1 Dio Cassius, LXIII, 4. The answer was mistaken for an insult by Nero, and, as it seems, by Dio himself. In fact Vologeses remained to the last faithful to the memory of Nero (Suet. Nero, 57). What we know moreover of his personal character qualifies him for taking the initiative in a religious work. He seems to have been a man of contemplative mind rather than a man of action, which often excited the anger or scorn of his people against him; and he had the glory of breaking with the family policy of Parthian kings (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 1, 2). It was under his reign that the first interference of religion with politics, of which the history of Persia speaks, took place, as he was called by the people of Adiabene against their king Izates, who had become a Jew (Josephus, Antiq. XX, 4, 2).
3 Hamzac Ispahensis Annales, ed. Gottwaldt, p. 31 (in the translation).
XXXVI § 8. Another presumptive evidence of the groundwork of the Avesta being anterior to the age of the Sassanians is given by the language in which it is written. That language not only was not, but had never been, the national language of Persia. It is indeed closely connected with the ancient Persian, as found in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achrcmenian kings, from which modern Persian is derived; but the relations between ancient Persian and Zend are of such a kind that neither language can be conceived as being derived from the other; they arc not one and the same language in two different stages of its development, but two independent ‘dialects in nearly the same stage, which is a proof that they did not belong to the same country, and, therefore, that Zend was not the language of Persia. Now the language used in Persia after the death of Alexander, under the Arsacidcs and wSassanides, that is, during the period in which the Avesta must have been edited, was Pahlavi, which is not derived from Zend, but from ancient Persian, being the middle dialect between ancient and modern Persian. Therefore, if the Sassanian kings had conceived the project of having religious books of their own written and composed, it is not likely that they would have had them written in an old foreign dialect, but in the old national language, the more so, because, owing both to their origin and their policy, they were bound to be the representatives of the genuine old Persian tradition.
Therefore, if they adopted Zend as the language of religion, it must have been because it was already so when they appeared, that is to say, because the only remnants of sacred literature then extant were written in Zend, and the editors of the Avesta had Zend writings before them.
This docs not, of course, prove that all we find in the Avesta is prc-Sassanian, and that the editors did not compose new Zend texts. Although Zend was not only a dead language, but also a foreign one, it was not an unknown language: that it was well understood by the learned class, the priests, appears from the Pahlavi translation, which was made by them, and which, the deeper xxxvii one enters into the meaning of the text, has the fuller •justice done to its. merits. The earliest date that can be ascribed to that translation, in its present form, is the last century of the Sassanian dynasty, as it contains an allusion to the death of the heresiarch Mazdak, the son of Bamdad \ who was put to death in the beginning of the reign of Khosrav Andsharv&n (about 531). Now the ability to translate a dead language is a good test of the ability to write in it, and in the question of the age of the Zend texts the possibility of new ones having been composed by the editors cannot be excluded d priori. Nay, wc shall see further on that there are passages in these texts which look very modern, and may have been written at the time when the book took its last and definitive form. But whatever may be the proportion of the new texts to the old ones (which I believe to be very small), it is quite certain that the bulk of the Avesta is prc-Sassanian.
§ 9. The date assigned by the Dinkart to the final edition of the Avesta and to its promulgation as the sacred law of the nation, agrees with what we know of the religious state of Iran in the times of Shapfir II. Mazdeism had just been threatened with destruction by a new religion sprung from itself, the religion of Man!, which for a while numbered a king amongst its followers (Shapfir I, 240-270). Mazdeism was shaken for a long time, and when Man! was put to death, his work did not perish with him. In the Kissah-i San^ah, Zoroaster is introduced prophesying that the holy religion will be overthrown three times and restored three times; overthrown the first time by Iskander, it will be restored by Ardeshir; overthrown again, it will be restored by Shapiir II and Adarbad Mahraspand; and, lastly, it will be overthrown by the Arabs and restored at the end of time by Soshyos. The Parsi traditions about Adarb&d, although they are mixed with much fable, allow some historical truth to show itself. He was a holy man under Shapur II, who, as there were many religipns and heresies in Iran and the true religion 1 Vide infra, p. xli, note 3.
