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1Iraq and SavAd remained in the hands of the Arabs, who were waging a perpetual war with one another, as they are used to do®.” Therefore the texts in which the Arab Asi Dahaka appears as reigning in Babylon belong to a time when Arabs were already settled in Mesopotamia. A certain Zaini-gaus or ZainigAv ® is mentioned once in the Avesta as being conquered and killed by Frangrasyan * who on that one occasion was invested with the royal fivarené and who, accordingly, in the Shahn4ma, is credited with having delivered Iran from an Arab invasion: in the absence of Kai-KAds, it says, invaders flowed over Iran from every side, both Turanians and Arabs: ‘the Arabs were conquered by the Turanians.’ Perhaps the key to the Afrasy4b enigma is here. One can hardly understand how the Turanians beyond the Oxus, whom Afrésyab is supposed to represent, could repel the Arabs coming from over the Euphrates. But one must bear in mind that Afrasy4b’s career ends on the banks of the Kaééasta lake, in Adarbaigan 5, north of Mesopotamia. On another side, the legendary history of Yemen tells of the Tubbah Abd Kurrub’s invasions into Mesopotamia and his struggles with 1 Tg, a brother of Héshang and the ancestor of the TAagtks (Xitradad Nask, in Dinkart VIII, 13, 8). ? Tabari, tr. Zotenberg, II, 8-9. The Hatra, Hfra, and Ghassanian kingdoms were already flourishing in the first century of our era. The Ghassanians reigned at Damas when Paulus was a prisoner there. ® Bearing the same name as Asi Dahaka’s grandfather (p. xlix). * Yt. XIX, 93. The translation in the Sacted Books of the East is to be corrected as follows: ‘that glory that Frangrasyan, the Turanian, bore, when the wicked Zainigau was killed.’ (Cf. Greater Bundahis: ‘There was a fiend called Zinigiv who had poison in his eye: he had come from the country of the Arabs to reign on Iran-Shahr: any man he gazed at with his evil eye, he killed. The Iranians called Frasy4v into their country, he killed that Zinigdv.’) ® Yt. XVII, 42. INTRODUCTION, V. li the Turanians of Adarbaigan!; so that the wars of Frangrasyan and Zainigau may be an echo of the predatory struggles between the Arabs from the south and those Turanians of north-western Iran who were for centuries the plague of that country, and whom Khusr6é Néshirvan tried at last to imprison in the Caucasus. CHAPTER V. BRAHMANICAL, BUDDHIST, AND GREEK ELEMENTS. § 1. The political and social circumstances which the Avesta reflects being those of the Parthian time, one may easily expect to find in its doctrine the reaction of those civilisations, or religions, which flourished during that period either in Iran or in the neighbouring countries. In fact, we find in the Avesta either polemics against, or loans | from, the great contemporary systems, the Brahmanical, , the Buddhist, the Greek, and the Jewish.
2In fact, we find in the Avesta either polemics against, or loans | from, the great contemporary systems, the Brahmanical, , the Buddhist, the Greek, and the Jewish. § 2. The true Zoroastrian is called a Mazdayasna, ‘a worshipper of Mazda *,’ in contradistinction to the Daévayasna, ‘the worshipper of the Daévas.’ Daéva is generally understood as ‘a demon,’ and that is the meaning it has in the derived dév and in most of the Zend texts generally; as it is applied to the evil forces of nature, like the Wind- Daéva, or to the evil forces of the soul, like Aéshma, ‘Wrath;’ Akem Mand, ‘ Bad Thought;’ Tardmaiti, ‘ Pride.’ But it must also have applied to false gods, for the Daévayasna is not a bad Zoroastrian, it is a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian system, it is a foreigner, an Anaryan. Doctors must practise on Daévayasnas before treating Mazdayasnas, which is a rule clear and practical only if the Daévayasna is a worshipper of the false gods, of Indian, Assyrian, or Greek idols; for the test is simple enough. The word may have applied first and more 1 Tabari, J, 505 ; Hamza, tr. p. 98. ® The Sassanian kings took on their coins the title of Mazdayasn, instead of the Philhellen of the Arsacidae. d2 lii VENDIDAD. especially to the Indian religions and to the worshippers of Devas. § 3. The disparaging meaning of the word Deva in Zoroastrianism was formerly interpreted as a sign that Zoroaster’s