Thrita, a spirit of heaven, who has a place among the sages and sacrificers of old time (p. 42) was, in the Avesta, the first physician who kept back disease and death; and every one who follows in his course, every physician, must appear as a willing combatant, an active co-operator against the evil spirits, from whom death and disease proceed. According to the Vendidad, those have the first place among the physicians who heal by charms, i. e. by the sacred word, the words of the law; these are the "physicians of physicians;" next come the physicians who heal by remedies; and last of all, those who heal by the knife.[400] These latter must first use the knife on the worshippers of the Daevas; when they have done so three times, and the patient has died each time, they are incapable for ever of practising the art of healing. But if they have healed three worshippers of the Daevas, they are capable of "healing the worshippers of Auramazda, and they can try their skill upon them as they please." The physician is not only to heal sick men, but sick animals also, and above all the sick dog. The Vendidad fixes the sum which the physician is to receive for his services. He is to heal a priest, and ask for no more than his blessing. For healing the overseer of a district he is to receive a yoke of four oxen, and for his wife a she-camel; the overseer of a canton is to pay a large beast of draught, and his wife a mare; the head of a village pays a smaller beast, and his wife a cow; the head of a house a small beast, and his wife a she-ass. For healing a large beast of draught the price is a beast of moderate size; and for one of moderate size, a head of small cattle, etc.[401] Pliny quotes a number of remedies and means of cure used by the Magi, some of them of an extraordinary character; indeed, the impression made on Pliny by the importance ascribed to medicine in the doctrine of Zarathrustra was so great, that he maintained that the Magism of Zoroaster had arisen out of the art of healing, and had introduced, as it were, a higher and sacred medicine. To this was subsequently added the power of religion, and the mathematical arts of investigating the future by the heavens, so that Zoroaster's doctrine had taken possession of the mind of men by a three-fold bond.[402] How greatly he is mistaken in ascribing to the Magians the astrology of the Chaldæans, has been remarked above; the mistake is explained by the fact, that the Avesta includes the astronomical knowledge of the priests of Iran in the books which treated of medicine (p. 52).
The astronomical chapters are lost as well as those on medicine. From our fragments we cannot so much as fix the year by which the Avesta reckons. We merely perceive that it counted by nights, not by days. It is from the Bundehesh that we first learn that the year of Eastern Iran is made up of 360 days in twelve months of thirty days, with five additional days. This year is said to have begun with the vernal equinox, i. e. the period when the vigour of nature again shows itself. In the last five nights of the old year, and the first five nights of the new one, the spirits of the forefathers, the Fravashis, come to their descendants in the houses; they awake with nature to new life (p. 179). The first month is called Farvardin after these spirits; of the remaining eleven, six are called after the Amesha Çpentas, and the remaining five, which are inserted between the six, after Mithra, Tistrya, the spirits of fire and water, and lastly after the law (Din). The inscriptions of the Achæmenids give us nine names of months entirely different from these. Hence the West had its own calendar, as well as its own alphabet, and made use of it as early as the year 500 B.C. In the East the calendar of the Avesta was in use; and this seems to have been current in the West also in the first half of the fourth century B.C. There is no doubt whatever that it was the standard for all Iran at the time of the Sassanids.[403]
We have already set forth in detail what weight the Avesta lays on purity, and the avoidance of contact with dead matter, which has fallen into the power of the Daevas. From these points of view, in consequence of the reform, the priests in Iran came to adopt a peculiar mode of burial. Among the Arians of the Panjab the oldest form of burial was interment, and in time cremation came into use (IV. 62). But could the Athravas allow anything so unclean as a corpse to be laid on fire, the pure "son of Auramazda"? If the corpse was thrown into water the pure water was defiled; if buried in the earth pollution was cast on the beautiful, submissive daughter of Auramazda. Nothing therefore remained for the priests but to leave the corpse above the earth; in this case it served the pure animals, the birds and dogs, for nourishment, and was thus destroyed in the best manner. To throw a corpse into water, to bury or burn it, are great sins, actions which do not admit of expiation,[404] and those who do such things "help the drought which destroys the pasture, and the evil onsweeping winter, which kills the flock, and is full of snow; such men are impure for ever."[405] Any one who buries a dead dog or a dead man in the earth, and does not dig the body up again within half a year, is to receive twice five hundred stripes; any one who allows it to remain in the earth for a year, is to receive twice a thousand stripes; but if a man leaves a corpse in the earth for more than two years, there is for him neither penalty, nor expiation, nor purification.[406]