xxxviii was falling into oblivion, restored it through a miracle, as he gave a sign of its truth by allowing melted brass to be poured on his breast, without his being injured. Setting aside the miracle, which is most probably borrowed from the legend of Zoroaster, this account receives its true interpretation from the passages in the Kissah-i San^ah and the Dinkar/, which imply that Adarbad restored Mazdeism, which had been shaken by the Manichean heresy, and that in order to settle it upon a solid and lasting base, he gave a definitive form to the religious book of Iran and closed the Holy Writ. And even nowadays the Parsi, while reciting the Patet, acknowledges Adarb&d as the third founder of the Avcsta; the first being Zoroaster, who received it from Ormazd; the second Camasp, who received it from Zoroaster; and the third Adarbdd, who taught it and restored it to its purity.
Therefore, so far as we can trust to inferences that rest upon such scanty and vague testimonies, it seems likely that the Avesta took its definitive form from the hands of Adarbfid Mahraspand, under King Sliaptir II, in consequence of the dangers with which Mani’s heresy had threatened the national religion. As the death of Mani and the first persecution of his followers took place some thirty years before Shapur’s accession to the throne, it may be presumed that the last revision of the Avesta was made in the first years of the new reign, when the agitation aroused by Mani s doctrines and imperfectly allayed by the persecution of his disciples had not yet subsided, and the old religion was still shaking on its base1.
§ io. It follows hence that Zend texts may have been composed even as late as the fourth century A. D. This is, of course, a mere theoretical possibility, for although the liturgical parts of the Yasna, the Visperad, the Sirdzah, and 1 Shapftr II ascended the throne about 309 (before being bom, as the tradition goes): and as he appears from the Dinkar/ to have taken a personal part in the work of Adarbdd, the promulgation of the Avesta can hardly have taken place at an earlier date than 325-330. Adarbad and the Fathers at Nicaea lived and worked in the same age, and the Zoroastrian threats "of the king of Iran and the Catholic anathemas of the Kaisar of Rdm may have been issued on the same day.
XXXIX XXXIX the Khorda Avesta must be ascribed to a later time than the Gathas, the Vendidad, and the Ya^ts, and may belong to some period of revision, they certainly do not belong to the period of this last revision. Adarbad was only the last editor of the Avesta, and it is likely, nay, it is beyond all question, that the doctors of the law, before his time, had tried to put the fragments in order, to connect them, and to fill up the gaps as far as the practical purposes of liturgy required it. Therefore instead of saying that there are parts of the Avesta that may belong to so late a period as the fourth century, it is more correct to say that no part of it can belong to a later date.
There are two passages in the Vendidad which seem to contain internal evidence of their date, and in both cases it points to Sassanian times, nay, the second of them points to the age of Manichcism. The first is found in the eighteenth Fargard (§ 10): Ahura Mazda, while cursing those who teach a wrong law, exclaims: ( And he who would set that man at liberty, when bound in prison, does no better deed than if he should flay a man alive and cut off his head.’
This anathema indicates a time when Mazdcism was a state religion and had to fight against heresy; it must, therefore, belong to Sassanian times. These lines are fully illustrated by a Parsi book of the same period1, the Mainy6-i-Khard: r Good government is that which maintains and orders the true law and custom of the city people and poor untroubled, and thrusts out improper law and custom;...and keeps in progress the worship of God, and duties, and good works;...and will resign the body, and that also which [is] its own life, for the sake of the good religion of the Mazdayasnians. And if [there] be any one who shall stay [away] from the way of God, then it orders him to return thereto, and makes him a prisoner, and brings [him] back to the way of God; and will bestow, from the wealth that is his, the share of God, and the worthy, and good works, See the book of the Mainyo-i-Khard, ed. West; Introduction, p. x seq.
xl vend!dAd.
