by Peter Watson
But there was another side to Isaiah, and equally important. In his religion, sacrifice is not enough but repentance is always possible, the Lord is always forgiving and, if enough people repent, he foresees an age of peace, when men and women ‘shall beat swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore’. This, as many scholars have noted, for the first time gives history a linear quality. God gives history a direction and here Isaiah introduces an even more radical idea: ‘Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’ This special son shall advance the age of peace: ‘The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.’ But he will also be a great ruler: ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.’ Christians attach more to this passage than Jews do. Matthew saw this as a prophecy of Jesus; Jews do not interpret Isaiah messianically.90 The book of Isaiah is above all concerned with the individual soul–though that is not the right word. For Isaiah, each of us has the ‘still small voice’ of conscience, and that marks out Judaism. The Jews had no real belief in the afterlife, so the nearest they could come to a soul was the conscience.
In the last days before Jerusalem finally fell, Isaiah was followed by Jeremiah, who could not have been more different. Equally critical of the establishment, equally blunt and perhaps even more acid, Jeremiah became an outcast, forbidden to enter–or even to go near–the Temple. He was probably as unstable as he was unpopular: his family turned against him and no woman would marry him.91 (He did, however, have and keep a secretary. When others went into exile he remained for a while in Mizpah, a modest town north of Jerusalem.) Yet his writings were preserved–for his prophecies of doom came true. In 597 BC and again in 586 BC, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, and after the second siege the Temple and the walls of the city were destroyed and most of the rest of the city was set ablaze. Jeremiah was among those who fled but thousands of Israelites were carried off into exile in Babylon. Traumatic as it was, exile would prove invigorating for the transformation of Judaism.
The Israelites remained in exile in Babylon from 586 BC to 539 BC. While they were there, they found that their captors practised Zoroastrianism, which was the major belief system in the Middle East before Islam. The origins of this faith are obscure. According to Zoroastrian tradition, Zarathustra made his first conversion ‘258 years before Alexander’, which would put it at 588 BC, and therefore right in the middle of the Axial Age. But this cannot be correct. One reason is that the language of Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, the liturgical hymns which make up the Avesta, the Zoroastrian canon, is very similar to the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, the sacred texts of the Hindus (see below, page 115). The two languages are so close that they are ‘little more than dialects of one tongue’, and not many centuries can have separated them from their common origins.92 Since the Vedas date to between 1900 and 1200 BC, at least, the Gathas cannot be very much younger.
However, while the Vedas were still set in the heroic age, with many gods, often acting ‘with the same nature as men’, and sometimes with great cruelty, Zoroastrianism was very different.93 Zoroastrianism has one origin in the third millennium BC with the migration of the peoples known to archaeologists, pre-historians and philologists as the Indo-Aryans. As was mentioned above, there has been much debate as to where these people originated: from the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, in the lands around the Oxus river, north of Persia, as Iran then was, the so-called BMAC complex (Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex, essentially northern Afghanistan), even the Indus valley. What seems more certain is that they split into two groups, one–furthereast–giving rise to the Vedic religion, which developed into Hinduism (see below, page 115); and the second, further west, giving rise to Zoroastrianism.
Certain aspects of Zoroastrianism appear to have developed from the cult of Mithras. Mithras, said to have been born out of a rock and often associated with bull sacrifice, appears first in the historical record on an inscription found at Boghazköy in eastern Anatolia, and dating from the fourteenth century BC. The inscription commemorates a treaty between the Hittites (whom we have already encountered, in an earlier chapter) and the Mitanni (a tribe with Aryan chiefs, across the Euphrates from what is now Syria) and mentions a number of deities who later appear in the Rig Veda, the Hindu scriptures. These deities include Mithra, Varuna and Indra.94 Mithra, be it noted, is the old Persian word for contract, which is interesting for at least three reasons. One, and this is speculative, a god of contract recalls the Israelite idea of the covenant, which is essentially a contract with God–is this where the idea originally came from? Two, a god of contract also suggests an urban, or urbanising, culture, with a growing merchant class; but third, and arguably the most important reason is that contract stood for fairness, and therefore justice.95 And here, for the first time, we have a god who is an abstract concept–this was Zarathustra’s achievement. He broke with the tradition of a pantheon of gods.
Tradition variously puts Zarathustra’s birthplace in Rhages, the ancient town of Rayy, now on the outskirts of Tehran, or in Afghanistan or even as far away as Kazakhstan. By the time he was about thirty, however, Zarathustra had found his way to the court of King Gushtasp, the ruler of a tribe of people in the north of Iran, possibly the ancient site northwest of Kabul known as Balkh. There, he won over the king, and then the people, and his beliefs became the official religion.
The crucial importance–and the mystery–of Zoroastrianism lies partly in its introduction of abstract concepts as gods, and partly in its other features, some of which find echoes in Buddhism and Confucianism, and some of which appear to have helped form Judaism, and therefore Christianity and Islam. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra was the source of the ‘profoundest error in human history–namely the invention of morality’.96 Zarathustra envisaged three types of soul: the urvany, that part of the individual which survived the body’s death; fravashi, who ‘live the earth since the time of their death’; and daena, the conscience.97 Either way, Zoroastrianism may well have been the fundamental set of ideas that helped shape the world’s major faiths as we know them today.