religion was born in an Indo-Iranian period, from a moral reaction against Vedic polytheism, which sent to hell the former gods. This theory, as far as I can see, has no longer any supporter: it has been seen that it all rests on a few lexicographical particularities, not on inner historical evidence. In fact Zoroastrianism has much in common with the Vedic Pantheon; its supreme God, Ahura Mazda, is not more different from the great Asura, Varuza, than Zeus is from Jupiter ; the Zoroastrian Apollo, Mithra, answers exactly to the Vedic Mitra. The worship is centred on both sides around the sacred plant (Soma— _Haoma) and the sacred fire(Agni—Atar). The mythological struggle between the God of the Lightning, Indra, and the serpent Ahi is transferred to Atar (the Fire) and Asi. Yama, son of Vivasvat, and Traitana revive in Yima, son of Vivanghazt, and Thraétaona. How those analogies are to | be accounted for, whether they are the relics of an old Indo-Iranian religion, or whether they have been, entirely or partly, borrowed from either side by the other, remains an open question, which we are neither prepared to answer in the negative, nor to answer at all. But thus much is clear that there is not the slightest evidence or symptom of any such inner upheaval, rejecting a Vedic or quasi-Vedic religion, as was supposed to have taken place in prehistoric periods.
3But thus much is clear that there is not the slightest evidence or symptom of any such inner upheaval, rejecting a Vedic or quasi-Vedic religion, as was supposed to have taken place in prehistoric periods. § 4. This only remains, that when Zoroastrianism, with the exclusive character which belongs to moral religions, wanted to brand and condemn the most dangerous rival it encountered amongst its neighbours, it found no more characteristic name to designate the false gods and the demons than the name given to divine beings in the false religions of India which had so many followers in the eastern provinces of the empire. It went so far as to take the names of three Indian devas to designate those archdemons which it opposes artificially and systematically to the Amesha-Spestas; they are Ivdra, Saurva, and INTRODUCTION, V. liti Naunghaithya, given as counterparts to Asha Vahista, ‘ Perfect Righteousness ;’ Khshathra Vairya, ‘Good Government ;’ and Spenta Armaiti, ‘Humility.’ There is nothing in their Avesta character that reminds one of Indra the Storm God, of Sarva a name of Siva, or of NAsatya the Asvin ; they are Wickedness, Tyranny, and Pride, by the mere fact of their opposition to the three Amshaspands, and it appears clear thereby that their present character is not the result of a prolonged evolution in the inner circle of Zoroastrianism. § 5. The Daéva Baiti who, by order of Angra Mainyu, ‘tries to kill Zarathustra on his being born, is according to the Greater Bundahis ‘the demon who resides in the idols’ (b(t), and is the same as Batasp worshipped in India. Batdsp, the founder of the Samanean or Buddhist sect, is no less a personage than the Bodhisattva, from which it follows that Baiti is nothing but the object of the Buddhist worship, the Buddha, or better the Bodhi. In fact once Bditi is called Bhidhi'!. Therefore, at the time when the legend of Zarathustra was written down, Buddhism was one of the religions with which he was supposed to have to struggle. The composer of the nineteenth Fargard of the Vendidad, therefore, knew of Buddhism, and this accounts for the striking analogies between the legend of Zarathustra’s temptation by Angra Mainyu and Sakya’s temptation by Mara. The Zoroastrian writer thought it fair to borrow such an edifying legend from the very religion he opposed. § 6. Another passage in the Yasts mentions controversies victoriously carried on by Zoroastrians against that impostor Gaotema. Here, again, it is striking to find Zoroastrians engaged in religious warfare with an enemy who bears one of the names of Buddha, Gotama. Controversies were to the taste of both sects: Gotama, in the GAtakas, seems to pass all his life in confounding heretics ; and late tradition ascribes to Zoroaster, as one of his most 1 Farg. XI, 9. liv VENDIDAD. glorious feats, the defeat and conversion of a great Indian sage Kangragaka.