and the poor; and will deliver up the body on account of the soul. A good king who [isj of that sort, is called like the Yazads and the Amesh&spends V What doctrines are alluded to by theVendidad is not explained: it appears from the context that it had in view such sects as released the faithful from the yoke of religious practices, as it anathematizes, at the same time, those who have continued for three years without wearing the sacred girdle. We know too little of the Manichean liturgy to guess if the Manicheans are here alluded to: that Man! should have rejected many Zoroastrian practices is not unlikely, as his aim was to found a universal religion. While he pushed to extremes several of the Zoroastrian tenets, especially those which had taken, or might receive, a moral or metaphysical meaning, he must have been very regardless of practices which could not be ennobled into moral symbolism. However it may be with regard to the foregoing passage, it is difficult not to sec a direct allusion to Manichcism in lines like the following (IV, 47 scq.): ‘Verily I say it unto thee, O Spitama Zarathuftra! the man who has a wife is far above him who begets no sons; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above him who has none.
‘ And of two men, he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit much more than he who does not so; the latter is all but dead; the former is above him by the worth of an Asperena, by the worth of a sheep, by the worth of an ox, by the worth of a man.
4 It is this man that can strive against the onsets of Astovidhotu; that can strive against the self-moving arrow; that can strive against the winter fiend, with thinnest garment on; that can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head; it is this man that can strive against the ungodly Ashemaogha1 2 who does not eat V 1 Chap. XV, 1 6 seq. as translated by West.
a Ashemaogha, ‘ the confounder of Asha ’ (see IV, 37), is the name of the fiends and of the heretics. The Parsis distinguish two sorts of Ashemaoghas, the deceiver and the deceived; the deceiver, while alive, is marxli That this is a bit of religious polemics, and that it refers to definite doctrines and tenets which were held at the time when it was written, can hardly be doubted. It may remind one of the Christian doctrines; and. in fact, it was nearly in the same tone, and with the same expressions, that in the fifth century King Yazdgard branded the Christians in Armenia 4. But however eager the Christian propaganda may have been for a time in Persia, they never endangered the state religion. The real enemy was the heresy sprung from Mazdeism itself; and Christianity, coming from abroad, was more of a political than a religious foe. And, in point of fact, the description in the above passage agrees better with the Manichcan doctrines than with the Christian 5. Like Mani, Christian teachers held the single life holier than the state of matrimony, yet they had not forbidden marriage, which Mani did; they put poor Lazarus above Dives, but they never forbade trade and husbandry, which Mani did; and, lastly, they never prohibited the eating of flesh, which was one of the chief precepts of Mum0. Wc find, therefore, in this passage, an illustration, from the Avesta itself, of the celebrated doctrine of the three seals with which Mani had sealed the bosom, the hand, and the mouth of his disciples (signaculum sinus, manus, oris)0.
garzan, ‘ worthy of death,’ and after death is a darvand (a fiend, or one of the damned); the deceived one is only margarz&n.
8 The Pahlavi translation illustrates the words 'who does not eat’ by the gloss, ‘ like Mazdak, son of Bam dad/ which proves that this part of the commentary is posterior to, or contemporary With the crushing of the Mazilakian sect (in the first years of Khosrav Anosharvan, about 531). The words * against the wicked tyrant’ are explained by the gloss, ‘like Zarvandad / may it not be Kobad, the heretic king, or ‘Yazdgard the sinner/ the scorner of the Magi?
4 Elisacus, pp. 29, 52, in the French translation by Garabed.
5 At least with orthodox Christianity, which seems to have alone prevailed in Persia till the arrival of the Ncstorians. The description would apply very well to certain gnostic sects, especially that of Cerdo and Marcio, which is no wonder, as it was through that channel that Christianity became known to Man?. Masndi makes M&ni a disciple of Kardun (ed. B. de Meynard, II, 167), and the care which his biographer (ap. Fliigcl, Mani, pp. 51, 85) takes to determine the length of time wtiich intervened between Marcio and Mani seems to betray some dim recollection of an historical connection between the two doctrines.