The society into which Zarathustra addressed his ideas was a people who venerated fire and worshipped the familiar gods of earth and sky, plus a host of daevas, spirits and demons.98 Zoroastrians believe that Zarathustra received a revelation direct from the one true god, Ahura Mazda. In accepting the revelation, he imitated the primordial act of god–the choice of good. This is a crucial aspect of Zoroastrianism: man is invited to follow the path of the Lord, but he is free in that choice–he is not a slave or a servant.99 Ahura Mazda was also the father of a set of twins, Spenta Mainyu, the Good Spirit, and Angra Mainyu, the Destroying Spirit. These twins respectively choose Asha, justice, and Druj, deceit.100
Zarathustra referred to himself several times as a ‘saviour’ and this helped to shape his idea of heaven and the soul. In the religion of the day, which Zarathustra was born into, only priests and aristocrats were understood to have immortal souls, only they could go to heaven, whereas the laity were consigned to hell.101 He changed all that. He condemned the sacrifice of cattle as cruel and denounced the priestly cult of Haoma, which may have been a hallucinogenic plant related to the Soma mentioned in Hindu scriptures, and possibly cannabis or hemp, which Herodotus records as being used in rituals by the steppe nomads.102 At the same time, there is some evidence that early Zoroastrianism was itself an ecstatic religion, with even Zarathustra using bhang (hemp).103 The name of paradise in the new religion was garo demana, or ‘House of Song’, and there are ancient accounts of sha
mans reaching ecstasy by singing for long periods of time. The House of Song was in theory open to all in Zoroastrianism, but only the righteous actually got there. The road to the beyond passed over the Cinvat Bridge where the just and the wicked were divided, sinners remaining for ever in the House of Evil.104 The idea of a river dividing this world from the next is found in many faiths, while the idea of a Judgement became a major feature of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In fact, life after death, resurrection, judgement, heaven and paradise were all Zoroastrian ideas first, as were hell and the devil.105 One verse of the Gathas says that the soul remains close to a person’s body after death, but after three days a wind arises. For the righteous it is a perfumed wind which quickly transports the soul to ‘the lights without beginning, paradise’, but for others it is a cold north wind, which drives the sinner to the zone of darkness.106 Note the delay of three days.
The Israelites had been taken into captivity in 586 BC, by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzer. In 539, however, Babylon was captured by Cyrus, a Persian king who had also defeated the Medes and the Lydians. He and his followers spread Zoroastrianism throughout the Middle East. Cyrus freed the Jews and allowed them back to their homeland. It is no accident, therefore, that he is one of only two foreign kings to be treated with respect in the Hebrew scriptures (the other is Abimelech, in Genesis 21). It is no accident that Judaism, and therefore Christianity and Islam, share many features of Zoroastrianism.
The Buddha was not a god and he was not really a prophet. But the way of life that he came to advocate was the result of his dissatisfaction with the development of a new merchant class in the towns, their materialism and greed, and with the local priesthood, their obsession with sacrifice and tradition. His answer was to ask men to look deep inside themselves to find a higher purpose in life. In that, conditions in India in the sixth–fifth century BC paralleled those in Israel.
Siddhartha Gautama was by all accounts a pessimist anyway, constitutionally inclined to look on the grimmer side of life. Nevertheless, the social and religious ideas in India were changing fundamentally at the time he was alive. Hinduism is a Muslim word for the traditional religion of India, and dates only from 1200 AD, when the Islamic invaders wished to distinguish the Indian faith from their own. (Hindu is in fact the Persian word for Indian–see Chapter 33 below.) Traditional Hinduism has been described as more a way of living than a way of thought.107 It has no founder, no prophet, no creed and no ecclesiastical structure. Instead, Hindus speak of ‘eternal teaching’ or ‘eternal law’. The first record of these beliefs come from excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the twin capitals of the civilisation, about 400 miles apart, on the banks of the Indus river and dating to about 2300–1750 BC. A ritual purity appears to have been one of the central rites (as it is today), with prominent places for ceremonial ablutions.108 In addition there were many figurines of the mother goddess, which either showed her pregnant, or emphasised her breasts. Each village had its own goddess, embodiments of the female principle, though there was also a male god, with horns and three faces, known as Trimurti, which later found expression in Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Fertility symbols were also found, in particular the lingam and the yoni, representing, again, the female and male sex organs. Besides purification, the holy men of Harappa and the Indus valley practised yoga and renunciation of the world.
