Zoroaster Sentence Examples

As Zoroaster probably preached his religion in eastern Iran, Vishtaspa must have been a dynast in Bactria or Sogdiana.

It is possibly also in connexion with the dualism of his fundamental 1 =Nimrod = Zoroaster, cf.

According to the Avesta (Yasna, 9, 17),, Airyanem Vaejo, on the river Daitya, the old sacred country of the gods, was the home of Zoroaster, and the scene of his.

But it was decided by the High Court, after prolonged argument, that, though the creed of Zoroaster theoretically admitted proselytes, their admission was not consistent with the practice of the Parsees in India.

The religion was remodelled by Zoroaster, who seems to be a historical character and to have lived about the 7th century B.C. About the same time they shook off the domination of Assyria.

Zoroaster was already famous in classical antiquity as the founder of the widely renowned wisdom of the Magi.

The ancients also recounts a few points regarding the childhood of Zoroaster and his hermit-life.

Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch's contemporary, declares that neither Homer nor Hesiod sang of the chariot and horses of Zeus so worthily as Zoroaster, of whom the Persians tell that, out of love to wisdom and righteousness, he withdrew himself from men, and lived in solitude upon a mountain.

He gives a faithful sketch of the doctrines, mythology and dualistic system of the Magian Zoroaster.

The Avesta is, indeed, our principal source for the doctrine of Zoroaster; on the subject of his person and his life it is comparatively reticent; with regard to his date it is, naturally enough, absolutely silent.

Darmesteter has failed to realize sufficiently the distinction between the Zoroaster of the later Avesta and the Zoroaster of the Gathas.

The Gathas alone within the Avesta make claim to be the ipsissima verba of the prophet; in the rest of that work they are put into Zoroaster's own mouth (Yasna, 9, 1) and are expressly called "the Gathas of the holy Zoroaster" (Yasna, 57, 8).

The Vendidad also merely gives accounts of the dialogues between Ormazd and Zoroaster.

The Gathas alone claim to be authentic utterances of Zoroaster, his actual expressions in presence of the assembled congregation.

They are the last genuine survivals of the doctrinal discourses with which - as the promulgator of a new religion - he appeared at the court of King Vishtaspa The person of the Zoroaster whom we meet with in these hymns differs lobo coelo from the Zoroaster of the younger Avesta.

So soon as the point of view is clear - that in the Gathas we have firm historical ground on which Zoroaster and his surroundings may rest, that here we have the beginnings of the Zoroastrian religion - then it becomes impossible to answer otherwise than affirmatively every general question as to the historical character of Zoroaster.

He stands at the meetingpoint between the old world and the new era which begins with Zoroaster.

In the relation between Zoroaster and Vishtaspa already lies the germ of the state church which afterwards became completely subservient to the interests of the dynasty and sought its protection from it.

We are quite ignorant as to the date of Zoroaster; King Vishtaspa does not seem to have any place in any historical chronology, and the Gathas give no hint on the subject.

According to the Arda Viraf, I, 2, Zoroaster taught, in round numbers, some 300 years before the invasion of Alexander.

Meyer, therefore, conjecturally puts the date of Zoroaster at 1000 B.C., as had already been done by Duncker (Geschichte des Altertums, 4 4, 78).

Zoroaster taught a new religion; but this must not be taken as meaning that everything he taught came, so to say, out of his own head.

The most striking difference between Zoroaster's doctrine of God and the old religion of India lies in this, that while in the Avesta the evil spirits are called daeva (Modern Persian div), the Aryans of India, in common with the Italians, Celts and Letts, gave the name of deva to their good spirits, the spirits of light.

This twofold development of the idea of God formed the point of leverage for Zoroaster's reformation.

This culminating stage in the asura-conception is the work of Zoroaster.

The daevas, unmasked and attacked by Zoroaster as the true enemies of mankind, are still, in the Gathas, without doubt the perfectly definite gods of old popular belief - the idols of the people.

For Zoroaster they sink to the rank of spurious deities, and in his eyes their priests and votaries are idolaters and heretics.

Zoroaster says of himself that he had received from God a commission to purify religion (Yasna, 44, 9).

Zoroaster's teachings show him to have been a man of a highly speculative turn, faithful, however, with all his originality, to the Iranian national character.

The ultimate triumph of the good spirit is an ethical demand of the religious consciousness and the quintessence of Zoroaster's religion.

Of a real remission of sins the old doctrine of Zoroaster knows nothing, whilst the later Zoroastrian Church admits repentance, expiation and remission.

Zoroaster at last, as being a spiritual man, was found fit for the mission.

It was not without special reason - so Zoroaster believed - that the calling of a prophet should have taken place precisely when it did.

Like John the Baptist and the Apostles of Jesus, Zoroaster also believed that the fulness of time was near, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.

For the great mass of the people Zoroaster's doctrine was too abstract and spiritualistic. The vulgar fancy requires sensuous, plastic deities, which admit of visible representation; and so the old gods received honour again and new gods won acceptance.

