History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 58

Indifference on the part of the Parsi youth arouses the proselytizing zeal of the Christian missionaries. These thought that they could easily turn the apathy of the newly educated Parsi youth for his own religion to interest in the faith of Jesus, if they could convince him of the superiority of Christianity over his national creed. The impressionable youth once secured, they imagined, would prove a valuable asset in bringing over his enlightened coreligionists to the Christian fold. Christianity would thus easily spread downwards among the masses, they thought, if only they could capture the upper educated classes. The missionaries felt that this handful of the progressive people, who approached nearest to the Western people in their modes of living, would ultimately be easily won over to their faith. With this object in view some of them began to study the Zoroastrian scriptures first hand, during the latter part of the first half of the last century. They picked out what seemed to them to be vulnerable points in the Zoroastrian faith, and exposed them to the ridicule of the Parsi youth newly tinged with Western ideas. The community was alarmed at this aggression, the more so when a couple of converts were actually made to Christianity from this class.

Salient features of Zoroastrianism assailed by the missionaries. The religion of Zoroaster, the controversialists alleged, abounded in absurdities and incongruities. It was based on the idolatry of nature. The Parsi scholars repudiated the accusation with indignation, and said that in their reverence for the elements of nature they never worshipped fire, sun, and such other elements, but venerated the angels presiding over these noble productions of God, holding them to be his purest symbols.^[1] ​An erroneous rendering of Vd. 19. 9 had led Anquetil du Perron, the first translator of the Avestan text into a European tongue, to depict Boundless Time as the first principle of the Universe.^[2] This interpretation was taken as an unequivocal testimony of the Zoroastrian scriptures to corroborate the statement of the Greek and Armenian writers who had alleged that both Ormazd and Ahriman had sprung from Time. Anquetil's mistake was repeated in the works of the European writers for a considerable time, until it was finally corrected by the unanimous verdict of the Iranian scholars of the West during the latter half of the last century. When the Zoroastrian scriptures were adversely criticized by the missionaries on the ground that the doctrine of Boundless Time at the apex of existence proved the derivative and secondary character of Ormazd,^[3] the Parsi priests repudiated the charge and vigorously maintained that the concept simply designated eternity and nothing more Far from being Ormazd's superior, Boundless Time, they affirmed was his creation.

More heated was the controversy that hinged upon the alleged belief of two rival spirits. We have already seen how dualism has been the main question of inveterate controversies; we shall here only advert to it in passing. When the missionaries derisively called the Parsis the worshippers of two gods, which certainly they never were, they at once vehemently denied the charge and hastened to repudiate it by denying downright an objective existence to Ahriman. The Evil Spirit, they argued, is not an entity, but merely the symbolic personification of evil nature in man owing his origin to man's errant thoughts. Outside of man he has no existence at all. He is a gratuitous invention. The concept of his existence is purely negative, a chimera. He is man's creation, as are also the infernal host of demons and fiends, which are nothing more than the lusts and passions of man.^[4]

Parsi apologists meet the charges of their opponents by resorting to allegorical explanations. This attempt at giving allegorical interpretations of the scriptures was carried still further. Tradition had always seen some geographical data in the first ​chapter of the Vedidad, and modern scholarship had accepted that view; but in their polemics with the missionaries the Parsi scholars explained the opening of the chapter by asserting that the act of Ormazd in creating Iran Vej, the first region of the world, was to be interpreted as a mere figurative expression for religious faith, and Ahriman's counter creation of winter was emblematic of infidelity. Similarly, the various places said to have been created by Ormazd indicated man's body, and the obnoxious creatures of Ahriman signified man's evil passions.^[5] Another instance of the same kind of interpretation may be cited. Druj Nasu, or the Demon of Defilement is spoken of in the Vendidad as taking possession of a man who has touched the corpse of a dog or a man,^[6] and a minute description is given as to how the demon is successively driven out from the top of the head of the defiled person to the tips of his toes, as the ablution ceremony is being performed. This rite was criticized as being revolting to common sense.^[7] Instead of defending it on hygienic principles, the learned controversialists again expatiated upon the mystic significance of the text, and alleged that the whole ceremony referred to the internal purification of man, and that Nasu represented his evil nature, while the successive expulsion of the fiend from one part of the body to the other, until finally eradicated, meant the gradual improvement of a man's character.^[8] Zoroastrianism teaches that the sin of burying corpses is inexpiable.^[9] The pulling down of the dakhmas, wherein lie interred the dead bodies of such men, is a means of the expiation of one's sins in thought, word, and deed; and is equivalent to the recital of a Patit.^[10] Responding to a criticism on this passage, recourse was again taken to declare it as couched in mysterious language. It was curiously explained to mean that the dakhma referred to the body of man, the corpse stood for his evil passions, its disinterment meant the expulsion of the evil propensities, and the final exposure to the light of the sun signified the enlightenment of the inner man by the divine wisdom.^[11]

​The outcome of this controversy. The Parsis further retaliated by seizing upon the weak points of the Christian scriptures and turning them into ridicule, just as we have seen, the author of the Shikand Gumanik Vijar did in the Pahlavi period. Theological questions were thus discussed with acrimonious zeal on both sides, and a considerable polemic literature was produced. The good that came out of this controversy was that the study of their own religion began to be prosecuted by the Parsi priests with greater avidity than before.