Product Code Database
Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster or Zarathustra, was an Iranian peoples religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. Variously described as a sage or a wonderworker; in the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, which he is believed to have authored, he is described as a preacher and a poet-prophet. He also had an impact on Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, and the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
He spoke an Eastern Iranian language, named Avestan by scholars after the Avesta. Based on this, it is tentative to place his homeland somewhere in the eastern regions of Greater Iran (perhaps in modern-day Afghanistan or Tajikistan), but his exact birthplace is uncertain.
His life is traditionally dated to sometime around the 7th and 6th centuries BC, making him a contemporary of Cyrus the Great, though most scholars, using linguistic and socio-cultural evidence, suggest a dating to somewhere in the second millennium BC. Zoroastrianism eventually became Iran's most prominent religion from around the 6th century BC, enjoying official sanction during the time of the Sassanid Empire, until the 7th century AD, when the religion itself began to decline following the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran. Zoroaster is credited with authorship of the Gathas as well as the , a series of hymns composed in Old Avestan that cover the core of Zoroastrian thinking. Little is known about Zoroaster; most of his life is known only from these scant texts. By any modern standard of historiography, no evidence can place him into a fixed period and the historicization surrounding him may be a part of a trend from before the 10th century AD that historicizes legends and myths.
In Avestan, is generally accepted to derive from an Old Iranian . The element half of the name () is thought to be the Indo-Iranian root for 'camel', with the entire name meaning 'he who can manage camels'. Reconstructions from later Iranian languages—particularly from the Middle Persian (300 BC) , which is the form that the name took in the 9th- to 12th-century Zoroastrian texts—suggest that might be a zero-grade form of . Subject then to whether derives from or from , several interpretations have been proposed.
If is the original form, it may mean 'with old/aging camels', related to Avestan language ( cf. Pashto and Ossetian , 'old'; Middle Persian , 'old'):Paul Horn, Grundriß der neupersischen Etymologie, Strassburg 1893
The interpretation of the () in the Avestan was for a time itself subjected to heated debate because the is an irregular development: as a rule, (a first element that ends in a dental consonant) should have Avestan or as a development from it. Why this is not so for has not yet been determined. Notwithstanding the phonetic irregularity, that Avestan with its was linguistically an actual form is shown by later attestations reflecting the same basis. All present-day Iranian-language variants of his name derive from the Middle Iranian variants of , which, in turn, all reflect Avestan's fricative .
In Middle Persian, the name is , in Parthian , in Manichaean Middle Persian , in Early New Persian , and in modern (New Persian language), the name is .
The name is attested in Classical Armenian sources as (often with the variant ). The most important of these testimonies were provided by the Armenian authors Eznik of Kolb, Elishe, and Movses Khorenatsi. The spelling was formed through an older form which started with , a fact which the German Iranologist Friedrich Carl Andreas (1846–1930) used as evidence for a Middle Persian spoken form . Based on this assumption, Andreas even went so far to form conclusions from this also for the Avestan form of the name. However, the modern Iranologist Rüdiger Schmitt rejects Andreas's assumption, and states that the older form which started with was just influenced by Armenian ('wrong, unjust, idle'), which therefore means that "the name must have been reinterpreted in an anti-Zoroastrian sense by the Armenian Christians". Furthermore, Schmitt adds: "it cannot be excluded, that the (Parthian or) Middle Persian form, which the Armenians took over ( or the like), was merely metathesized to . ".
It has been suggested by Silk Road Seattle, using its own interpretations of Victor H. Mair's writings on the topic that Zoroaster could have been born in the 2nd millennium BC.
Almut Hintze, the British Library, and the European Research Council have dated Zoroaster to roughly 3,500 years ago, in the 2nd millennium BC.
9 and 17 cite the Ditya River in [[Airyanem Vaējah|Airyanem Vaejah]] (Middle Persian ) as Zoroaster's home and the scene of his first appearance. The [[Avesta]] (both Old and Younger portions) does not mention the Achaemenids or of any West Iranian tribes such as the [[Medes]], [[Persians|Persian people]], or even [[Parthia]]ns. The refers to some Iranian peoples that are unknown in the Greek and Achaemenid sources about the 6th and 5th century BC Eastern Iran. The contain 17 regional names, most of which are located in north-eastern and eastern Iran.
