Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/457

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
424
THE RENOVATION

religion into concrete actions that thus make the seemingly incomprehensible intelligible and tangible to the masses. The most prominent among these leaders in the last three millenniums, as noted before, are the three sons that are to be born miraculously to Zaratusht, from his seed through a supernatural conception by a maid, bathing in the waters of Lake Kans (an idea as old as Yt. 19), and the names of these three ideal promoters of mankind, as perpetuated in the forms current during the Pahlavi period, are Hoshedar, Hoshedar-mah, and Soshyos, who will appear at an interval of a millennium each.[1] It is said that Zaratusht went three times near unto his wife Hvov, and that each time the seed went to the ground. On each of these three occasions, important for mankind, the spiritual seeds were caught up by the angel Neryosangh and intrusted to the keeping of Ardvisur, the divinity of waters, and from these sanctified waters they will be born in time to come, as miraculously conceived at different periods by three virgins.[2] The advent of the all-beneficent renovators of the faith for the regeneration of the world will, as we shall see below, be attended with portents and miraculous signs.

The millennium of Hoshedar. A child is born to a virgin named Shemik-abu of the age of fifteen, who miraculously conceives Zaratusht's seed when she drinks the waters from a pool. The seed was emitted during the lifetime of Zaratusht and lay concealed in the waters until the maiden kindled the germs and became pregnant.[3] The child thus immaculately born in the first of the three final millenniums of the world is named Hoshedar, a later modified corrupt transcript of the Avestan Ukhshyatereta. In the first of the last three thousand years of the world, before the final renovation and the resurrection, he holds, at the age of thirty, a conference with Ormazd and receives a revelation.[4] When he returns from this divine conference, Hoshedar makes the sun stand still for ten days and nights to convince the people of the world about the authenticity of his mission.[5] During his millennium, righteousness, liberality, and all the virtues

  1. ↑ Mkh. 2. 95.
  2. ↑ Bd. 32. 8.
  3. ↑ Dk., SBE., vol. 47, bk. 7. 8. 55–57, p. 105, 106.
  4. ↑ BYt. 3. 44; Dk., vol. 8, p. 485.
  5. ↑ BYt. 3. 45, 46; Dk., vol. 4, p. 247; SBE., vol. 47, bk. 7. 9. 2, p. 107, 108.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.