Ten Great Religions Part 16

The fields are covered with grain, which ripens in May; the grapes, apricots, and peaches are finer than those of Europe. The nightingale (or bulbul) sings more sweetly than elsewhere, and the rose-bush, the national emblem of Persia, grows to the size of a tree, and is weighed down by its luxuriant blossoms. The beauty of this region, and the loveliness of the women of Schiraz awakened the genius of Hafiz and of Saadi, the two great lyric poets of the East, both of whom resided here.

At one extremity of this valley, in the hollow of a crescent formed by rocky hills, thirty miles northwest of Schiraz, stands an immense platform, fifty feet high above the plain, hewn partly out of the mountain itself, and partly built up with gray marble blocks from twenty to sixty feet long, so nicely fitted together that the joints can scarcely be detected. This platform is about fourteen hundred feet long by nine hundred broad, and its faces front the four quarters of the heavens. You rise from the plain by flights of marble steps, so broad and easy that a procession on horseback could ascend them. By these you reach a landing, where stand as sentinels two colossal figures sculptured from great blocks of marble. The one horn in the forehead seems to Heeren to indicate the Unicorn; the mighty limbs, whose muscles are carved with the precision of the Grecian chisel, induced Sir Robert Porter to believe that they represented the sacred bulls of the Magian religion; while the solemn, half-human repose of the features suggests some symbolic and supernatural meaning. Pa.s.sing these sentinels, who have kept their solitary watch for centuries, you ascend by other flights of steps to the top of the terrace.

There stand, lonely and beautiful, a few gigantic columns, whose lofty fluted shafts and elegantly carved capitals belong to an unknown order of architecture. Fifty or sixty feet high, twelve or fifteen feet in circ.u.mference, they, with a mult.i.tude of others, once supported the roof of cedar, now fallen, whose beams stretched from capital to capital, and which protected the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes from the hot sun of Southern Asia. Along the n.o.ble upper stairway are carved rows of figures, which seem to be ascending by your side. They represent warriors, courtiers, captives, men of every nation, among whom may be easily distinguished the negro from the centre of Africa. Inscriptions abound, in that strange arrow-headed or wedge-shaped character,--one of the most ancient and difficult of all,--which, after long baffling the learning of Europe, has at last begun yielded to the science and acuteness of the present century.

One of the inscriptions copied from these walls was read by Grotefend as follows:--

"Darius the King, King of Kings, son of Hystaspes, successor of the Ruler of the World, Djemchid."

Another:--

"Xerxes the King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, successor of the Ruler of the World."

More recently, other inscriptions have been deciphered, one of which is thus given by another German Orientalist, Benfey:--[107]

"Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd) is a mighty G.o.d; who has created the earth, the heaven, and men; who has given glory to men; who has made Xerxes king, the ruler of many. I, Xerxes, King of Kings, king of the earth near and far, son of Darius, an Achaemenid. What I have done here, and what I have done elsewhere, I have done by the grace of Ahura-Mazda."

In another place:--

"Artaxerxes the King has declared that this great work is done by me.

May Ahura-Mazda and Mithra protect me, my building, and my people[108]."

Here, then, was the palace of Darius and his successors, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, famous for their conquests,--some of which are recorded on these walls,--who carried their victorious arms into India on the east, Syria and Asia Minor on the west, but even more famous for being defeated at Marathon and Thermopylae. By the side of these columns sat the great kings of Persia, giving audience to amba.s.sadors from distant lands. Here, perhaps, sat Cyrus himself, the founder of the Persian monarchy, and issued orders to rebuild Jerusalem. Here the son of Xerxes, the Ahasuerus of Scripture, may have brought from Susa the fair Esther. For this is the famous Persepolis, and on those loftier platforms, where only ruinous heaps of stones now remain, stood that other palace, which Alexander burned in his intoxication three hundred and thirty years before Christ.

"Solitary in their situation, peculiar in their character," says Heeren, "these ruins rise above the deluge of years which has overwhelmed all the records of human grandeur around them, and buried all traces of Susa and Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most un.o.bservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,--all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and wavering light."

