History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 46

Iran sinks before the hordes of Arabs. The death of Khusru Parviz, who had waged the last war in the standing rivalry with the West, heralded the collapse of the Persian empire. The death-knell of the national greatness had been struck when with the advent of the weak kings on the throne the commanders, who felt the allegiance of the army to them rather than to the person of the king, persuaded the army to revolt. Rival princes strove to assert their respective rights to the throne. Court intrigues and strifes became rife. The long wars with the Romans in the far West and the Eastern hordes near at home, whose inroads were facilitated by the unfavourable geographical position of Persia, had exhausted the national resources. Famine and plague had extended their ravages over the whole country. Unbridled luxury, with all its concomitant vices, was imported from foreign lands, and the simplicity of life inculcated by Zarathushtra and zealously upheld by the Dasturs was abandoned. The masses did not escape the contagion of the luxury and vice of the nobility, and the love of simplicity was replaced by a feverish worship of pleasure. The simple habits fostered by agricultural pursuits were on the wane; and the entire social fabric of Iran was seriously dislocated. The springs of patriotism were sapped, and the bravery with which the Persians of old had faced their national foes was weakened. The age of valour had given place to an age of weakness and decay.

These causes aggravated the downfall of Iran and foreshadowed the coming catastrophe, and there was none to come out as a saviour in this the darkest period of the nation's agony, so as to avert the impending ruin. In the midst of this chaos and confusion, Yazdagard III, the last of the illustrious house of Sasan, sat on the tottering throne.

Since Zoroaster founded his religion, Persia played her con​spicuous part as one of the mightiest empires of the world in Asia, Africa, and Europe. During this long period when mighty empires rose and fell and great events in human history took place, the peninsula of Arabia harboured a vast population that led its uneventful, independent life. The pastoral people were divided into innumerable tribes always at war with one another. These sons of the desert were generous and hospitable, active and of rugged virtues. They were inured to fatigue and scorching rays of the sun. They made predatory excursions upon neighbouring peoples Internal feuds kept them divided.

On a sudden, the greatest and most marvellous revolution of human history overtook Arabia, which soon changed the history of mankind. Arabia gave a great prophet to the world. Mohammed united the discordant, warring tribes into one people and bound them with one common religious and political bond. He breathed new life into the multitude and made them conscious of their power. He leavened the masses, elevated their morals, taught them a higher form of worship, and instilled in them a sense of the dignity of human nature. He inspired them with religious fervour and animated them with burning enthusiasm for one mighty cause, the spread of Islam. To their traditional warlike zeal, he added religious enthusiasm and this combination made them irresistible. They fought with fiery zeal, reckless valour, and fanatic fury. They broke the mightiest empires of the world and changed the destinies of mankind.

Pulsating with the vigour and zeal of youth, and frenzied by the sudden rise of fortune, the host of these formidable foes overran Iran in the first half of the seventh century; and the decisive battles of Qadisiya and Nihavand sealed her fate. The Kingly Glory that had guarded the fortunes of the nation had flown away, and the star of Islam had risen. The Crescent superseded the Kava banner, Shahinshah was followed by Caliph, Ormazd was replaced by Allah. Zaratusht gave place to Mohammed, the Koran supplanted the Avesta, and the thrilling cry of the Muazzin from the minaret of the mosque drowned the intonations of the Mobad at the altar in the fire-temple and proclaimed; God is great. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.

