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348
HERESIES

company the owner, but go into others' possessions.[1] None should be proud of his possessions and count upon them as exclusively his own, for at the time of death even the palaces and treasures are of no avail, and the owner does not take them with him on his journey heavenward.[2] A wealthy man rolling in riches is healthy in the morning, becomes ill at noon, and quietly passes from this world before night; his fortune does not help him to avert this calamity.[3] Wealth and rank are the accidents of life, they do not constitute the real greatness of man. Righteousness alone is the true riches and man cannot get it in the next world on loan.[4]

Mazdak

The economic basis of his religious reform. The second great heretic of this period who had a considerable following was a pious Mobad named Mazdak, son of Bamdat.[5] A Pahlavi treatise named Mazdak Namah, Book of Mazdak, is said to have been rendered into Arabic by Ibnul Muqaffa. The work has been lost, but its contents have been preserved in other Arabic works.[6] The author of Dabistan says that he met some Mazdakites who practised their religion secretly among the Mohammedans. These showed him a book called Desnad, written in Old Persian.[7] There are references to Mazdak and his teachings in Greek and Syriac, Arabic and Persian. He is called the accursed heterodox who observes fasts,[8] who appeared to cause disturbance among the faithful.[9] He was contemporary with Kobad.[10] Mazdak agreed with the fundamental doctrine of Zoroastrianism in respect to the indelible antithesis between the two principles, Light and Darkness, or Ormazd and

  1. ↑ AnAtM. 145.
  2. ↑ Gs. 169.
  3. ↑ Dk., vol. 11, bk. 6. 200, p. 71, 72.
  4. ↑ AnkhK. 5.
  5. ↑ Modi, Mazdak the Iranian Socialist in Dastur Hoshang Memorial Volume, p. 116–131, Christensen, Two Versions of the History of Mazdak in Modi Memorial Volume, p. 321–330; Nicholson, Mazdak in ERE' 8, 508–510; Pettazoni, La Religione di Zarathustra, p. 199, 200.
  6. ↑ Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 1. 169, New York, 1902.
  7. ↑ Dabistan, tr. Shea and Troyer, 1. 378.
  8. ↑ BYt. 2. 21; Phl. Vd. 4. 49.
  9. ↑ BYt. 1. 6.
  10. ↑ 488–531 A. D.
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