Diodorus Siculus says that at Persepolis, on the face of the mountain, were the tombs of the kings of Persia, and that the coffins had to be lifted up to them along the wall of rock by cords. And Ctesias tells us that "Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had a tomb prepared for himself in the double mountain during his lifetime, and that his parents were drawn up with cords to see it, but fell and were killed." These very tombs are still to be seen on the face of the mountain behind the ruins. The figures of the kings are carved over them. One stands before an altar on which a fire is burning. A ball representing the sun is above the altar. Over the effigy of the king hangs in the air a winged half-length figure in fainter lines, and resembling him. In other places he is seen contending with a winged animal like a griffin.

All this points at the great Iranic religion, the religion of Persia and its monarchs for many centuries, the religion of which Zoroaster was the great prophet, and the Avesta the sacred book. The king, as servant of Ormazd, is worshipping the fire and the sun,--symbols of the G.o.d; he resists the impure griffin, the creature of Ahriman; and the half-length figure over his head is the surest evidence of the religion of Zoroaster.

For, according to the Avesta, every created being has its archetype or Fereuer (Ferver, Fravashis), which is its ideal essence, first created by the thought of Ormazd. Even Ormazd himself has his Fravashis,[109] and these angelic essences are everywhere objects of worship to the disciple of Zoroaster. We have thus found in Persepolis, not only the palace of the great kings of Persia, but the home of that most ancient system of Dualism, the system of Zoroaster.

-- 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion.

But who was Zoroaster, and what do we know of him? He is mentioned by Plato, about four hundred years before Christ. In speaking of the education of a Persian prince he says that "one teacher instructs him in the magic of Zoroaster, the son (or priest) of Ormazd (or Oromazes), in which is comprehended all the worship of the G.o.ds." He is also spoken of by Diodorus, Plutarch, the elder Pliny, and many writers of the first centuries after Christ. The worship of the Magians is described by Herodotus before Plato. Herodotus gives very minute accounts of the ritual, priests, sacrifices, purifications, and mode of burial used by the Persian Magi in his time, four hundred and fifty years before Christ; and his account closely corresponds with the practices of the Parsis, or fire-worshippers, still remaining in one or two places in Persia and India at the present day. "The Persians," he says, "have no altars, no temples nor images; they worship on the tops of the mountains. They adore the heavens, and sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds."[110] "They do not erect altars, nor use libations, fillets, or cakes. One of the Magi sings an ode concerning the origin of the G.o.ds, over the sacrifice, which is laid on a bed of tender gra.s.s." "They pay great reverence to all rivers, and must do nothing to defile them; in burying they never put the body in the ground till it has been torn by some bird or dog; they cover the body with wax, and then put it in the ground." "The Magi think they do a meritorious act when they kill ants, snakes, reptiles."[111]

Plutarch's account of Zoroaster[112] and his precepts, is very remarkable. It is as follows:--

"Some believe that there are two G.o.ds,--as it were, two rival workmen; the one whereof they make to be the maker of good things, and the other bad.

And some call the better of these G.o.d, and the other Daemon; as doth Zoroastres, the Magee, whom they report to be five thousand years elder than the Trojan times. This Zoroastres therefore called the one of these Oromazes, and the other Arimanius; and affirmed, moreover, that the one of them did, of anything sensible, the most resemble light, and the other darkness and ignorance; but that Mithras was in the middle betwixt them.

