Zarathrustra, The Persian Prophet

There are many viewpoints on the timeline for Zarathrustra's date of birth - vary by almost 1,000 years. At best this is all speculative. The truth will remain an enigma, but his teachings and his belief in monotheism have perpetuated throughout history. Who was this great teacher and prophet? Many scholars believe he was a priest and a prophet. He was linked to the Magi. His spiritual influences have always affected human thought and reasoning - his goals, to show human their connection a creation and their link to one source.

The name of the founding Prophet of Zoroastrianism is not Zoroaster, which is a Greek transliteration of the name, but Zarathushtra, which means, in ancient Iranian, "yellow camel." (zara = yellow, ushtra = camel). An alternate reading is "old camel." Animals such as camels and horses were essential and even sacred to the people of Zarathushtra's age, and thus a name containing one of these animals marks a person as important. A similar naming practice occurred among the ancient Greeks where names containing "-ippos" or horse denoted high birth - such as Philippos (lover of horses), Aristippos (best horse), or Xanthippos (yellow horse).

The later Zoroastrians, perhaps embarrassed by their prophet's primitive-sounding name, said that the name meant "Golden Light," deriving their meaning from the word zara and the word ushas, light or dawn. There is no doubt about Zarathushtra's clan name, which is Spitama - perhaps meaning "white." Zarathushtra's father was named Pouruchaspa (many horses) and his mother was named Dughdova (milkmaid). His birthday is celebrated on March 26, as part of the Iranian New Year Festival.

No one knows where or when the Prophet was born. Some legends place his birth in western Iran, perhaps near Tehran; others, which are somewhat more likely due to the eastern Iranian language of his poetry, place his birthplace in the east. As for the date of his birth, it has been since ancient times a matter of controversy. Greek sources placed him as early as 6000 B.C., a reckoning derived from poorly transmitted Zoroastrian legends; few if any scholars take that date seriously. The traditional Zoroastrian date for Zarathushtra's birth and ministry is around 600 B.C. This is derived from a Greek source that places him "300 years before Alexander" which would give that date; other rationales for the 600 BC date identify the King Vishtaspa of Zarathushtra's Gathas with the father of the Persian King Darius, who lived around that time.

As the linguists of both Europe and India worked on the Gathas, however, it became clear that the language of the Gathas attributed to Zarathushtra was far older than the language spoken in Iran at the time of King Darius' father. Gathic Avestan was very close to the Sanskrit of the Indian Rig-Vedas, which can be dated from the period 1500-1200 BC. This would mean that Zarathushtra lived far earlier than the "traditional" date. Some scholars have said that the 600 BC date is still plausible if Gathic Avestan was actually an artificially preserved sacred language, somewhat like Latin, which continued in literature and rituals thousands of years after it had ceased to be spoken.

Recent work by Martin Schwartz and Almut Hintze tends to discount this theory, as the linguists show that the Gathas are not the work of an academic writing in a dead language; they show all the signs of poetry composed and recited in an oral tradition, similar to the heroic poetry of Homer or the Rig-Vedas. These studies would confirm the earlier date for Zarathushtra.

The problem of Zarathushtra's time will never be solved, unless some improbable archaeological find turns up. Most scholars agree on a time-frame for Zarathushtra which could be as early as 1700 B.C. or as late as 1000 B.C.

Zarathushtra received his prophetic calling in about his thirtieth year, in which he envisioned God through Vohu Manah, or "Good Mind." His prophecies were not foretelling of the future, but prophecy in the sense of the later Hebrew prophets: revolutionary messages of religious purity and social justice, speaking out against corrupt priests and potentates.

There is very little biographical material in the Gathas. What is there indicates that Zarathushtra was cast out of his original home, wherever that was, and forced to wander, along with his followers and their animals. Yasna 46 begins with a sad verse about this:

"To what land should I turn? Where should I turn to go?
They hold me back from folk and friends.
Neither the community I follow pleases me,
nor do the wrongful rulers of the land...
I know... that I am powerless.
I have a few cattle and also a few men."
(Jafarey translation)

He and his followers wandered until they found a sympathetic friend in King Vishtaspa, who was not the father of King Darius but an earlier ruler of the same name, who may have lived in eastern Iran or in Bactria, modern Afghanistan. There, Zarathushtra won over the king, and his court, and became the court prophet.

Zarathushtra is said to have had six children, three boys and three girls. This is not exact information, since the number and gender equals that of the six Amesha Spentas and may be only symbolic. But the last Gatha is composed for the marriage of Zarathushtra's daughter Pouruchista (Full of Wisdom) so he is known to have had at least one child. Zarathushtra, in the legends, had three wives (in sequence) of whom the last was Hvovi (Good Cattle) the daughter of King Vishtaspa's prime minister. Thus Zarathushtra married into the king's court; Pouruchista, in turn, married the prime minister.