The dead are to be carried away on peculiarly dry paths, little trodden by cattle, beasts of draught, and pure men, and laid on the driest and barest places in the earth, on the highest eminences where carnivorous birds and dogs may most easily see them.[407] The soil is to be dug out, waist deep, if the earth is soft; if hard, to the depth of half a foot, and this depression is to be filled with tiles, stones, and dust; for damp earth contracts pollution most readily, whereas stones, tiles, and dust contract it very slowly. To this place (Dakhma) the naked corpse is to be taken on a bier, which has a foundation of stones or tiles, by two strong men—never by one: one bearer would pollute himself for ever, and the Druj Naçu would never leave him. Any one who throws a cloth on the dead must be punished with twice four hundred, or twice a thousand stripes, according to the size of the cloth. The corpse is to be placed on the Dakhma, with the face turned to the sun (any one who does not place the body with its face to the sun, is to pay the same penalty as is prescribed for the murder of a pure man[408]): the corpse is then to be secured in its place by iron, stones, or lead, attached to the feet or hair, in order that the birds and dogs may not carry away the bones and remains to water and trees: the neglect of these fastenings is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[409] If it rains or snows, or the wind is strong, so that the necessary preparations cannot be made on the day of death, the corpse can be carried on its own bed and mat to the Dakhma.[410]
At these burial-places the Daevas hold their meetings; there they propagate and assemble, "in order to bring to death, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, an innumerable host of men;" there the Daevas are most dangerous and deadly to men: for in the places of burial are "infection, disease, fever, impurity, ague, trembling, and old hair." A Dakhma is not pure till the body has been eaten by dogs and birds, till the remains have entirely changed into dust, and become utterly mixed up with the foundation of mortar, tiles, and stones. When this point has been reached, the Dakhma should be levelled. Such destruction of the place of burial is regarded by the law-book as the annihilation of death itself; as one of the highest virtues of the faithful. "He who levels only so much as the size of his own body of a burial-place," says the book of the law, "has repented of all his sins which he has committed in thought, speech, and action; he has not only repented of them, but he has expiated them, and the two heavenly powers will not begin a contest about his entrance into paradise."[411]
The prescriptions of the law for the purification of the vessels and clothes which have touched the corpse, are given from regard to utility, and from the point of view of a certain simple rationalism, which forms an advantageous contrast between Iran and India. Vessels of lead, wood, and earth, are impure for ever; vessels of gold and silver can be taken into use again after a number of washings with gomez. Garments on which spittle, moisture, or dung have fallen are to be cut in pieces and buried; in other cases they can be purified with gomez, water, and earth, and aired, and then again taken into use for women at the time of impurity. The house of the dead is pure when the period for the extinction of the fire is over, when the prayers appointed for the dead have been said, and the inhabitants of the house have had their bodies and clothes washed three times, and the sacred hymns have been sung (p. 215).
For the bearers, who have carried a corpse to the Dakhma, and those who in any way have come into contact with a corpse, special forms of purification are necessary. The washing of the bearers must be begun immediately after the corpse has been deposited. For this purpose the gomez of the nearest male and female relation of the dead is required as well as that of "cattle and beasts of draught." At the last washing the Druj Naçu springs out of the forehead between the eyebrows, from thence to the shoulders and under the arms, until at length by continued ablutions she is driven into the left toes, and is compelled to pass away from there to the north in the form of a fly.[412] In order to purify the way on which the dead has been carried to the Dakhma, a dog must be led along it, three times, six times, and nine times. Then a priest must walk along it, who pronounces the "victorious words," i. e. certain exorcisms. "I drive back the Daevi Druj, so that she flies to the North. Avaunt! She must not slay the corporeal world of the pure. May Auramazda and Çpenta Armaiti protect us from our enemies; may Çraosha come, and Vohumano."[413] The worst of all forms of pollution is that contracted by touching a corpse in a distant place in solitude, for here the power of the demon was greatest. Any one to whom this has happened, is to wash himself fifteen times with water, and rub himself an equal number of times with earth, to hurry away from the spot, and call out to every one whom he meets: "I have touched a dead body, without wishing it in thought, word, or deed; my desire is purification." Every one is to avoid him unless he wishes to bring on himself the guilt of the impure man.[414]
