Avesta

1.

The Avesta, or Zend-Avesta, as it is more familiarly, though less accurately called, is the name under which, as a designation, we comprise the bible and prayer-book of the Zoroastrian religion. The Avesta forms to day the Sacred Books of the Parsis or Fire-Worshippers, as they are often termed, a small community living now in India, or still scattered here and there in Persia. The original home of these worshippers and of their holy scriptures was ancient Iran, and the faith they profess was that founded centuries ago by Zoroaster(Zarathushtra), one of the great religious teachers of the East.

2.

The Avesta is, therefore, an important work, preserving as it does, the doctrines of this ancient belief and the customs of the earliest days of Persia. It represents the oldest faith of Iran, as the Vedas do of India. The oldest parts date back to a period of time nearly as remote as the Rig-Veda, though its youngest parts are much later. The religion which the Avesta presents was once one of the greatest; it has, moreover, left ineffaceable traces upon the history of the world. Flourishing more than a thousand years before the Christian era, it became the religion of the great Achaemenian kins, Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, but its power was weakened by the conquest of Alexander, and many of its sacred books were lost. It revived again during the first centuries of our own era, but was finally broken by the Mohammedans in their victorious invasion. Most of the Zoroastrian worshippers were then compelled through presecution to accept the religion of the Koran; many, however, fed to India for refuge, and took with them what was left of their sacred writings. A few of the faithful remained behind in Persia, and, though presecuted, they continued to practise their religion. It is these two scanty peoples, perhaps 80,000 souls in India and 10,000 in Persia, that have preserved to us the Avesta in the form in which we now have it.

3.

The Designation Avesta, for the scriptures, is adopted from the term Avistak, regularly employed in the Pahlavi of the Sassassanian time. But it is quite uncertain what the exact meaning and derivation of this word may be. Possibly Pahlavi Avistak, like the Sanskrit Veda, may signify 'wisdom, knowledge' the book of knowledge'. Perhaps, however, it means rather 'the original text, the scripture, the law'. The designation 'Zend-Avesta', though introduced by Anquetil du Perron, as described below, is not an accurate title. It arose by mistake from the inversion of the oftrecurring Pahlavi Phrase, Avistak va Zand 'Avesta and Zend', or 'the Law and Commentary'. The term Zand in Pahlavi as the Parsi priests now rightly comprehend it, properly denotes 'understanding, explanation', and refers to the later version and commentary of the Avesta texts, the paraphrase which is written in the pahlavi language. The proper designation for the scriptures, therefore, is Avesta; the term Zend (see below) should be understood as the Pahlavi version and commentary.

1.

Of the religion, manners, and customs of ancient Persia, which the Avesta preserves to us, we had but meagre knowledge until about a century ago. What we did know up to that time was gathered from the more or less scattered and unsatisfactory references of the classic Greek and Latin, from some allusions in Oriental writers, or from the later Persian epic literature. To direct sources, however, we could not then turn. Allusions to the religion of the Magi, the faith of the Avesta, are indeed to be found in the Bible. The wise men from the East who came to worship our Saviour, the babe in Bethlehem, were Magi. Centuries before that date, however, it was Cyrus, a follower of the faith of Zoroaster, whom God called his anointed and his shepherd and who gave orders that the Jews be returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon. Darius, moreover, the worshipper of Ormazd, favored the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem as decreed by Cyrus. Allusions to the ancient faith of the Persians are perhaps contained in Ezek.8.16; Isiah 45.77,12.

2.

The classical references of Greek and Roman writers to the teachings of Zoroaster, which we can now study in the Avesta itself, may be said to begin with the account of the Persians given by Herodotus in his history. To this account may be added references and allusions, though often preserved only in fragments, by various other writers, including Plutarch 'On Isis and Osiris', and Pliny, down to Agathias (A.D. 500).

3.

After the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, we have an allusion by the Arabic writer, Mas'udi (A.D. 940), who tells of the Avesta of Zardusht, and its commentary called Zend, together with a Pazand explanation. The Abasta is also mentioned several times by Al-Biruni (about A.D. 1000). The later Mohammedan writer, Shahrastani (A.D. 1150), sketches in outline the creed of the Magi of his day. An interesting reference is found in the Syriac-Arabic Lexicon of Bar-Bahlul (A.D. 963) to an Avastak, a book of Zardusht, as composed in seven tongues, Syriac, Persian, Aramean, Segesteanian(Sistan), Marvian, Greek, and Hebrew. In an earlier Syriac manuscript Commentary on the New Testament (A.D. 852) by Isho'dad, Bishop of Hadatha, near Mosul, mention is made of the Abhasta as having been written by Zardusht in twelve different languages. These latter allusions, though late, are all important, as showing the continuity, during ages, of the tradition of such a work as the Avesta, which contains the teachings of Zoroaster, the prophet of Iran. All these allusions, however, it must be remembered, are by foreigners. No direct Iranian sources had been accessible.