For which cause, the Persians called Mithras the mediator. And they tell us that he first taught mankind to make vows and offerings of thanksgiving to the one, and to offer averting and feral sacrifice to the other. For they beat a certain plant called h.o.m.omy[113] in a mortar, and call upon Pluto and the dark; and then mix it with the blood of a sacrificed wolf, and convey it to a certain place where the sun never shines, and there cast it away. For of plants they believe, that some pertain to the good G.o.d, and others again to the evil Daemon; and likewise they think that such animals as dogs, fowls, and urchins belong to the good; but water animals to the bad, for which reason they account him happy that kills most of them. These men, moreover, tell us a great many romantic things about these G.o.ds, whereof these are some: They say that Oromazes, springing from purest light, and Arimanius, on the other hand, from pitchy darkness, these two are therefore at war with one another. And that Oromazes made six G.o.ds[114], whereof the first was the author of benevolence, the second of truth, the third of justice, and the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and a third of that pleasure which accrues from good actions; and that Arimanius likewise made the like number of contrary operations to confront them. After this, Oromazes, having first trebled his own magnitude, mounted up aloft, so far above the sun as the sun itself above the earth, and so bespangled the heavens with stars. But one star (called Sirius or the Dog) he set as a kind of sentinel or scout before all the rest. And after he had made four-and-twenty G.o.ds more, he placed them all in an egg-sh.e.l.l. But those that were made by Arimanius (being themselves also of the like number) breaking a hole in this beauteous and glazed egg-sh.e.l.l, bad things came by this means to be intermixed with good. But the fatal time is now approaching, in which Arimanius, who by means of this brings plagues and famines upon the earth, must of necessity be himself utterly extinguished and destroyed; at which time, the earth, being made plain and level, there will be one life, and one society of mankind, made all happy, and one speech. But Theopompus saith, that, according to the opinion of the Magees, each of these G.o.ds subdues, and is subdued by turns, for the s.p.a.ce of three thousand years apiece, and that for three thousand years more they quarrel and fight and destroy each other's works; but that at last Pluto shall fail, and mankind shall be happy, and neither need food, nor yield a shadow.[115] And that the G.o.d who projects these things doth, for some time, take his repose and rest; but yet this time is not so much to him although it seems so to man, whose sleep is but short. Such, then, is the mythology of the Magees."

We shall see presently how nearly this account corresponds with the religion of the Parsis, as it was developed out of the primitive doctrine of Zoroaster.[116]

Besides what was known through the Greeks, and some accounts contained in Arabian and Persian writers, there was, until the middle of the last century, no certain information concerning Zoroaster and his teachings.

But the enterprise, energy, and scientific devotion of a young Frenchman changed the whole aspect of the subject, and we are now enabled to speak with some degree of certainty concerning this great teacher and his doctrines.

-- 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta.

Anquetil du Perron, born at Paris in 1731, devoted himself early to the study of Oriental literature. He mastered the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian languages, and by his ardor in these studies attracted the attention of Oriental scholars. Meeting one day in the Royal Library with a fragment of the Zend Avesta, he was seized with the desire of visiting India, to recover the lost books of Zoroaster, "and to learn the Zend language in which they were written, and also the Sanskrit, so as to be able to read the ma.n.u.scripts in the _Bibliotheque du Roi_, which no one in Paris understood."[117] His friends endeavored to procure him a situation in an expedition just about to sail; but their efforts not succeeding, Du Perron enlisted as a private soldier, telling no one of his intention till the day before setting out, lest he should be prevented from going. He then sent for his brother and took leave of him with many tears, resisting all the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose. His baggage consisted of a little linen, a Hebrew Bible, a case of mathematical instruments, and the works of Montaigne and Charron. A ten days' march, with other recruits, through wet and cold, brought him to the port from whence the expedition was to sail. Here he found that the government, struck with his extraordinary zeal for science, had directed that he should have his discharge and a small salary of five hundred livres. The East India Company (French) gave him a pa.s.sage gratis, and he set sail for India, February 7, 1755, being then twenty-four years old. The first two years in India were almost lost to him for purposes of science, on account of his sicknesses, travels, and the state of the country disturbed by war between England and France[118]. He travelled afoot and on horseback over a great part of Hindostan, saw the worship of Juggernaut and the monumental caves of Ellora, and, in 1759, arrived at Surat, where was the Parsi community from which he hoped for help in obtaining the object of his pursuit. By perseverance and patience he succeeded in persuading the Destours, or priests, of these fire-worshippers, to teach him the Zend language and to furnish him with ma.n.u.scripts of the Avesta. With one hundred and eighty valuable ma.n.u.scripts he returned to Europe, and published, in 1771, his great work,--the Avesta translated into French, with notes and dissertations. He lived through the French Revolution, shut up with his books, and immersed in his Oriental studies, and died, after a life of continued labor, in 1805. Immense erudition and indomitable industry were joined in Anquetil du Perron to a pure love of truth and an excellent heart.