There is no exact or provable information about Zarathushtra's life at court, though it may be assumed that it was here that he composed the Gathas, and the names of king and court appear in the poetry as if, in oral recitation, they were there listening to him. The prophet may have spent almost three decades there, before his death at age 77.

Again, no one knows how Zarathushtra died. Many legends, and Zoroastrian tradition, say that he was killed, while praying in the sanctuary, by a foreign enemy of the king. But there is no holiday commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet, as there would be in other religions (Christianity, for instance) and other Zoroastrian traditions, and scholars, say that Zarathushtra died peacefully.

One of the controversies about Zarathushtra concerns whether he was a priest. He did not live in a religious vacuum, but was born into a society that practiced the polytheistic rites of ancient Indo-Iranian religion. This religion already had a well-developed system of priesthood and service. In one verse of the Gathas (Y,33, 6) Zarathushtra calls himself a "zaota" which in later Zoroastrian usage is the word for officiating priest. The word, though, literally means "invoker" and both Taraporewala and Jafarey translate it simply, claiming that Zarathushtra never meant to call himself a priest. It is very possible that Zarathushtra, if not a priest, had priestly training (how else would he know the highly technical spiritual language found in the Gathas, as well as the ability to compose philosophical/religious poetry?). Other Zoroastrians, including more traditionally minded ones, say that Zarathushtra was indeed a priest and the first of the millennia-old tradition of Zoroastrian ritualizing priesthood.

In the later Avesta, Zarathushtra is used as a character in dialogue with Ahura Mazda; he is featured in ritual texts and in law- texts, and great amounts of ritual and doctrine are thus attributed to him, whether he was their originator or not. In much later Zoroastrian traditions, some of which were not recorded until centuries after the Arab conquest, the life of the Prophet abounds with miracles and divine interventions.

His mother glowed with the divine Glory usually reserved for kings; the soul of the prophet was placed by God in the sacred Haoma plant (which Z. condemned in the Gathas) and the prophet was conceived through the essence of Haoma in milk (though the birth is not a virgin birth, but the natural product of two special, but earthly parents.). The child laughed at his birth instead of crying, and he glowed so brightly that the villagers around him were frightened and tried to destroy him. All attempts to destroy young Zarathushtra failed; fire would not burn him nor would animals crush him in stampedes; he was cared for by a mother wolf in the wilderness.

He spent years in the wilderness communing with God before his first vision, in which Vohu Manah came to him in the form of a huge Angel. All the heavenly entities, the Amesha Spentas, instructed Zarathushtra in heaven, and he received perfect knowledge of past, present, and future. Zarathushtra's preaching to King Vishtaspa was enhanced by miracles, especially the healing of a paralyzed horse that convinced the king to accept the new religion.

Most of these motifs are familiar from the lives of other culture heroes such as Romulus, Moses, and Jesus. Whether any of this literally happened is a matter for belief, not scholarship. Tradition-minded Zoroastrians do accept these legends as truth about Zarathushtra. Other, more modern Zoroastrians, who rely more on the Gathas as a scriptural source, discount the legends as pious fantasies, noting that there are no miracles or supernatural interventions in the Gathas.

Unlike Mohammed's recitation of the Koran, the Gathas of Zarathushtra are not "channeled" - that is, the Gathas are regarded as the inspired composition of a poet-prophet rather than a text dictated by a heavenly being. Zarathushtra was inspired by God, through the Bounteous Immortals of Vohu Manah, Asha, and the others - but he was not a passive recipient of the divine wisdom. In accordance with Zoroastrian philosophy, he reached God through his own effort simultaneously with God's communication to him.

Zarathushtra was never divine, not even in the most extravagant legends. He remained a man like all others, though divinely gifted with inspiration and closeness to Ahura Mazda. His life is an inspiration for Zoroastrians of all persuasions, traditionalist and modern - in his innovation, loving relationship with God, and spiritual courage he is a model for all his followers. After his death. Zarathushtra's great soul attains almost the level of a Bounteous Immortal, but still is not merged in the divinity.

Ever since ancient Greek times the name of Zoroaster has stood for mysterious Eastern wisdom. In Hellenistic times many esoteric and magical texts were written using his name (though none of those texts had anything to do with the real Zarathushtra) and Zoroaster was thought of as one of the greatest magicians.

Once the Avesta had been brought to the West in the 18th century, his name again became famous in the West - this time not for magic, but for the humanistic, monotheistic, moral philosophy found in the Gathas. Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant and Diderot mentioned him as a model; the playwright Voltaire wrote a play called "Zoroaster."