However, in 59.18, the , or supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, is said to reside in 'Ragha' (Badakhshan). In the 9th- to 12th-century Middle Persian texts of Zoroastrian tradition, this 'Ragha' and with many other places appear as locations in Western Iran. While the land of Media does not figure at all in the Avesta (the westernmost location noted in scripture is Arachosia), the , or "Primordial Creation", (20.32 and 24.15) puts Ragha in Medes (medieval Rai). However, in Avestan, Ragha is simply a toponym meaning 'plain, hillside.'.
Apart from these indications in Middle Persian sources that are open to interpretations, there are a number of other sources. The Greek and Latin sources are divided on the birthplace of Zoroaster. There are many Greek accounts of Zoroaster, referred usually as Persian or Perso-Median Zoroaster; Ctesias located him in Bactria, Diodorus Siculus placed him among Ariaspai (in Sistan), Cephalion and Justin suggest east of greater Iran whereas Pliny and Origen suggest west of Iran as his birthplace. Moreover, they have the suggestion that there has been more than one Zoroaster. (2025). 9781855068285, Thoemmes. ISBN 9781855068285
On the other hand, in post-Islamic sources Al-Shahrastani (1086–1153), an Iranian peoples writer originally from Shahristān, in present-day Turkmenistan, proposed that Zoroaster's father was from Atropatene (also in Medea) and his mother was from Rey. Coming from a reputed scholar of religions, this was a serious blow to the various regions which all claimed that Zoroaster originated from homelands, some of which then decided that Zoroaster must then have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there. cf. . cf. . Arabic sources of the same period and the same region of historical Persia also consider Azerbaijan as the birthplace of Zarathustra.
By the late 20th century, most scholars had settled on an origin in eastern Greater Iran. Gnoli proposed Sistan, Baluchistan (though in a much wider scope than the present-day province) as the homeland of Zoroastrianism; Frye voted for Bactria and Chorasmia;. Khlopin suggests the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan.. Sarianidi considered the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex region as "the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself.". Boyce includes the to the west from the Volga River.. The medieval "from Media" hypothesis is no longer taken seriously, and Zaehner has even suggested that this was a Magi-mediated issue to garner legitimacy, but this has been likewise rejected by Gershevitch and others.
The 2005 Encyclopedia Iranica article on the history of Zoroastrianism summarizes the issue with "while there is general agreement that he did not live in western Iran, attempts to locate him in specific regions of eastern Iran, including Central Asia, remain tentative".
Zoroaster's training for priesthood probably started very early around seven years of age. He became a priest probably around the age of 15, and according to Gathas, gaining knowledge from other teachers and personal experience from traveling when he left his parents at age 20. By the age of 30, Zoroaster experienced a revelation during a spring festival; on the river bank he saw a shining being, who revealed himself as (Good Purpose) and taught him about (Wise Lord) and five other radiant figures. Zoroaster soon became aware of the existence of two primal spirits, the second being (Destructive Spirit), with opposing concepts of (order) and (deception). Thus he decided to spend his life teaching people to seek . He received further revelations and saw a vision of the seven , and his teachings were collected in the and the .
Eventually, at the age of about 42, Zoroaster received the patronage of queen Hutaosa and a ruler named Vishtaspa, an early adherent of Zoroastrianism (possibly from Bactria according to the Shahnameh).
According to the tradition, he lived for many years after Vishtaspa's conversion, managed to establish a faithful community, and married three times. His first two wives bore him three sons, Isat Vâstra, Urvatat Nara, and Hvare Chithra, and three daughters, Freni, Thriti, and Pouruchista. His third wife, Hvōvi, was childless. Zoroaster died when he was 77 years and 40 days old. There are conflicting traditions on Zoroaster's manner of death. The most common is that he was murdered by a (priest of the old religion) named Brādrēs, while performing at an altar. The , and the Epic poem , ascribe his death to a Turanian soldier named Baraturish, potentially a spin on the same figure, while other traditions combine both accounts or hold that he died of old age.
