The Zoroastrian code, like the Laws of Manu, gives a large place to man’s duties toward the lower animal creation. But the animal ethics of the Iranian lawgiver are much more reasonable than those of the Hindu legislator. The Buddhist, as we have seen, is enjoined to spare every living thing; there is no distinction made between useful animals and dangerous beasts and noxious reptiles. To such an extreme is this regard for all life carried that agriculture, though a permissible because a necessary occupation, still is looked upon with disfavor for the reason that the plow injures the beings living in the earth.[321]
On the other hand, the Zoroastrian code distinguishes between beneficent and baneful creatures, declares the first to have been created by the good Ahura and the latter by the evil Ahriman, and makes it the duty of the good man to protect and treat kindly all useful animals, and to destroy all baneful creatures, including noxious plants, such as weeds and brambles. Hence tilling the soil is praised as an especially holy occupation, since the plow destroys the thistles and weeds sown by the evil-disposed Ahriman.
Duty of protecting the purity of the elements
Another important department of Persian ethics was based on the idea of the holiness of the elements—fire, earth, and water. Any defilement of these was a sin, in some cases an unpardonable sin. For instance, burying the corpse of a man or of an animal in the earth, and not disinterring it within two years—“for that deed there is nothing that can pay; ... it is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever.”[322] Equally stringent were the prohibitions against the pollution of the holy elements fire and water, through casting into them any unclean matter.[323]
We shall perhaps best understand the moral value of such duties as we have to do with in this division of Persian ethics, if we compare them with those duties of the Christian code—Sabbath observances—which are based on the idea of the holiness of a certain portion of time. The ethical feelings evoked in the one case are akin to those evoked in the other.
The judgment of the dead; the soul the judge of the soul
In the Persian judgment of the soul after death we have the most profound and spiritual conception of the rewards and punishments of the hereafter that has found expression in the ethical teachings of any people. The soul is conceived as being judged by itself. Upon its departure from this life the soul of the faithful is met by a beautiful maiden, “fair as the fairest thing,” who says to him: “I am thy own conscience; I was lovely and thou madest me still lovelier; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer, through thy good thought, thy good speech, and thy good deed.” And then the soul is led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. It is on account of thy will and actions that I am hideous and vile.” And then the soul is led down into the hell of endless darkness.[324]
The remarkable thing about all this is that this profound and spiritual conception of “a mental heaven and hell with which we are now familiar as the only future state recognized by intelligent people” should have found expression at the early period when the faith of the Zend-Avesta was formulated. “While mankind were delivered up to the childish terrors of a future replete with horrors visited upon them from without, the early Iranian sage announced the eternal truth that the rewards of Heaven and the punishments of Hell can only be from within. He gave us, we may fairly say, through the systems which he has influenced, that great doctrine of subjective recompense, which must work an essential change in the mental habits of every one who receives it.”[325]
III. The Practice
Effects of the moral ideal upon the Persian character