Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1It 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. § 3. Alexander's invasion brought in its wake political and moral anarchy. Zoroastrianism did not perish ; its dogmas, its worship, and part of its mythology survived ; but for want of a sacred authoritative book, there was no Zoroastrian orthodoxy. At the same time, the barriers between East and West being broken, all religions and © systems were brought face to face. The religious question became the order of the day. Buddhism and Brahmanism pushed from the East, Judaism from the West, Hellenism ruled all over Iran. In the systems that from all the four points of the compass spread into Iran, either with a conscious propagandist spirit, or through the slow, blind influences of every-day contacts, Zoroastrianism found both what repelled and what attracted it. Its practical and moral ideal revolted against the inert asceticism of Buddhism, the ethical indifference of Braéhmanism, and the superstitious, low worship of immoral Devas. § 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.
2§ 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.
3The 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 °®.
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.
1It 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. § 3. Alexander's invasion brought in its wake political and moral anarchy. Zoroastrianism did not perish ; its dogmas, its worship, and part of its mythology survived ; but for want of a sacred authoritative book, there was no Zoroastrian orthodoxy. At the same time, the barriers between East and West being broken, all religions and © systems were brought face to face. The religious question became the order of the day. Buddhism and Brahmanism pushed from the East, Judaism from the West, Hellenism ruled all over Iran. In the systems that from all the four points of the compass spread into Iran, either with a conscious propagandist spirit, or through the slow, blind influences of every-day contacts, Zoroastrianism found both what repelled and what attracted it. Its practical and moral ideal revolted against the inert asceticism of Buddhism, the ethical indifference of Braéhmanism, and the superstitious, low worship of immoral Devas. § 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.
2§ 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.
3The 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 °®.
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.
No commentary for this page.