The ultimate end of both books is to teach the faithful the rule of life.
§ 2. Here is a series of particular concordances that show more clearly the unity of their plan:
(1) Creation of the world.—Jehovah creates the world in six days ; he creates successively the light, the heaven, the sea, the earth and the plants, the lights in the firmament, the animals, and lastly man.
Ahura Mazda creates the world in six periods; he creates successively the heaven, the water, the earth, the plants, the animals, and man.
(2) Creation of man.—All the human race, in Genesis, is descended from one couple, man and woman, Adam and Eve (Adam means ‘ man’).
All the human race, in the Avesta, is descended from one couple, man and woman, Mashya and Mashyana (Mashya means ‘ man’).
(3) The Deluge.—Jehovah intends to destroy the human race, on account of its wickedness, and to renew it. He brings about the deluge, but saves one just man, Noah, with his family and a couple of each species of animals. Noah, on his advice, builds an ark, in which he takes refuge, with his people, and from which he goes out afterwards to repeople the earth.
In course of time, the earth shall be laid waste by the:
snows and rains of three long winters, the Mahrkdsha winters. Ahura, in order to repeople his earth with ’ superior races, orders kind Yima to build an underground
INTRODUCTION, VI. lix
palace, the Var of Yima, where the finest specimens of human, animal, and vegetable species will live till the moment when, the evil days being over, they shall open the doors of the Var and repeople the earth with a better race.
(4) Division of the Earth.—Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the ancestors of the three races between which the earth. is divided.
Thraétaona, the avenger and successor of Yima, has three sons, Airya, Sairima, and Tara, between whom the earth is divided: Airya receives Iran, the centre of the earth’s surface, Sairima receives the West, and Tara the East.
Putting aside the legend of Airya, killed by his brothers, which reminds one, but not closely enough, of Joseph persecuted by his brethren, we arrive at the fact that is the central interest of the two books:
(5) The Revelation. Zarathustra converses with Ahura, as Moses with Jehovah, and receives, like him, the revelation of the laws of every description, on the Mountain of the Holy Conversations, as Moses did on Sinai.
(6) Both Moses and Zarathustra had forerunners.
A first covenant was made by Jehovah with Noah.
The Iranian Noah, Yima, had been first offered to act the part of a lawgiver, which he modestly declined.
Moses was preceded by three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Zarathustra was preceded by three great saints, who practised before him the worship of Haoma: Vivanghant, Athwya, and Thrita.
Moses was preceded by three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Zarathustra was preceded by three great saints, who practised before him the worship of Haoma: Vivanghant, Athwya, and Thrita.
§ 3. Certainly it would not be safe to affirm that the coincidences between Genesis and the Avesta are due to a direct action of one on the other. The newly-recovered fragments of a Chaldaean Genesis leave room open for a third medium. However, the myths of the creation and the deluge, the only part of the Biblico-Chaldaean mythology which has, in a rather mutilated form, come down to us, differ so widely in the Bible and the Babylonian tablets, that it is only out of scientific scruple that we leave the Chaldaean door open. For the other points of comparison,
} lx venptpAp.
we are obliged, for want of any Chaldaean remains, to let the Bible and the Avesta alone stand face to face.
If the Mazdean Genesis rests on a Chaldaean basis, the date of the loan remains indefinite, as it may virtually have taken place at any date between the time when Iran came into contact with Chaldaea and the time when the Chaldaean
, mythology died out. If it rests on the Biblical tradition, | the loan can hardly have taken place earlier than the time when Judaism began to spread beyond Palestine, that is to say, the first century before Christ and the first after. There were at that time Jewish communities in Media, Parthia, Susiana, and Mesopotamia ; the king of Adiabene, Izates, was converted to Judaism about 58 A.D.; and Jewish schools were flourishing in Babylonia and in the Greek towns. So the Magi could meet with doctors of Judaism as well as with teachers of Platonism.
CHAPTER VII. ACHAEMENIAN AND EARLIER ELEMENTS.
§ 1. From the preceding disquisitions we assume that the Avesta doctrine is not one and self-sufficient: but it contains elements borrowed from foreign systems, from India, Greece, and Judaea. It directs its polemic against India and borrows from her, though in a hostile spirit. It owes to Greece some of its teaching, and to Judaea its historical views. And all these foreign elements were borrowed in the Parthian period.
But these elements, however important they may be, do not constitute the whole of Zoroastrianism, for there are essential doctrines in it, the existence of which can be traced back far beyond the Parthian period and the Greek conquest, with historical evidence. One may, with certain accuracy, distinguish in Zoroastrianism what is old, pre- Alexandrian, or Achaemenian from what is late, or post- Alexandrian.
§ 2. The fundamental basis of Mazdeism, the belief in a supreme God, the organiser of the world, Ahura Mazda,
INTRODUCTION, VII. lxi
is as old as anything we know of Persia. Darius proclaims Auramazda, the greatest of all gods, a powerful God, who made this earth, who made that heaven, who made man, who made Darius king.
lxi is as old as anything we know of Persia. Darius proclaims Auramazda, the greatest of all gods, a powerful God, who made this earth, who made that heaven, who made man, who made Darius king.
§ 3. The principle of dualism is pre-Alexandrian. This is implied, in the time of Darius, by the great king stating that Ahura ‘created welfare (shiyatim) for man!;’ in the time of Herodotos, by the religious war waged by the Magi against the ants, snakes, and other noxious creatures, which shows that the distinction of Ormazdian and Ahrimanian creatures was already in existence. Moreover, at the end of the Achaemenian period, Aristotle knows of a Good Spirit and the Evil One, Zeus—Oromazdes and Ades— Areimanios.
§ 4. Already in the Achaemenian Mazdeism, the existence of the world was limited to twelve thousand years, distributed into four periods, the character of which was altered in the post-Alexandrian period, to humour the Neo- Platonic tendencies of the age. It was already an estab- « lished dogma that Ahriman would be conquered at last and that men would live again. The belief in resurrection and a future life implies the correlative belief in future } rewards and punishments, which plays a great part in the post-Alexandrian religion, but must have belonged to the older stratum.