The first change Hinduism went through occurred around 1700 BC, when India was invaded by the Aryan peoples. The Aryans arrived from Iran, as their name implies, but their exact origins have been one of the great mysteries of archaeology.* The Aryan impact on India was profound. Even today, northern Indians are taller and paler than their Dravidian compatriots in the southern part of the subcontinent. The Aryan language developed in India into what is now called Sanskrit, related to Greek, Latin and the other Indo-European languages which were discussed in Chapter 2. Their religion may have had links with that of Homer’s Greece, insofar as there are parallels among the gods, which are mainly forces of nature. They practised sacrifice and performed their ceremonies around the fire, where they cast butter, grain and spice into the flames. They also are known to have used the drug, soma, which induced trances, by means of which the Vedas were ‘revealed’ to them. The fact that sacred fire was so important in their religion hints that they originally came from a northern (cold) region. Unlike the proto-Hindus, the Aryans did have a sacred text. This, written down about 800 BC, is known as the Rig Veda (‘Songs of Knowledge’; vid = ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’). Many of these religious hymns may have been composed before the Aryans arrived in India, though by later times they were considered to be a revelation from Brahman, the ultimate source of all being.109 More than a thousand hymns (20,000 verses) make up the Rig Veda, and they are addressed to scores of different deities. The most important gods, however, are Indra, conceived as a warrior who overcomes evil and brings everything into being; Agni, who personifies the sacred fire (Latin = ignis), which links heaven and earth by carrying the sacrifice upwards; and Varuna (the Greek god Uranus), a sky god but also the chief of the gods, and the guardian of cosmic order.
As it developed, the Veda posited a world soul. This is a mystical entity, quite unlike anything else: it is envisaged both as a sacrifice and as a form of body, which gives the world order. The creator brought the world into existence by sacrifice–even the gods, their very existence, depended on continued sacrifice. The mouth of the world soul is made up of the priests (called Brahmans, to reflect their relationship to the fundamental source, Brahman: before the Vedas were written down, it was the Brahmans’ responsibility to memorise and preserve them, father to son); the arms comprised the rulers, the thighs make up the commercial classes–landowners, farmers, bankers and merchants–and the feet are the artisans and peasants. To begin with, the four different classes were not hereditary but in time they became so, probably led by the Brahmans, whose task of memorising the Vedas was more easily achieved if fathers could begin teaching their sons early on. It was the Brahmans too who knew how to perform the elaborate sacrificial rites by means of which the whole world was kept in existence.110 The kings and nobles funded the sacrifices and the landowners bred the cattle that were killed. Thus three of the four classes had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
This is the traditional picture. By the time of Gautama, however, there was widespread change in India, both social and spiritual. Towns and cities were on the increase and the power partnership of king and temple was breaking down as merchants and a market economy undermined the status quo. A new urban class was emerging which was ambitious for itself and impatient with the old ways. The new Iron Age technology played a role here, too, in helping farmers clear the dense forests.111 This opened up more and more land to cultivation and changed the economy from stockbreeding to agricultural crops. Though this helped expand population, it also changed attitudes to sacrifice, now seen as more and more out of place.
Kapilavatthu, where Gautama lived, typified these changes. In any case shortly before his birth there was a religious rebellion in India. Dissatisfied with the old Vedic faith, the sages of the day began to compose a new series of texts which they passed secretly between themselves. These new texts became known as the Upanishads, which derived from a Sanskrit term, apa-ni-sad, which means ‘to sit near’, and reflected the unorthodox way that these new, reinterpreted verses, were begun. In a way the Upanishads had parallels with the teaching of the Israeli prophets, in that they made the old Vedas more spiritual and gave them an interiorised aspect.112 By dint of the Upanishad disciplines, a practitioner would find that Brahman was present in the core of his own being. ‘Salvation lay not in sacrifice but in the realisation that absolute, eternal reality that is higher even than the gods, was identical to one’s own deepest self (atman).’ In the Upanishads, salvation is not just salvation from sin, but from the human condition itself.113 This really marked the beginning of the religion that we now call Hinduism, and the parallels with the Judai
sm of the prophets are clear.
Just where the idea of reincarnation came from is not so clear. However, in the As’valayana-Grkyasutra, one of the Vedas, there is an idea that ‘The eye must enter the sun, the soul the wind; go into the heaven and go into the earth according to destiny; or go into the water, if that be assigned to thee, or dwell with thy limbs in the plants.’114 Though primitive, this passage in many ways heralds the idea, in the Upanishads, that, after cremation, the dead, according to their life on earth, would go ‘the way of God’ (devayana), which led to Brahman, or to ‘the way of the fathers’ (pitrayana) which went via darkness and gloom to the abode of the ancestors and then back to earth for a new cycle.115 It was in the Upanishads that the twin doctrines of samsara and karma appear. Samsara is rebirth, karma is the life force but its character determines the form of someone’s next incarnation. The subject of the twin processes was the atman, the soul, a word derived from an, to breathe, meaning that for Hindus too the soul was equivalent to the animating principle.116 In order to be at one with Brahman and achieve moksa, and to succeed to the ‘way of the gods’, salvation, the atman had to overcome avidya, a profound ignorance, of which the most important aspect was maya, taking the phenomenal world for reality and regarding the self as a separate entity. The overlap here between Hinduism on the one hand, and Plato on the other, is apparent and will become more so.