Here was a philosopher from "pagan" antiquity who was monotheistic and moral without any help from the Christian Church! The French composer Rameau wrote an opera called "Zoroastre" and the free-thinking Mozart used a variant of the name for his character Sarastro in "The Magic Flute;" Sarastro is the priest of the Sun and Light who defeats the Queen of the Night. In the 20th century Nietszche was inspired by Zarathushtra's example when expounding his philosophy in 'Thus Spake Zarathrustra', though there is no identifiable Zoroastrian teaching in the Nietszche work.

The German composer Richard Strauss, inspired by the Nietzsche work, wrote the tone-poem of the same name, which became famous in the 1960s as the theme for the Stanley Kubrick film 2001 - 'A Space Odyssey. '

The example of the Prophet is still good today, and anyone who sees his or her own religion overwhelmed by insensitive, exploitative "orthodoxy" can sympathize with this ancient revolutionary whose message is ever fresh and ever new.

Hannah M.G. Shapero

According to the 'Zend Avesta', the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, Zoroaster was born in Azerbaijan, in northern Persia. He is said to have received a vision from Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, who appointed him to preach the truth. Life.

A major personality in the history of the religions of the world, Zoroaster has been the object of much attention for two reasons. On the one hand, he became a legendary figure believed to be connected with occult knowledge and magical practices in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic Age (c. 300 BC-c. AD 300).

On the other hand, his monotheistic concept of God has attracted the attention of modern historians of religion, who have speculated on the connections between his teaching and Judaism and Christianity.

Though extreme claims of pan-Iranianism (i.e., that Zoroastrian or Iranian ideas influenced Greek, Roman, and Jewish thought) may be disregarded, the pervasive influence of Zoroaster's religious thought must nevertheless be recognized.

The student of Zoroastrianism is confronted by several problems concerning the religion's founder. One question is what part of Zoroastrianism derives from Zoroaster's tribal religion and what part was new as a result of his visions and creative religious genius.

Another question is the extent to which the later Zoroastrian religion (Mazdaism) of the Sasanian period (ad 224-651) genuinely reflected the teachings of Zoroaster.

A third question is the extent to which the sources--the Avesta (the Zoroastrian scriptures) with the Gathas (older hymns), the Middle Persian Pahlavi Books, and reports of various Greek authors--offer an authentic guide to Zoroaster's ideas.

The date of Zoroaster's life cannot be ascertained with any degree of certainty. According to Zoroastrian tradition, he flourished "258 years before Alexander."

Alexander the Great conquered Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenids, a dynasty that ruled Persia from 559 to 330 BC, in 330 BC.

Following this dating, Zoroaster converted Vishtaspa, most likely a king of Chorasmia (an area south of the Aral Sea in Central Asia), in 588 BC. According to tradition, he was 40 years old when this event occurred, thus indicating that his birth date was 628 BC.

Zoroaster's teachings.

Zoroaster apparently was opposed in his teachings by the civil and religious authorities in the area in which he preached. It is not clear whether these authorities were from his native region or from Chorasmia prior to the conversion of Vishtaspa.

Confident in the truth revealed to him by Ahura Mazda, Zoroaster apparently did not try to overthrow belief in the older Iranian religion, which was polytheistic; he did, however, place Ahura Mazda at the center of a kingdom of justice that promised immortality and bliss. Though he attempted to reform ancient Iranian religion on the basis of the existing social and economic values, Zoroaster's teachings at first aroused opposition from those whom he called the followers of the Lie (dregvant).

Ahura Mazda and the Beneficent Immortals.

Zoroaster's teachings, as noted above, centered on Ahura Mazda, who is the highest god and alone is worthy of worship. He is, according to the Gathas, the creator of heaven and earth; i.e., of the material and the spiritual world. He is the source of the alternation of light and darkness, the sovereign lawgiver, and the very center of nature, as well as the originator of the moral order and judge of the entire world. The kind of polytheism found in the Indian Vedas (Hindu scriptures having the same religious background as the Gathas) is totally absent; the Gathas, for example, mention no female deity sharing Ahura Mazda's rule.

He is surrounded by six or seven beings, or entities, which the later Avesta calls amesha spentas, "beneficent immortals." The names of the amesha spentas frequently recur throughout the Gathas and may be said to characterize Zoroaster's thought and his concept of god. In the words of the Gathas, Ahura Mazda is the father of Spenta Mainyu (Holy Spirit), of Asha Vahishta (Justice, Truth), of Vohu Manah (Righteous Thinking), and of Armaiti (Spenta Armaiti, Devotion).

The other three beings (entities) of this group are said to personify qualities attributed to Ahura Mazda: they are Khshathra Vairya (Desirable Dominion), Haurvatat (Wholeness), and Ameretat (Immortality). This does not exclude the possibility that they, too, are creatures of Ahura Mazda. The good qualities represented by these beings are also to be earned and possessed by Ahura Mazda's followers.