1 See Rawlinson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. x, p. 291; Benfey, Die Persischen Keilinschriften, pp. 63, 95.
-
Ixii VENDIDAD.
§ 5. The practical and utilitarian morality of the Avesta was one of the older traits of the national character. In the eyes of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotos, as in those of the writer of Vendidad III, and of all good Parsis of the present day, the two greatest merits of a citizen were the begetting and rearing of
‘a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.
Truthfulness was already considered the paramount virtue, and the balance of merits and demerits was already known at least to the earthly judge.
§ 6. The worship of the elements, water, fire, and earth, and respect for their purity were already in practice. It was forbidden to sully the waters or the fire, to throw a corpse into the fire, or to bury it in the earth until reduced to a fleshless, incorruptible skeleton.
§ 6. The worship of the elements, water, fire, and earth, and respect for their purity were already in practice. It was forbidden to sully the waters or the fire, to throw a corpse into the fire, or to bury it in the earth until reduced to a fleshless, incorruptible skeleton.
§7. There were two sorts of sacrifices: the bloody sacrifice, of which a survival has lingered to this day in the Atash zéhr, and the bloodless sacrifice, consisting essentially of the Haoma-offering and libations, of which there is no direct mention in the classics, but which indirect evidence obliges us to ascribe to the older religion.
§ 8. Thus the principles of the Achaemenian religion may be summed up as follows:
(1) As far as dogma goes: the existence of two conflicting supreme powers, one good and the other evil, Ormazd and Ahriman; the final defeat of Ahriman after twelve thousand years ; and the resurrection. Also a number of naturalistic deities, amongst which were Mithra and Anéfhita.
(2) Morals: veneration of truth, family, and agriculture.
(3) Liturgy: a bloody sacrifice and a bloodless sacrifice (Haoma). Certain laws of purity extending to the waters, the fire, and the earth. Burning or burying corpses forbidden.
§ 9. The Achaemenian religion was practised in the south as well as in the north of Iran, in Persia as well
‘ asin Media. It had its centre in Media and its sacerdotal class belonged to a Median tribe, the Magi. The priesthood was hereditary—as it still is nowadays amongst the
INTRODUCTION, VII. Lxili
Parsis—and the Magi were to Mazdeism what the Levites and Cohanim were to Judaism. The sacerdotal tribe spread wherever Mazdeism extended ; and in spite of the intense provincial hatred which the Persians bore to the .
Medians, their former masters, and which the Pseudo- Smerdis’ usurpation was not sufficient to smother, still the Magi were in the Persian idea the only true, authorised priests. No sacrifice was of any value which had not been performed by a Magus: only a Magus could make himself heard by the gods.
No sacrifice was of any value which had not been performed by a Magus: only a Magus could make himself heard by the gods.
§ 10. The supposed founder of the religion was named Zarathustra, a personage that must have been known to the pre-Alexandrian religion, as Dino mentions him, and his protectors, king Vistaspa (“Lordomns) and Vist4spa’s brother Zairivairi (Zapiddpys), were already, in the time of Alexander, heroes of epic songs which were current in Asia. As to the birthplace of Zarathustra, all Zoroastrian texts agree with the old classic tradition in placing it in Media. Whether Zarathustra was an historical or a legendary personage it is difficult to decide, and to some extent useless, as Zoroastrianism no longer appears to be one homogeneous religious monument, since we are confronted with two Zoroastrianisms, one anterior and the other posterior to Alexander. The Pseudo-Xanthos, which is at any rate anterior to the first century B.C., and may be much older, makes Zarathustra the founder of Magism and the first of a series of grand chiefs of Magism who succeeded one another till Alexander’s time. Zarathustra would therefore be an old chief of the priestly caste, a Mobed4n- Mobed, a Zarathustrétema xar’ éfoy4v, whether historical or legendary. As his legend is known to us only from Avesta sources, we have no means of distinguishing in it what may be older from what may be a later development.
§ 11. Zoroastrianism, whether prior to Alexander or in its post-Alexandrian form, was never a simple religion ; it was the result of an historical elaboration of complex materials. It was a growth in which one easily discerns Aryan elements, which it has in common with India, and new original elements. Its Aryan elements may be termed :
J
lxiv VENDIDAD.
the supreme God, the God of the Heaven, Ahura Mazda; the God of the heavenly light, Mithra; the worship of the elementary divinities, Waters, Fire, and Earth; a number of storm myths and mythical legends; and the worship of Haoma. Purely Iranian are: the dualistic conception of the world, its limited duration of twelve thousand years with its four periods ; the continual conflict of Ormazd and Ahriman, and the latter’s defeat; the resurrection of the dead, the notion of purity carried to the extreme, the prohibition of burning or burying the dead, and the throwing away of corpses to dogs and birds of prey.
§ 12. Some of the new dogmas may be the independent development of Aryan elements: for instance, the dualistic conception may have grown out of the mythical struggles between gods and demons. But the Great year and the resurrection are things quite new, which seem to betray external influences. Of the Scythian origin of Zoroastrianism it will be idle to speak, till the advocates of the system have brought something like historical or rational evidence in its favour. The only civilisation of which we know in the neighbourhood of Media was that of the Assyro-Chal-
Of the Scythian origin of Zoroastrianism it will be idle to speak, till the advocates of the system have brought something like historical or rational evidence in its favour. The only civilisation of which we know in the neighbourhood of Media was that of the Assyro-Chal-
' daeans, which in many things was the instructor of the Medes and taught them their art, their writing, and their political organisation. Unfortunately, too little is known of the inner aspects of the Chaldaean religion. One may wonder if the Frashé-kereti, that renewal of the world that is to take place at the end of the Great year of twelve millennia, was derived from the Semitic myths of the annual revival of Adonis and Tammuz. Even the idea of resurrection seems to be attested on the so-called Cyrus’ cylinder of Babylon. If these hypotheses turn out to be correct, older Magism may be defined as an Aryan growth under Chaldaean influences.
CHAPTER VIII. AGE AND GROWTH OF THE AVESTA.
