Yet the religious temperaments of India and Iran are not the same. Zoroastrianism has little sympathy for pantheism or asceticism: it does not teach metempsychosis or the sinfulness of taking life. Images are not used in worship[1144], God and his angels being thought of as pure and shining spirits. The foundation of the system is an uncompromising dualism of good and evil, purity and impurity, light and darkness. Good and evil are different in origin and duality will be abolished only by the ultimate and complete victory of the good. In the next world the distinction between heaven and hell is equally sharp but hell is not eternal[1145].
The pantheon and even the ritual of the early Iranians resembled those of the Veda and we can only suppose that the two peoples once lived and worshipped together. Subsequently came the reform of Zoroaster which substituted theism and dualism for this nature worship. For about two centuries, from 530 B.C. onwards, Gandhara and other parts of north-western India were a Persian province. Between the time of Zoroaster (whatever that may be) and this period we cannot say what were the relations of Indian and Iranian religions, but after the seventh century they must have flourished in the same region. Aristobulus[1146], speaking of Taxila in the time of Alexander the Great, describes a marriage market and how the dead were devoured by vultures. These are Babylonian and Persian customs, and doubtless were accompanied by many others less striking to a foreign tourist. Some hold that the Zoroastrian scriptures allude to disputes with Buddhists[1147].
Experts on the whole agree that the most ancient Indian architecture which has been preserved—that of the Maurya dynasty—has no known antecedents in India, but both in structure (especially the pillars) and in decoration is reminiscent of Persepolis, just as Asoka's habit of lecturing his subjects in stone sermons and the very turns of his phrases recall the inscriptions of Darius[1148]. And though the king's creed is in some respects—such as his tenderness for animal life—thoroughly Indian, yet this cannot be said of his style and choice of themes as a whole. His marked avoidance of theology and philosophy, his insistence on ethical principles such as truth, and his frank argument that men should do good in order that they may fare happily in the next world, suggest that he may have become familiar with the simple and practical Zoroastrian outlook[1149], perhaps when he was viceroy of Taxila in his youth. But still he shows no trace of theism or dualism: morality is his one concern, but it means for him doing good rather than suppressing evil.
After the death of Asoka his Empire broke up and races who were Iranian in culture, if not always in blood, advanced at its expense. Dependencies of the Persian or Parthian empire extended into India or like the Satrapies of Mathurâ and Saurâshṭra lay wholly within it. The mixed civilization which the Kushans brought with them included Zoroastrianism, as is shown by the coins of Kanishka, and late Kushan coins indicate that Sassanian influence had become very strong in northern India when the dynasty collapsed in the third century A.D.
I see no reason to suppose that Gotama himself was influenced by Iranian thought. His fundamental ideas, his view of life and his scheme of salvation are truly Hindu and not Iranian. But if the childhood of Buddhism was Indian, it grew to adolescence in a motley bazaar where Persians and their ways were familiar. Though the Buddhism exported to Ceylon escaped this phase, not merely Mahayanism but schools like the Sarvâstivadins must have passed through it. The share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely perfection. And Zoroastrian influence is I think indubitable in the figures of the great Bodhisattvas, even Maitreya[1150], and above all in Amitâbha and his paradise. These personalities have been adroitly fitted into Indian theology but they have no Indian lineage and, in spite of all explanations, Amitâbha and the salvation which he offers remain in strange contradiction with the teaching of Gotama. I have shown elsewhere[1151] what close parallels may be found in the Avesta to these radiant and benevolent genii and to the heaven of boundless light which is entered by those who repeat the name of its master. Also there is good evidence to connect the early worship of Amitâbha with Central Asia. Later Iranian influence may have meant Mithraism and Manichæism as well as Zoroastrianism and the school of Asanga perhaps owes something to these systems[1152]. They may have brought with them fragments of Christianity or doctrines similar to Christianity but I think that all attempts to derive Amitâbhist teaching from Christianity are fanciful. The only point which the two have in common is salvation by faith, and that doctrine is certainly older than Christianity. Otherwise the efforts of Amitâbha to save humanity have no resemblance to the Christian atonement. Nor do the relations between the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas recall the Trinity but rather the Persian Fravashis.
Persian influences worked more strongly on Buddhism than on Hinduism, for Buddhism not only flourished in the frontier districts but penetrated into the Tarim basin and the region of the Oxus which lay outside the Indian and within the Iranian sphere. But they affected Hinduism also, especially in the matter of sun-worship. This of course is part of the oldest Vedic religion, but a special form of it, introduced about the beginning of our era, was a new importation and not a descendant of the ancient Indian cult[1153].
The Brihatsaṃhita[1154] says that the Magas, that is Magi, are the priests of the sun and the proper persons to superintend the consecration of temples and images dedicated to that deity, but the clearest statements about this foreign cult are to be found in the Bhavishya Purana[1155] which contains a legend as to its introduction obviously based upon history. Sâmba, the son of Krishna, desiring to be cured of leprosy from which he suffered owing to his father's curse, dedicated a temple to the sun on the river Candrabhâgâ, but could find no Brahmans willing to officiate in it. By the advice of Gauramukha, priest of King Ugrasena, confirmed by the sun himself, he imported some Magas from Śâkadvîpa[1156], whither he flew on the bird Garuda[1157]. That this refers to the importation of Zoroastrian priests from the country of the Śâkas (Persia or the Oxus regions) is made clear by the account of their customs—such as the wearing of a girdle called Avyanga[1158]—given by the Purana. It also says that they were descended from a child of the sun called Jaraśabda or Jaraśasta, which no doubt represents Zarathustra.
The river Candrabhâgâ is the modern Chenab and the town founded by Samba is Mûlasthana or Multan, called Mu-la-san-pu-lu by the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Chuang. The Bhavishya Purana calls the place Sâmbapuri and the Chinese name is an attempt to represent Mûlasâmba-puri. Hsüan Chuang speaks enthusiastically of the magnificent temple[1159], which was also seen by Alberuni but was destroyed by Aurungzeb. Târanâtha[1160] relates how in earlier times a king called Śrî Harsha burnt alive near Multan 12,000 adherents of the Mleccha sect with their books and thereby greatly weakened the religion of Persians and Sakas for a century. This legend offers difficulties but it shows that Multan was regarded as a centre of Zoroastrianism.
Multan is in the extreme west Of India, but sun temples are found in many other parts, such as Gujarat, Gwalior and the district of Gaya, where an inscription has been discovered at Govindapur referring to the legend of Sâmba. This same legend is also related in the Kapila Saṃhita, a religious guide-book for Orissa, in connection with the great Sun temple of Konarak[1161].