With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismô is the breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismô) creates a soul (rûbân), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted for the “activity” of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismô “living soul,” but rûbân only “soul.” Does not this indicate Ahura Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a “living soul,”—a being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of death? Is it not his rûbân that is the image of nismô? (Cf. Genesis ix. 5, 6.)
Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast, a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. “The Fravashi,” says Darmesteter, “is the inner power in every being that maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins, that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead; but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men, but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had each a Fravashi.” “The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed before man and outlived him.”
In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: “O Maker, how do the souls of the dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?” Ahura Mazda answered: “They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit and excellence of mind.”
Favardin Yast, 9: “Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra, I maintain the wide earth,” etc. 12: “Had not the awful Fravashis of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine, of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength would belong to the fiend.”
In other verses these Fravashis (the word means “protectors”) help the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude of reason, “The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of——?”
With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs, nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world, relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious “merits” and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems, who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental, and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi: “Take Faizi’s Díwán to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects.”
[1] It may be mentioned that the Moslem name for the Queen of Sheba is Balkis, which points to the great Zoroastrian city of Balkh, near which are the Seven Rivers (Saba’ Sin), whose confluence makes the Balkh (Oxus), with whose sands gold is mingled. (Cf. Psalm lxxii. 15.)
[2] In many places in the Avesta (e. g., Sîrôzah i. 2) a distinction is drawn between “the heavenly wisdom made by Mazda, and the acquired wisdom through the ear made by Mazda.” Darmesteter says: “Asnya khratu, the inborn intellect, intuition, contrasted with gaoshô-srûta khratu, the knowledge acquired by hearing and learning. There is between the two nearly the same relation as between the parâvidyâ and aparâvidyâ in Brahmanism, the former reaching Brahma in se (parabrahma), the latter sabdabrahma, the word-brahma (Brahma as taught and revealed).” (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXIII., p. 4.)
[3] Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XVIII. Pahlavi Texts tr. by West. The text quoted above (from p. 415) is of uncertain age, but it is harmonious with the more ancient scriptures, and no doubt compiled from them.