The orientalist Arthur Christensen in his book '' Iran During The Sassanid Era'' , mentioned that the sources dating back to the era of the Sasanian Empire state in Old Persian that refer to the Zoroastrian doctrine do not match the sources that appeared after the collapse of the state, such as the Pahlavi source and others. The reason is that because of the fall of the Sasanian state, the Zoroastrian clerics tried to save their religion from extinction through modifying it to resemble the religion of Muslims to retain followers in the Zoroastrian religion.
Gherardo Gnoli comments that the Islamic conquest of Persia caused a huge impact on the Zoroastrian doctrine:
Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla described the doctrine of the Gayomarthians sect as another attempt to mitigate the dualism that has always been the essence of Zoroastrianism. This was due to the Prophet Muhammad’s emphasis on monotheism and the Muslims’ mockery of the doctrine of worshipping two gods, which made the Zoroastrians view dualism as a defect, so they added monotheism, which led to the Zoroastrians’ division into sects and he mentions examples of the Zoroastrian attempt to establish a monotheistic belief by diminishing the importance of Ahriman, including that Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were created from time, or that Ahura Mazda himself allowed the existence of evil, or that Ahriman was a corrupt angel who rebelled against Ahura Mazda. Then he mentions the name of a Persian book from the 15th century in which it is written that the Magi (Zoroastrians) believe that Allah and Iblis are brothers.
This provides an explanation of why a number of parallels have been drawn between Zoroastrian teachings and Islam. Such parallels include the evident similarities between Amesha Spenta and the archangel Gabriel, praying five times a day, covering one's head during prayer, and the mention of Thamud and Iram of the Pillars in the Quran.
The Sabians, who believed in free will coincident with Zoroastrians, are also mentioned in the Quran 22:17.
Ibn Kathir has quoted the original narrative was borrowed from Tabari's record of the "History of Jerusalem". He also mentioned that Zoroastrian was synonymous with Majus.
Sibt ibn al-Jawzi instead stated that some older narration said that Zoroaster was a former disciple of Uzair.
Al-Tabari (I, 681–683) recounts that Zaradusht accompanied a Jewish prophet to Bishtasb/Vishtaspa. Upon their arrival, Zaradusht translated the sage's Hebrew teachings for the king and so convinced him to convert (Tabari also notes that they had previously been ) to the Magian religion.
The 12th-century heresiology al-Shahrastani describes the Majusiya into three sects, the (an otherwise undocumented sect that – per Sharastani – seems to have had a stronger doctrine of Ahriman's "non-reality"), the and the , among which Al-Shahrastani asserts that only the last of the three were properly followers of Zoroaster. As regards the recognition of a prophet, Zoroaster has said: "They ask you as to how should they recognize a prophet and believe him to be true in what he says; tell them what he knows the others do not, and he shall tell you even what lies hidden in your nature; he shall be able to tell you whatever you ask him and he shall perform such things which others cannot perform." (Namah Shat Vakhshur Zartust, .5–7. 50–54)
The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain and align itself to . For humankind, this occurs through active ethical participation in life, ritual, and the exercise of constructive/good thoughts, words, and deeds.
Elements of Zoroastrian philosophy entered the West through their influence on Judaism and Platonism and have been identified as one of the key early events in the development of philosophy. Among the classic Greek philosophers, Heraclitus is often referred to as inspired by Zoroaster's thinking.
In 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zoroaster as first in the chronology of philosophers.Frankfort, H., Frankfort, H. A. G., Wilson, J. A., & Jacobsen, T. (1964). Before Philosophy. Penguin, Harmondsworth. Zoroaster's impact lingers today due in part to the system of religious ethics he founded called . The word is Avestan and is translated as 'Worship of Wisdom/Mazda' in English. The encyclopedia Natural History (Pliny) claims that Zoroastrians later educated the Greeks who, starting with Pythagoras, used a similar term, philosophy, or "love of wisdom" to describe the search for ultimate truth.
