History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 34

Ardashir, a Magus, rejuvenates Zoroastrianism. With the fall of the Achaemenian empire were extinguished the last sparks of the fire of racial jealousy between the Medes and Persians. Common hardships and common sorrows had obliterated all traces of bitter feeling for one another. The Seleucid period and the five centuries of Parthian rule, as another great empire in Iran, served all the more to make them now one compact homogeneous people, thinking with one mind, feeling with one heart, and acting with one aim. As already pointed out, the Magi did not receive recognition in the Avesta. It is not so in the Pahlavi period. The Avestan term athravan remains during this era as a class designation alone, but magopat, which later becomes mobad, is used throughout the Pahlavi literature, equally as a class designation for priesthood and as a personal title of a priest to distinguish him from a layman. Significant in this light becomes the fact that although the Persians of old had defeated the Medes and their sacerdotal caste, the Magi, it was now a Magus again that was destined to revive the national glory of Iran, and restore their ancient faith The Kingly Glory of Iran clave to a hero of the house of Sasan in the province of Fars,^[1] who was alike priest and king.^[2] Ardashir was his name, and the Iranian world rang with the praises of this son of Babak, whose fame is writ large in the history of Zoroastrianism.

This founder of the Sasanian dynasty won his spurs in the battle against Ardavan, the last of the Parthian kings, in A.D. 224 People turned their eager eyes to him for the national emancipation from the heavy yoke of the foreigners. His was the task of rebuilding the shattered fragments of the ancient Persian empire upon the ruins of the Parthian empire. When he succeeded in ​consolidating the various states of Iran into one mighty commonwealth under his sceptre, he proceeded vigorously thereupon to establish a polity in conformity with the teachings of Zoroaster which would unite his empire as Church and State. It was through Ardashir that Zoroastrianism became once more enthroned as the creed paramount, after a lapse of fully five centuries, and remained so for four centuries under the House of Sasan. The king himself, being of sacerdotal caste, strongly upheld the doctrine of the unity of the Church and the State. The two, he said, are like brother and sister; neither can flourish without the other.^[3] They both are interwoven together like two pieces of brocade.^[4] The Dinkart, which is the greatest of the Pahlavi works of this period, upholds the divine right of kings and states that if the temporal power of the glorious king Jamshid had been blended with the spiritual power of the supreme priest Zoroaster, the Evil Spirit would have lain low long ere this, and the Kingdom of Righteousness would have been established on earth once and forever.^[5] Both of these powers will be concentrated in the final saviour, who is to enable man to gain the final victory over the Kingdom of Wickedness.^[6]

Ardashir, as a pontiff-king himself, commissioned his high-priest Tansar to collect the scattered Avestan works and thus to prepare an authorized compilation of the sacred texts.^[7] The enthusiasm evoked among the faithful at the restoration of their lost scriptures presents a situation seldom paralleled in history, and certainly never surpassed in the religious development of Zoroastrianism.

The revival of Zoroastrianism continues with unabating zeal. The great work inaugurated by the first of the royal House of Sasan was zealously continued by his descendants and notably by Shapur II,^[8] who brought the work to completion with the help of his illustrious Dastur and premier Adarbad Mahraspand.^[9] Mani's heresy was at its height during this period, and Adarbad strove hard to restore the faith of his people that was undermined by the misguided leader's heretical teachings. In order to prove the marvels of the faith, Adarbad is reported to have submitted himself to the ordeal of the molten metal and to have ​come out unscathed.^[10] King Shapur thereupon declared the work, as thus redacted, to be authoritative, and he commanded that anything outside this canonical collection should not be countenanced. Another source states that still further steps were taken to put the truth of the religion to the test. Several pious mobads were convoked to attend at the temple of the fire Froba, and there to consider the momentous question of deputing one of their number to visit, in a vision, the spiritual world and thus to bring back from the angels themselves a first-hand knowledge of matters spiritual for the complete restoration of the religion. Seven holy men were first elected from the assembly. Out of this number Arda Viraf was selected as the most righteous and saintly. After preliminary ceremonies this holy man entered into a trance for seven days and nights, during which he was transported in spirit to the other world. His soul ascended into the realm of heaven, traversed the spiritual regions, and after beholding paradise visited likewise the inferno. Viraf described the experience of his visions and thus contributed to rehabilitating the faith of the people in their historic religion.

