Zoroastrianism
religion
Table of Contents
Introduction
Nature and significance
History
Beliefs and mythology
Practices and institutions
Iconography
Relation to other religions
Conclusion
Zoroastrianism, the ancient pre-Islamic religion of Iran that survives there in isolated areas and, more prosperously, in India, where the descendants of Zoroastrian Iranian (Persian) immigrants are known as Parsis, or Parsees.
The Iranian prophet and religious reformer Zarathustra (flourished before the 6th century bce)�more widely known outside Iran as Zoroaster, the Greek form of his name)�is traditionally regarded as the founder of the religion. Zoroastrianism contains both monotheistic and dualistic features. It likely influenced the other major Western religions�Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For a discussion of the context in which Zoroastrianism arose,
The ancient Greeks saw in Zoroastrianism the archetype of the dualistic view of the world and of human destiny. Zarathustra was supposed to have instructed Pythagoras in Babylon and to have inspired the Chaldean doctrines of astrology and magic. It is likely that Zoroastrianism influenced the development of Judaism and the birth of Christianity. The Christians, following a Jewish tradition, identified Zoroaster with Ezekiel, Nimrod, Seth, Balaam, and Baruch and even, through the latter, with Jesus Christ himself. On the other hand, as the presumed founder of astrology and magic, Zarathustra could be considered the arch-heretic.
Though Zoroastrianism was never, even in the thinking of its founder, as insistently monotheistic as, for instance, Judaism or Islam, it does represent an original attempt at unifying under the worship of one supreme god a polytheistic religion comparable to those of the ancient Greeks, Latins, Indians, and other early peoples. Its other salient feature, namely dualism, was never understood in an absolute, rigorous fashion. Good and evil fight an unequal battle in which the former is assured of triumph. God�s omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited. In this struggle all human beings must enlist because of their capacity for free choice. They do so with soul and body, not against the body, for the opposition between good and evil is not the same as the one between spirit and matter. Contrary to the Christian or Manichaean (from Manichaeism�a Hellenistic, dualistic religion founded by the Iranian prophet Mani) attitude, fasting and celibacy are proscribed except as part of the purificatory ritual. The human struggle has a negative aspect, nonetheless, in that it must strive for purity and avoid defilement by the forces of death, contact with dead matter, etc. Thus, Zoroastrian ethics, though in itself lofty and rational, has a ritual aspect that is all-pervading. On the whole, Zoroastrianism is optimistic and has remained so even through the hardship and oppression of its believers. History Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion
The religion of Iran before the time of Zarathustra is not directly accessible, for there are no reliable sources more ancient than those composed by or attributed to the prophet himself. It has to be studied indirectly on the basis of later documents and by a comparative approach. The language of Iran is closely akin to that of northern India, and, hence, the people of the two lands probably had common ancestors who spoke a common Indo-Aryan language. The religion of those peoples has been reconstructed by means of common elements contained in the sacred books of Iran and India, mainly the Avesta and the Vedas. Both collections exhibit the same kind of polytheism with many of the same gods, notably the Indian Mitra (the Iranian Mithra), the cult of fire, sacrifice by means of a sacred liquor (
The Indo-Iranians appear to have distinguished from among their gods the
Zarathustra (Zoroaster) was a priest of a certain
It has not yet been possible to place Zarathustra�s hymns, the Gāthās, in their historical context. Not a single place or person mentioned in them is known from any other source. Vishtāspa, the prophet�s protector, can only be the namesake of the father of Darius, the Achaemenid king. All that may safely be said is that Zarathustra lived somewhere in eastern Iran, far from the civilized world of western Asia, before Iran became unified under Cyrus II the Great. If the Achaemenids ever heard of him, they did not see fit to mention his name in their inscriptions nor did they allude to the beings who surrounded the great god and were later to be called the
Religion under the Achaemenids was in the hands of the Magi, whom the Greek historian Herodotus describes as a Median tribe with special customs, such as exposing the dead, fighting evil animals, and interpreting dreams. Again, the historical connection with Zarathustra�whom Herodotus also ignores�is a hazy one. It is not known when Zarathustra�s doctrine reached western Iran, but it must have been before the time of Aristotle (384�322), who alludes to its dualism.