§1. The internal evidence of the doctrines has thus confirmed the half-historical evidence of the texts, and
INTRODUCTION, VIIT. Ixv
led us to believe that the Avesta is the embodiment and the fusion of two teachings, one of which belonged to the
Achaemenian age, whereas the other could not be older :
than the fall of the Greek domination in Iran. One might therefore divide the Avesta. so far as the doctrine goes, into pre-Alexandrian and post-Alexandrian texts. The ‘
Vendidéd may be taken as the best specimen of the texts imbued with the pre-Alexandrian spirit, as its general | laws are Achaemenian in tone, and a great part of it may be interpreted by means of classical testimonies regarding the Achaemenian age. The Gathas may be taken as the best specimen of the post-Alexandrian spirit, as they are .
filled with ideas of post-Alexandrian growth. § 2. The date of the Gathas, if not exactly determinable, may yet be fixed between rather narrow limits. They can’
hardly be older than the first century before our era, or even before Philo of Alexandria ; for the neo-Platonic ideas and beings are found in them just in the Philonian stage. They cannot be dated later than the time of the Scythian kings, Kanishka and Huvishka, who reigned in India between 78 and 130 A.D., and who left on their coins records of many of the Zoroastrian divinities, not only the old elementary ones, like Metpo—Mithra, Tepo—Tighri, Oado—VAta, Mao—Maungha; but also the new abstract deities, like Oavyda—Vanainti, Op\ayyo—Verethraghna, and the Amshaspand Zaopnoap—Khshathra Vairya. If it is assumed that the idea Vohu Mand was inspired by Philo or his school, the Gathas will be thereby ascribed to the first century of our era. It is just the period when we find Vologeses and the first historical mention of an attempt to form a systematic religious code.
The GAthas present therefore this apparent contradiction, that, being the oldest part of the Avesta, they represent, at
It is just the period when we find Vologeses and the first historical mention of an attempt to form a systematic religious code.
The GAthas present therefore this apparent contradiction, that, being the oldest part of the Avesta, they represent, at the same time, the latest growth of the Zoroastrian spirit. ;
This is contradictory only to those who in a text confound the date of its composition with the date of the ideas it expresses. The Vendidd4d may be at the same time later than the Gathas in its composition and older in its material. The writer of the Vendidad had the Gathas before his eyes,
[4] €
Ixvi VENDIDAD.
though he expressed ideas and facts far anterior to the time when the Gathas could have been written or thought of.
But if the Gathas were written in the first century of our era, it follows that they must have been written in a dead language. Names like Vaninda, Oado, Saorévar, on the Indo-Scythian coins, show that at the end of that century the Zend was no longer a living language, but had already been brought to the level of the popular Pahlavi stage. Though the possibility remains that what we call the Philonian concept may be older than Philo, its best-known exponent; and that the Gathas may therefore be brought back as far as the first or second century before Christ, an epoch when we find already the neo-Platonic spirit in the later productions of Jewish ethics, like the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In this hypothesis, the Zend might have been still a living, or rather a dying, language, judging from its state of decomposition. As to the country to which it belonged, only one thing can be safely affirmed: it was not Persia. It may have been Media, which remained to the last the centre of Zoroastrianism and the
Zoroastrian priesthood ; it may have been the eastern part.
of Iran, where a modern dialect, the Afghan, appears to be a lineal descendant of the Zend.
One question remains to be settled. Allowing that a part of the Avesta is post-Alexandrian, is there a part of it which belongs to the pre-Alexandrian age, namely, that part which, so far as its contents go, belongs to the old religious stratum ?
Certainly it would be most hazardous to deny the existence of a sacred literature under the Achaemenian kings, though no historical evidence can be brought forward to support its assumption. Nay more, if the Gathas are supposed to have been written in a dead language, we are obliged to assume the existence of an old literature and the survival of fragments of it; for it is impossible to write in a dead language unless one has under one’s eyes models composed at a time when the language was living. But if there has ever been such a thing as an Achaemenian Avesta, and even if fragments of it were in the hands of the
INTRODUCTION, IX. Ixvii
But if there has ever been such a thing as an Achaemenian Avesta, and even if fragments of it were in the hands of the
INTRODUCTION, IX. Ixvii
post- Alexandrian Diaskeuasts, one thing is certain ; there is not one page of that older Avesta that is literally reproduced in the newer Avesta. Those theogonies which the Magi in the time of Herodotos sang at the sacrifice have nothing to do with our Gathas, since our Gathas contain elements which did not enter the Iranian mind till Iran was overwhelmed by the Greek conquest. Neither were they like our Yasts, because the composition of our Yasts was directed by an historical and chronological principle, of biblical origin. Only the laws of the Vendidad, which, | most of them, are as old as the older Zoroastrianism, may be supposed to be a partial reproduction of an Achaemenian Avesta; but even they are presented in a form that implies the new evolution. A Magus of the old days was as energetic as an Avesta Athravan in protecting the purity of the earth against any defilement; but he would not have spoken of the earth as Spenta Armaiti.
CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSIONS.
§ 1. Zoroastrianism is an historical religion, that is to say, one that has changed in course of time, not only by an inner evolution, but also under the reaction of foreign schools and political events.
§ 2. In the remotest period, the Median priests, the —
Magi, elaborated on a naturalistic basis, not different from what is found in Indian, Greek, and Italian paganisms, an original system, not free from Semitic elements. Its characteristics are: dualism, the limited duration of the world, the resurrection, the worship of pure elements, and the ethics of labour. That system spread from Media to |
Persia, and was dominant under the Achaemenians. It is Zoroastrianism proper ; no direct documents of it are left ; but it is known indirectly through the inscriptions, through the testimony of the classics, and through the documents of the neo-Zoroastrianism, which received its dogmas and gave them a new form.
e2
Ixviii VENDIDAD.
It is Zoroastrianism proper ; no direct documents of it are left ; but it is known indirectly through the inscriptions, through the testimony of the classics, and through the documents of the neo-Zoroastrianism, which received its dogmas and gave them a new form.