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Iraq and SavAd remained in the hands of the Arabs, who were waging a perpetual war with one another, as they are used to do®.” Therefore the texts in which the Arab Asi Dahaka appears as reigning in Babylon belong to a time when Arabs were already settled in Mesopotamia. A certain Zaini-gaus or ZainigAv ® is mentioned once in the Avesta as being conquered and killed by Frangrasyan * who on that one occasion was invested with the royal fivarené and who, accordingly, in the Shahn4ma, is credited with having delivered Iran from an Arab invasion: in the absence of Kai-KAds, it says, invaders flowed over Iran from every side, both Turanians and Arabs: ‘the Arabs were conquered by the Turanians.’ Perhaps the key to the Afrasy4b enigma is here. One can hardly understand how the Turanians beyond the Oxus, whom Afrésyab is supposed to represent, could repel the Arabs coming from over the Euphrates. But one must bear in mind that Afrasy4b’s career ends on the banks of the Kaééasta lake, in Adarbaigan 5, north of Mesopotamia. On another side, the legendary history of Yemen tells of the Tubbah Abd Kurrub’s invasions into Mesopotamia and his struggles with 1 Tg, a brother of Héshang and the ancestor of the TAagtks (Xitradad Nask, in Dinkart VIII, 13, 8). ? Tabari, tr. Zotenberg, II, 8-9. The Hatra, Hfra, and Ghassanian kingdoms were already flourishing in the first century of our era. The Ghassanians reigned at Damas when Paulus was a prisoner there. ® Bearing the same name as Asi Dahaka’s grandfather (p. xlix). * Yt. XIX, 93. The translation in the Sacted Books of the East is to be corrected as follows: ‘that glory that Frangrasyan, the Turanian, bore, when the wicked Zainigau was killed.’ (Cf. Greater Bundahis: ‘There was a fiend called Zinigiv who had poison in his eye: he had come from the country of the Arabs to reign on Iran-Shahr: any man he gazed at with his evil eye, he killed. The Iranians called Frasy4v into their country, he killed that Zinigdv.’) ® Yt. XVII, 42. INTRODUCTION, V. li the Turanians of Adarbaigan!; so that the wars of Frangrasyan and Zainigau may be an echo of the predatory struggles between the Arabs from the south and those Turanians of north-western Iran who were for centuries the plague of that country, and whom Khusr6é Néshirvan tried at last to imprison in the Caucasus. CHAPTER V. BRAHMANICAL, BUDDHIST, AND GREEK ELEMENTS. § 1. The political and social circumstances which the Avesta reflects being those of the Parthian time, one may easily expect to find in its doctrine the reaction of those civilisations, or religions, which flourished during that period either in Iran or in the neighbouring countries. In fact, we find in the Avesta either polemics against, or loans | from, the great contemporary systems, the Brahmanical, , the Buddhist, the Greek, and the Jewish.
2In fact, we find in the Avesta either polemics against, or loans | from, the great contemporary systems, the Brahmanical, , the Buddhist, the Greek, and the Jewish. § 2. The true Zoroastrian is called a Mazdayasna, ‘a worshipper of Mazda *,’ in contradistinction to the Daévayasna, ‘the worshipper of the Daévas.’ Daéva is generally understood as ‘a demon,’ and that is the meaning it has in the derived dév and in most of the Zend texts generally; as it is applied to the evil forces of nature, like the Wind- Daéva, or to the evil forces of the soul, like Aéshma, ‘Wrath;’ Akem Mand, ‘ Bad Thought;’ Tardmaiti, ‘ Pride.’ But it must also have applied to false gods, for the Daévayasna is not a bad Zoroastrian, it is a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian system, it is a foreigner, an Anaryan. Doctors must practise on Daévayasnas before treating Mazdayasnas, which is a rule clear and practical only if the Daévayasna is a worshipper of the false gods, of Indian, Assyrian, or Greek idols; for the test is simple enough. The word may have applied first and more 1 Tabari, J, 505 ; Hamza, tr. p. 98. ® The Sassanian kings took on their coins the title of Mazdayasn, instead of the Philhellen of the Arsacidae. d2 lii VENDIDAD. especially to the Indian religions and to the worshippers of Devas. § 3. The disparaging meaning of the word Deva in Zoroastrianism was formerly interpreted as a sign that Zoroaster’s religion was born in an Indo-Iranian period, from a