For many years after the publication of the Avesta its genuineness and authenticity were a matter of dispute among the learned men of Europe; Sir William Jones especially denying it to be an ancient work, or the production of Zoroaster. But almost all modern writers of eminence now admit both. Already in 1826 Heeren said that these books had "stood the fiery ordeal of criticism." "Few remains of antiquity," he remarks, "have undergone such attentive examination as the books of the Zend Avesta. This criticism has turned out to their advantage; the genuineness of the princ.i.p.al compositions, especially of the Vendidad and Izeschne (Yacna), has been demonstrated; and we may consider as completely ascertained all that regards the rank of each book of the Zend Avesta."

Rhode (one of the first of scholars of his day in this department) says: "There is not the least doubt that these are the books ascribed in the most ancient times to Zoroaster." Of the Vendidad he says: "It has both the inward and outward marks of the highest antiquity, so that we fear not to say that only prejudice or ignorance could doubt it[119]."

-- 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him?

As to the age of these books, however, and the period at which Zoroaster lived, there is the greatest difference of opinion. He is mentioned by Plato (Alcibiades, I. 37), who speaks of "the magic (or religious doctrines) of Zoroaster the Ormazdian" (_magedan Zoroastran ton Oromazon_[120]). As Plato speaks of his religion as something established in the form of Magism, or the system of the Medes, in West Iran, while the Avesta appears to have originated in Bactria, or East Iran[121], this already carries the age of Zoroaster back to at least the sixth or seventh century before Christ. When the Avesta was written, Bactria was an independent monarchy. Zoroaster is represented as teaching under King Vistacpa. But the a.s.syrians conquered Bactria B.C. 1200, which was the last of the Iranic kingdoms, they having previously vanquished the Medes, Hyrcanians, Parthians, Persians, etc. As Zoroaster must have lived before this conquest, his period is taken back to a still more remote time, about B.C. 1300 or B.C. 1250[122] It is difficult to be more precise than this.

Bunsen indeed[123] suggests that "the date of Zoroaster, as fixed by Aristotle, cannot be said to be so very irrational. He and Eudoxus, according to Pliny, place him six thousand years before the death of Plato; Hermippus, five thousand years before the Trojan war," or about B.C. 6300 or B.C. 6350. But Bunsen adds: "At the present stage of the inquiry the question whether this date is set too high cannot be answered either in the negative or affirmative." Spiegel, in one of his latest works,[124] considers Zoroaster as a neighbor and contemporary of Abraham, therefore as living B.C. 2000 instead of B.C. 6350. Professor Whitney of New Haven places the epoch of Zoroaster at "least B.C. 1000," and adds that all attempts to reconstruct Persian chronology or history prior to the reign of the first Sa.s.sanid have been relinquished as futile.[125]

Dollinger[126] thinks he may have been "somewhat later than Moses, perhaps about B.C. 1300," but says, "it is impossible to fix precisely" when he lived. Rawlinson[127]| 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.[128] Rapp,[129] 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. It is not far from the period given by the oldest Greek writer who speaks of Zoroaster,--Xanthus of Sardis, a contemporary of Darius. It is the period given by Cephalion, a writer of the second century, who takes it from three independent sources. We have no sources now open to us which enable us to come nearer than this to the time in which he lived.

Nor is anything known with certainty of the place where he lived or the events of his life. Most modern writers suppose that he resided in Bactria. Haug maintains that the language of the Zend books is Bactrian[130]. A highly mythological and fabulous life of Zoroaster, translated by Anquetil du Perron, called the Zartusht-Namah[131], describes him as going to Iran in his thirtieth year, spending twenty years in the desert, working miracles during ten years, and giving lessons of philosophy in Babylon, with Pythagoras as his pupil. All this is based on the theory (now proved to be false) of his living in the time of Darius. "The language of the Avesta," says Max Muller, "is so much more primitive than the inscriptions of Darius, that many centuries must have pa.s.sed between the two periods represented by these two strata of language[132]." These inscriptions are in the Achaemenian dialect, which is the Zend in a later stage of linguistic growth.