The last things and the end of the world are relegated to the close of a long period of time (3000 years after Zoroaster), when a new Saoshyant is to be born of the seed of the prophet, the dead are to come to life, and a new incorruptible world to begin.

In Persia itself only a few followers of Zoroaster are now found (in Kerman and Yezd).

The Parsees in and around Bombay hold by Zoroaster as their prophet and by the ancient religious usages, but their doctrine has reached the stage of a pure monotheism.

Manichaeism, which combined the adoration of Zoroaster and Christ, became the refuge of those supporters of Mithraism who were inclined to compromise, while many found the transition to orthodox Christianity easy because of its very resemblance to their old faith.

He had lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad Sade, and formed the project of a voyage to India to discover the works of Zoroaster.

In 1771 he published his Zend-Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred writings of the fire-worshippers, a life of Zoroaster, and fragments of works ascribed to him.

See further Zoroaster.

Mani, following the example of the gnostic Jewish Christians, appears to have held Adam, Noah, Abraham (perhaps zoroaster and Buddha) to be such prophets.

As there can be scarcely any doubt that it was in these regions, where the fertile soil of the mountainous country is everywhere surrounded and limited by the Turanian desert, that the prophet Zoroaster preached and gained his first adherents, and that his religion spread from here over the western parts of Iran, the sacred language in which the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, is written, has often been called "old Bactrian."

But a great Bactrian empire certainly never existed; the Bactrians and their neighbours were in old times ruled by petty local kings, one of whom was Vishtaspa, the protector of Zoroaster.

The valley is connected with many early Magian traditions, according to which Zoroaster dwelt at Balkh, where, in the 7th century B.C., his proselytizing efforts first came into operation.

Buddhism eventually spread widely over the Oxus countries, and almost entirely displaced the religion of Zoroaster in its very cradle.

He is thus received into the religion of Zoroaster, and is henceforth considered morally accountable for his acts.

Its functions resemble the Venetian council of ten, and its objects are to preserve unity, peace and justice amongst the followers of Zoroaster.

As the result of these inquiries, he adopted the creed of pure deism and a ritual based upon the system of Zoroaster.

The details of this remarkable scheme must be studied elsewhere (see Zoroaster).

Though found neither in the inscriptions of Darius nor in the Greek authors, the name Turan must nevertheless be of great antiquity; for not merely is it repeatedly found in the Avesta, under the form Tura, but it occurs already in a hymn, which, without doubt, originates from Zoroaster himself, and in which the Turanian Fryana and his descendants are commemorated as faithful adherents of the prophet (Yasna, 46, 62).

These legends have lived and flourished in Iran at every period of its history; and neither the religion of Zoroaster, nor yet Islam, has availed to suppress them.

This is the Avesta, the Bible of the modern Parsee, which comprises the revelation of Zoroaster.

As to the home and time of Zoroaster, the Parsee tradition yields us no sort of information which could possibly be of historical service.

The Greek theory, which relegates Zoroaster to the mists of antiquity, or even to the perioc of the fabulous Ninus and Semiramis, is equally valueless Even the statement that he came from the north-west of Medif (the later Atropatene), and his mother from Rai (Rhagae) in eastern Media, must be considered as problematic in the extreme Our only trustworthy information is to be gleaned from his OWl testimony and from the history of his religion.

The possibility that Zoroaster himself was not a native of East Iran,but had immigrated thither (from Rhagae?), is of course always to be considered; and this theory has been used to explain the phenomenon that the Gathas, of his own composition, are written in a different dialect from the rest of the Avesta.

The next clue towards determining the period of Zoroaster is, that Darius I.

Thus, if the doctrine of Zoroaster predominated in Media in 714 B.C., obviously his appearance in the role of prophet must have been much earlier.

The religion which Zoroaster preached was the creation of.

Obviously, it was through this preaching of a judgment to come and a direct moral responsibility of the individual man, that, like Mahomet among the Arabs, Zoroaster and his disciples gained their adherents and exercised their greatest influence.

The preaching of Zoroaster is directed to each individual man, and requires of him that he shall choose his position with regard to the fundamental problems of life and religion.

See further, ZOROASTER and works there quoted.

The Persian kingsnone more so than Darius, whose religious convictions are enshrined in his inscriptions and, with the kings, their people, were ardent professors of the pure doctrine of Zoroaster; and the Persians settled in the provinces diffused his creed throughout the whole empire.

Moreover, the unadulterated doctrine of Zoroaster could no more become a permanent popular religion than can Christianity.

The later Parsee tradition contends that Alexander burned the sacred books of Zoroaster, the Avesta, and that only a few fragments were saved and afterwards reconstructed by the Arsacids and Sassanids.

At their head was the Religious supreme Mobed, resident in Rhagae (Rai), who was re- Developgarded as the successor of Zoroaster.