moral reaction against Vedic polytheism, which sent to hell the former gods. This theory, as far as I can see, has no longer any supporter: it has been seen that it all rests on a few lexicographical particularities, not on inner historical evidence. In fact Zoroastrianism has much in common with the Vedic Pantheon; its supreme God, Ahura Mazda, is not more different from the great Asura, Varuza, than Zeus is from Jupiter ; the Zoroastrian Apollo, Mithra, answers exactly to the Vedic Mitra. The worship is centred on both sides around the sacred plant (Soma— _Haoma) and the sacred fire(Agni—Atar). The mythological struggle between the God of the Lightning, Indra, and the serpent Ahi is transferred to Atar (the Fire) and Asi. Yama, son of Vivasvat, and Traitana revive in Yima, son of Vivanghazt, and Thraétaona. How those analogies are to | be accounted for, whether they are the relics of an old Indo-Iranian religion, or whether they have been, entirely or partly, borrowed from either side by the other, remains an open question, which we are neither prepared to answer in the negative, nor to answer at all. But thus much is clear that there is not the slightest evidence or symptom of any such inner upheaval, rejecting a Vedic or quasi-Vedic religion, as was supposed to have taken place in prehistoric periods.
3But thus much is clear that there is not the slightest evidence or symptom of any such inner upheaval, rejecting a Vedic or quasi-Vedic religion, as was supposed to have taken place in prehistoric periods. § 4. This only remains, that when Zoroastrianism, with the exclusive character which belongs to moral religions, wanted to brand and condemn the most dangerous rival it encountered amongst its neighbours, it found no more characteristic name to designate the false gods and the demons than the name given to divine beings in the false religions of India which had so many followers in the eastern provinces of the empire. It went so far as to take the names of three Indian devas to designate those archdemons which it opposes artificially and systematically to the Amesha-Spestas; they are Ivdra, Saurva, and INTRODUCTION, V. liti Naunghaithya, given as counterparts to Asha Vahista, ‘ Perfect Righteousness ;’ Khshathra Vairya, ‘Good Government ;’ and Spenta Armaiti, ‘Humility.’ There is nothing in their Avesta character that reminds one of Indra the Storm God, of Sarva a name of Siva, or of NAsatya the Asvin ; they are Wickedness, Tyranny, and Pride, by the mere fact of their opposition to the three Amshaspands, and it appears clear thereby that their present character is not the result of a prolonged evolution in the inner circle of Zoroastrianism. § 5. The Daéva Baiti who, by order of Angra Mainyu, ‘tries to kill Zarathustra on his being born, is according to the Greater Bundahis ‘the demon who resides in the idols’ (b(t), and is the same as Batasp worshipped in India. Batdsp, the founder of the Samanean or Buddhist sect, is no less a personage than the Bodhisattva, from which it follows that Baiti is nothing but the object of the Buddhist worship, the Buddha, or better the Bodhi. In fact once Bditi is called Bhidhi'!. Therefore, at the time when the legend of Zarathustra was written down, Buddhism was one of the religions with which he was supposed to have to struggle. The composer of the nineteenth Fargard of the Vendidad, therefore, knew of Buddhism, and this accounts for the striking analogies between the legend of Zarathustra’s temptation by Angra Mainyu and Sakya’s temptation by Mara. The Zoroastrian writer thought it fair to borrow such an edifying legend from the very religion he opposed. § 6. Another passage in the Yasts mentions controversies victoriously carried on by Zoroastrians against that impostor Gaotema. Here, again, it is striking to find Zoroastrians engaged in religious warfare with an enemy who bears one of the names of Buddha, Gotama. Controversies were to the taste of both sects: Gotama, in the GAtakas, seems to pass all his life in confounding heretics ; and late tradition ascribes to Zoroaster, as one of his most 1 Farg. XI, 9. liv VENDIDAD. glorious feats, the defeat and conversion of a great Indian sage Kangragaka.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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