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Updated: May 31, 2025
In the meantime Zúára, impatient at this delay, advanced towards the Iránians, and reproached them for their cowardice so severely, that Núsháwer, the younger son of Isfendiyár, felt ashamed, and immediately challenged the bravest of the enemy to fight. Alwaí, one of Rustem's followers, came boldly forward, but his efforts only terminated in his discomfiture and death.
The essential point is that the evil mass in the world was conceived of as a unity by the Iranians and assigned a head, Angro Mainyu. This name does not occur in the Achæmenian inscriptions, but it is mentioned in the Gathas and by Aristotle, so that it appears to belong to an early stratum of the Iranian religion. +977+. A strictly dualistic system recognizes only two Powers in the world.
As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on this subject. Its peculiar feature was dualism, two original uncreated principles; one good, the other evil.
The cost of land carriage probably prevented papyrus from superseding this material in Western Asia, as it did in Greece at a tolerably early date. Clay, so much used for writing on both in Babylonia and Assyria, appears never to have approved itself as a convenient substance to the Iranians.
Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water. Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected.
To this he expressed no dissent, provided she would accompany him; but she said it was impossible to do so on account of the condition she was in. "Leave me," she added, "and save thy own life!" He therefore called together his three hundred Iránians, and requesting Ferangís, if she happened to be delivered of a son, to call him Kai-khosráu, set off on his journey.
In the Gathas, which belong to a very remote era indeed, we seem to have the first beginnings of the Religion. We may indeed go back by their aid to a time anterior to themselves a time when the Arian race was not yet separated into two branches, and the Easterns and Westerns, the Indians and Iranians, had not yet adopted the conflicting creeds of Zoroastrianism and Brahminism.
But the stage of social and religious culture indicated in the Vedic hymns may have begun long before they were composed, and rites and deities common to Indians and Iranians existed before the reforms of Zoroaster . It may seem that everything is uncertain in this literature without dates or authors and that the growth of religion in India cannot be scientifically studied.
This is in the time of Shalmaneser II., 840 B.C. Their rise is coincident with the fall of Assyria. He brought under his rule the Bactrians, and the Persians about Pasargadae and Persepolis, and made the Halys, dividing Asia Minor, the limit of his kingdom. His effeminate son, Astyages, lost what his father had won. The Persian branch of the Iranians gained the supremacy.
From these and other passages we infer that the religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra, the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was worshipped.
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