But, meanwhile, in its Iranian home and especially in Persis, the religion of Zoroaster lived a quiet life, undisturbed by the proceedings of the outside world.

The Zend is said to be a branch of the Lak tribe, dating from the time of the Kaianian kings, and claims to have been charged with the care of the Zend-Avesta by Zoroaster himself.1 The tree attached to Markhams chapter on the dynasty contains the names of eight members of the family only, i.e.

Zend is the language of the so-called Ayes/a,3 the holy book of the Persians, containing the oldest documents of the religion of Zoroaster.

The view wbich became current through Anquetil Duperron, that the Ayes/a is throughout the work of Zoroaster (in Zend, Zarathushtra), the founder of the religion, has long been abandoned as untenable.

But the opposite view, that not a single word in the book can lay claim to the authorship of Zoroaster, also appears on closer study too sweeping.

They bear in themselves irrefutable proofs of their authenticity, bringing us face to face not with the Zoroaster of the legends but with a real person, announcing a new doctrine and way of salvation, no supernatural Being assured of victory, but a mere man, struggling with human conflicts of every sort, in the midst of a society of fellow-believers yet in its earliest infancy.

If, then, the gathas reach back to the time of Zoroaster, and he himself, according to the most probable estimate, lived as early as the 14th century B.C., the oldest component parts of the Avesta are hardly inferior in age to the oldest Vedic hymns.

The followers of Zoroaster soon ceased to understand Zend.

The kernel of the whole book, around which the remaining portions are grouped, consists of the Gathas or " hymns " of Zoroaster (q.v.), the oldest and most sacred portion of the entire canon.

As to the authenticity of these hymns, see Zoroaster.

Hermippus, in the 3rd century B.C., affirmed that Zoroaster, the founder of the doctrine of the Magi, was the author of twenty books, each containing ioo,000 verses.

According to the Arda-Viraf--Nama the religion revealed through Zoroaster has subsisted in its purity for 300 years, when Iskander Rumi (Alexander the Great) invaded and devastated Iran, and burned the Avesta which, written on cowhides with golden ink, was preserved in the archives at Persepolis.

But to search for a precise time or an exact locality is to deal with the question too narrowly; it is more correct to say that the Avesta was worked at from the time of Zoroaster down to the Sassanian period.

The rest of the Avesta, in spite of the opposite opinion of orthodox Parsees, does not even claim to come from Zoroaster.

The language in which Zoroaster taught, especially a later development of it, remained as the standard with his followers, and became the sacred language of the priesthood of that faith which he had founded; as such it became, so to speak, absolved from the ordinary conditions of time and space.

In Persis the traditions of the Achaemenian empire had always been alive, as the name of Ardashir himself shows, and with them the national religion of Zoroaster.

Zoroaster, whose aim was to promote monotheism, apparently omitted these gods from the Gathas in favor of Ahuramazda.

Guided by Good Purpose, Zoroaster encountered a theophany of the supreme god, Ahuramazda, at the top of a mountain.

Thus more than human honour is paid to Zoroaster and Buddha and even to the founders of systems not strictly religious, e.g.

The new Sassanid Empire which he founded enforced the restored religion of Zoroaster (Zarathustra) on the whole of Iran.

They adopted the Iranian religion of Zoroaster (in the royal town Asaak an eternal fire was maintained), and " their language was a mixture of Scythian and Median " (i.e., Iranian).

There, on the river Darejya, assuming that the passage (Vend., 19, 4) is correctly interpreted, stood the house of his father; and the Bundahish (20, 32 and 24, 15) says expressly that the river Daraja lay in Airan Vej, on its bank was the dwelling of his father, and that there Zoroaster was born.

While in India the conception of the asura had veered more and more towards the dreadful and the dreaded, Zoroaster elevated it again - at the cost, indeed, of the daivas (daevas), whom he degraded to the rank of malicious powers and devils.

Thus the fundamental ideas of a middle state after death and of a purification preparatory to perfect blessedness are met with in Zoroaster, who takes souls through twelve stages before they are sufficiently purified to enter heaven; and the Stoics conceived of a middle place of enlightenment which they called Eµirtpw ns.

So Zoroaster himself converted the Turanian Fryana with his kindred (sec above); and the same tendency to proselytize alien peoples survived in his religion.

For Manichaeism is an attempt to weld the doctrine of the Gospel and the doctrine of Zoroaster Manlchae- into a uniform system, though naturally not without lam, an admixture of other elements, principally Babylonian and Gnostic. Mani, perhaps a Persian from Babylonia, is said to have made his first appearance as a teacher on the coronation day of Shapur I.

The advent of the Persians, bringing with them a conception of religion of a far higher order than Babylonian-Assyrian polytheism (see Zoroaster), must also have acted as a disintegrating factor in leading to the decline of the old faith in the Euphrates Valley, and we thus have the interesting though not entirely exceptional phenomenon of a great civilization bequeathing as a legacy to posterity a superstition instead of a real achievement.