The Pahlavi works are written by many hands in successive periods. Though the canon was declared closed by the edict of Shapur II, the work of rendering the Avestan texts into Pahlavi with exegetic commentaries, and the composition of original works in the court language, continued throughout the Sasanian period, and even long after the downfall of the empire. Few if any of the exegetical works of Zoroastrianism written during the Sasanian period have survived the devastating hands of the conquering hordes of the Arabs, and almost all the important Pahlavi works that we possess to-day were written under the Abbasid Caliphs. The Persians in whose veins flowed the kingly blue blood had helped the Abbasids in overthrowing the Umayyads, thus avenging themselves upon their national foes, the Arabs. This greatly elevated the position of the Zoroastrians at the royal court of Bagdad. During this period it was that the composition of the Pahlavi treatises was undertaken with renewed vigour. To the ninth century we owe much of the Pahlavi literature that has come down to us. Thus the Pahlavi literature covers a period of about seven centuries, beginning ​from the first Sasanian ruler, Ardashir, or still earlier, and stretching downwards to the times of the illustrious Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, al-Ma'mun, or even later. The invention of the modern Persian alphabet restricted the use of Pahlavi to the learned clerics, who continued to make some slight additions to the Pahlavi literature up to the end of the eleventh century.^[11]

The Pahlavi literature has its roots in the Avestan soil. The Pahlavi works allege that the Avestan Nasks had perished, but the tradition transmitted orally from father to son and the fragments of the sacred texts did not suffer the Avestan lore to die out entirely. The extant Pahlavi works contain quotations from Avestan works that have not come down to us, and this may help to show that the later writers either quoted from memory or that they had access to Avestan works, since lost, when they wrote their Pahlavi treatises; or possibly it may serve to prove both facts. Nay, some of the Pahlavi works seem to be wholly or in part reproductions of some of the Avesta Nasks, and most scholars agree with West that the Pahlavi Bundahishn is an epitome of the Avestan Damdad Nask, that has since disappeared.^[12] This leads to the probable conclusion that besides the two archetype copies deposited in the royal treasuries at Persepolis and Samarkand, there may have existed other copies of these Nasks, in full or in part, in private possession or in the more notable fire-temples. The internal evidence of some of the most important Pahlavi works show us that they preserve much of the material derived from Avestan sources, which still existed in their days, but has been subsequently lost, and thus make up for the loss of the original Avestan books to a considerable extent.

The Pahlavi literature is the completion of the Avestan works. The Pahlavi works explain, elaborate, and describe in detail much of what is stated in brief in the original Avestan texts. This is the inestimable value of the Pahlavi literature. A few examples may serve to illustrate this statement.

The Avestan texts frequently mention 'the Time of Long Duration,' a period carved out from eternity as the age for the duration of the present world, but give no idea, as far as the texts have been preserved, as to the length of this mighty aeon. It is to ​the Pahlavi books that we have to turn to ascertain the specific duration of this period, for the millennial doctrine is recognized but not described in the Avestan writings that we possess to-day. It is worked out in full detail in the Pahlavi works. This fact might even suggest that the idea originated with the Pahlavists but such is not the case, for we know from Plutarch that Theopompus, who flourished in the fourth century B.C., or a little before the close of the Avestan period, was well acquainted with this doctrine of the Zoroastrians, and wrote about it in his works.^[13]

The Later Avestan texts speak of the future judgment, the rising of the dead, the renovation, but it is the Pahlavi works that acquaint us with the method of the administration of justice in the heavenly tribunal and the final restoration of the universe.