§ 4. Greece and Palestine, on the contrary, brought to it novel, fascinating, and edifying thoughts. How far and deep Hellenism made its influence felt is symbolically expressed on the coins of the Philhellen Arsacidae. Not that I think that Zeus impressed in any active way the worshippers of Ahura, though Herodotos and Aristotle had recognised their affinities, as the Sassanians did later on. It was Greek philosophy that reacted on the Zoroastrian schools. Platonism was there, as it was in Western Asia, ‘the bond between the East and Greece.’ What struck the Mazdean sages most in it was what at the same time impressed the Hellenist Jews so much: the idea of the Logos, that divine intelligence abstracted from God and interposed between him and the world ; also the concept of an ideal world, the heavenly unseen prototype of the material one. After the Iranian Logos, Vohu Mané, rose the Amshaspands, to share with him the government of the soul and the world. Then came a host of divine abstractions, to impersonate all the spiritual and material forces of nature. In spite of the dryness and scholastic rigour with which the doctors invested Mazdeism, oné cannot help admiring the practical good sense and idea of proportion
INTRODUCTION, IX. lxix
which presided over the choice of these divine abstractions and represented their impulses; and when one contrasts them with the Eons of the Gnostics and the Sephiroth of the Cabbalists, which starting from the same point, the First Intelligence, fell engulfed in mystical nihilism, one can understand why and how Mazdeism was, next to Christianity, the only one among the religious systems inspired with Plato’s spirit that lived and deserved to live.
§ 5. Judaism inspired Zoroastrianism in a different, though not less powerful, way. It answered certain questions of which Mazdeism had not thought. Its sacred book supplied the Mazdean doctors with its solutions of those questions. It gave them even its historical and chronological framework. The creation, the deluge, the genealogies, the patriarchs, the division of races, the Revelation were all told in a Zoroastrian spirit. Perhaps the very idea of an Avesta was suggested by the Bible. The very divisions of the Bible were adopted in the Avesta: the classification of the Nasks into Data (the Law), Gatha (metaphysics) and Hadha-miathra, is the classification of the Biblical texts into Thora (Law), Nebiim (Prophets), and Ketbim. When Islam assimilated the Zoroastrians to the People of the Book, it evinced a rare historical sense and solved the problem of the origin of the Avesta.
§ 6. Thus, in the centuries about the Christian era, was ~ elaborated in Iran a new religion, not differing essentially from the old one, which, in fact was nothing more than this old religion, adapted to the new necessities of its spiritual and political surroundings, better armed against rivals and made stronger by borrowing from every one of its competitors. All these novelties Zoroastrianism could adopt and assimilate to itself without losing its own physiognomy, and there are few instances of foreign elements and concepts so freely borrowed by a religion and so harmoniously blended in the original mould.
Ixx VENDIDAD.
CHAPTER X. THE VENDIDAD.
§ 1. According to Parsi tradition the Vendid4d' is the only Nask, out of the twenty-one, that was preserved in its entirety*, This is a statement to which it is difficult to trust ; for, if there is anything that shows how right the Parsis are in admitting that the Avesta is only a collection of fragments, it is the fragmentary character of the Vendidad that strikes us most.
The Vendidad has often been described as the book of the laws of the Parsis ; it may be more exactly called the code of purification, a description, however, which is itself only so far correct that the laws of purification are the object of the largest part of the book.
The Vendidad has often been described as the book of the laws of the Parsis ; it may be more exactly called the code of purification, a description, however, which is itself only so far correct that the laws of purification are the object of the largest part of the book.
The first two chapters deal with mythical matter, without any direct connection with the general object of the Vendidad, and are remnants of an old epic and cosmogonic literature. The first deals with the creations and counter- | creations of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu; the second . speaks of Yima, the founder of civilisation. Although there was no particular reason for placing them in the Vendidad, as soon as they were admitted into it they were naturally put at the beginning, because they referred to the first ages of the world. Three chapters of a mythical character, about the origin of medicine, were put at the end of the book, for want of any better place, but might as well have been kept apart*, as was the so-called Hadhékht Nask fragment. There is also another mythical Fargard, the nineteenth, which, as it treats of the revelation of the law by Ahura to Zarathustra, would have been more suitably placed at the beginning of the Vendid4d proper, that is, as the third Fargard.
1 The word Vendfdad is a corruption of Vidaév6-datem (d&tem), the ‘antidemoniac law.’ It is sometimes applied to the whole of the law (Vendidad Sada).
2 See above, p. xxxii.
3 As an introduction to a code of laws on physicians; see Farg. VII, 36-44.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxi
The other sixteen chapters deal chiefly with religious observances, although mythical fragments, or moral digressions, are met with here and there, which are more or less artificially connected with the text, and which were most probably not written in connection with the passages which they follow}.
§ 2. A rough attempt at regular order appears in these sixteen chapters: nearly all the matter contained in the eight chapters from V to XII deals with impurity arising from the dead and the way of dispelling it; but the subject is again treated, here and there, in other Fargards*, and matter irrelevant to the subject has also found its way into these same eight Fargards*. Fargards XIII and XIV are devoted to the dog, but must be completed with a part of the XVth. Fargards XVI, XVII, and most part of XVIII deal with several sorts of uncleanness, and their proper place should rather have been after the XIIth Fargard. Fargard III is devoted to the earth * ; Fargard IV stands by itself, as it deals with a matter which is treated only there, namely, civil and penal laws 5.
No better order prevails within these several parts: prescriptions on one and the same subject are scattered about through several Fargards, without any subject being treated at once in a full and exhaustive way; and this occasions needless repetitions °®.
No better order prevails within these several parts: prescriptions on one and the same subject are scattered about through several Fargards, without any subject being treated at once in a full and exhaustive way; and this occasions needless repetitions °®.
The main cause of this disorder was, of course, that the advantage of order is rarely felt by Orientals; but it was further promoted by the very form of exposition adopted by the first composers of the Vendid4d. The law is revealed by Ahura in a series of answers to questions put to him by
1 For instance, Farg.V, 15-20; III, 24-29; 30-32; 33; IV, 47-49.
3 III, 14-21; 36 seq.; XIX, 11-25.
® The passages on medicine (VII, 36-44), and on the sea Vouru-kasha (V, 15-20).
