The married state was regarded as superior to the unmarried: “He who has children,” says the Zend-Avesta, “is far above the childless man.”[310] Fasting was condemned as ungodly, for “no one who does not eat has strength to do heavy work of holiness”;[311] the well-fed man can fight better than the one who lessens his vitality by fasting, can withstand the cold better, “can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head.”[312] The Zoroastrians regarded Christianity, in the form in which they knew it, with disapproval, because it exalted celibacy and made fasting a virtue.
This moral ideal which made life a strenuous battling for the right was, after the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, the loftiest developed by the ancient world. As we shall see immediately, it tended to make the morality of the ancient Persians “a morality of vigor and manliness.”
Truthfulness the paramount virtue
Among the special virtues making up the moral ideal, the highest place was assigned the virtue of veracity. It is noteworthy how this virtue was, if not created, at least fostered by the Persian conception of the supreme god, Ahura Mazda, whose symbol was the light.[313] As Ahriman was the god of deceit and lies, so was Ahura the god of sincerity and truth. This thought of deity made truthfulness a supreme virtue, for man must in all things take for his model the good spirit on whose side he battles.
Various testimonies bear witness to the high place assigned in the scale of virtues to veracity. There was to be no liar among those persons whom the Persian Noah (Yima) was commanded to bring into the great underground abode, that the earth might be repeopled with a superior race after the deadly cold of the long winter.[314] The punishment provided in the Zend-Avesta for false swearing was terrible. The very first time one knowingly tells a lie unto Mithra (the god adjured in taking an oath), “without waiting until it is done again,” he shall be beaten on earth with twice seven hundred stripes, and below in hell shall receive punishment harder than the pain from the cutting off of limbs, from falling down a precipice, from impalement.[315]
What is especially noteworthy here is that Zoroastrian morals recognize the universality of the law of truthfulness and require that contracts made even with the unfaithful be faithfully kept: “Break not the contract,” says the sacred law; ... “for Mithra stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful.”[316] Even more sacred than the engagements of kinsman with kinsman are the engagements between nations, for while a contract between members of the same group is thirtyfold more binding than one between two strangers, a contract between two nations is a thousandfold more binding.[317] Here is raised a standard of international morality to which modern statesmen and diplomatists have not yet attained.
The duty of industry; the ethics of labor
Industry was another cardinal virtue of the Zoroastrian ideal of character. Labor was enjoined not only as honorable but as a sacred duty. Wedgwood endeavors to show how this virtue was the outgrowth of the Persian conception of the origin of the universe. In Indian thought the world is not a creation, the work of a divine Creator; it is an emanation from an impersonal, unconscious, primal principle. But in the Persian world-view the universe is conceived as the work of a deity who labors to give it form and shape. This conception of God as a worker reacted powerfully upon the ideal of human excellence. Man must imitate this divine virtue of labor. He must become a co-worker with the good Ahura Mazda. Thus was labor idealized, and all work, even the most lowly, made a sacred thing.[318]
There is in this view doubtless an element of truth, but it is probable that this duty of industry and thrift upon which such emphasis is laid in the Zend-Avesta was in the beginning taught and enforced by the limited area of fruitful soil and the necessity of careful irrigation and tillage, and that only later the virtue thus engendered received the sanction and support of religion. We may infer this from the fact that agriculture was the most sacred of occupations. “He who sows corn,” says the Zend-Avesta, “sows righteousness.”[319] To sow corn, grass, and fruit; to water dry ground and to drain ground that is too wet—this is the duty of man.[320]
Animal ethics