The Raiders
Despite the conservative forces in Indo-Iranian society, the way of life for these people eventually changed. As they drifted southward from the Central Asian steppes, the Indo-Iranians acquired the knowledge to domesticate the horse and to build and use war chariots. They also learned how to make bronze and availed themselves of the rich ore deposits of the area to fashion weapons. The coming of the chariot and the implements of war completely disrupted the once-stable culture. A new form of livelihood now emerged to supplement the passive tending of sheep and cows, and that was stealing sheep and cows. Many of the later Indo-Iranians became rustlers. Raiding and pillaging developed into a new way of life, initiating a restless, heroic age, not unlike the cultures of the old Norsemen and pre-Islamic Arabia. A career in raiding brought a fundamental new purpose to those who partook of this new form of living: gaining wealth and glory. Cattle and sheep had long been the measure of prosperity among the Indo-Iranians. Besides providing meat and milk, these animals were the sources of leather for clothing and tents, bones for tools, dung for fire, and even urine for the consecration of sacred utensils.
But raiding not only altered the economy of the Indo-Iranians, it also disrupted moral concerns and respect for the rule of law. These pillaging rustlers showed little regard for the weak and defenseless; whole villages might be wiped out in an afternoon just to enhance another clan’s livestock holdings. Might rather than right ruled the day. A third class of individuals thus arose alongside the priests and producers: the warlords and professional warriors. This new class soon became identified with their love for rough living, hard drinking, and gambling, in many ways similar to the Hollywood versions of the old American West, with its outlaws, gunslingers, and saloons. There was excitement and a thrill to living on the edge and outside the restraints of conventional society.
Certainly not all Indo-Iranians adopted the lifestyle of cattle rustling and village pillaging, just as not all denizens of the Old West were cowboys and outlaws. A new kind of nomenclature entered the Aryan lexicon to distinguish between the two kinds of people. The ashavans followed the way of order and stability, but the wicked ones (at least so called by the ashavans) were the drujvants, the devotees of the principle of disorder. And like the guys with white and black hats in the old westerns, the ashavans and drujvantswere depicted differently. The followers of asha were believed to have been given a heavenly blessing (khvarna), which suggested divine approval. In images, the blessing was represented as golden flames surrounding the head. Similar motifs seen in later images of the Buddha, Christian saints, and Muhammad may have derived from this Iranian influence.
The Religious Transformation
Although not all Indo-Iranians were rustlers and outlaws, the raiding and looting life had ramifications for those who wanted nothing to do with it. These effects were even felt in Indo-Iranian religious life. New gods more acceptable to the emerging warrior caste began to appear and even dominate some forms of religion. Many turned to worship Indra, the brave new deity of the heroic age. In fact, by the time the Aryans reached India, Indra was the ascendant divine being. Over one-quarter of the thousand hymns of praise in the Rig Veda are addressed to him alone.
Indra was a macho god, to be sure. He was valiant in combat, reckless to the point of being foolhardy, nearly amoral, but loyal to those who revered him and made offerings to him. In return, he was a giver of many gifts to his followers. And he loved Soma, the intoxicating beverage that fueled his passion and reckless spirit. Earlier, we observed how Soma was imbibed to allow the Indo-Iranians to commune with the gods, to imagine a new life free of distress, and to inspire poetry. In the heroic age of raiding, Soma seems to have acquired another dimension. Perhaps it had been there all the along, but certainly in these latter days, its potential to produce a frenzy conducive to war and lawlessness was fully exploited:
This, yes this is my thought: I will win [i.e., steal!] a cow and a horse. Have I not drunk Soma?
Like impetuous winds, the drinks have lifted me up. Have I not drunk Soma?
The drinks have lifted me up, like swift horses bolting with a chariot. Have I not drunk Soma?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The five tribes are no more to me than a mote in the eye. Have I not drunk Soma?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In my vastness, I surpassed the sky and this vast earth. Have I not drunk Soma?
