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The name of the last great leader, together with a few of his doctrines, and various scattered fragments in the Gathas, are all that remain on record of a man whose personality stands connected with the earliest attempt to reform a degraded and sensualized religion. That this prophet was without honor in his own country is shown by the following lamentation: "To what country shall I go?

The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gathas; the writers continually harp upon it, their minds are evidently struck with this sad antithesis which colors the whole moral world to them; they see everywhere a struggle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity; apparently they are blind to the evidence of harmony and agreement in the universe, discerning nothing anywhere but strife, conflict, antagonism.

The following are some examples of this: The great doctrine of Heaven and Hell as inner states, as being simply the best and the worst state of mind, is clearly announced; but the traditional view of future abodes of happiness and misery also appears. The Kinvat-bridge is mentioned several times in the Gathas, over which Iran conceived that the individual had to pass after death.

The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy.

The Gathas have several noble passages describing the true sacrifice man has to offer to God for his goodness, as consisting simply in the offering of self, in the devotion to the deity of all a man is, and all he can do. At the same time Zarathustra has not a word to say in disparagement of the sacrifice of victims.

That doctrine is the basis of a new set of ideas and practices which we have now to consider, those namely which are contained in the Vendidad, one of the later works of the Persian canon. To pass from the Gathas to the Vendidad is like passing from Isaiah to Leviticus, and the laws of purity of Persian religion bear a strong analogy to those of Judaism.

These existed, in a more or less incomplete state, down to the ninth century of our era, to which century the Pahlavi work "Dindard" belongs. The Avesta which exists to-day may be divided thus: I. The strictly canonical parts, including the following, which will be more fully described in connection with the summaries. Yasnas, including the Gathas. 2. Vispereds. 3. Vendidads.

The oldest is the Yasna, a collection of liturgies, which admit and indeed invite comparison with those of early Christianity: along with these are found the Gathas or hymns, the only part of the Avesta composed in verse, and written in an older dialect.

There is no trace of it in the Gathas, in the Yagna haptanhaiti, or in the older portions of the Vendidad. It was a Scythic practice; and probably the best extant account of it is that which Herodotus gives of the mode wherein it was managed by the Scyths of Europe. "Scythia," he says, "has an abundance of soothsayers, who foretell the future by means of a number of willow wands.

The Gathas, taken alone, tell us hardly anything of the religion in which Zarathustra's fellow-countrymen believed. They believed undoubtedly in many gods; in those parts of the Avesta which come next to the hymns in time, polytheism is in full force.