6 The patriarch of Alexandria, Timotheus, allowed the other patriarchs, xlii § ii. Wc must now go a step farther back, and try to solve the question whence came the original texts out of which the editors of the Avesta formed their collection. Setting aside the Dinkar/, we have no oriental document to help us in tracing them through the age of the Arsacidcs, a complete historical desert, and we arc driven for information to the classical writers who arc, on this point, neither very clear nor always credible. The mention of books ascribed to Zoroaster occurs not seldom during that period, but very often it applies to Alexandrian and Gnostic apocrypha1. Yet there are a few passages which make it pretty certain that there was a Mazdean literature in existence in those times. Pausanias, travelling through Lydia in the second century of our era, saw and heard Magian priests singing hymns from a book2; whether these hymns were the same as the Gatlias, still extant, we cannot ascertain, but this shows that there were Gathas.
The existence of a Zoroastrian literature might be traced back as far as the third century before Christ, if Pliny could be credited when he says that Hermippus:i had given an analysis of the books of Zoroaster, which are said to have amounted to 2,000,000 lines 4. For want of external evidence for ascertaining whether the original texts were already in existence in the later years of the Achmmenian dynasty, we must seek for internal evidence. A comparison between the ideas expressed in our texts and what wc know of the ideas of Achaemenian Persia may perhaps lead to safer inferences.
§ 12. That all the Avesta ideas were already fully developed in the time, or, at least, at the end of the bishops, and monks to eat meat on Sundays, in order to recognise those who belonged to the Manichean sect (Fliigcl, Man!, p. 279).
1 ‘ Those who follow the heresy of Prodicus boast of possessing secret books of Zoroaster,’ Clemens Alex. Stromata I. Cf. the airoieakvil/eis Zupoaurpov forged by Adelphius or Aquilinus (ap. Porphyr. Vita Plotini, § 16).
3 See Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, 288.
4 1 Hermippus, qui de tota arte ea (magia) diligentissime scripsit et viciens centiens inilia versuum a Zoroastre condita indicibus quoque voluminum ejus positis cxplanavit.'...(Hist. Nat. XXX, 1, 2). He had written a book it tpl pdycov (Diog. Laert. Proocm. 8).
xliii xliii Achaemenian dynasty, appears from the perfect accordance of the account of Mazdeism in Theopompos1 with the data of the Zend books. All the main features of Mazdean belief, namely, the existence of two principles, a good and an evil one, Ormazd and Ahriman, the antithetical creations of the two supreme powers, the division of all the beings in nature into two corresponding classes, the limited duration of the world, the end of the struggle between Ormazd and Ahriman by the defeat and destruction of the evil principle, the resurrection of the dead, and the everlasting life, all these tenets of the Avesta had already been established at the time of Philip and Aristotle. Therefore wc must admit that the religious literature then in existence, if there were any, must have differed but little, so far as its contents were concerned, from the Avesta; its extent was greater of course, and wc have a proof of this in this very account of Theopompos, which gives us details nowhere to be found in the present texts, and yet the authenticity of which is made quite certain by comparative mythology 2 3. Therefore there is nothing that forbids us to believe, with the Parsis, that the fragments of which the Avesta is composed were already in existence before the Greek invasion”.
§ 13. Put it docs not follow hence that the Achaemenian Avesta was the sacred book of the Achnemenians and of Persia, and it must not be forgotten that the account in Plutarch is not about the religion of Persia, but about the belief of the Magi and the lore of Zoroaster. Now if we consider that the two characteristic features of Avestean M agism arc, so far as belief goes, the admission of two principles, and so far as practice is concerned, the prohibition of burying the dead, we find that there is no evidence 1 In Plutarch, De Iside et Osiridc, §§ 46-47.
2 Men, when raised from the dead, shall have no shadow any longer (fi'fjTt oKi&v irotovvras). In India, gods have no shadows (Nalus); in Persia, Rashid addin was recognised to be a god from his producing no shadow (Guyard, Un grand maitre des Assassins, Journal Asiatique, 1877, I, 392); the plant of eternal life, Ilaoma, has no shadow (Henry Lord).
