United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But in the Gathas they form with Ahura-Mazda a unity much resembling the Sabellian trinity. 2. The doctrine of reward and punishment that is taught in the Gathas is subjective, i.e., it makes a man's reward and punishment consist in change of character, disposition, etc.
But the Persians came before the Jews in this; the Gathas preach persecution, and the insults offered by Persian kings in later times to the religions of Egypt and Greece were no doubt justified by their convictions. In Persia, as in Israel, religion had come to entertain the notion of false gods. And a religion which entertains that notion must be exclusive.
Zarathustra in the Gathas finds the antithesis fully formed between the good and the evil deities; he appeals to his countrymen on that matter as one which he does not need to teach them, but with which they have long been familiar. In speaking of his date this has to be remembered. We proceed now to describe from the Gathas the work and teaching of Zarathustra.
The very first notices of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda, even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism, therefore, was of later growth.
The Koran, like the Vedas and the Gathas and the Jewish Scriptures, was exalted in later stages of the religion to the highest conceivable honours; and one of the greatest controversies of Islam raged round the question whether it had existed from eternity and was uncreated. Islam a Universal Religion. What is most remarkable about Islam is the rapidity of its growth.
Of the hymns we have abundant examples in the Gathas of the Zendavesta, and in the Yagna haptanhaiti, or "Yaana of seven chapters," which belongs to the second period of the religion. A specimen from the latter source is subjoined below.
He further got a transcript of the rules in six or seven thousand gâthas, being the sarvâstivâdâh rules those which are observed by the communities of monks in the land of Ts'in; which also have all been handed down orally from master to master without being committed to writing.
After the Gathas proper we have other hymns written in the Gathic dialect, from which the history of the religion after its foundation may be to some extent inferred. These show that the Zarathustrian religion was regarded, after the departure of the founder, as a great divine institution, and was worked out on the lines he had laid down. The forms of it became of course more fixed.
But in the way in which this material was modified and organized the two communities differ widely. In the Gathas, which are commonly held to be the most ancient Zoroastrian documents, these attendants of the supreme god are often nothing but qualities, but on the other hand are often personified and worshiped.
Forests are delightful; where the world finds no delight, there the passionless will find delight, for they look not for pleasures. Though a man recite a hundred Gâthâs made up of senseless words, one word of the law is better, which if a man hears, he becomes quiet. If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors.
Word Of The Day