Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/417

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CHAPTER XLIII
EVIL

Independent origin of evil. The sharp antithesis of the Avestan period between good and evil is still further intensified by the Pahlavi writers. In fact dualism reaches its consummation in this period. It is the standard philosophy, and is upheld as the only possible solution of the problem of evil. The author of the Shikand Gumanik Vijar, who is himself a dualist of the most pronounced kind, strongly urges in his polemics against other religions that good and evil can on no account have originated from one and the same source. Evil is considered to have as independent and complete an existence as good; they are both primeval. They are so entirely separate from each other that neither good originates from evil, nor evil from good.[1] Each one of them exists by itself, and entertains perpetual antagonism towards the other.[2] The pairs of opposites such as heat and cold, perfume and stench, pleasure and pain, health and sickness, life and death, and all others fall under the compass of these fundamental terms, good and evil.[3] This dualism between good and evil in the moral realm is the same as that between light and darkness in the physical world. Right is identified with light, and wrong with darkness. There has never been anything in the world which is not either good or evil or a mixture of both.[4] Besides, in all periods, evil is found to be stronger than goodness.[5] The nature of divinity is light and beauty, fragrance and purity, goodness and wisdom; for darkness and ugliness, stench and pollution, evil and ignorance are outside of his nature[6] Ormazd is not responsible for this imperfect side of existence.

Tracing both good and evil to God deprives him of his divinity. It seems that the dualistic system is criticized by the non-Zoroastrian critics as detracting from the grandeur of the

  1. ↑ Sg. 8. 89, 102.
  2. ↑ Ib., 90. 91.
  3. ↑ Ib., 92–99, 101.
  4. ↑ Ib., 100; 11. 158.
  5. ↑ Ib., 11. 97
  6. ↑ Ib., 319, 320.

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