3 Persian tradition cannot be much relied on, when it tries to go back beyond Alexander, and on that special point it seems to be more an inference of later ages, than a real tradition; but the inference happens to be right.
xliv vendJdad.
that Achaemcnfan Persia admitted the former, and there is evidence that she did not admit the latter. But, at the same time, it appears that both the belief and the practice were already in existence, though peculiar to one class, the sacerdotal class, the Magi.
The question whether the Achcemenian kings believed in dualism and knew of Ahriman, is not yet settled. Much stress has often been laid on the absence of the name of Ahriman in the religious formulae engraved by Darius and Xerxes on the rocks at Pcrsepolis and Naq^-i Rustam1. But it is never safe to draw wide conclusions from negative facts: Darius and Xerxes speak of Auramazda quite in the style of the Avesta, and their not speaking of Ahriman is no sufficient proof of their not knowing him; they did not intend to publish a complete creed, nor had they to inscribe articles of faith.
The account of the Persian religion in Herodotus also leaves, or seems to leave, Ahriman unnoticed. But it must be borne in mind that he does not expound the religious conceptions of the Persians, but only their religious customs; he describes their worship more than their dogmas, and not a single tenet is mentioned. He seems even not to know anything of Ormazd, who was, however, most certainly the supreme god of Persia in his days; yet, in fact, he clearly alludes to Ormazd, when he states that the Persians worship Zeus on the summits of mountains, and call by the name of Zeus the whole circle of the heavens, which exactly agrees with the character of Ormazd 2 3. In the same way the existence of Ahriman is indirectly pointed to by the duty enforced upon the faithful to persecute and kill noxious animals, as it was only on account of 1 Professor Oppert thinks he has found in Darius’ inscriptions an express mention of Ahriman (Le peuple et le languc des Modes, p. 199); yet the philological interpretation of the passage seems to me still too obscure to allow of any decisive opinion. Plutarch introduces Artaxerxes I speaking of ’Apcijidvios, but whether the king is made to speak the language of his own time, or that of Plutarch’s time, is left doubtful. As to the allusions in Isaiah (xlv), they do not necessarily refer to dualism in particular, but to all religions not monotheistic. (Cf. Ormazd et Ahriman, § 241.)
3 Vide infra, IV, 5.
xlv their being creatures of the evil principle and incarnations of it, that this custom was enjoined as a religious duty l. It appears, it is true, from the words of Herodotus, that it was only a custom peculiar to the Magi 2; but it shows, at least, that the belief in Ahriman was already then in existence, and that dualism was constituted, at least, as a Magian article of faith.
If we pass now from dogma to practice, we find that the most important practice of the Avesta law was either disregarded by the Achaemcnian kings, or unknown to them. According to the Avesta burying corpses in the earth is one of the most heinous sins that can be committed 3; we know that under the Sassanians a prime minister, Seoses, paid with his life for an infraction of that law 4 *. Corpses were to be laid down on the summits of mountains, there to be devoured by birds and dogs; the exposure of corpses was the most striking practice of Mazdean profession, and its adoption was the sign of conversion f>. Now under the Achamienian rule, not only the burial of the dead was not forbidden, but it was the general practice. Persians, says Herodotus, bury their dead in the earth, after having coated them with wax G. But Herodotus, immediately after stating that the Persians inter their dead, adds that the Magi do not follow the general practice, but lay the corpses down on the ground, to be devoured by birds. So what became a law for all people, whether laymen or priests, under the rule of the Sassanians, was only the custom of the Magi, under the Achexmenians.
The obvious conclusion is that the ideas and customs which arc found in the Avesta were already in existence under the Achaemenian kings; but that taken as a whole, they were not the general ideas and customs of the whole of Persia, but only of the sacerdotal caste7. There were 1 Vide infra, IV, 35; cf. Fargard XIII, 5 seq.; XIV, 5.