Darius, when he seized power in 522, had to fight a usurper, Gaumata the Magian, who pretended to be Bardiya, the son of Cyrus the Great and brother of the king Cambyses. This Magian had destroyed cultic shrines,
Xerxes, successor to Darius, mentioned in one of his inscriptions how at a certain (unnamed) place he substituted the worship of Auramazda for that of the
From Artaxerxes II (404�359/358) onward, the inscriptions mention, besides Auramazda, Mithra and the goddess Anahita (Anahit), which proves only a change of emphasis, not the appearance of new deities. The Arsacid period
In consequence of Alexander�s conquest, the Iranian religion was almost totally submerged by the wave of Hellenism. At Susa, for instance, which had been one of the capital cities of the Achaemenids but where the religion of Auramazda was not indigenous, the coinage of the Seleucid and Arsacid periods does not represent a single Iranian deity.
Then the Iranian religion gradually emerged again. In Commagene in the middle of the 1st century bce, gods bear combinations of Greek and Iranian names: Zeus Oromazdes, Apollo Mithra, Helios Hermes, Artagnes Herakles Ares. The first proof of the use of a Zoroastrian calendar, implying the official recognition of Zoroastrianism, is found some 40 years earlier at Nisa (near modern Ashgabat in Turkmenistan). By then some form of orthodoxy must have been established in which Auramazda and the entities (powers surrounding him) adjoin other gods such as Mithra, the Sun, and the Moon.
In Persis (modern Fārs), from the beginning of the Christian Era to the advent of the Sāsānians (early 3rd century ce), any allusion to the fire cult disappears. The coins seem to indicate, in not showing the fire altar, that the prince had lost interest in the Iranian religion. The Sāsānian period
With Ardashīr, the future founder of the Sāsānian dynasty, the situation was different, and this may suggest that his religious zeal�as a hereditary priest of Staxr (Istaxr)�may have helped him seize power in his native province, even before he started attacking his Arsacid suzerain, Artabanus V.
Two persons are recorded, in different sources, as helping to establish Zoroastrianism under the first Sāsānians: Kartēr and Tansar. Whereas Kartēr is known through contemporary inscriptions, most of which were written by himself, Tansar (or Tosar) is only remembered in later books. The latter tell us that Tansar, an
Under Bahrām V (420�438), presumably, the title
Khosrow I continued the work of his father, Qobād, and thus the Mazdakite upheaval made way for a strong state and an established Mazdean Church. The religious books give Khosrow the unique title of
Khosrow II (590/591�628) married a Christian woman and may have been a Christian himself. He was superstitious and dabbled in astrology. Post-Islamic Iranian Zoroastrianism
Islam won a decisive victory at al-Qādisiyyah in 635 over the armies of Yazdegerd III, the last Sāsānid. Islam, in principle, tolerated the ancient religion, but conversions by persuasion or force were massive in many provinces. Zoroastrianism fomented rebellion and brought persecutions upon itself. There were pockets of survival, notably in Persis, the ancient centre of the Achaemenian and Sāsānian empires. Books were produced to save the essentials of the religion from a threatened disaster. The disaster did occur, but exactly why and how is not known. Zoroastrians, called Gabars by the Muslims, survived in Iran as a persecuted minority in small enclaves at Yazd and Kerman. The Parsis in India
From the 10th century onward, groups of Zoroastrians emigrated to India, where they found asylum in Gujarat. Their connection with their coreligionists in Iran seems to have been almost totally broken until the end of the 15th century. Reestablished in 1477, the connection was kept up chiefly in the form of an exchange of letters until 1768. Under British rule, the Parsis, who previously had been humble agriculturists, started to enrich themselves through commerce, then through industry. They became a most prosperous and �modern� community, centred in Bombay (Mumbai). Formerly they had adopted the Gujarati language and the dress of their Hindu milieu. Later they adopted British customs, British dress, the education of girls, and the abolition of child marriage. In their enterprises as well as in their charities, they followed the example of the West. From the 19th century on, they were able to help their less-favoured brethren in Iran, either through gifts or through intervention with the government.
