[340] Strabo, p. 733.
[341] Pausan. 5, 27, 5, 6.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAW OF THE PRIESTS.
The rules concerning purity and purification, the expiations and penances necessary to avert the Daevas, which we possess in the Vendidad of the Avesta, are only the remnant of a far more comprehensive law. From the list of books and chapters traditional among the Parsees, we can see that it was intended to include not only all the invocations and prayers which the worship required, the rules of sacrifice, and the entire ritual, together with the Calendar of the year of the Church, but also the arrangement of the process of law, the civil and criminal code, and, moreover, rules for agriculture and medicine. If to this we add the statements and quotations of the Greeks (p. 53), we may assume that the scriptures of Eastern Iran comprised the whole sum of the knowledge of the priests. In the Avesta the Athravas had sketched the ideal picture of the correct conduct pleasing to Auramazda in every department of life. How far the princes of Bactria and the viceroys of Cyaxares and the Achæmenids, or even these princes themselves, and the judges, wished or allowed themselves to be bound in their decisions by these regulations of the priests, may be left out of the question. The priests here, like the Brahmans in India, could only influence the action of the State and those charged with it, so far as the reverence for the principles of religion and the force of their own authority extended.
The existing part of the law has obviously arisen out of the questions and considerations sketched above, which in consequence of the reform must have forced themselves into the circles of the priests. The reform also required above all things purity from men, but no supernatural purity, such as the Brahmans demanded. The body is not in the Avesta, as it was to the Brahmans and after them to the Buddhists, the impure prison of the soul which must be abandoned; on the contrary the Avesta rejoices in its health and vigour. It requires that the body should be kept pure from filth, from contamination by the impure, which gives the Daevas power over mankind, i. e. it demands the exclusion of the harmful side of nature; it desires that the soul should be pure from pollution, freed from untruthfulness, lying, and deceit, which are contradictory to the nature of the clear bright gods, and Auramazda, and make men companions of the Daevas, and sharers in their nature. In other words, it demands the invigoration of the light and wholesome side of man. The kingdom of the good spirits is truth, increase, and life; the kingdom of the evil is deception and falsehood, lying, destruction, and death. The Avesta praises Auramazda as purity itself; and next to him Asha vahista, i. e. the best purity; the gods are chiefly extolled as "the pure," and Zarathrustra as the master and teacher of purity. The Avesta repeatedly declares "that purity after birth is the best thing for men." Hence it is the foremost of all duties to keep the soul and body pure. The worshipper of Auramazda must preserve his purity by good thoughts, words, and works; truth is required in thinking, speaking, and acting; uprightness and honesty in all the relations of life; the sacredness of promises and pledges, and solemn assurances, at which Mithra is summoned to bear witness. It is an old function of the god which appears here. He is the guardian of the word, and the compact. "Mithra is twenty-fold between friends and kinsmen, thirty-fold between tradespeople, forty-fold between companions who live together, fifty-fold between man and wife, sixty-fold between associates in sacrifice, seventy-fold between scholar and teacher, eighty-fold between step-son and step-parents, ninety-fold between brothers, a hundred-fold between son and father." "Miserable are the houses, without descendants the dwellings, inhabited by those who deceive Mithra. Miserably does the cloven-footed cow go on the wrong path, which is oppressed by the burden of Mithra-deceiving men."[342] In accordance with this view deception is in the eyes of the law the worst offence; worse than robbery or theft. Evil-speaking and calumny also are, according to the Vendidad, "lies and sins" against Mithra. The gravest offence of this kind is the calumny by which "a pure man" is disparaged "with a man of another religion," for this sin is committed with full knowledge, and by a man's own intelligence; and the worst of all lies is teaching a false law. "One who teaches such a law," says the Vendidad, "does no better than if he killed a thousand horses, slew the men in a village inhabited by worshippers of Auramazda, or carried off the cows on the wrong way."[343]
It is not the least proof of the currency of the doctrines of the Avesta in the West of Iran that their ethical side, which gathers round the command of truthfulness, was there most distinctly recognised. King Darius has already told us that "the lie" had brought his kingdom into rebellion; the leaders of the rebellious lands, who gave themselves out to be descendants of the ancient royal families, he calls "liars against the kingdom." From their youth up, Herodotus tells us, the children of the Persians were instructed in truthfulness. He adds: Among the Persians it was forbidden to speak of that which it was forbidden to do; the Avesta requires truth "in thought, speech, and action." Lying and borrowing, Herodotus says, passed with the Persians for the most disgraceful acts, for they were of opinion that any one who contracted debts was generally compelled to tell lies. The Avesta says: "He who does not restore that which has been borrowed, seeks day and night to deceive the creditor." Plato states that the heirs to the Persian throne had, besides three others, a teacher whose special business it was to instruct them in truth. Xenophon assures us that pledges and oaths were religiously kept among the Persians; and Diodorus, that the pledge of hands was the strongest security among them.[344] Practice in Persia was, it is true, not equal to these injunctions, however sharply expressed; on the contrary, we often find the two in the most glaring contradiction.
