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Updated: May 31, 2025
Then there follow laws prescribing the counter-charms to be used against evil spirits; the methods by which the sacred fire must be made and used, and so forth. FARGAD 19, treats of the fate of the soul after death. The Aprocryphal or Khorda Avesta YASHT I. The names of Ahura-Mazda and their efficacy.
That is the history of creeds. "The purest of thoughts is that which concerns the beginning of things." So Ormuzd instructed Zarathrustra. "And what was there at the beginning?" the prophet asked. "There was light and the living Word." Long later the statement was repeated in the Gospel attributed to John. Originally it occurred in the course of a conversation that the Avesta reports.
In fact, the only thing in which Jones succeeded was to prove in a decisive manner that the ancient Persians were not equal to the lumières of the eighteenth century, and that the authors of the "Avesta" had not read the "Encyclopédie." Jones's censure was echoed in England by Sir John Chardin and Richardson, in Germany by Meiners.
Probably it was first employed to designate an imaginary prophet, and then a series of spiritual though actual successors by whom, in the course of centuries, the Avesta was evolved. Otherwise Zarathrustra and Gotama are brothers in Brahmanaspati. Both had virgin mothers. In the lives of both miracles are common. The advent of Zarathrustra was accounted the ruin of demons.
There is much in these descriptions which is unlike the attributes ascribed to any other member of the Vedic pantheon and recalls Ahura Mazda of the Avesta or Semitic deities. No proof of foreign influence is forthcoming, but the opinion of some scholars that the figure of Varuṇa somehow reflects Semitic ideas is plausible.
Again, the angel Vohu-manô, or "good thought," was reduced, by means of the Parsi form Bahman, to the Sanscrit bâhumân, "a long-armed god." At length came Burnouf. From the time when Anquetil had published his translation, that is to say during seventy years, no real progress had been made in knowledge of the Avesta texts.
This is the Bible of the Zarathustrians and of their modern representatives, the Parsees, who flourish for the most part in Bombay. The title "Zend Avesta" is an anomaly, for "Zend" is not the name of a language at all, but means "commentary," the word "Avesta" connoting the original text on which the commentary is written.
In the Khordah Avesta we have the following concerning the doctrine of the resurrection and that of future rewards and punishments.
The latter were much more bigoted and uncompromising in their treatment of other religions and their literatures than were Alexander the Great and his successors. The original Avesta, as described in Pahlavi text which have come down to us, contain twenty-one Nasks or books.
Rawlinson merely remarks that Berosus places him anterior to B.C. 2234. Haug is inclined to date the Gathas, the oldest songs of the Avesta, as early as the time of Moses. Rapp, after a thorough comparison of ancient writers, concludes that Zoroaster lived B.C. 1200 or 1300. In this he agrees with Duncker, who, as we have seen, decided upon the same date.
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