This means that the gods and mankind are both bound to observe the same ethical principles. If the amesha spentas show the working of the deity, while at the same time constituting the order binding the adherents of the Wise Lord, then the world of Ahura Mazda and the world of his followers (the ashavan) come close to each other. The very significant eschatological aspect of Zoroastrianism is well demonstrated by the concept of Khshathra (Dominion), which is repeatedly accompanied by the adjective Desirable; it is a kingdom yet to come.

Monotheism and dualism.

The conspicuous monotheism of Zoroaster's teaching is apparently disturbed by a pronounced dualism: the Wise Lord has an opponent, Ahriman, who embodies the principle of evil, and whose followers, having freely chosen him, also are evil.

This ethical dualism is rooted in the Zoroastrian cosmology. He taught that in the beginning there was a meeting of the two spirits, who were free to choose--in the words of the Gathas--"life or not life." This original choice gave birth to a good and an evil principle.

Corresponding to the former is a Kingdom of Justice and Truth; to the latter, the Kingdom of the Lie (Druj), populated by the daevas, the evil spirits (originally prominent old Indo-Iranian gods).

Monotheism, however, prevails over the cosmogonic and ethical dualism because Ahura Mazda is father of both spirits, who were divided into the two opposed principles only through their choice and decision.

The Wise Lord, together with the amesha spentas, will at last vanquish the spirit of evil: this message, implying the end of the cosmic and ethical dualism, seems to constitute Zoroaster's main religious reform.

His monotheistic solution resolves the old strict dualism. The dualist principle, however, reappears in an acute form in a later period, after Zoroaster.

It is achieved only at the expense of Ahura Mazda, by then called Ohrmazd, who is brought down to the level of his opponent, Ahriman.

At the beginning of time, the world was divided into the dominion of the good and of the evil.

Between these, each man is bound to decide. He is free and must choose either the Wise Lord and his rule or Ahriman, the Lie.

The same is true of the spiritual beings, who are good or bad according to their choices. From man's freedom of decision it follows that he is finally responsible for his fate.

Through his good deeds, the righteous person (ashavan) earns an everlasting reward, namely integrity and immortality.

He who opts for the lie is condemned by his own conscience as well as by the judgment of the Wise Lord and must expect to continue in the most miserable form of existence, one more or less corresponding to the Christian concept of hell.

According to Avestan belief, there is no reversal and no deviation possible once a man has made his decision.

Thus, the world is divided into two hostile blocks, whose members represent two warring dominions. On the side of the Wise Lord are the settled herdsmen or farmers, caring for their cattle and living in a definite social order.

The follower of the Lie (Druj) is a thieving nomad, an enemy of orderly agriculture and animal husbandry.

Eschatological teachings.

The Gathas, the early hymns, many of which may have been written by Zoroaster, are permeated by eschatological thinking. Almost every passage contains some reference to the fate awaiting men in the afterlife.

Each act, speech, and thought is viewed as being related to an existence after death. The earthly state is connected with a state beyond, in which the Wise Lord will reward the good act, speech, and thought and punish the bad.

This motive for doing good seems to be the strongest available to Zoroaster in his message.

After death, the soul of man must pass over the Bridge of the Requiter (Cinvat), which everyone looks upon with fear and anxiety.

After judgment is passed by Ahura Mazda, the good enter the kingdom of everlasting joy and light, and the bad are consigned to the regions of horror and darkness. Zoroaster, however, goes beyond this, announcing an end phase for the visible world, "the last turn of creation."

In this last phase, Ahriman will be destroyed, and the world will be wonderfully renewed and be inhabited by the good, who will live in paradisiacal joy.

Later forms of Zoroastrianism teach a resurrection of the dead, a teaching for which some basis may be found in the Gathas. Through the resurrection of the dead, the renewal of the world bestows a last fulfillment on the followers of the Wise Lord.

Cultic reforms.

Zoroaster forbade all sacrifices in honor of Ahriman or of his adherents, the daevas, who from pre-Zoroastrian times had degenerated into hostile deities. In the prevailing religious tradition, Zoroaster probably found that the practice of sacrificing cattle, combined with the consumption of intoxicating drinks (haoma), led to orgiastic excess.

In his reform, Zoroaster did not, as some scholars would have it, abolish all animal sacrifice but simply the orgiastic and intoxicating rites that accompanied it. The haoma sacrifice, too, was to be thought of as a symbolic offering; it may have consisted of unfermented drink or an intoxicating beverage or plant. Zoroaster retained the ancient cult of fire.

This cult and its various rites were later extended and given a definite order by the priestly class of the Magi. Its center, the eternal flame in the Temple of Fire, was constantly linked with the priestly service and with the haoma sacrifice.

Influence and assessments.

After the conversion of Vishtaspa to such teachings, Zoroaster remained at the court of the king. Other officials were converted, and a daughter of Zoroaster apparently married Jamasp, a minister of the king.

- Encyclopedia Britannica