Persecution and conversion. The Iranian nation now broke into pieces. There was not the remotest chance of its ever ​rising to power again. Confusion and chaos became rampant. The sufferings wrought on the faithful by the conquering hordes defy description. Tens of thousands embraced Islam, and threw in their lot with the conquerors to find relief from the persecution that raged around them. Many went over to the new faith because it enabled them to preserve their power and influence. Others became converts, because conversion brought to them exemption from the payment of the poll-tax. Similar causes contributed to the conversion of the Zoroastrians to Islam in the course of successive centuries. Many embraced Islam under the influence of Abu Muslim during the eighth century. The Samanid dynasty (A.D. 874–999) is named after Saman, a Zoroastrian noble of Balkh. He claimed his descent from the famous warrior Bahram Chaubin. He gave up his faith for the religion of Mohammed. The Zoroastrian king of the Qabusiyya dynasty adopted Islam at the beginning of the ninth century. The influence of Daylam brought many Zoroastrians to Islam during the end of the ninth century. The Zoroastrian poet named Mahyar gave up his ancestral religion under the influence of his Mohammedan poet friend who had instructed him in the art of poetry. Those that were more devoted to the national faith resolved to stick to it at any cost. In this they were imitating their prophet who, when tempted by Ahriman to renounce the good Mazdayasnian religion, had said that he would not do so even to save his body or his life.^[1] The inevitable had come, but they could not afford to resign themselves to it. If they fostered the spirit of resignation and despair, they would be wiped away from the surface of the earth in the intense struggle for existence. Zoroastrianism inspired them from within to assert themselves, even in the face of disheartening obstacles of such magnitude and the fear of coming calamities that were ever imminent. If Ahriman had reduced them to such an abject state, it was cowardice to succumb to his doing. It was heroic to revolt against it.

The frequent ravages caused by the inroads of the Tartar and Turk, Mongol and Afghan hordes added to the hardships of the Iranians. Persecutions checkered their progress. Century after century their number decreased by repeated conversions to Islam. When Agha Mohammed Khan, the founder of the Qajar ​dynasty, laid a siege to Kerman during the end of the eighteenth century, there were about twelve thousand Zoroastrian families in that city alone. About a thousand families have come over to India during the last century. There are about three thousand families left in Iran to-day. Writing to their coreligionists in India in the fifteenth century, they complain that ever since the overthrow of the empire they are living under such troublesome times that the atrocities of a Zohak, or an Afrasiab, or an Alexander, pale before what they have been suffering for nine centuries.^[2] The unfortunate people were denied freedom of thought, safety of life and property, and human justice up to the end of the last century. They retired within themselves, and struggled to eke out an unhappy existence. They slept smarting under the indignities inflicted on them during the day, were haunted by the spectre of persecution in their dreams, and awoke in the morning with gloomy thoughts of the impending morrow. At best they were suffered to exist, they could not live humanly. This was the veritable iron age of Zoroastrianism and its followers, spoken of in the Bahman Yasht. Zoroastrianism had struggled for its very existence during this period in Persia, and its followers during such troublesome times had to practise their religious rites by stealth.

Almost every vestige of Iranian scholarship perishes. The literary edifice of Iran had crumbled along with the empire, after the invasion of Alexander the Great. What little the nation was able to restore during the Sasanian period fell now once more before the devastating fury of the Arabs. Iranian culture never truly emerged from the shock of this final blow. Many of the most famous writers who have contributed to the Arabic literature and science were themselves Zoroastrian converts to Islam or descendants of those who had embraced Islam in earlier days. We look in vain in the extant Pahlavi literature for the literary works of merit on secular subjects by the Zoroastrian writers. These have evidently perished. We meet with occasional attempts on the part of the priests to save the literary tradition from extinction. The fall of the Umayyads and the ascendency of the Abbasid Caliphs in 749, by the help of the Persians, succeeded in supplanting the Arab supremacy by a Persian power. The Abbasids owed their elevation to the throne to the ​Persians, who now rose to power and influence. Persian method of administration, and Persian food, dress and music prevailed at the royal court and among the people. The observance of the Nuruz, the festival of the New Year, was introduced. Ministers of Persian extraction came to the head of affairs. A noble Persian family, known to history, as the Barmicide, descended from Barmak, who was the high-priest of the great fire-temple of Navbahar at Balkh, remained in power for over fifty years (A.D. 752–804) and wisely directed the affairs of the Caliphate. The Zoroastrians got a favourable opportunity of peacefully conducting their literary activities; and some of the important Pahlavi works that have come down to us were produced during this period, more particularly in the reign of al-Mamun, (A.D. 813–833). After that era the literary activity appears to have been arrested, for no original works were produced that can be assigned to the period following. The work of copying manuscripts, however, was carried on up to modern times, and it is owing to the zealous activity of faithful adherents to the cause that the ancient works have reached us.

