Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/496

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MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM
463

Desatir and Dabistan. In the early part of the last century appeared the text and translation of the Desatir, alleged to have a heavenly origin, and to have been written down in the reign of Khusru Parviz and thus to throw a flood of light on Zoroastrianism. A very heated controversy was the result of the appearance of this work. One party of eminent European scholars declared it to be a fraudulent forgery, while others of equal eminence endeavoured to prove its authenticity. The claim of the Desatir to have been written in a celestial language was put to a crucial test. Patient research has since declared the book to be an exotic, outside the pale of Zoroastrianism. And so it has been held by all Iranian scholars both of East and West.[1]

In this work are given the teachings of various mystic schools, and the entire treatise breathes a totally different atmosphere from that of the genuine Zoroastrian works, being divergent in tone from the true spirit from its very beginning to its close. The Iranian scriptures of all periods have recognized Gayomard as the primeval man, who was the progenitor of the human race, and who, first among mortals, heard the divine word of Ormazd.[2] But this work, on the contrary, gives a regular hierarchy of prophets who are supposed to have preceded the first man. God first revealed his secrets to one Mahabad, who was followed by thirteen other prophets in the former cycles of time bearing his name. Through them the supposed revelation came down to Gayomard and his descendants. It is alleged in this book, moreover, that all the early Pishdadian kings conformed to this religion of Mahabad, until the time that Zoroaster came and preached his fundamentally new religion. But even the new prophet's religion, we are told, was so glossed over by the Yazdanians, the followers of Mahabad, that Zoroastrianism was ultimately made to confer to the Mahabadian code.[3]

Another Persian work entitled Dabistan, or School of Manners, written in India by Mohsan Fani in the seventeenth century, draws the greater part of its materials from the Desatir. The author of this composition mentions some fourteen sects into which he finds the Zoroastrians of his day divided. These are the Sipasian, Abadian, Jamshaspian, Samradian, Khodaiyan,

  1. ↑ Bharucha, in Zartosht, vol. 3, p. 121–134; 179–191; vol. 4, p. 257–279, Bombay, 1275 A. Y.
  2. ↑ Yt. 13 87.
  3. ↑ Dabistan, tr Shea and Troyer, vol I, p 30
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