Alexander is said to have burnt the former copy: the latter, stolen by the Greeks, is reported to have been translated into their language and to have furnished them with all their scientific knowledge. One of the Arsacids, Vologesus I., caused a search to be made for all the fragments which existed either in writing or in the memory of the faithful,* and this collection, added to in the reign of the Sassanid king, Ardashîr Bâbagan, by the high priest Tansar, and fixed in its present form under Sapor I., was recognised as the religious code of the empire in the time of Sapor II., about the fourth century of the Christian era.*** The text is composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by no means equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it with sufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult of Iran, such as they were under the Achæmenids, and perhaps even under the hegemony of the Medes.
* Tradition speaks simply of a King Valkash, without
specifying which of the four kings named Vologesus is
intended. James Darmesteter has given good reasons for
believing that this Valkash is Vologesus I. (50-75 A.D.),
the contemporary of Nero.
** This is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the
Dinkart.
*** Darmesteter declares that ancient Zoroastrianism is, in
its main lines, the religion of the Median Magi, even though
he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of
the Avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it
Greek, Jewish, and Christian elements.
It is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period of development. The doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship, loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by laws prescribing minute details of ritual,* which were only put in practice by priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of the faithful.
* Renan defined the Avesta as “the Code of a very small
religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and
strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the
great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters,
professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law
so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred
book of this description, the Greeks must have mentioned
it.”
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.
The primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly: but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the ancient nations of Western Asia—the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and reduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of a powerful priesthood. Families consecrated to the service of the altar had ended, as among the Hebrews, by separating themselves from the rest of the nation and forming a special tribe, that of the Magi, which was the last to enter into the composition of the nation in historic times. All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the service of religion, but all who did so devote themselves sprang from the Magian tribe; the Avesta, in its oldest form, was the sacred book of the Magi, as well as that of the priests who handed down their religious tradition under the various dynasties, native or foreign, who bore rule over Iran.
The Creator was described as “the whole circle of the heavens,” “the most steadfast among the gods,” for “he clothes himself with the solid vault of the firmament as his raiment,” “the most beautiful, the most intelligent, he whose members are most harmoniously proportioned; his body was the light and the sovereign glory, the sun and the moon were his eyes.” The theologians had gradually spiritualised the conception of this deity without absolutely disconnecting him from the material universe.