A glimpse into the religious life of the Iranians during the centuries that followed. From this period onward we have very little knowledge of the religious life of the stray remnants of Zoroastrians in Persia. The insufficiency of the data prevents us from forming any very clear opinion about their beliefs. What little information we have of this period comes mostly from the Mohammedan writers.

Masudi wrote about A.D. 950 that Avesta came as revelation from heaven. Zend is commentary. Those who differed from the Avesta were called Zendiks, because they based their statements on the Zend rather than the original Avesta. Al-Biruni, who flourished about A.D. 1000, gives some scattered information on miscellaneous matters of religious practice, which he gathered from the Zoroastrians of his day. We shall select some points of interest from his description. The angel Srosh, he notes, is spoken of as the most powerful angel against the sorcerers, and he visits the world three times during the night to rout them. It was Srosh who introduced the practice of Zamzama, that is, reciting one's prayers with closed lips and emitting inarticulate sounds or in bāj, as the Zoroastrians do to this present day. Artavahisht, as the genius of fire and light, watches ​over mankind, he says, and heals diseases with drugs, but besides this, as the genius who presides at the ordeal by fire, distinguishes a truth-speaking man from a liar.^[3] We have already seen that by the end of the Pahlavi period the sharp distinction between man's soul and his Farohar was forgotten, and both were regarded as one and the same. Commenting upon the observance of the Fravardigan festival, or the days set apart for the propitiation of the Farohars, in his own time, al-Biruni says that the Zoroastrians believed that the souls of the dead, both righteous and wicked, descended to the earth during these ten days. They, therefore, fumigated the house with juniper, and put dishes of food and drink on the roofs of their houses, in the pious expectation that the souls would inhale their savour and receive nourishment and comfort. The pious souls, moreover, assumed invisible forms, dwelt among their relatives, and took part in their affairs.^[4] Spandarmad, he observes, is the guardian of the earth and of chaste women who are devoted to their husbands. On the fifth day of the twelfth month, both of which take their names after this archangel, the author says people write a charm on three pieces of paper to scare away the noxious creatures and fix them on three walls of their house.^[5] The custom lingers in some Parsi families in India up to this day. People get a Pahlavi incantation written by the priests, preferably in red, and stick it to the front door of their houses. Zoroastrianism never enjoined days of fast, and we have already seen from the Pahlavi works that fasting was regarded a sin. The injunction not to fast seems to have been faithfully followed. for al-Biruni attests that he who observed a fast was compelled to feed some needy persons by way of expiation for his sin.^[6] Zoroastrians were generally called fire-worshippers. Firdausi admonishes his coreligionists on the point and asks them not to speak of the Zoroastrians as fire-worshippers because they were the worshippers of one holy God. Kazwini, writing about A.D. 1263, says that Zoroaster made the fire a Kibla and not a god.^[7]

We have already seen that the religious dissensions during the Parthian and Sasanian periods had racked the Zoroastrian ​world. Sects and heresies had sprung up in consequence. Several of these flourished in Iran for centuries after the downfall of the Persian empire. Shahristani (A.D. 1086–1153) in his Book of Sects attests the existence of some of these in his times. The more prominent of these were the Mazdakites, Zarvanites, and the Gayomarthians. The latter sect, about which we hear for the first time, evidently derived its name from Gayomard, the primeval man. The followers of this sect, we are told, believe in an eternal being who is called Yazdan. This first principle, it is said, existed when there was nothing beside him; he entertained a thought in his mind on the probability of the origin of an adversary. This evil thought originated Ahriman, the spirit of darkness. Ever since the manifestation of this evil one, there goes on a fierce war between the powers of light and darkness.^[8]

This appears to be still another attempt to palliate dualism which has ever been the crux of Zoroastrianism. The question comes up time after time and was the cause of many sectarian divisions among the believers. Mohammed strongly urges the unity of God. He preaches rigid monotheism. Iblis or satan, in his system, is a fallen angel and, unlike Ahriman, owes his existence to God. Worshipping two gods must have been the taunt hurled at the doctors of the Zoroastrian Church by the Moslem divines. Those among the Mazdayasnians who seem to have viewed dualism as a flaw in their religious system apparently endeavoured to give it a monistic form by declaring that Yazdan originated Ahriman.