* It contains two digressions, the one on funeral laws, the other on husbandry. See Farg. III, Introd.
5 It contains one digression on physical well-being, which must have belonged originally to Farg. III. See Farg. IV, Introd.
Zarathustra'; and as these questions are not of a general character, but refer to details, the matter is much broken up into fragments, each of which, consisting of a question with its answer, stands by itself, as an independent passage.
We shall treat in the following pages, first of the laws of purification, then of the civil laws, and, lastly, of the penalties both religious and civil.
A.
§ 3. The first object of man is purity, yaozdau : ‘purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good?’
Purity and impurity have not in the Vendidad the exclusively spiritual meaning which they have in our languages: they do not refer to an inward state of the soul, but chiefly to a physical state of the body. Impurity or uncleanness may be described as the state of a person or a thing that is possessed of the demon; and the object of purification is to expel the demon.
The principal means by which uncleanness enters man is death, as death is the triumph of the demon.
When a man dies, as soon as the soul has parted from the body, the Drug Nasu or Corpse-Drug falls upon the dead from the regions of hell, and whoever thenceforth touches the corpse becomes unclean, and makes unclean whomsoever he touches 3.
The Drug is expelled from the dead by means of the Sag-did, ‘the look of the dog:’ ‘a four-eyed dog’ or ‘a white one with yellow ears’ is brought near the body and is made to look at the dead; as soon as he has done so, the Drug flees back to hell *.
The Drug is expelled from the dead by means of the Sag-did, ‘the look of the dog:’ ‘a four-eyed dog’ or ‘a white one with yellow ears’ is brought near the body and is made to look at the dead; as soon as he has done so, the Drug flees back to hell *.
' The outward form of the Vendidad has been often compared with that of the Books of Moses. But in reality, in the Bible, there is no conversation between God and the lawgiver: the law comes down unasked, and God gives commands, but gives no answers. In the Vendid&d, on the contrary, it is the wish of man, not the will of God, that is the first cause of the revelation. Man must ask of Ahura, who knows everything, and is pleased to answer (XVUI, 13 seq.) ; the law is ‘the question to Ahura,’ &hfiiri frashné,
* In the shape of a fly. ‘The fly that came to the smell of the dead body was thought to be the corpse-spirit that came to take possession of the dead in the name of Ahriman’ (Justi, Persien, p. 88).
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxiii
The Drug is expelled from the living, whom she has seized through their contact with the dead, by a process of washings with ox’s urine (g6méz or nirang) and with water, combined with the Sag-did *.
The real import of these ceremonies is shown by the spells which accompany their performance: ‘Perish, O fiendish Drug! Perish, O brood of the fiend! Perish, O world of the fiend! Perish away, O Drug! Rush away, O Drug! Perish away, O Drug! Perish away to the [ regions of the north, never more to give unto death the living world of the holy spirit!’
Thus, in the death of a man, there is more involved than the death of one man: the power of death, called forth from hell, threatens from the corpse, as from a stronghold, the whole world of the living, ready to seize whatever may fall within his reach, and ‘from the dead defiles the living, and from the living rushes upon the living. When a man dies in a house, there is danger for three days lest somebody else should die in that house *.
The notion or feeling, out of which these ceremonies grew, was far from unknown to the other Indo-European peoples : what was peculiar to Mazdeism was that it carried it to an extreme, and preserved a clearer sense of it, while elsewhere it grew dimmer and dimmer, and faded away. In fact, when the Greek, going out of a house where a dead man lay, sprinkled himself with water from the dpddyoy at the door, it was death that he drove away from himself. The Vedic Indian, too, although his rites were intended chiefly for the benefit of the dead, considered himself in danger and, while burning the corpse, cried aloud: ‘Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men!’ (Rigveda X, 18, 1.)
The Vedic Indian, too, although his rites were intended chiefly for the benefit of the dead, considered himself in danger and, while burning the corpse, cried aloud: ‘Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men!’ (Rigveda X, 18, 1.)
§ 4. As to the rites by means of which the Drug is expelled, they are the performance of myths. There is nothing in worship but what existed before in mythology. What we call a practice is only an imitation of gods, an épotwots 6eg, as man fancies he can bring about the things
1 Farg. VIII, 35-72; IX, 12-36. * Saddar 78.
Ixxiv VEND!DAD.
he wants, by performing the acts which are supposed to have brought about things of the same kind when practised by the gods.
The Parsis, being at a loss to find four-eyed dogs, interpret the name as meaning a dog with two spots above the eyes!: but it is clear that the two-spotted dog’s services are only accepted for want of a four-eyed one, or of a white one with yellow ears, which amounts to saying that there were myths, according to which the death-fiend was driven away by dogs of that description. This reminds one at once of the three-headed Kerberos, watching at the doors of hell, and, still more, of the two brown, four-eyed dogs of Yama, who guard the ways to the realm of death *.
The identity of the four-eyed dog of the Parsi with Kerberos and Yama’s dogs appears, moreover, from the Parsi tradition that the yellow-eared dog watches at the head of the Kinvat bridge, which leads from this to the | next world, and with his barking drives away the fiend from the souls of the holy ones, lest he should drag them to hell *,
Wherever the corpse passes by, death walks with it ; all along the way it has gone, from the house to its last resting-place, a spirit of death is breathing and threatening the living. Therefore, no man, no flock, no being whatever that belongs to the world of Ahura, is allowed to pass by
1 In practice they are still less particular: ‘ The Sag-dfd may be performed by a shepherd’s dog, by a house-dog, by a Vohunazga dog (see Farg. XIII, 19, n.), or by a young dog (a dog four months old),’ Comm. ad Farg. VII, 2. As birds of prey are as fiend-smiting as the dog, they are Nasu-smiters like him, and one may appeal to their services, when there is no dog at hand (see Farg. VII, 3, n. 3).
® Rig-veda X, 14, To seq.
