“Jemshid, the father of his people, the most glorious of mortals whom the sun ever beheld. In his day animals perished not: there was no want either of water or of fruit-bearing trees, or of animals fit for the food of mankind. During the light of his reign there was neither frost nor burning heat, nor death, nor unbridled passions, nor the work of the Deevs. Man appeared to retain the age of fifteen; the children grew up in safety as long as Jemshid reigned the father of his people.[212]
“The restoration of such a golden age was the end of the legislation of Zoroaster, who, however, built his code on a religious foundation agreeably to the practice of the East; and the multifarious ceremonies he prescribed had all reference to certain doctrines intimately associated with his political dogmata; and it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind their alliance, if we would not do injustice to one part or other of his system.
“On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle and gardening, which he perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his disciples with a sense of their importance.
“According to his own professions he was only the restorer of the doctrine which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive magia, the work of Deevs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished, in order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd.
“Even Plato, the first Grecian writer who mentions Zoroaster, speaks of him as a sage of remote antiquity; and the same is established by the evidence of Hermippus and Eudoxus, which Pliny has preserved. The second Zoroaster, supposed by Toucher to have flourished under Darius Hystaspes, is the mere figment of some later Grecian authors of little credit.
“On the whole, we are compelled to carry back Zoroaster to the period when Bactriana was an independent monarchy, a period anterior to the very commencement of the Median empire, as related by Herodotus, ascending beyond the eighth century before the Christian era. Whether we must refer him to a still more ancient epoch, prior to the Assyrian monarchy, the chronological notices we have already given are all that can be afforded, except we be prepared to transport the sage beyond the utmost limits of recorded history.”
As I have no longer occasion, however, for the sage than to show that he was a reformer; and though at least “eight (more likely eighteen) hundred years before the Christian era,”—yet was he even then, comparatively, a modern,—I shall now turn to other sources to ascend to the dynasties that had preceded him.
“The rare and interesting tract on twelve religions,” says Sir W. Jones, “entitled the Dabistan, and composed by a Mohammedan traveller, a native of Cashmere, named Moshan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of Fani, or Perishable, begins with a wonderfully curious chapter on the religion of Hushang, which was long anterior to Zeradust (Zoroaster), but had continued to be secretly professed by many learned Persians, even to the author’s time; and several of the most eminent of these dissenting, in many points, from the Ghabres, and persecuted by the ruling powers of their country, had retired to India, where they compiled a number of books, now extremely scarce, which Moshan had perused, and with the writers of which, or with many of them, he had contracted an intimate friendship. From them he learned that a powerful monarchy had been established for ages in Iran for the accession of Cayemurs; that it was called the Mahabadean dynasty, for a reason which will soon be mentioned; and that many princes, of whom seven or eight only are named in the Dabistan, and among them Mahbul, or Maha Beli, had raised the empire to the zenith of human glory. If we can rely on this evidence,—which to me appears unexceptionable,—the Iranian monarchy must have been the oldest in the world.”
Sir John Malcolm had some scruples as to the authenticity of this production, and entered upon a very severe analysis of its contents; merely because the idols which the ancient Persians are therein stated to have adored, and the mode of their adoration, were dissimilar to those of India! Was it necessary that they should be alike? It is true, that from Persia everything Indian flowed; but there, on its importation, it partook of the peculiarities of the soil and climate; while, even in Persia itself, a great degeneracy occurred; and the deterioration and moral laxity, thus superinduced, was what the virtuous Zeradust so deplored, and what kindled his fervour to new model the system.
But “the introduction of the angel Gabriel,” he says, “appears of itself enough to discredit the whole work.” Was Sir John sure that this rendering was literal? He himself admits that he was “following a Mohammedan author, who has certainly made a free translation of the Pahlavi text.” And, if so in one case, why not in another? But even admitting that there was no freedom at all used in the matter; and that Gabriel is the rigid version of the name of the messenger employed, this should not, in the least, affect our reliance upon the Dabistan, as I shall adduce a greater coincidence than this, nay, a downright identity, not only of name but of essence, between the divine dispensation in all previous ages, and the spiritual form of it with which we are at present blessed.