The Zoroastrian author of the Ulama-i Islam, a controversial treatise in Persian, written in about the fourteenth century, acquaints us with the different opinions held in his own day, to account for this ever-recurring problem. Himself a Zarvanite, the author attests the existence of several different sects, who variously held that both Ormazd and Ahriman have originated from Time, or that Ormazd himself permitted evil to exist in order that his goodness might be better appreciated, or that Ahriman was a reprobate angel who revolted from Ormazd.^[9]

A Persian treatise entitled Siwar-i Akalim-i Sab'ah, or ​Sketches of Seven Countries, composed at the beginning of the fifteenth century, states that the Magi believe God and Iblis to be two brothers. A thousand years of the world are a cycle of God, and a thousand of Satan.^[10]

The Rivayat literature, a collection of questions and answers on ritual observances exchanged between the Parsis of India and their coreligionists in Persia, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, enables us to gain an insight into the theological beliefs of the Zoroastrians of Persia during that time, and as these Rivayats were compiled in India, we shall recur to them when we discuss the Indian period.

The Zoroastrian community in Persia, during these centuries lay steeped in the grossest ignorance and darkness. Although the condition of the Zoroastrians in their fatherland had been growing more and more precarious, they still had succeeded, amid chaos and confusion, in maintaining for a considerably long time their superiority over their Indian coreligionists in the knowledge of their sacred literature. We shall see in the subsequent pages how the Indian Parsis had to look to the Iranians for enlightenment in religious matters. The learned Iranian Mobad Jamasp, who came from Kerman to Surat in 1721, found the state of the intelligence of the Zoroastrian priests in India so low that he resolved to impart religious instruction to some of the leading high priests during the period of his stay in the land. The Dasturs of Surat, Navsari, and Broach consequently became his disciples;^[11] and the first of these, Dastur Darab, later became the teacher of Anquetil du Perron. But the times later changed. Zoroastrian scholarship could not thrive in Persia, as it was able to do under the conditions in India. The mother-country to-day has to look to her thriving children living in India for religious instruction, and for masters from the adopted land able to teach the Zoroastrian Persians themselves, as Perșia has not been in a position for more than a hundred years to give any real instruction to the Indian Parsis, or to produce any literary work that could throw light on their sacred books. Zoroaster's teachings had, for a century, been losing their hold upon the community of the faithful in Iran. When the representative of the Society for the ​Amelioration of the Zoroastrians in Persia, founded by the munificence of the Parsis of India, first visited Persia in the middle of the last century, he found persons of full age living without the sacred shirt and girdle, the indispensable marks of a Zoroastrian. He saw them smoking tobacco without any compunction. Superstition had been rampant.

It was manifest the pristine purity of the faith had departed with the greatness and glory of the Iranian nation. The sacred fire, kindled by the holy prophet in the remote past, was still there, it is true, but the demon Az had stretched his icy hands to extinguish it, leaving the fire of Ormazd only smouldering in ashes upon the altar. Nevertheless, though shorn of its innate radiance, its sparks were not quenched, and its ashes were still hot; only a Tansar or an Adarbad was needed to fan it into flame.

Such has been the tale of sorrow and suffering of the group that chose to remain behind their enterprising coreligionists who, engendered by a spirit of adventure, set sail for India and planted their colonies in Gujarat Different is the story that the Indian group has to tell us. It is one of phenomenal progress, unprecedented prosperity, social regeneration, and religious revival. To this we shall now turn.