Zoroaster emphasized the freedom of the individual to choose right or wrong and individual responsibility for one's deeds. This personal choice to accept and shun is one's own decision and not a dictate of . For Zoroaster, by thinking good thoughts, saying good words, and doing good deeds (e.g. assisting the needy, doing good works, or conducting good rituals) one increases in the world and in themselves, celebrating the divine order, and coming a step closer on the everlasting road to . Thus, mankind are not the slaves or servants of , but can make a personal choice to be co-workers, thereby perfecting the world as saoshyants ("world-perfecters") and eventually achieving the status of an ("master of ").
Zoroaster is rarely depicted as looking directly at the viewer; instead, he appears to be looking slightly upwards, as if beseeching. Zoroaster is almost always depicted with a beard along with other factors bearing similarities to 19th-century portraits of Jesus.
Many modern depictions of Zoroaster derive from a Sassanid-era rock-face carving at Taq-e Bostan. In this depiction, a figure is seen to preside over the coronation of either Ardashir I or Ardashir II. The figure is standing on a lotus, with a in hand and with a gloriole around his head. Until the 1920s, this figure was commonly thought to be a depiction of Zoroaster, but in recent years is more commonly interpreted to be a depiction of Mithra.
Zoroaster has also been described as a sorcerer-astrologerthe creator of both magic and astrology. Deriving from that image, and reinforcing it, was a "mass of literature" attributed to him and that circulated the Mediterranean world from the 3rd century BC to the end of antiquity and beyond..
The language of that literature was predominantly Greek language, though at one stage or another various parts of it passed through Aramaic language, Syriac language, Coptic language, or Latin. Its ethos and cultural matrix was likewise Hellenistic, and "the ascription of literature to sources beyond that political, cultural and temporal framework represents a bid for authority and a fount of legitimizing "alien wisdom". Zoroaster and the magi did not compose it, but their names sanctioned it.". The attributions to "exotic" names (not restricted to magians) conferred an "authority of a remote and revelatory wisdom.".
Among the named works attributed to "Zoroaster" is a treatise On Nature (), which appears to have originally constituted four volumes (i.e. papyrus rolls). The framework is a retelling of Plato's Myth of Er, with Zoroaster taking the place of the original hero. While Porphyry imagined Pythagoras listening to Zoroaster's discourse, On Nature has the Sun in middle position, which was how it was understood in the 3rd century. In contrast, Plato's 4th-century BC version had the Sun in second place above the Moon. Colotes accused Plato of plagiarizing Zoroaster, and Heraclides Ponticus wrote a text titled Zoroaster based on his perception of "Zoroastrian" philosophy, in order to express his disagreement with Plato on natural philosophy. With respect to substance and content in On Nature only two facts are known: that it was crammed with astrological speculations, and that Necessity ( Ananké) was mentioned by name and that she was in the air.
Pliny the Elder names Zoroaster as the inventor of magic ( Natural History 30.2.3). "However, a principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds." That "dubious honor" went to the "fabulous magus, Ostanes, to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was attributed.". Although Pliny calls him the inventor of magic, the Roman does not provide a "magician's persona" for him. Moreover, the little "magical" teaching that is ascribed to Zoroaster is actually very late, with the very earliest example being from the 14th century..
Association with astrology according to Roger Beck, were based on his origin, and Zoroaster's Greek name was identified at first with star-worshiping (, 'star sacrificer") and, with the , even as the 'living' star.. Later, an even more elaborate mythoetymology evolved: Zoroaster died by the living () flux () of fire from the star () which he himself had invoked, and even, that the stars killed him in revenge for having been restrained by him.
The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratras or Zaratas/Zaradas/Zaratos.Cf. Agathias 2.23–5 and Clement's Stromata I.15. Pythagoreanism considered the mathematicians to have studied with Zoroaster in Babylonia.See Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras 12, Alexander Polyhistor apud Clement's Stromata I.15, Diodorus of Eritrea and Aristoxenus apud Hippolytus VI32.2, for the primary sources. Lydus, in On the Months, attributes the creation of the seven-day week to "the Babylonians in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes," and who did so because there were seven planets.Lydus, On the Months, II.4. Lucian, in Mennipus 6, reports deciding to journey to Babylon "to ask one of the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors," for their opinion.Lucian, Mennipus 6.