XIII, 19, n.), or by a young dog (a dog four months old),’ Comm. ad Farg. VII, 2. As birds of prey are as fiend-smiting as the dog, they are Nasu-smiters like him, and one may appeal to their services, when there is no dog at hand (see Farg. VII, 3, n. 3).
that way until the deadly breath, that blows through it, has been blown away to hell’. The four-eyed dog is made to go through the way three times, or six times, or nine times, while the priest helps the look of the dog with his spells, dreaded by the Drug.
§ 5. The use of géméz in cleansing the unclean is also derived from old mythic conceptions*. The storm floods that cleanse the sky of the dark fiends in it were described in a class of myths as the urine of a gigantic animal in the heavens. As the floods from the bull above drive away the fiend from the god, so do they from man here below, they make him ‘free from the death-demon’ (franasu), and the death-fiend flees away hellwards, pursued by the fiend-smiting spell: ‘ Perish thou, O Drug . . ., never more to give over to Death the living world of the good spirit !’
§ 6. As uncleanness is nothing else than the contagion of death, it is at its greatest intensity when life is just departing. The Nasu at that moment defiles ten persons around the corpse *: when a year is over, the corpse defiles no longer*. Thus the notion of uncleanness is quite the reverse of what it is elsewhere : the corpse, when rotten, is less unclean than the body still all but warm with life; death defiles least when it looks most hideous, and defiles most when it might look majestic. The cause is that in the latter case the death-demon has just arrived in the fulness of his strength, whereas in the former case time has exhausted his power. .
§ 7. As the focus of the contagion is in the corpse, it must be disposed of so that death may not spread abroad. On this point the old Indo-European customs have been completely changed by Mazdeism. The Indo-Europeans either burnt the corpse or buried it : both customs are held to be sacrilegious in the Avesta.
§ 8. This view originated from the notion of the holiness
1 Farg. VIII, 14-22.
On this point the old Indo-European customs have been completely changed by Mazdeism. The Indo-Europeans either burnt the corpse or buried it : both customs are held to be sacrilegious in the Avesta.
§ 8. This view originated from the notion of the holiness
1 Farg. VIII, 14-22.
2 Orm. Abr. § 124. The use of giméz has been lately found to be known in Basse-Bretagne (Luzel, Le Nirang des Parsis en Basse-Bretagne, Mélusine, 493).
3 Farg. V, 27; ef. n. 5. * Farg. VIII, 33-34.
Ixxvi VENDIDAD.
of the elements being pushed to an extreme. The elements, fire, earth, and water are holy, and during the Indo-Iranian period they were already considered so, and in the Vedas they are worshipped as godlike beings. Yet this did not prevent the Indian from burning his dead; death did not appear to him so decidedly a work of the demon, and the dead man was a traveller to the other world, whom the fire kindly carried to his heavenly abode ‘on his undecaying, flying pinions, wherewith he killed the demons.’ The fire was in that, as in the sacrifice, the god that goes from earth to heaven, from man to god, the mediator, the god most friendly to man. In Persia it remains more distant from , him; being an earthly form of the eternal, infinite, godly light !, no death, no uncleanness can be allowed to enter it, as it is here below the purest offspring of the good spirit, the purest part of his pure creation. Its only function is to repel the fiends with its bright blazing. In every place where Parsis are settled, an everlasting fire is kept, the Bahram fire, which, ‘preserved by a more than Vestal care®, and ever fed with perfumes and dry well-blazing wood, whichever side its flames are brought by the wind, goes and kills thousands and thousands of fiends, as Bahram does in heaven*. If the necessities of life oblige us to employ fire for profane uses, it must be only for a time an exile on our hearth, or in the oven of the potter, and it must go thence to the Right-Place of the fire (Daityé GAtu), the altar of the Bahr4m fire, there to be restored to the dignity and rights of its nature‘.
At least, let no gratuitous and wanton degradation be inflicted upon it: even blowing it with the breath of the mouth is a crime®; burning the dead is the most heinous
3 J. Fryer, A New Account of East India and Persia, 1698, p. 265.
3 Farg. VIII, 81-96; 79-80.
* Extinguishing it is a mortal sin (Ravfets; Elisaeus; cf. Strabo XV, 14).
5 A custom still existing with the TAztk, an Iranian tribe in Eastern Persia, (de Khanikoff, Ethnographie de la Perse). Strabo XV, 14. Manu has the same prescription (IV, 53). Cf. Farg. XIV, 8, n. 10.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxvii
of sins: in the times of Strabo it was a capital crime}, and the Avesta expresses the same, when putting it in the number of those sins for which there is no atonement ?.
Strabo XV, 14. Manu has the same prescription (IV, 53). Cf. Farg. XIV, 8, n. 10.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxvii
of sins: in the times of Strabo it was a capital crime}, and the Avesta expresses the same, when putting it in the number of those sins for which there is no atonement ?.
Water was looked upon in the same light. Bringing dead matter to it is as bad as bringing it to the fire®. The Magi are said to have overthrown a king for having built bath-houses, as they cared more for the cleanness of water than for their own ‘+.
§ 9. Not less holy was the earth, or, at least, it became so. There was a goddess who lived in her, Spesta Armaiti; no corpse ought to defile her sacred breast: burying the dead is, like burning the dead, a deed for which there is no atonement®. It was not always so in Persia: the burning of the dead had been forbidden for years ®, while the burying was still general. Cambyses had roused the indignation of the Persians by burning the corpse of Amasis: yet, years later, Persians still buried their dead. But the priests already felt scruples, and feared to defile a god. Later on, with the ascendancy of the Magian religion, the sacerdotal observances became the general law 7.
§ 10. Therefore the corpse is laid on the summit of a mountain, far from man, from water, from tree, from fire, and from the earth itself, as it is separated from it by a layer of stones or bricks*. Special buildings, the Dakhmas,
' Strabo XV, 14; cf. Herod. III, 16.
» Farg. I, 17; cf. Farg. VIII, 74.
® Farg. VII, 25-27; Strabo XV, 14; Herod. I, 138.