Yes! I will place the earth here, or perhaps there. Have I not drunk Soma?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am huge, huge! flying to the cloud. Have I not drunk Soma?
I am going to a well-stocked house, carrying oblations to the gods. Have I not drunk Soma?[6]
Where Soma enabled the priests to see visions of the gods and poets to utter great, beautiful words, it now propelled the warriors to feel invincible, powerful, beyond the confines of worldly limits.
In contrast to Indra, worship of many other gods began to decline. For some, Varuna, the venerable ahura, seemed a little too tame, sitting up in his palace in heaven, keeping order in the world. For a nomadic people equipped with the horse and chariot, the more adventurous life of the daring Indra was more appealing—or at least that is what the texts suggest by the sheer volume of songs written to him. In time, Varuna and Indra would come to be seen as virtually diametrically opposite gods.
Division
Over time, the Indo-Iranian family began to divide and settle in different lands, where their once-shared religious practices and beliefs underwent significant transformations that ultimately produced the traditions that would much later be known as Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. The split was gradual, of course, and the religious developments were incremental. The actual divergence of the branches may have begun in the third millennium bce, but it was definitely under way by the mid-second millennium. Dates for nomadic peoples are notoriously difficult to establish with precision, because nomads leave very few archaeological artifacts.
To study the developments initiated by this division, we turn first to West Asia, particularly the land of Iran, and then later trace the movement of the Indo-Aryans into South Asia. We start with an Iranian prophet named Zoroaster, who was not exactly a full-blown axial sage but an individual whose life and thought seem to prefigure much of what was to come in other axial centers. Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, as he is sometimes known,[7] is one of the least understood founding figures in the history of the world’s religions. Perhaps best regarded as a transitional figure, he represents an interesting mixture of preaxial and axial religious elements.
* * *
The name of the Iranian god is spelled just like the automobile Mazda. According to the manufacturer, the car was so named for three reasons: first, to honor the god Mazda; second, because Mazda means “wisdom” in Persian; and third, because the family name of the Japanese manufacturer is Matsuda, which sounds much like Mazda.↵
For an analysis of the connection between cosmogony and ritual, see Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1987). ↵
I remember thinking as a child the same thing as I pondered the nature of the sky. When the first rockets were sent into outer space, I recall being deeply worried about the possibility of spacecraft literally shattering the sky and breaking it into pieces.↵
Yasna 39.1-2 quoted in Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (New York: Routledge, 2001), 5. ↵
TheRig Veda, 8.48, trans. Wendy Doniger (New York: Penguin, 2005), 134–35.↵
The Rig Veda, 10.119, trans. Doniger, 131–32. ↵
Zoroaster, the name by which he is most commonly known, is a Greek transliteration of Zarathustra.↵
2
The Life of Zoroaster
Precious little is known about Zoroaster beyond his name. Most scholars agree that a biographical account of him would be tenuous at best, and wildly varying speculations ha
ve been put forth as to when and where he lived. Some research puts his birth anywhere between 1500 and 1000 bce or even earlier. Mary Boyce, one of the leading specialists in this area, dates him to around 1200 bce. According to tradition, his birth date was 628 bce, making him an older contemporary of Confucius. Current scholarship places him right at or sometime before the start of Axial Age. According to general consensus, he lived in the eastern area of present-day Iran, but some researchers would place him in Central Asia. We will have to live with these uncertainties. What is clear is that Zoroaster came from a modest family living in the seminomadic conditions of Indo-Iranian times, as the rustlers and outlaws were in their prime, and druj seemed to be overwhelming asha.
Aside from much later traditions and legends, all the information we have about Zoroaster comes from the Gathas, or the “Verses,” which are among the oldest parts of the Avesta, the foundational scripture of Zoroaster’s religion. There are only seventeen extant gathas, but there may have been more at one time. These verses are believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself under moments of religious inspiration. They are written in an archaic dialect, very close to the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda, and they resemble spontaneous prayers addressed to god; they are not sermons or didactic proclamations.