-- 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion

It is not likely that Zoroaster ever saw Pythagoras or even Abraham. But though absolutely nothing is known of the events of his life, there is not the least doubt of his existence nor of his character. He has left the impress of his commanding genius on great regions, various races, and long periods of time. His religion, like that of the Buddha, is essentially a moral religion. Each of them was a revolt from the Pantheism of India, in the interest of morality, human freedom, and the progress of the race.

They differ in this, that each takes hold of one side of morality, and lets go the opposite. Zoroaster bases his law on the eternal distinction between right and wrong; Sakya-muni, on the natural laws and their consequences, either good or evil. Zoroaster's law is, therefore, the law of justice; Sakya-muni's, the law of mercy. The one makes the supreme good to consist in truth, duty, right; the other, in love, benevolence, and kindness. Zoroaster teaches providence: the monk of India teaches prudence. Zoroaster aims at holiness, the Buddha at merit. Zoroaster teaches and emphasizes creation: the Buddha knows nothing of creation, but only nature or law. All these oppositions run back to a single root. Both are moral reformers; but the one moralizes according to the method of Bishop Butler, the other after that of Archdeacon Paley. Zoroaster cognizes all morality as having its root within, in the eternal distinction between right and wrong motive, therefore in G.o.d; but Sakya-muni finds it outside of the soul, in the results of good and evil action, therefore in the nature of things. The method of salvation, therefore, according to Zoroaster, is that of an eternal battle for good against evil; but according to the Buddha, it is that of self-culture and virtuous activity.

Both of these systems, as being essentially moral systems in the interest of humanity, proceed from persons. For it is a curious fact, that, while the essentially spiritualistic religions are ignorant of their founders, all the moral creeds of the world proceed from a moral source, i.e. a human will. Brahmanism, Gnosticism, the Sufism of Persia, the Mysteries of Egypt and Greece, Neo-Platonism, the Christian Mysticism of the Middle Ages,--these have, strictly speaking, no founder. Every tendency to the abstract, to the infinite, ignores personality.[133] Individual mystics we know, but never the founder of any such system. The religions in which the moral element is depressed, as those of Babylon, a.s.syria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, are also without personal founders. But moral religions are the religions of persons, and so we have the systems of Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed.[134] The Protestant Reformation was a protest of the moral nature against a religion which had become divorced from morality. Accordingly we have Luther as the founder of Protestantism; but mediaeval Christianity grew up with no personal leader.

The whole religion of the Avesta revolves around the person of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. In the oldest part of the sacred books, the Gathas of the Yacna, he is called the _pure_ Zarathustra, good in thought, speech, and work. It is said that Zarathustra alone knows the precepts of Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), and that he shall be made skilful in speech. In one of the Gathas he expresses the desire of bringing knowledge to the pure, in the power of Ormazd, so as to be to them strong joy (Spiegel, Gatha Ustvaiti, XLII. 8), or, as Haug translates the same pa.s.sage (Die Gathas des Zarathustra, II. 8): "I will swear hostility to the liars, but be a strong help to the truthful." He prays for truth, declares himself the most faithful servant in the world of Ormazd the Wise One, and therefore begs to know the best thing to do. As the Jewish prophets tried to escape their mission, and called it a burden, and went to it "in the heat and bitterness of their spirit," so Zoroaster says (according to Spiegel): "When it came to me through your prayer, I thought that the spreading abroad of your law through men was something difficult."

Zoroaster was one of those who was oppressed with the sight of evil. But it was not outward evil which most tormented him, but spiritual evil,--evil having its origin in a depraved heart and a will turned away from goodness. His meditations led him to the conviction that all the woe of the world had its root in sin, and that the origin of sin was to be found in the demonic world. He might have used the language of the Apostle Paul and said, "We wrestle not with flesh and blood,"--that is, our struggle is not with man, but with principles of evil, rulers of darkness, spirits of wickedness in the supernatural world. Deeply convinced that a great struggle was going on between the powers of light and darkness, he called on all good men to take part in the war, and battle for the good G.o.d against the dark and foul tempter.