* King Balfsh (Josué le Stylite, traduction Martin, § xx). It seems as if there were a confusion between Balash and Kav&t; at any rate, it shows that bathing smacked of heresy. Jews were forbidden to perform the legal ablutions (Fiirst, Culturgeschichte der Juden, 9).
® Farg. I, 13. * From the reign of Cyrus.
7 Still the worship of the earth seems not to have so deeply penetrated the general religion as the worship of fire. The laws about the disposal of the dead were interpreted by many, it would seem, as intended only to secure the purity of water and fire, and they thought that they might be at peace with religion if they had taken care to bury the corpse, so that no part of it might be taken by animals to fire or water (Farg. III, 41, n. 7).
® Farg. VI, 44 seq.; VIII, 10 seq. Cf. 1X, 11, 0.5. Moreover, the Dakhma is ideally separated from the ground by means of a golden thread, which is supposed to keep it suspended in the air (Ravaet, ap. Spiegel, Uebersetzung des Avesta II, XXXVI).
Ixxvili VENDIDAD.
were erected for this purpose’. There far from the world the dead were left to lie, beholding the sun ?.
Spiegel, Uebersetzung des Avesta II, XXXVI).
Ixxvili VENDIDAD.
were erected for this purpose’. There far from the world the dead were left to lie, beholding the sun ?.
§ 11. Not every corpse defiles man, but only those of such beings as belong to the world of Ahura. They are the only ones in whose death the demon triumphs. The corpse of an Ahrimanian creature does not defile; as its life was incarnate death, the spring of death that was in it is dried up with its last breath: it killed while alive, it can do so no more when dead; it becomes clean by dying*. None of the faithful are defiled by the corpse of an Ashemaogha or of a Khrafstra. Nay, killing them is a pious work, as it is killing Ahriman himself.
§ 12. Not only real death makes one unclean, but partial death too. Everything that goes out of the body of man is dead, and becomes the property of the demon. The going breath is unclean, it is forbidden to blow the fire with it *, and even to approach the fire without screening it from the contagion with a Penédm®. Parings of nails and cuttings or shavings of hair are unclean, and become weapons in the hands of the demons unless they have been protected by certain rites and spells*. Any phenomenon by which the bodily nature is altered, whether accompanied with danger to health or not, was viewed as a work of the demon, and made the person unclean in whom it took place. One of these phenomena, which is a special object of attention
1¢The Dakhma is a round building, and is designated by some writers, “The Tower of Silence.” A round pit, about six feet deep, is surrounded by an annular stone pavement, about seven feet wide, on which the dead bodies are placed. This place is enclosed all round by a stone wall some twenty feet high, with a small door on one side for taking the body in. The whole is built up of and paved with stone. The pit has communication with three or more closed pits, at some distance, into which the rain washes out the liquids and the remains of the dead bodies’ (Dadabhai Naoroji, The Manners and Customs of the Parsees, Bombay, 1864, p. 16). Cf. Farg. VI, 50. A Dakhma is the first building the Parsis erect when settling in a new place (Dosabhoy Framji).
? The Avesta and the Commentator attach great importance to that point : it is as if the dead man’s life were thus prolonged, since he can still behold the sun. ‘Grant us that we may long behold the sun,’ said the Indian R#shi.
5 Farg. V, 35 sey. 4 See above, p. Ixxvi.
5 See Farg. XIV, 8, n. 10. ® Farg. XVII.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxix
‘Grant us that we may long behold the sun,’ said the Indian R#shi.
5 Farg. V, 35 sey. 4 See above, p. Ixxvi.
5 See Farg. XIV, 8, n. 10. ® Farg. XVII.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxix
in the Vendid4d, is the uncleanness of women during their menses. The menses are sent by Ahriman’, especially when they last beyond the usual time: therefore a woman, as long as they last, is unclean and possessed of the demon: she must be kept confined, apart from the faithful whom her touch would defile, and from the fire which her very look would injure; she is not allowed to eat as much as she wishes, as the strength she might acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food is not given to her from hand to hand, but is passed to her from a distance’, in a long leaden spoon. The origin of all these notions is in certain physical instincts, in physiological psychology, which is the reason why they are found among peoples very far removed from one another by race or religion®, But they took in Persia a new meaning as they were made a logical part of the whole religious system.
§ 13. A woman that has just been delivered of a child is also unclean *, although it would seem that she ought to be considered pure amongst the pure, since life has been increased by her in the world, and she has enlarged the realm of Ormazd. But the strength of old instincts overcame the drift of new principles. Only the case when the woman has been delivered of a still-born child is examined in the Vendidad. She is unclean as having been in contact with a dead creature; and she must first drink géméz to wash over the grave in her womb. So utterly unclean is she, that she is not even allowed to drink water, unless she is in danger of death; and even then, as the sacred element has been defiled, she is liable to the penalty of a Peshétanu®, It appears from modern customs that the treatment is the same when the child is born alive: the reason of which is that, in any case, during the first three days after delivery she is in danger of death®. A great fire is lighted
¢ «When there is a pregnant woman in a house, one must take care that there be fire continually in it; when the child is brought forth, one must bum
Ixxx VENDIDAD.
to keep away the fiends, who use then their utmost efforts to kill her and her child. She is unclean only because the death-fiend is in her.
to keep away the fiends, who use then their utmost efforts to kill her and her child. She is unclean only because the death-fiend is in her.
§ 14. Logic required that the sick man should be treated as an unclean one, that is, as one possessed. Sickness, being sent by Ahriman, ought to be cured like all his other works, by washings and spells. In fact, the medicine of spells was considered the most powerful of all*, and although it did not oust the medicine of the lancet and that of drugs, yet it was more highly esteemed and less mistrusted. The commentator on the Vendid4d very sensibly observes that if it does not relieve, it will surely do no harm, which seems not to have been a matter of course with those who heal by the knife and physic. It appears from the last Fargard that all or, at least, many diseases might be cured by spells and Barashnim washing. It appears from Herodotos and Agathias that contagious diseases required the same treatment as uncleanness: the sick man was excluded from the community of the faithful ‘, until cured and cleansed according to the rites °,
§ 15. The unclean are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean persons and objects, the Armést-gah °, which may be described, therefore, as the Dakhma for the living. All the unclean, all those struck with temporary death, the man who has touched dead matter, the woman in her menses, or just delivered of child, the leper 7, or the man who has made himself unclean for ever by carrying a corpse alone ®, stay there all the time of their uncleanness.