They also adapted themselves to their Indian culture by minimizing what was repugnant to the Hindus�namely, blood sacrifice�and they surrendered to some extent to the vogue of astrology and to theosophy. On the other hand, ever since they were attacked by Christian missionaries for their dualism, they have been emphasizing the monotheistic aspect of their doctrine. Beliefs and mythology Sources
Only the hymns, or Gāthās, are attributable to Zarathustra. They are written in various metres and in a dialect different from the rest of the Avesta, except for seven chapters, chiefly in prose, that appear to have been composed shortly after the prophet�s demise. All these texts are embedded in the
The Avesta is, therefore, a collection of texts compiled in successive stages until it was completed under the Sāsānians. It was then about four times larger than what has survived. A summary of its 21 books, or
Other works in Pahlavi include, besides a translation and commentary on the Avesta, the
Finally, there are Zoroastrian books written in Persian, either in verse or in prose. The latter include the correspondence exchanged between Zoroastrians of Iran and India and the treatise entitled
Zarathustra�s silence on Mithra is not easy to interpret. Since this god was closely associated with Varuna in India and with Varuna�s likely substitute in Iran, Zarathustra can hardly have ignored one-half of this divine pair without a definite purpose. Otherwise, it might be presumed that Mithra was included in the formula �Mazdā and the [other]
It is in the framework of the religion of the
The moral dualism expressed in the opposition Asha�Druj (truth�falsehood) goes back at least to Indo-Iranian times, for the Veda knows it too, as
To the army of the
In this battle the whole material universe is, through the entities, potentially enrolled, the Bounteous Spirit being the patron of humankind, Asha of fire, the Good Mind of the Ox, the Dominion of the metals, Aramaiti of the earth, Integrity and Immortality of the waters and plants. Moreover, since the entities are at once divine and human (because both the spiritual and material qualities of man partake of divine), everyone faithful to the wise Ahura can commune with him.
After Zarathustra, considerable changes occurred in the theology he had professed. The entities were reduced to mere deities, which were even separated into male and female. Never again were their names used to designate human faculties. This is probably a consequence of the resurgence of the ancient gods.
It is not known to what extent Zarathustra�s system was meant to be exclusively the cult of Ahura Mazdā. In the Later Avesta all the gods he had ignored emerged again, such as Mithra, Airyaman (whom he had replaced by Sraosha), Anahita, Apām Napāt, Verethraghna, and Vayu. This vast pantheon, still nominally headed by Ahura Mazdā, is similar to the compromise that Darius, according to the interpretation cited above, made between the cult of Auramazda and that of the gods of the nobility.
Not only did Zarathustra�s theology thus lose its exclusive position, but an internal change also modified its equilibrium and even threatened its very essence. The Bounteous Spirit was almost completely reabsorbed into Ahura Mazdā. Whereas in a
In the cosmogony as expounded in the
A solution was provided by Zurvanism: it is Zurvān (Time) who is the father of Ormazd and Ahriman. But this solution upset the very essence of Mazdaism and was therefore condemned as heretical. Zurvanism was widely accepted, however, perhaps even prevalent, in Sāsānian times. Traces of it are found in Mazdean orthodoxy, some features of which cannot otherwise be explained.
In Mazdean orthodoxy, when Ormazd created the material world, he first produced from Infinite Light a form of fire, out of which all things were to be born. This form of fire is �bright, white, round, and visible from afar.� Gayōmart, the Primal Man, was also conceived as spherical, in the image of the sky. Mānushchihr writes that �Ormazd, the lord of all things, produced from Infinite Light a form of fire whose name was that of Ormazd and whose light was that of fire.� This phrase can be accounted for only as a clumsy adaptation of a Zurvanite text that must have said, in effect, that Zurvān created Ormazd.
The Mazdean quaternity is reflected in the calendar at Nisa in 90 bce. The Zurvanite speculation that preceded it probably dates back to the first centuries of the Arsacid period and thus was born in the wake of Hellenism and in connection with the spread of astrology. Cosmology
In order to vanquish Ahriman, Ormazd created the world as a battlefield. He knew that this fight would be limited in time�it would last 9,000 years�and he offered Ahriman a pact to that effect. After they had created their respective material creations, Ahriman�s first attack was defeated by Ormazd with the help of the Ahuna Vairya prayer (the most sacred Zoroastrian prayer), and he lay prostrate for another period of 3,000 years, the second in a total of four. He was then stirred up by the prostitute (Primal Woman) and went back to the attack, this time in the material universe. He killed the Primal Bull, whose marrow gave birth to the plants and whose semen was collected and purified in the moon, whence it would produce the useful animals. Ahriman then killed Gayōmart, the Primal Man, whose body produced the metals and whose semen was preserved and purified in the sun. A part of it would produce the rhubarb from which the first human couple would be born.
The first human couple was perverted by Ahriman, and it is only with the advent of Zarathustra, after 3,000 years, that Ahriman�s supremacy came to an end. Ormazd and Ahriman then fight on equal terms until Ormazd, at the end of the last 3,000 years, finally will triumph. Humanity
The idea of a human being as a microcosm, already illustrated in the cosmogony, is further developed in the
Indian and Iranian beliefs in the afterlife have many features in common, probably dating back to the Indo-Iranian period: a feminine encounter, a bridge with dogs watching it, a heavenly journey. In the Katha Upanishad, one of the Upanishads (speculative philosophical texts in the Hindu tradition), a man�s soul is welcomed in heaven by 500
Either before this encounter or after, according to the various texts, the soul must cross a bridge. This, with the young girl and the gods, is attested in India in the Yajurveda and the Upanishads. In the Gāthās it is called the Bridge of the Requiter. It leads the good souls to paradise, but the bad ones fall into hell.
