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CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES ATTACK ZOROASTRIANISM

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.[1] 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,[2] 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.[3]

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

  1. ↑ Zend-Avesta, vol. 1, p. 414; vol. 2, p. 592, Paris, 1771.
  2. ↑ Wilson, The Parsi Religion, p. 134, Bombay, 1843.
  3. ↑ A Parsi Priest, Tālim-i Zurtoosht, p. 62–64, 83, 84; Aspandiarji, Hādie Gum Rāhān (Eng. version), p. 35–37, 73, 74.
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