Great physical calamities added to the intensity of this conviction. It appears that about the period of Zoroaster, some geological convulsions had changed the climate of Northern Asia, and very suddenly produced severe cold where before there had been an almost tropical temperature.

The first Fargard of the Vendidad has been lately translated by both Spiegel and Haug, and begins by speaking of a good country, Aryana-Vaejo, which was created a region of delight by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). Then it adds that the "evil being, Angra-Mainyus (Ahriman), full of death, created a mighty serpent, and winter, the work of the Devas. Ten months of winter are there, two months of summer." Then follows, in the original doc.u.ment, this statement: "Seven months of summer are (were?) there; five months of winter were there. The latter are cold as to water, cold as to earth, cold as to trees. There is the heart of winter; there all around falls deep snow. There is the worst of evils." This pa.s.sage has been set aside as an interpolation by both Spiegel and Haug. But they give no reason for supposing it such, except the difficulty of reconciling it with the preceding pa.s.sage. This difficulty, however, disappears, if we suppose it intended to describe a great climatic change, by which the original home of the Aryans, Aryana-Vaejo, became suddenly very much colder than before.

Such a change, if it took place, was probably the cause of the emigration which transferred this people from Aryana-Vaejo (Old Iran) to New Iran, or Persia. Such a history of emigration Bunsen and Haug suppose to be contained in this first Fargard (or chapter) of the Vendidad. If so, it takes us back further than the oldest part of the Veda, and gives the progress of the Aryan stream to the south from its original source on the great plains of Central Asia, till it divided into two branches, one flowing into Persia, the other into India. The first verse of this venerable doc.u.ment introduces Ormazd as saying that he had created new regions, desirable as homes; for had he not done so, all human beings would have crowded into this Aryana-Vaejo. Thus in the very first verse of the Vendidad appears the affectionate recollection of these emigrant races for their fatherland in Central Asia, and the Zoroasterian faith in a creative and protective Providence. The awful convulsion which turned their summer climate into the present Siberian winter of ten months'

duration was part of a divine plan. Old Iran would have been too attractive, and all mankind would have crowded into that Eden. So the evil Ahriman was permitted to glide into it, a new serpent of destruction, and its seven months of summer and five of winter were changed to ten of winter and two of summer.[135]

This Aryana-Vaejo, Old Iran, the primeval seat of the great Indo-European race, is supposed by Haug and Bunsen to be situated on the high plains northeast of Samarcand, between the thirty-seventh and fortieth degrees of north lat.i.tude, and the eighty-sixth and ninetieth of east longitude. This region has exactly the climate described,--ten months of winter and two of summer. The same is true of Western Thibet and most of Central Siberia.

Malte-Brun says: "The winter is nine or ten months long through almost the whole of Siberia." June and July are the only months wholly free from snow. On the parallel of 60, the earth on the 28th of June was found frozen, at a depth of three feet.

But is there reason to think that the climate was ever different?

Geologists a.s.sure us that "great oscillations of climate have occurred in times immediately antecedent to the peopling of the earth by man."[136]

But in Central and Northern Asia there is evidence of such fluctuations of temperature in a much more recent period. In 1803, on the banks of the Lena, in lat.i.tude 70, the entire body of a mammoth fell from a ma.s.s of ice in which it had been entombed perhaps for thousands of years, but with the flesh so perfectly preserved that it was immediately devoured by wolves. Since then these frozen elephants have been found in great numbers, in so perfect a condition that the bulb of an eye of one of them is in the Museum at Moscow.[137] They have been found as far north as 75.

Hence Lyell thinks it "reasonable to believe that a large region in Central Asia, including perhaps the southern half of Siberia, enjoyed at no very remote period in the earth's history a temperate climate, sufficiently mild to afford food for numerous herds of elephants and rhinoceroses."