Thus we have seen the fabulous “world mountain” of early Babylonia pervading the mythologies of Europe and Asia, taking the form of the star-crowned Olympus on the Ægean sea, and of Meru, with her fadeless flowers, in the valleys of India. In northern Europe it is represented by the Nida mountains with their golden palaces, and in Persia by the beautiful Hara with her crown of living light.
The Chaldean river of death, Datilla, flows also through the realms of Grecia under the name of Styx, and in the regions of the north it becomes the Ifing, and also the Gyöll. Again the mythical river seems to mount upward, and like the heavenly Nile, the Ganges springs from celestial heights and flows through the starry highlands of heaven, while the silvery torrents of the Persian stream come pouring down from the white summit of the Hara-Berezaita.
The early Baal, with all the unspeakable abominations attending his worship, becomes refined in the form of Zeus or Jove, who hurls his lightnings from the brow of Olympus, and in the Ahūra-Mazda of the Persians, whose throne is “the lofty mountain.” Tammuz and Chemosh, whose hideous images called forth the contempt of the prophets, appear in the Persian pantheon as Mithra with his glittering steeds; Ashtaroth of Sidon, and Diana of Ephesus, lay aside their revolting sensuality, and come forth as the chaste and strong Diana of Grecian poetry, or the fair goddess of the dawn among the Hindūs and Persians. The germs of European and Asiatic mythology are therefore found in that cradle of idolatry, where the image-worship of Babylonia received the rebuke of the prophets, and where the red altars of Baal and Moloch were stained with human blood even amidst the highest forms of early art and culture.
DIVISION II.
The Period of the Zend-Avesta.
CHAPTER V.
THE ZEND-AVESTA.
DERIVATION AND LANGUAGE—DIVISIONS—AGE OF THE ZEND-AVESTA—MANUSCRIPTS—ZARATHUŚTRA—THE EARLY PĀRSĪS—THE MODERN PĀRSĪS.
We use the ordinary form of the word, Zend-Avesta, for though some Orientalists claim that it should be called the Avesta-Zend, it is an open question whether this is the original and only correct term. According to the Pārsīs, Avesta means the sacred text, and Zend its Pahlavī translation, but in the Pahlavī translations themselves, the original work is called the Avesta-Zend, although there is no reason given for this course. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend occurs in the original Zend texts. The word Avesta, however, seems to be the Sanskṛit avastha, meaning “authorized text,” while Max Müller[[145]] claims that the name Zend was originally a corruption of the Sanskṛit word Khandas, or “metrical language,” which is a name given by the Brāhmans to the hymns of the Veda. The word Zend, or Zand, is also used to designate the language[[146]] in which the greater part of the Avesta is written.
In relation to its antiquity, the Zend ranks next to the Sanskṛit, and such authorities as Westergaard and Spiegel, while differing upon many points, agree in considering the Veda the safest key to an understanding of the Avesta. Many of the gods which are unknown to any of the Indo-European nations are worshipped under the same name in Sanskṛit and in Zend, and indeed many of the gods of the Zoroastrians seem to be mere reflections of the more primitive gods of the Veda, but at times the tendency to monotheism in the Zoroastrian religions would appear to be a solemn protest against the worship of all the powers of nature which is found in the Veda. Although there is much kinship between the two tongues, and many striking similarities between the gods of the two mythologies, it does not necessarily prove that portions of the Zend-Avesta were borrowed from the Veda. It does prove, however, that the two works proceeded from a common source of Āryan tradition, and it also proves that the Sanskṛit and the Zend continued to live side by side long after they were separated from the common stock of the Indo-European tongues.
There are decided differences between the themes of the Veda and the Avesta, but the link which binds them to a common source is never broken. Some Orientalists claim that there was a schism between the two and that the differences are the result of a religious revolution, while others argue that there was only a long and slow movement which led, by insensible degrees, the vague dualism of the Indo-Īrānians onward to the sharply defined dualism of the Magi. It has been clearly shown that the mythologies of Europe and Asia have a common origin in the idolatry found the valley of the Euphrates; so also the Veda and the Zend-Avesta are two great literary productions flowing from the same fountain head, which is found in the Indo-Īrānian period.