Avesta.—Sprung from the same ancient Aryan tongue as the Sanscrit of India, and distinguished by the same richness of inflection, is Avesta, the earliest language of Persia, still preserved to us in the Persian Scriptures known as the Avesta. The Veda and the Avesta have been described as “two rivers flowing from one fountain-head;” and beyond a doubt the Vedic Aryans and the Avesta-speaking Persians were originally one community, conversing in a common tongue.
The Avesta was first made known to Europeans by a French orientalist; Anquetil Duperron (ongk-teel’ deu-pa-rong’), who went to India for the express purpose of discovering the sacred books of the Parsees. With great difficulty he at length possessed himself of the much-desired Avesta manuscripts, and in 1771, after long and patient effort, he gave his countrymen men the first translation of the Avesta into a European tongue. The language has since been carefully studied, and in our own day has at last been mastered. Time wrought many changes in it; the Persian of Xerxes’ reign differed much more from the Avesta of antiquity than our present language does from the English of Chaucer. Further modifications and the introduction of Arabic elements have made modern Persian still more unlike the ancient vernacular.
The sacred writings of Persia just referred to are among the oldest and most important in the whole range of Indo-European literature. They contain the doctrines of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra, the Bactrian sage who reformed the religious system of his country. (See Jackson’s Avesta Series, Part I.)
Zoroaster is believed to have flourished about 1400 B.C. Nothing is known of his life or history. Yet, through more than thirty centuries his influence has been felt; and to-day, though they have dwindled to perhaps 150,000 souls, his followers constitute a thrifty and intelligent population in India and Persia. These Parsees, or Fire-worshippers (called by the Mohammedans Guebres, or infidels), still burn the eternal fire, kindled as they believe from heaven, not for idolatrous worship, but as an emblem of Ormazd, the Almighty source of light. They are descendants of those Zoroastrians whom Darius and Xerxes launched against Europe in the mightiest armies ever raised by man, threatening to plant their purer faith amid the ruined shrines of Greece. (Read Haug’s “Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis.”)
At a later date, when the Caliph Omar converted Persia to Mohammedanism with the sword (641 A.D.), their forefathers clung to the ancient faith, and found an asylum across the Indus or in the deserts of their native land.
The Avesta (sacred text) contains the only existing monuments of a once extensive literature. It is divided into distinct parts, made up of separate pieces and fragments, which, repeated orally from generation to generation, were probably collected and reduced to writing in their present form many centuries after the period of Zoroaster. The compositions in question are chiefly professed revelations and instructions to mankind, confessions, prayers to the Supreme Being and various inferior deities, and metrical hymns (Gâthâs), simple and some of them so grand as to be deemed the productions of Zoroaster himself.
Zoroaster is represented in the Avesta as conversing with Ormazd, who, in answer to the inquiries of the sage, reveals his will, and prescribes the moral and ceremonial law. Thus, in the following passage, Zoroaster questions Ormazd:—
“O Ormazd (Ahura Mazda), most holy spirit, creator of existent worlds, righteous One! What, O Ormazd, was the Word (more correctly, Ahuna Vairya, the name of a sacred verse) which you pronounced for me before the heaven, before the water, before the cow, before the tree, before the fire, before the righteous man, before the demons and noxious creatures?”
Then Ormazd replies: “I will tell thee, most holy Zoroaster, what was the Creative Word I pronounced for thee before the heaven, before the water, before the cow, before the tree, before the fire, before the righteous man, before the demons and noxious creatures, before all the universe. Such is the whole of the Creative Word, which, even when unpronounced and unrecited, outweighs a thousand breathed prayers, which are not pronounced, nor recited, nor sung. And he who in this world, O most holy Zoroaster, remembers the whole of the Creative Word, or utters it, or sings it, I will lead his soul thrice across the bridge of the better world, to the better existence, to the better truth, to the better days. I pronounced this Speech which contains the Word and its working, before the creation of this heaven, and before the creation of the earth.
“He is a holy man,” says Ormazd elsewhere, “who constructs upon the earth a habitation in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and herds. He who makes the earth produce grain, who cultivates the fruits of the fields, he maintains purity; he promotes the law of Ormazd as much as if he offered a hundred sacrifices.”