4 Procopius, De Bello Persico, 1, 1 1.
7 There are other features of the Avesta religion which appear to have been foreign to Persia, but are attributed to the Magi. The Avaetvodatha, the holiness of marriage between next of kin, even to incest, was unknown to xlvi therefore, practically, two religions in Iran, the one for laymen and the other for priests. The Avesta was originally the sacred book only of the Magi, and the progress of the religious evolution was to extend to laymen what was the custom of the priests.
§ 14. We are now able to understand how it was that the sacred book of Persia was written in a non-Persian dialect: it had been written in the language of its composers, the Magi, who were not Persians. Between the priests and the people there was not only a difference of calling, but also a difference of race, as the sacerdotal caste came from a non-Persian province. What that province was we know both from Greek historians and from Parsi traditions.
All classical writers, from Herodotus down to Ammianus, agree in pointing to Media as the seat and native place of the Magi. ‘ In Media/ says Marccllinus (XXIII, 6), 4 are the fertile fields of the Magi...(having been taught in the magic science by King Hystaspes) they handed it down to their posterity, and thus from Hystaspes to the present age an immense family was developed, hereditarily devoted to the worship of the gods...In former times their number was very scanty..., but they grew up by and by into the number and name of a nation, and inhabiting towns without walls they were allowed to live according to their own laws, protected by religious awe/ Putting aside the legendary account of their origin, one sees from this passage that in the time of Marccllinus1 (fourth cent. A.D.) there was in Media a tribe, called Magi, which had the hereditary privilege of providing Iran with priests. Strabo, writing three centuries before Marcellinus, considered the Magi as a sacerdotal tribe spread over the land2. Lastly, we see in Herodotus (III, 65) that the usurpation of the Magian Smerdis was interpreted Persia under Cambyses (ITerod. Ill, 31), but it is highly praised in the Avesta, and was practised under the Sassanians (Agathias II, 31); in the times before the Sassanians it is mentioned only as a law of the Magi (Diog. Laert. Prooem. 6; Catullus, Carm. XC).
1 Or of the historians from whom he copies. Still he seems to speak from contemporary evidence. Sozomenus (Hist. Eccles. II, 9) states that the care of worship belonged hereditarily to the Magi ‘ as to a sacerdotal race,* Samp 71 <f>v\ov UpariKuv.
xlvii by Cambyses as an attempt of the Mcdcs to recover the hegemony they had lost, and when we learn from Herodotus (I, 101) that the Medes were divided into several tribes, Busae, Paraetakeni, Strouchatcs, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi, without his making any remark on the last name, we can hardly have any doubt that the priests known as Magi belonged to the tribe of the Magi, that they were named after their origin, and that the account of Marcellinus may be correct even for so early a period as that of Herodotus.
§ 15. Parsi traditions agree with Greek testimonies.
That the priesthood was hereditary, we sec from the statement in the Bundahi.?, that all the Maubeds arc descendants from King Minochihr1, and even nowadays the priesthood cannot extend beyond the priestly families; the son of a Dastur is not obliged to be a Dastur, but no one that is not the son of a Dastur can become one2.
That they came from Media, we see from the traditions about the native place of Zoroaster, their chief and the founder of their religion. Although epic legends place the cradle of Mazdean power in Bactria, at the court of King Vfotasp, Bactria was only the first conquest of Zoroaster, it was neither his native place, nor the cradle of his religion. Although there are two different traditions on this point, both agree in pointing to Media; according to the one he was born in Rai, that is in Media, properly so called; according to the other he was born in Shiz, that is in Media Atropatcne.
The former tradition seems to be the older; it is expressed directly in the Pahlavi Commentary to Vendidad I, 16 3 *; and there is in the Avesta itself (Yasna XIX, 18 (50)) a passage that either alludes to it or shows how it originated.
‘ How many masters are there? 5 1 Bundahis 79, 13.
2 Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, &c. p. 277.