Pools and streams are polluted by corpses till the corpses have been removed and rain has thrice fallen upon the water; after this cattle and men can again drink of the water. So long as the corpse lies in a river, the fiend of death extends over nine paces above and three paces below it, and six paces on either side; in a pool the domain of the fiend is six paces in every direction; in snow and ice-water it is three paces. When Zarathrustra asks, whether the water which falls from heaven on the corpse is impure, the god answers, "I, Auramazda, allow the water to go forth from Lake Vourukasha, with storms and clouds, and to fall on a corpse; I, Auramazda, and to flow upon a burial-place, and upon a dung-heap, and carry away a bone, and wash all into Lake Puitika (the pool of purification in heaven). When purified the waters flow from Lake Puitika into Lake Vourukasha. I, Auramazda, rain down herbs of all kinds, to be food for the pious men, food for the useful cattle. With such speeches Auramazda appeased the just Zarathrustra."[415] Zarathrustra further inquires, whether corpses which have been carried by dogs, wolves, and panthers to a field make the field and men impure? Auramazda, as frequently happens in such cases, argues from the point of view of the possible and attainable. "If such corpses," says the god, "rendered men impure, all mankind would quickly be rendered impure owing to the multitude of the corpses which are upon the earth." But Zarathrustra is not satisfied; he says: "A man dies in the hollow of a valley; from the heights of the mountains a bird flies down to the valley, and then back to the summit of a mountain, and alights on a tree of hard or soft wood. There he is sick and voids excrements. Then a man goes up from the valley to the summit of the mountain, and comes to the tree, on which the bird has sat, and seeks fuel for his fire. He cuts the tree down, splits it up, and kindles a fire with it. What is his penalty?" Auramazda again replies that nothing carried away by wolves, dogs, birds, flies, or winds pollutes men. But now it occurs to Zarathrustra, or rather to the priests who have written these things down, whether the animals which have eaten the corpses are not impure. This difficulty Auramazda solves by declaring the animals pure; but no flesh of such animals is to be eaten within a year, or offered for sacrifice.[416]
With the exception of Herodotus, Strabo, and Agathias, the Western writers give us only very exaggerated accounts of the peculiar mode of burial in use among the Persians. Herodotus has already told us that the corpses of the Magians were exposed to dogs and birds; with regard to the corpses of the rest he had no accurate knowledge, for a mystery was made of the matter.[417] Onesicritus relates that those Bactrians, who were weakened by disease and age, were thrown to dogs brought up for the purpose and called buriers of the dead; and Strabo says that among the Caspians, parents, when they had reached seventy years of age, were shut up by their children, and so killed by starvation;[418] though he also observes that the Magians gave over the corpses to birds.[419] Cicero narrates that it was not the custom of the Magians to bury the corpses of their dead before they had been torn by wild animals: in Hyrcania a peculiar kind of dog was reared—by the lower classes in common; of the wealthier men each had his own—by which they might be torn after death, and this was considered the best kind of burial.[420] From Eusebius we hear that the Medes gave the dying to carefully-reared dogs; the Hyrcanians and Caspians those who were still alive; the Bactrians the old; others the dead.[421] Agathias, on the other hand, tells us, that the dead among the Persians were carried out before the gates of the cities naked and without a coffin, and eaten by dogs, so that the bones lay about in the fields. If any man's corpse was not at once eaten, the Persians believed that he had been of an unholy mind, that his soul was unjust and wicked, and so had come into the power of the evil spirits, and would be carried into hell. Such men were lamented by their friends, because they had no part in the better lot. Those who were most quickly eaten up, the Persians praised as fortunate; they called their souls the best, and like the gods, and said of them that they had gone into the good land.[422]
The Greeks maintained that the Achæmenids were buried at Pasargadae and Persepolis, and that the corpse of Cyrus rested at Pasargadae.[423] Of Darius we are told that even in his lifetime he caused his tomb to be prepared on the summit of a mountain. The corpses of Artaxerxes I. of Damaspia, and of his son Xerxes, were buried, according to Ctesias, in Persia.[424] The last Darius was buried by Alexander in the royal sepulchre, when he had already given the honours of burial to the Persian queen Statera.[425] Diodorus tells us that these tombs were on the eastern side of the citadel of Persepolis, at a distance of four hundred feet, in the "royal mountain." The rock was hewn out, and contained several chambers. But these tombs had no entrance; the corpses were drawn up by machines to the summit, and so laid in them.[426]