§ 16. Thus far for general principles. From the diversity a candle, or, better still, a fire, for three days and three nights, to render the Dévs and Drugs unable to harm the child; for there is great danger during those three days and nights after the birth of the child’ (Saddar 16).
1 «When the child is being born, one brandishes a sword on the four sides, lest fairy Aal kill it’ (Polack, Persien I, 223). In Rome, three gods, Intercidona, Pilumnus, and Deverra, keep her threshold, lest Sylvanus come in and harm her (Augustinus, De Civ. D. VI, 9).
® Farg. VII, 44. 3 Thid.
* Herod. I, 138. 5 Agathias IT, 23.
* The Armést-gih for women in their menses is called Dashtanistan.
7 Herod. I. 1.; Farg. II, 29. * Farg. II, 19.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxxi
of circumstances arises a system of casuistry, the development of which may be followed first through the glosses to the Vendidad, in which the labours of several generations of theologians are embodied, and, later on, through the Ravdets. We will give a few instances of it, as found in the Vendidad itself.
The process of the cleansing varies according to the degree of uncleanness; and, again, the degree of uncleanness depends on the state of the thing that defiles and the nature of the thing that is defiled.
We will give a few instances of it, as found in the Vendidad itself.
The process of the cleansing varies according to the degree of uncleanness; and, again, the degree of uncleanness depends on the state of the thing that defiles and the nature of the thing that is defiled.
The uncleanness from the dead is the worst of all, and it is at its utmost when contracted before the Nasu has been expelled from the corpse by the Sag-did?: it can be cured only by means of the most complicated system of cleansing, the nine nights’ Barashniim %,
If the Nasu has already been expelled from the corpse, as the defiling power was less, a simple washing once made, the Ghosel, is enough °.
The defiling power of the Nasu reaches farther, if the death has just taken place, and if the dying creature occupied a higher rank in the scale of beings*; for the more recent the victory of the demon, or the higher the being he has overcome, the stronger he must have been himself.
Menstruous women are cleansed by the Ghosel *.
As for things they are more or less deeply defiled according to their degree of penetrability : metal vessels can be cleansed, earthen vessels cannot®; leather is more easily cleansed than woven cloth’; hard wood than soft wood °. Wet matter is a better conductor of uncleanness than dry matter, and corpses cease to defile after a year ®.
1 Farg. VIII, 35-36; 98-99; cf. VII, 29-30, and n. 6 to 30.
? Farg. IX. The Barashniim, originally meant to remove the uncleanness from the dead, became a general instrument of holiness. Children when putting on the Késtt (Farg. XVIII, 9, n. 3) perform it to be cleansed from the natural uncleanness they have contracted in the womb of their mothers. It is good for every one to perform it once a year.
§ 17. In the cases heretofore reviewed, religious purposes are alone concerned. There is another order of laws, in which, although religion interferes, yet it is not the root of the matter; namely, the laws about contracts and assaults, to which the fourth Fargard is devoted, and which are the only remains extant of the civil and penal legislation of Zoroastrianism.
The contracts were divided into two classes, according to their mode, and according to the valye of their object '. As to their mode they are word-contracts or hand-contracts: as to their object, they are sheep-contracts, oxcontracts, man-contracts, or field-contracts, which being estimated in money value are contracts to the amount of 3, 12, 500 istirs, and upwards %.
No contract can be made void by the will of one party alone; he who breaks a contract is obliged to pay the value of the contract next higher in value.
The family and the next of kin are, it would seem, answerable for the fulfilment of a contract, a principle of the old Indo-European civil law *,
The family and the next of kin are, it would seem, answerable for the fulfilment of a contract, a principle of the old Indo-European civil law *,
§ 18. Assaults are of seven degrees: A4gerepta, avaoirista*, stroke, sore wound, bloody wound, broken bone, and manslaughter. The gravity of the guilt does not depend on the gravity of the deed only, but also on its frequency. Each of these seven crimes amounts, by its being repeated without having been atoned for, to the crime that immediately follows in the scale, so that an 4gerepta seven times _ repeated amounts to manslaughter.
Cc.
§ 19. Every crime makes the guilty man liable to two penalties, one here below, and another in the next world.
1 See p. 35, 2. 3-
® An istir (orarhp) is as much as four dirhems (8payph). The dirhem is estimated by modern tradition as a little more than a rupee, but the authority is doubtful (see Sacred Books of the East, vol. xviii, p. 180, n. 2).
® Farg. IV, 5 seq. * Two different sorts of menaces; see IV, 17.
INTRODUCTION, X. Ixxxiii
The penalty here below consists of a certain number of stripes with the Aspahé-astra or the Sraoshé-arana '.
The unit for heavy penalties is two hundred stripes; the crime and the criminal thus punished are called Peshétanu or Tanu-peretha (Parsi: Tanafahr). The two words literally mean, ‘one who pays with his own body,’ and ‘payment with one’s body,’ and seem to have originally amounted to ‘ worthy of death, worthiness of death ;’ and in effect the word Peshé-tanu is often interpreted in the Pahlavi Commentary by margarz4n, ‘worthy of death. But, on the whole, it was attached to the technical meaning of ‘one who has to receive two hundred strokes with the horse-whip?.’ The lowest penalty in the Vendidad is five stripes, and the degrees from five stripes to Peshétanu are ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty, seventy, ninety, two hundred. For instance, 4gerepta is punished with five stripes, avaoirista with ten, stroke with fifteen, sore wound with thirty, bloody wound with fifty, broken bone with seventy, manslaughter with ninety; a second manslaughter, committed without the former being atoned for, is punished with the Peshétanu penalty. In the same way the six other crimes, repeated eight, or seven, or six, or five, or four, or three times make the committer go through the whole series of penalties up to the Peshétanu penalty.