8 ‘Ragha of the three races,’ that is to say, Atropatene (vide infra); some say it is * Rai.’ It is * of the three races ’ because the three classes, priests, warriors, husbandmen, ‘ were well organized there. Some say that Zartust was bom there..., those three classes were born from him.’ Cf. Bundahis 79, 15, and Farg. II, 43, n. 2. Rai is the Greek 'Fayai.
xlviii i There are the master of the house, the lord of the borough, the lord of the town, the lord of the province, and the Zarathujtra (the high-priest) as the fifth. So is it in all lands, except in the Zarathu^trian realm; for there are there only four masters, in Ragha, the Zarathujtrian city V ‘Who are they?’
‘They are the master of the house, the lord of the borough, the lord of the town, and Zarathujtra is the fourth2 3/ This amounts to saying that the high-priest, the Maubedan Maubcd, held in Rai the position of the da//vyuma, or lord of the land, and was the chief magistrate. It may be suspected that this was the independent sacerdotal state which is spoken of in Marcellinus, and this suspicion is raised to a certain degree of probability by the following lines in Yaqilt: 1 Ustfinawand, a celebrated fortress in the district of Danbawand, in the province of Rai. It is very old, and was strongly fortified. It is said to have been in existence for more than 3000 years, and to have been the stronghold of the Masmoghan of the land during the times of paganism. This word, which designates the high-priest of the Zoroastrian religion, is composed of mas, “great,1 ” and moghan, which means “magian.” Khaled besieged it, and destroyed the power of the last of them V According to another tradition Zarathuilra was born in Atropatcnc. The very same commentary which describes Ragha as being identical with Rai, and the native place of Zartu^t, also informs us that Ragha was thought by others 1 Or possibly, ‘ in the Zarathustrian Ragha.’
2 The Commentary has here: • that is to say, he was the fourth master in his own land.’
Their spreading and wandering over Mazdean lands appears from Yasna XL11, 6 (XLI, 54): 1 We bless the coming of the Athravans, who come from afar to bring holiness to countries;* cf. infra, p. lii, note 1, and Farg. XIII, 22.
3 Dictionnairc geographique de la Perse, traduit par Barbier de Meynard, p. 33. Cf. Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde III, 565. A dim recollection of this Magian dynasty seems to survive in the account ap. Diog. Laert. (Proocm. 2) that Zoroaster was followed by a long series of Magi, Osthanae Astrampsychi, and Pazatae, till the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
xlix xlix to be Atropatenc. Traditions, of which unfortunately we have only late records, make him a native of Shiz, the capital of Atropatcne1: c In Shiz is the fire temple of Azerckhsh, the most celebrated of the Pyraea of the Magi; in the days of the fire worship, the kings always came on foot, upon pilgrimage. The temple of Azerckhsh is ascribed to Zeratusht, the founder of the Magian religion, who went, it is said, from Shiz to the mountain of Sebilan, and, after remaining there some time in retirement, returned with the Zend-Avesta, which, although written in the old Persian language, could not be understood without a commentary. After this he declared himself to be a prophet2.’
Now we read in the BundahL? that Zartu^t founded his religion by offering a sacrifice in Iran Ve^ ( Airyanem Vae^o) Although this detail referred originally to the mythical character of Zoroaster, and Iran Vcg- was primitively no real country, yet as it was afterwards identified with the basin of the Aras (Vanguhi Daitya)4, this identification is a proof that the cradle of the new religion was looked for on the banks of the Aras. In the A vesta itself we read that Zoroaster was born and received the law from Ormazd on a mountain, by the river Dare^a 5, a name which strikingly reminds one of the modern Darah river, which falls from the Sebilan mount into the Aras.
To decide which of the two places, Rai or Atropatene, had the better claim to be called the native place of Zoroaster is of course impossible. The conflict of the two traditions must be interpreted as an indication that both places were important scats of the Magian worship. That both traditions may rely on the Avesta is perhaps a sign that the Avesta contains two scries of documents, the one emanating from the Magi of Ragha, and the other from the 1 The Persian Gazn, the Byzantine Gaza, Ganzaka, the site of which was identified by Sir Heniy Rawlinson with Takht i Suleiman (Memoir on the Site of the Atropatenian Ecbatana, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, M d Magi of Atropatene1; Which of the two places had the older claim is also a question hardly to be settled in the present state of our knowledge2.