The Gathas tell us that Zoroaster was a priest. He called himself a zaotar, one of the libation pourers. As an authorized ritual specialist, Zoroaster would have been trained early in the priestly tradition and recognized as a full-fledged priest by age fifteen. His priestly vocation and his commitment to the rituals of his youth may have prompted the transformation that eventually led him to assume the role of “prophet” and inspire the reform movement that became Zoroastrianism. As a prophet, Zoroaster would have played a different religious role from that of priest. A priest usually functions ritually as a mediator between humans and the divine; a prophet, by contrast, is often a critic of religious practices and functions as a mouthpiece for a god. Many think Zoroaster may have been the world’s first prophet in this sense.
“As a prophet, Zoroaster would have played a different religious role from that of priest. A priest usually functions ritually as a mediator between humans and the divine; a prophet, by contrast, is often a critic of religious practices and functions as a mouthpiece for a god. Many think Zoroaster may have been the world’s first prophet in this sense.”
Zoroaster was acutely aware of and troubled by the violence and lawlessness of the land. It is not difficult to imagine the deep concern he might have felt over the way the old sacred rituals were being pressed into the services of war and thieving. In a later chapter, we will observe how similar social circumstances in China quickened the moral conscience of Confucius, causing him to urge a renewed respect for religious ceremonies.
Zoroaster’s moral sensitivities seem to have ultimately led him on a quest for deeper truths, much as the Buddha and many others took to the wandering life to see the world in a clearer and more focused way during the Indian Axial Age. Tradition says that at age thirty, Zoroaster had an impressive visionary experience at a river, in which he was led into the presence of the Ahura Mazda and six other radiant beings, known collectively as the Heptad (that is, the Seven), and received a special revelation. He left this luminous audience with a new sense of purpose, departing with the words, “I shall teach men to seek the right [asha].”[1] The revelations did not stop there, though; Zoroaster had several more, but this was clearly the turning point in his life that transformed him from a mere priest to a prophet with a fire in the belly.
The beginning of Zoroaster’s career as a prophet parallels a number of initiatory stories in the lives of other sages. Like many of these stories in the prophetic tradition, Zoroaster’s calling occurred in the context of water. Indeed, decisive revelations seem to frequently occur by or in streams of water. The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel wrote that while standing “by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.”[2] Jesus was baptized by John at the River Jordan and heard the blessing of God the Father, had a vision of a dove, and began preaching about the kingdom of god. Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh movement in medieval India, was taken away into heaven for three days while bathing in a stream; he returned after having been commissioned with a new message for Muslims and Hindus. Equally intriguing is the fact that these experiences occurred to these individuals at or around the age of thirty. Zoroaster, Ezekiel, Jesus, Nanak, and perhaps others in the prophetic tradition were at this age when their critical revelations came.
Once he understood that he had received a prophetic call, Zoroaster’s response to this new vocation was both conservative and revolutionary. As a traditionalist, he called his fellow Iranians to a simple return to respect for the principles of good, order, and harmony. But he added novel dimensions to this traditional approach that made it an extremely powerful vision of the world.
Zoroaster’s Theology
Zoroaster’s theology had two chief foci, both movements in the direction of simplification. One focus was a set of ideas that nudged Iranian religion towards monotheism. The other was the notion that spiritual beings could be divided into two categories defining them as forces for either good or evil.
Movement toward Monotheism
Apparently as a result of his vision, Zoroaster became a passionate advocate for the worship of Ahura Mazda as the foremost deity. He wanted Mazda to be seen as superior to Varuna and the other ahuras. In his vision of the Heptad, Zoroaster unmistakably saw Mazda as the dominant deity. In later reflection and visions, Zoroaster seems to have refined this idea even further, suggesting that all the other ahuras and divinities were actually just emanations from or partial manifestations of Mazda. In Zoroaster’s view, Mazda was the only uncreated god and the agent behind the seven-stage creation scheme in the Avesta. It may be too much to say that Zoroaster was a monotheist, but it seems fair to say that his thinking certainly tended in this direction and probably helped contribute to the religious environment that would ultimately champion the monotheistic perspective.