Not falsehood and lies only, but also laziness and sloth pollute the soul of man. The pious man must rise early. Çraosha awakes the bird Parodarsh, we are told in the book of the law. At the return of the divine Ushahina, i. e. of the morning (p. 108), this bird speaks to those who are in their beds: "Friend, up, arise. Praise purity, and the Daevas will fly away. Long sleep, O man, is not good for thee. The Bushyançta runs up to thee, who lays again in sleep the whole corporeal world. Turn yourselves not away from the three best things: good thinking, speaking, and acting. He who rises first will come into Paradise; he who first brings pure, dry, old, well-hewn wood to the fire of Auramazda, him will the fire bless (p. 122)."[345] The pious man should be industrious and work; the best work is that which increases nourishment and fruit for men and animals, which furthers the increase and life of the world, and thus diminishes the kingdom of the evil, the power of the dark spirits. For this reason running water and growing fruits should be spread over the earth; "the field should be tilled, and trees planted which produce food." "When there are shoots," the law-book says, "the Daevas are in alarm; when there are stalks, the Daevas weep; when there are ears, the Daevas hiss; when there are grains, the Daevas fly."[346] "In the house where there are most ears, the Daevas are smitten most heavily." "The earth is not glad which lies untilled. The greatest pleasure is given to the earth where a pure man builds his house, provided with fire and cattle, and good flocks, with wife and child, where most corn, fodder, and grain is produced by husbandry, where the dry land is most watered, where fruit-bearing trees are planted, where cattle and beasts of draught leave the most urine."[347] "He who plants fruits and trees, who gives water to the earth where it is needed, and takes it away where too abundant, he worships the earth." When a man tills the earth she bestows life upon him; "as a friend to a beloved friend, she gives him descendants and wealth." To him who tills her, the earth says: "O man, who tillest me with the left arm and the right, with the right arm and the left, in love will I bear thee all kinds of fruit." But to him who tills her not the earth says: "Thou wilt go to the doors of others and there stand, in order to beg for food; in idleness thou wilt ask for it and get but little." He who sows corn, sows purity; the law of Auramazda increases with the fruits of the field; they extend the law of Auramazda by 100, 1000, and 10,000 meritorious works.
These regulations of the Avesta were fully accepted in the West. The great reverence paid to splendid trees by the Achæmenids is shown by Herodotus' story of Xerxes, that he furnished a beautiful plane tree, which he saw in Lydia, with golden ornaments, and appointed a perpetual guardian for it.[348] Ameretat, as already observed, was the special protecting spirit of trees (p. 164). Xenophon tells us that the Persian kings gave special attention to agriculture; on their journeys they inquired into the tillage of the land, and demanded similar attention from their satraps. Round their palaces and wherever they came they caused the most beautiful gardens to be laid out, planted with trees and all the most excellent shrubs in the world.[349] The satraps also had gardens of this kind (pairidaeza) round their residences, and the younger Cyrus assures Lysander, "in the name of Mithra," that he never took food before he had induced perspiration by work in the garden or exercise in arms.[350] The satraps, says Xenophon, whose provinces were found deficient in population and poorly cultivated, were punished and removed from their office, while those whose provinces were in good order, were rewarded by presents. When the king of the Persians conferred distinctions, those were summoned first who had distinguished themselves in war, and next came those whose districts were best cultivated.[351] Respect and reverence for trees was so deeply rooted in Iran, that even Islam did not extirpate the feeling. To this day in Shiraz old trees are presented with dedicatory offerings, and hung with amulets; and the pious prefer to pray under tall trees rather than in the neighbouring mosques; while in the barren regions of Iran even groups of bushes receive offerings.[352]