It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance which this passage bears to chapter 35 of the Fis Adamnáin. This resemblance must be purely accidental, but it is none the less worthy to be noted; for there is reason to suspect that a careful record of the similitudes and coincidences which so frequently occur where imitation or direct derivation is impossible, might tend to discourage the arbitrary assumption that derivation must needs exist, in cases where it may be possible, but is not proved.
It will be noted that Yima’s Vara is not represented in the Vendîdâd as the abode of the dead, or connected in any way with the Otherworld; it there appears rather as a Platonic ideal world, containing the forms, types, or ideas after which the material world is to be created, or, rather, restored. Yima, too, far from being one of the principal gods, appears only as a subordinate Demiourgos, subject to ‘the Maker,’ Ahura Mazda. Hence it might seem to be foreign to our subject; in reality, however, it is not so. However the legend may have been explained by later philosophic speculations—probably under Greek influences, as to which later—there is no doubt that in its original form it was meant for a picture of the world of the happy dead. Internal evidence of itself might convince us of this. The whole conception of a supernatural country, inhabited by human beings who lead a happy life amid conditions which reproduce the present world, but under a brighter and serener aspect—a country, moreover, which reproduces a traditionary golden age—is entirely in accord with the familiar Elysium of the Aryan peoples. But more than this, in the ancient Persian mythology Yima is identical with the Indian Yama, the ruler of the departed, who crossed the rivers, leading the fathers after him, and now presides over the spirits of the dead in a land beyond the sunset. Here, in a land of soft winds and cool rains, traversed by perennial streams of milk and honey, and illumined by unfailing light, he sits under the Tree of Life, drinking the Soma (the Persian Haôma) from its branches, and surrounded by the souls of the righteous, all whose desires are there accomplished.
The Persian religion, in the stage at which it is preserved in the Avesta, spiritualised much of the primitive Aryan mythology, allegorising many of its deities into personifications of good and evil principles and qualities. This notwithstanding, many of the more primitive elements of the older religion were retained, and were reinforced with a number of animistic beliefs derived from the Turanian peoples; and when the Zoroastrian religion experienced that process of corruption which commonly affects all ‘Religions of the Book,’ in greater or less degree, these lower and more ancient elements asserted themselves, so that the practical side of the religion consisted in great measure of Shamanistic practices designed to propitiate an innumerable host of good and evil spirits.[62]
The question how far the eschatological conceptions of the later Judaism may have been affected by contact with Zoroastrianism obviously depends, in great measure, upon the date to be assigned to the first appearance in the Persian religion of the foregoing theories concerning the future life. The Avesta consists of several books of different character and of different dates. Darmesteter[63] holds that it was compiled, in its present form, during the first and second centuries of our era, although a great part of the material embodied was of much earlier date. He further considers that the Zoroastrian belief received its ultimate form under the influence of the schools of Greek philosophy, with which the Persians were in close contact in the centuries following the conquests of Alexander, and more particularly, that the final redaction of the Avesta was indebted for its more spiritual and philosophic elements to ‘Neo-Platonism, that is to say, that philosophic compound inspired by the spirit of Plato, which permeated all the speculations of the centuries before Christ, and long after, and which finds its first and most influential exponent in Philo Judæus. In Philo is found, as far as I know, the first exact parallel to the Avestan doctrine,’ etc. (p. lv.).
The pronouncements of such a scholar as Darmesteter upon any matter of fact belonging to a department of learning of which he was so weighty an authority can only be accepted by us without reserve. At the same time, it may be permissible to consider how far the above inferences are supported by the author’s own arguments, or rather, the extent to which those inferences may be held to apply. It is certain that the Hellenic, or Hellenistic, philosophies exercised great influence throughout the more civilised parts of Asia during the existence of the Alexandrian Empire, and for long after its dissolution. It will be observed, however, that Darmesteter, while assuming that the Avesta was moulded by those Platonic doctrines ‘which pervaded all the speculations of the centuries before Christ,’ goes on to say that this speculation ‘finds its first … exponent in Philo Judæus.’ Now, Philo Judæus flourished in the middle of the first century of our era, and the other most celebrated founders, or rather precursors, of the Neo-Platonic school were of later date; Plutarch of Chæronea belonging to the latter part of the same century, Numenius to the second century A.D. If, then, ‘in Philo is found … the first exact parallel to the Avestan doctrine,’ it might conceivably be argued with regard to those parts, at any rate, of the Avestan doctrine to which the author ascribes a Neo-Platonic origin on the strength of their resemblance to the system of Philo, that such resemblance should be explained by a quite opposite derivation theory.[64] The further question also presents itself, whether the views of Philo and his school obtained so rapid an acceptance in the East, beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, as greatly to affect the substance of so ancient and important a creed as Zoroastrianism, as expounded in a recension of the sacred books of that religion made almost immediately after Philo’s death, if not then actually in progress.
It is enough to suggest these questions, without attempting their solution; we are only concerned to see whether Darmesteter’s theory, if correct, is incompatible with the existence in the earlier form of the Avestan religion of elements which may reasonably be presumed to have affected the development of our legend through Hebrew channels.
Darmesteter himself does not attempt to set up any hard and fast theory on the subject. In his own words: ‘Without pressing conclusions too hard as to facts and dates, this much can be safely inferred … that Platonic doctrines had found their way to Persia in the first centuries of the Christian era’ (loc. cit.). In particular, he traces Platonic influences in the spiritual and allegorical manner in which the creations of the old Aryan mythology are dealt with in the Avesta, and in the prevalence of a similar tone in the Avestan cosmology. The most notable instances of this mode of thought occur in the Var of Yima, which is practically a Platonic world of Ideas,[65] and in the Amesha Spentas, or Bountiful Immortals, who, we are told, first assume the character in which they now appear in the Avesta under the influence of Neo-Platonic theories.[66]
At the same time, Darmesteter points out that the ancient Achæmenian religion already possessed the fundamental doctrine of the conflict between the powers of good and evil, and the final triumph of the good, and of those that had adhered to it. The duration of the universe is already divided into four periods of 3000 years each,[67] in the last of which Ahriman was to be subdued, and men were to ‘live happily, needing no food, and casting no shadow.’[68] He further states, as we have seen, that the Avesta was compiled from various works of different dates; these would necessarily embody much matter of older date than themselves—very much older, we are warranted in believing, alike by the analogy of other religions, and by the nature of many of the beliefs preserved in the Avesta. In speaking of the books of which the Avesta is composed, Darmesteter gives it as his opinion that ‘the Vendîdâd may be taken as the best specimen of the text imbued with the pre-Alexandrian spirit’;[69] and it is precisely the Vendîdâd that contains the greater part, though not all, of the doctrines concerning the Otherworld, of which an abstract has been given above.
We are thus warranted in assuming that the Persians had developed a tolerably complete theory of the Otherworld, and of the rewards and punishments there meted out in recompense for man’s conduct in this life, at a date early enough to influence Hebrew thought, before either nation had come under Hellenic influences.