation. Thus from being beguiled by this original word of false religion proceeds the corruption of character, from corruption of character excess and deficiency, [from] excess and deficiency injustice, [from injustice] evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds, and from evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds, the distress of Man. By the distress of Man are the demons rejoiced and the gods distressed. When the demons are rejoiced and the gods distressed, then are the demons emboldened to upset and disturb the temporal world and to do harm and injury to the material world.' Religion and kingship or church and state, Denkart 'The Good Religion is the mother of Innate Wisdom and is adorned with Wisdom. Pre-eminently it stores up knowledge of higher things, preserves the mystery of the good spiritual world, [worships] the highest God as God, the Eternal, the Allgood, Creator and Preserver. For in conformity with it is praise. Its basis is the nobility inherent in the Iranian (erih), its matter is the Mean, its essence order (datastan), its home holiness, and its helpmate kingship. Those who profess it form their characters, increase in wisdom, develop their human dignity (khwarr) in co-operation with kingship, Religion's helpmate. (Through them) all men hold themselves erect, the times are good, the world prospers, the Aggressor is vanquished, and creation sees salvation. In it (the Religion) is the priesthood, the warrior caste, the caste of husbandmen, and the caste of artisans, the worship of Ohrmazd, increase (dahmah) and (all) other excellencies, virtues, and goodness. False religion is the mother of heresy and the opponent of wisdom. It stores up false incantations, preserves the dreadful mystery of the evil spiritual world, represents demons in the guise of gods, worships 'Lies' under the names of gods, propagates disorder in the name of order. Excess and deficiency are its matter, deceit its lair, tyranny its helpmate. Those who profess it ruin their own character,

overthrow their own reason, diminish their human dignity in co-operation with tyranny, the helpmate of (false religion). Through it are all men beguiled, the times are evil, the world suffers adversity, the Aggressor is strengthened, good creatures are made to reel. In it (false religion) is false priesthood (ahramoghih), tyranny, wolfishness, deception, suffering, worship of the demons, diminution, and (all) other imperfections, sins, and evil.' Denkart 'The thing against which the Destructive Spirit struggles most violently is the most coming together in full force of the dignities (khwarr) of kingship and the Good Religion in one person, because such a conjunction must destroy him. For if the highest power of the dignity of the Good Religion had been joined to the highest power of the dignity of kingship in Yam, or if the highest power of the dignity [of kingship] as it existed in Yam had been joined to the highest power of the dignity of the Good Religion in Zoroaster, then the Destructive Spirit would have met with swift destruction, creation would have escaped from the Aggressor, and the desired Rehabilitation would have been brought about in the (two) worlds. (For) whenever in this world piety is linked with good rule in one single pious and good ruler, then is vice weakened and virtue increased, opposition diminishes and co-operation augments, there is more of holiness and less of wickedness among men, the good prosper and prevail and the wicked are straitened and deprived of sovereignty, the world is prosperous, all creation rejoices, and the common people are well off; and by all these things is the world well ordered and adorned. When these two dignities meet in one man, then will the Aggressor be completely vanquished and creation saved and purged. From this the final Rehabilitation proceeds. The Good Religion reveals that these two dignities will meet together in Soshyans.'