The texts of the Younger Avesta, as noted above, speak of different heavens and hells, but the Pahlavi works locate them, and give a detailed description of the area they cover, the boundaries that divide them from one another, and the conditions that prevail in them.

The trend of the religious thought of the Pahlavi period. We have described the change from the Gathic to the Avestan texts as a retrograde step; the Pahlavi texts are still farther removed from the Gathas. The Gathic ideal lingers and continues to be admired, but it has ceased to influence. It evokes praise from the Pahlavi writers, but fails to inspire them with its abstract tone.

Zoroaster is a historical personage in the Gathas. In the Later Avesta he becomes super-human; but in the Pahlavi works his personality is enshrouded by miracles, and he is transformed into a myth. The fascination for marvels in religion is an unmistakable sign of the times. Christian bishops, who, as we shall see in the further stage of our inquiry, carried on inveterate disputes with the Zoroastrian clergy in Persia, based the claim of the greatness of their own religion on miracles. Perhaps in consequence the life-story of Zoroaster, as told by the writers of the Pahlavi period, is similarly stamped with the mark of the miraculous. The Gathas and the Younger Avesta speak of the prophet's conferences with the Amshaspands, or archangels, and his communing with them. The Pahlavi texts, as we have seen, state ​that they came to the court of King Gushtasp as the envoys of Ormazd, to give proof of the divine calling of the prophet. Moreover, when Zoroaster met Vohuman, he actually saw the body and the face of the archangel, his size, and his garments, and in these celestial conferences with the archangels the prophet was requested by each in turn to command mankind to take due care of the concrete thing under the special charge of each as an Amshaspand and not the abstract virtue that each impersonates. Vohuman, for instance, as the genius of good mind, did not emphasize the faithful adherence to good thoughts, but contented himself with reminding the prophet to teach mankind to take care of the cattle. Artavahisht, the genius of righteousness, gave no command to Zaratusht to exhort men to follow the path of righteousness, but taught him that the best way of propitiating the heavenly spirit was to propitiate his fire. Similarly the other archangels in these celestial interviews did not hold up as the ideals the virtues over which they presided, but they inculcated due preservation of their respective earthly objects. A Pazend penitential prayer, whose authorship is attributed to Dastur Adarbad Mahraspand, the high-priest and premier of King Shapur (309–379 A.D.), mentions the Amshaspands by name, and exhorts the penitent to atone severally for the sins committed against them. In every case he addresses each archangel in turn and craves forgiveness for any offence that may have been committed by ill-treating the earthly object over which the genius presides Offences against the abstract virtues which the archangels impersonate are not mentioned in this treatise,^[14] and this fact tends decidedly to show that phase of Zoroastrianism in which abstract ideas were gradually losing in importance, and the concrete side of the religion was coming out with greater prominence.

This process of materializing the original abstract concepts reaches its climax in the eschatological notions of this period. The several heavens and hells, as also the bridge of judgment that leads to them, are now completely materialized. All the splendours of a royal court with its golden thrones, rich carpets, fine cushions are transferred to paradise. On the other hand, all sorts of physical tortures that man's ingenuity can devise prevail in hell.

​Fifteen hundred years separated Zoroaster from the Sasanian period, and a thick veil began to hide the pristine truth of his great religion from his followers.

The Sasanian Church became an arbiter of the faith of Zoroaster. It was through the Church that the religious teachings filtered into the populace. During the period of her great influence, when the State was practically under her tutelage, the Church rendered a lasting service by her attempts to reinvigorate the Mazdayasnian faith. She triumphed when she stood for the spirit of the religion of Mazda; but she failed when she descended to rigid formalism, stifled independent inquiry, stigmatized honest doubt as Ahrimanian, and sought to overrule original thinking by dogmatic assertions. Religion defeats its own ends when it degenerates into dogmatic theology. And it was not otherwise in Persia.