“Zoroaster’s theology had two chief foci, both movements in the direction of simplification: (1) the worship of Ahura Mazda as the foremost deity, and (2) simplification of the pantheon by assigning clear moral qualities to the gods.”
Theistic Dualism
Zoroaster’s second innovation was to simplify the pantheon by assigning clear moral qualities to the gods. All the spirits—the daevasand the ahuras—were now plainly associated with either good or evil. Zoroaster removed any ambiguity. Because the daevas like Indra were honored by the rustlers, whom Zoroaster called the Followers of the Lie, he reserved the word daeva exclusively for the wicked gods and the word ahura for the ethical gods. This usage is still current in the West; our word “devil” derives from the Iranian use of the word daeva. (It is important to note that Western practice came down through Iran and not India; in India, the word deva does not hold this dichotomized association. The term deva refers more to the power and status of divine beings and not specifically to their ethical nature. However, as if to return the favor to Zoroaster, the Indo-Aryans came to consider the asuras—the Sanskrit counterparts to the ahuras—as evil divinities.) Zoroaster also used the term yazatas to refer to good spirits or divine assistants—not really gods as such—but beings associated with the principle of good and truth. The yazatas were probably the prototype for angels in the other Western religions.
Consistent with this theological simplification, Zoroaster also suggested the existence of an independent evil deity, a chief god among the daevas. It is not certain, by any means, given the scant evidence, but Zoroaster may in fact have been the first theologian in history to have conceived of an autonomous, wholly evil, supernatural being. In the Zoroastrian texts, this figure is called by various names including Aeshma and Angra Mainyu, but he is more commonly called by the name Ahriman. Zoroaster thus envisioned two superior beings—one completely good, the other completely evil—locked in mortal combat sinc
e the beginning of time, each struggling for the triumph of his principles and power.
In one of the ancient gathas, we get a flavor of Zoroaster’s worldview in a brief, and rather cryptic, text called “The Two Spirits.” The language is archaic, and it is not fully understood by modern scholars, but it does convey a sense of Zoroaster’s theological conceptions:
Now, these are the two original Spirits who, as twins, have been perceived (by me) through a vision. In both thought and speech, (and) in deed, these two are what is good and evil. Between these two, the pious, not the impious, will choose rightly.
Furthermore, the two Spirits confronted each other; in the beginning (each) create(d) for himself life and nonlife, so that in the end there will be the worst existence for the drujvants, but the best mind for the Righteous.
Of these two Spirits, the deceitful (drujvant) chose the worst course of action, (while) the most beneficent Spirit who is clothed in hardest stone (chose) Truth, (as) also (do) those who believingly propitiate Ahura Mazda.
Between these two (Spirits) the daewas did not choose rightly at all since, while they were taking counsel among themselves, delusion came upon them, so that they chose the worst Mind. Then, all together, they ran to Wrath with which they infect the life of man.[3]
This passage presents many problems theologically. For instance, if Mazda were the original uncreated and wholly benevolent god, where did the evil spirit come from and why? Of course, that is the very problem of evil that has plagued the Western traditions in religion for eons. Zoroaster does not attempt to solve the issue. What is important for him is not the abstract matter of theological consistency, but the very pragmatic and existentially vital point that the human being has to make a choice between good and evil. Irrespective of the origins of these entities, human beings cannot escape the responsibility of aligning themselves with asha or drujand must live their lives accordingly. Just as the daevas had a choice to make, and ultimately made the wrong one, individual human beings are confronted with the identical decision.
The Age of the Sages Page 4