While the division along the lines of Zoroaster/astrology and Ostanes/magic is an "oversimplification, the descriptions do at least indicate what the works are "; they were not expressions of Zoroastrian doctrine, they were not even expressions of what the Greeks and Romans " the doctrines of Zoroastrianism to have been". The assembled fragments do not even show noticeable commonality of outlook and teaching among the several authors who wrote under each name..
Almost all Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha is now lost, and of the attested texts—with only one exception—only fragments have survived. Pliny's 2nd- or 3rd-century attribution of "two million lines" to Zoroaster suggest that (even if exaggeration and duplicates are taken into consideration) a formidable pseudepigraphic corpus once existed at the Library of Alexandria. This corpus can safely be assumed to be pseudepigrapha because no one before Pliny refers to literature by "Zoroaster", and on the authority of the 2nd-century Galen and from a 6th-century commentator on Aristotle it is known that the acquisition policies of well-endowed royal libraries created a market for fabricating manuscripts of famous and ancient authors..
The exception to the fragmentary evidence (i.e. reiteration of passages in works of other authors) is a complete Coptic tractate titled (after the first-person narrator) discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. A three-line cryptogram in the colophones following the 131-page treatise identify the work as "words of truth of Zostrianos. God of Truth . Words of Zoroaster.". Invoking a "God of Truth" might seem Zoroastrian, but there is otherwise "nothing noticeably Zoroastrian" about the text and "in content, style, ethos and intention, its affinities are entirely with the congeners among the Gnostic tractates."
Another work circulating under the name of "Zoroaster" was the (or ), and which ran to five volumes (i.e. papyrus rolls). The title and fragments suggest that it was an astrological handbook, "albeit a very varied one, for the making of predictions." A third text attributed to Zoroaster is On Virtue of Stones (), of which nothing is known other than its extent (one volume) and that pseudo-Zoroaster 'sang' it (from which Cumont and Bidez conclude that it was in verse). Numerous other fragments preserved in the works of other authors are attributed to "Zoroaster", but the titles of those books are not mentioned.
These pseudepigraphic texts aside, some authors did draw on a few genuinely Zoroastrian ideas. The Oracles of Hystaspes, by "Vishtaspa", another prominent magian pseudo-author, is a set of prophecies distinguished from other Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha in that it draws on real Zoroastrian sources. Some allusions are more difficult to assess: in the same text that attributes the invention of magic to Zoroaster, Pliny states that Zoroaster laughed on the day of his birth, although in an earlier place, Pliny had sworn in the name of Hercules that no child had ever done so before the 40th day from his birth.Pliny, VII, I. This notion of Zoroaster's laughter also appears in the 9th– to 11th-century texts of genuine Zoroastrian tradition, and for a time it was assumed that the origin of those myths lay with indigenous sources. Pliny also records that Zoroaster's head had pulsated so strongly that it repelled the hand when laid upon it, a presage of his future wisdom.Pliny, VII, XV. The Iranians were however just as familiar with the Greek writers, and the provenance of other descriptions are clear. For instance, Plutarch's description of its dualistic theologies reads thus: "Others call the better of these a god and his rival a daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the Magus, who lived, so they record, five thousand years before the siege of Troy. He used to call the one Ahura Mazda and the other Angra Mainyu".Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, 46–7.
In E. T. A. Hoffmann's novel Little Zaches (1819), the mage Prosper Alpanus states that Professor Zoroaster was his teacher.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), considered to be his seminal work, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gives to the central character the native Iranian name "Zarathustra".. Nietzsche explained the choice of the name in his autobiographical work Ecce Homo: "Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle of good and evil the true driving-wheel in the machinery of things ... Zarathustra created the disastrous error that is morality: thus he must also be the first to acknowledge the mistake." Though the naming of Zarathustra is an acknowledgement of the lineage of moralism, Nietzsche advocates atheism and moral nihilism, directly contradicting the philosophy of Zoroaster, and makes subversive allusions to Zoroastrianism. Despite Nietzsche's iconoclasm, some admirers of pre-Islamic Persian culture see his use of the name "Zarathustra" as a mark of uncritical respect towards the historical figure, and may consequently misinterpret Nietzsche's philosophy.
|
|