The soul has also to undergo a judgment; it appears before Mithra and his two companions, Sraosha and Rashnu. Finally it ascends through successive stages representing respectively a man�s good thoughts (the stars), good words (the moon), and good deeds (the sun) to the paradise (of infinite lights). In the Veda it is said only that the sojourn of the good deed is beyond the path of the sun. In paradise the soul is led by Vohu Manah, the Good Mind, to the golden throne of Ormazd.
Hell also has, symmetrically, four levels. For the souls whose good actions exactly balance their evil ones, there is an intermediate place. Eschatology
Zarathustra used to invoke saviours who, like the dawns of new days, would come to the world. He hoped himself to be one of them. After his death, the belief in coming saviours developed. Zarathustra was expected to return, if not personally, at least in the form of his three sons who would be born, at intervals of a thousand years, from his semen. The last of these saviours, Astvat-ereta, or justice incarnate, was also simply called the Saviour (Saoshyans).
Only in the Pahlavi books is this theme systematically developed. It is dominated by the idea of a final return to the initial state of things. The first human couple had at first fed on water, then on plants, on milk, and at last on meat. The people in the last millennia will, at the advent of the three successive saviours, abstain in the reverse order from meat, milk, and plants to keep finally only water. The primeval combatants also have their counterparts at the end of time. The dragon that was killed in order to liberate the imprisoned waters will appear again at the resurrection to be killed by another hero. In the last great struggle, the host of good and the host of evil will vie with each other, and each soldier of Ormazd will defeat and kill his own special adversary. This will restore the state of peace that had prevailed initially. The wicked will then submit to an ordeal of molten metal and fire. Fire and Airyaman will cause the metals of the mountains to melt and to flow down as a river of fire. The whole of resuscitated humankind must traverse it; it will burn only the wicked, whereas to the just it will be as sweet as warm milk. The suffering of the wicked will last only three days, however, after which all humankind will enjoy much happiness. On the flattened earth (for the metal will fill in all the valleys), men and women, henceforth shadowless since they are sinless, will taste the bliss of family life. Hell will be sealed forever, and Ahriman will be either powerless or annihilated. Practices and institutions Cultic places
Although Herodotus wrote that the Persians had no temples, some have been found, in the shape of terraces or towers or square rooms.
The Farnbag, Gushnasp, and Burzen-Mihr fires were connected, respectively, with the priests, the warriors, and the farmers. The Farnbag fire was at first in Khwārezm, until in the 6th century bce, according to tradition, Vishtāspa, Zarathustra�s protector, transported it to Kabulistan. Then Khosrow in the 6th century ce transported it to the ancient sanctuary of Kariyan in Fārs. The latter, however, has not yet been identified. The Gushnasp fire, located at Shiz, was the ancient fire of the Magi (in Media), but it came to be the symbol of the monarchic and religious unity. The Burzen-Mihr fire never ranked as high as the other two because the peasants, unlike the kings and the clergy, never possessed any sovereignty. Besides these individual designations, the fires were classified according to two categories: the Adurān, village fires; and the Varhrān, provincial and royal fires. Priesthood
The Magians, though not originally Zoroastrian, apparently became acquainted with the prophet�s teachings not later than the 4th century bce. They had the monopoly on religion at the Achaemenian court. The term
All young Parsis must be initiated when they reach the age of seven (in India) or 10 (in Persia). They receive the shirt (
There are three types of purification, in order of increasing importance: the
Penance entails reciting the
The chief ceremony, the Yasna, essentially a sacrifice of
The sacred fire must be kept burning continually and has to be fed at least five times a day. Prayers also are recited five times a day. The founding of a new fire involves a very elaborate ceremony. There are also rites for purification and for regeneration of a fire. Burial rites
After death, a dog is brought before the corpse; it should preferably be a �four-eyed� dog (i.e., it should have a spot above each eye, as this is said to increase the efficacy of its look). The rite is repeated five times a day. After the first one, fire is brought into the room where it is kept burning until three days after the removal of the corpse to the
The interior of the
Festivals, in which worship is an essential part, are characteristic aspects of Zoroastrianism, a faith that enjoins on human beings the pleasant duty of being happy. The principal festivals in the Parsi year are the six seasonal festivals,
The New Year festival, Nōrūz, is the most joyous and beautiful of Zoroastrian feasts, a spring festival in honour of Rapithwin, the personification of noonday and summer. The festival to Mithra, or Mehragān, was traditionally an autumn one, as honoured as the spring feast of Nōrūz. Ethics
The precepts of Mazdean ethics focus upon the maintenance of life and the fight against evil. In order to maintain life, one must earn one�s living by means of cattle raising and agriculture, and one must procreate. To fight against evil is to combat the demons and whatever beings, human or animal, belong to them. The two points of view seem to coincide, considering that the forces of evil are the forces of death: good is opposed to evil as light is to darkness, as life is to nonlife. The life precepts can be transposed into fight precepts; for instance, eating and drinking are interpreted by Zātspram as a struggle against the she-demon Āz, �Concupiscence.� The two points of view, however, are also contradictory: how can one fight the forces of evil without suppressing certain lives, such as baleful animals? The second viewpoint prevails: Iran ignores, even in theory, the universal respect of life that is preached by Buddhism or that justifies the vegetarian diet of Brahmanic India.
Social reasons (e.g., the desire to maintain family privileges) apparently explain the development of consanguineous marriage, an acute form of endogamy.
Future life should be determined by the balance of the good and evil deeds, words, and thoughts of the whole life. This principle, however, is tempered to allow for human weakness. All faults do not have to be registered or weighed forever on the scales. There are two means of effacing them: confession and the transfer of supererogatory merits (the equivalent of the Roman Catholic �Treasury of Merits� of Christ and the saints). The latter is the justification for the prayers and ceremonies for the departed. Iconography
There is no Zoroastrian art. Be it in the Achaemenid, Arsacid, or Sāsānian period, Iranian art was predominantly royal. Only one god is represented during the first period: Auramazda, as a winged disk hovering above the king. It is known, however, that Artaxerxes II introduced statues of Anahita into her temples, after the Greek fashion. In the Arsacid period, Greek models also served for the representations of Iranian gods ordered by the kings on reliefs or coins. In the Sāsānian period, deities were represented only in the giving of the royal investiture, as is the case with Ormazd and Anahita at Naqsh-e Rostam, or Ormazd and Mithra at Taq-e Bostan. The frequency of the bullman in Achaemenid and Sāsānid iconography may be due to the obviously royal character of this personage: on seals he wears a crown, and the Pahlavi text calls him Gopatshāh, �King of Gopat.� Relation to other religions
The debt of Israel to its Eastern neighbours in religious matters is easy to demonstrate on a few precise points of minor importance but less so in other more important points, such as dualism, angelology, and eschatology.
Chapters 40 through 48 of the Book of Isaiah offer striking parallels with the third and fourth verses of Gāthā 44. Besides the common procedure of rhetorical questions, there is the notion of a god who has created the world and, notably, light and darkness. The very idea of a creator god may be common to all of the western part of the Semitic world. But the notion that God created light and darkness appears in both prophets. It is true that Zarathustra associates light and darkness only to waking and sleep and that no Iranian text says that God created good and evil. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition, in the Book of Isaiah, of light�darkness with good�evil sounds remarkably Iranian.
After the exile, the traditional hope in a messiah-king of the house of David who would reestablish Israel as an independent nation and make it triumph over all enemies gave way gradually to a concept at once more universal and more moral. The salvation of Israel was still essential, but it had to come about in the framework of a general renewal; the appearance of a saviour would mean the end of this world and the birth of a new creation; his judgment of Israel would become a general judgment, dividing human beings into good and evil. This new concept, at once universal and ethical, recalls Iran so strongly that many scholars attribute it to the influence of that country. Conclusion
Zoroastrianism is not the purely ethical religion it may at first seem. In practice, despite the doctrine of free choice, Zoroastrians are so constantly involved in a meticulous struggle against the contamination of death and the thousand causes of defilement and against the threat, even in sleep, of ever-present demons that they do not often believe that they are leading their lives freely and morally.
Apart from this attitude, the belief in the power of destiny sometimes culminates in fatalism. The latter is easily associated with Zurvanism, itself sometimes tainted with materialism. In the
Citation Information
Article Title: Zoroastrianism
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 18 July 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zoroastrianism
Access Date: August 31, 2019
Additional Reading
A wide-ranging introductory study is found in Cyrus R. Pangborn,
Texts covering specific aspects of Zoroastrianism are J.R. Hinnells, �Zoroastrian Saviour Imagery and Its Influence on the New Testament,� in