Zoroaster

• 1. Introduction

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  A sculpture of Zoroaster, completed in 1896 by Edward Clark Potter, towers over the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State at East 25th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Potter intended it to stand for the judicial wisdom of ancient Persia. A second figure of Zoroaster appears on the south side of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago. There he walks in a procession of faith traditions beside Abraham, Moses and Plato. Yet the man these statues honor, known in his own language as Zarathushtra Spitama, is close to a blank. Nearly everything said about his life rests on a few scant ancient texts, and by modern historical standards no evidence can fix him in a particular period. He is nevertheless called the spiritual founder of a religion. How can a figure so thinly documented be claimed by so many traditions? What did his name mean, and when and where did he live? What did he teach, and which parts of his story were added by later hands?

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• 2. A Name About Camels

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  In the Lydiaca of Xanthus, and again in Plato's First Alcibiades, the prophet appears as Zōroastrēs, a Greek spelling from the 5th century BC. That spelling is the ancestor of the English name Zoroaster. It was a Greek adaptation of something older. In Avestan, the language of his scriptures, his name was probably Zaraθuštra. Greek speakers appear to have bent the first half toward their word zorós, meaning undiluted, and the ending toward astron, their word for star.

  The Avestan ending -uštra is thought to come from the Indo-Iranian root for camel. On the simplest reading, the whole name means 'he who can manage camels.' Scholars have proposed other versions. If the original form was Zarantuštra, it could mean 'with old camels' or 'with angry camels.' A link to an Avestan verb meaning 'to drag' gives 'who is driving camels' or 'who is cherishing camels.' In 1977, Mayrhofer suggested 'desiring camels,' tying the first half to a Vedic Sanskrit verb meaning 'to like.' Another reading gives 'with yellow camels.'

  Even a single consonant is a puzzle. The th sound in the Avestan form is irregular, because a first element ending in a dental consonant should have kept a plain t. Why it did not has never been settled. The form itself is real, since later languages preserve the same basis. Middle Persian has Zardusht, the version used in Zoroastrian texts of the 9th to 12th centuries. Parthian has Zarhušt, and Early New Persian has Zardušt.

  Classical Armenian writers, including Eznik of Kolb, Elishe and Movses Khorenatsi, spell it Zradašt. The German Iranologist Friedrich Carl Andreas, who lived from 1846 to 1930, read that spelling as evidence of an older Middle Persian form beginning with zur-. Rüdiger Schmitt rejects this. He points out that Armenian zur means 'wrong, unjust, idle.' In his view, Armenian Christians reinterpreted the name in an anti-Zoroastrian sense. Greek writers who adopted the name inherited a harder puzzle than its meaning, which was the question of when its bearer lived.

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• 3. Counting Back the Years

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  Greek scholars of the 6th to 4th century BC, among them Xanthus, Eudoxus, Aristotle and Hermippus, believed Zoroaster lived 6,000 years before Xerxes I invaded Greece in 480 BC. That figure may be a misunderstanding of the Zoroastrian scheme of four cycles of 3,000 years, which would total 12,000. Diogenes Laërtius records the belief, and variant readings of his text place Zoroaster only 600 years before Xerxes, somewhere before 1000 BC. Diogenes also reports Hermodorus, who put him 5,000 years before the Trojan War, around 6200 BC. The 10th-century Suda says 500 years before that war. Pliny the Elder, citing Eudoxus, placed his death 6,000 years before Plato, around 6300 BC. Pliny also mentions two Zoroasters, one ancient and one who accompanied Xerxes into Greece. Aristoxenus described a Zaratas the Chaldaean who taught Pythagoras in Babylon. Some scholars suggest Persian magi worked out this calculation in the 4th century BC, which would explain why early Greeks saw him as a remote figure rather than a contemporary of Cyrus the Great.

  Zoroastrian priests had their own motive for counting. The Seleucid rulers who followed Alexander introduced an 'Age of Alexander' as a new calendar epoch. The priesthood disliked it and wanted an 'Age of Zoroaster' instead. They counted back through successive generations and concluded that he lived 258 years before Alexander. Mary Boyce considers this wrong, and notes that some even identified Cyrus with the patron Vishtaspa. The Bundahishn preserves the figure, and it returns in Arabic and Pahlavi texts of the 9th to 12th centuries. The 10th-century writer Al-Masudi cited a prophecy, from a lost Avestan book, in which Zoroaster foretold that the empire would fall in 300 years while the religion would last 1,000.

  Modern scholars divide into two camps. The late-date camp proposes the 7th and 6th centuries BC, for example c. 650-600 BC or 559-522 BC. Its main argument links Zoroaster's patron Vishtaspa to Hystaspes, the father of Darius I. A problem follows. It seems odd that the Avesta never mentions a Vishtaspa whose son ruled the Persian Empire, or that the Behistun Inscription is silent about it. Darius's father, Arsames, may simply have been named in honor of the patron.

  The early-date camp includes Mary Boyce, who placed Zoroaster somewhere between 1700 and 1000 BC. Its case rests on the likeness between the Old Avestan of the Gathas and the Sanskrit of the Rigveda, which dates to roughly 1700-1100 BC. The Gathas portray a society of warrior-herdsmen and priests. These scholars argue that the two collections could not have been composed more than a few centuries apart, and that Zoroaster lived before the Iranians left the steppe for the Iranian Plateau around 1200-1000 BC. Critics answer that the comparison is vague and that archaic language does not prove an earlier age. Almut Hintze, the British Library and the European Research Council put him roughly 3,500 years ago. Many scholars favor about 1000 BC, while others allow anywhere from 1500 to 500 BC. The question of where he stood when he first preached proved just as stubborn.

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• 4. Searching for a Homeland

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  Two passages of the Avesta, Yasna 9 and Yasna 17, name the Ditya River in Airyanem Vaējah as Zoroaster's home and the place of his first appearance. Beyond that, his birthplace is unknown. The language of the Gathas does not resemble the proposed northwestern or northeastern dialects of Persia. One suggestion is that he was born in one region and later lived in the other.

  The geography of the Avesta itself points east. It never mentions the Achaemenids, the Medes, the Persians or even the Parthians. Its westernmost named location is Arachosia, and Media does not appear at all. The Vendidad lists 17 regional names, most of them in northeastern and eastern Iran. The Farvardin Yasht refers to Iranian peoples unknown to the Greek and Achaemenid sources about the eastern Iran of the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

  A stubborn exception is Ragha. In Yasna 59.18, the zaraθuštrotema, the supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, is said to live there, in Badakhshan. Middle Persian texts of the 9th to 12th centuries place Ragha and many other sites in Western Iran. The Būndahišn puts Ragha in Media, at medieval Rai. In Avestan, however, ragha is simply a word for 'plain, hillside.'

  Classical writers disagreed too. Ctesias located him in Bactria, and Diodorus Siculus among the Ariaspai in Sistan. Cephalion and Justin suggest the east of Greater Iran, while Pliny and Origen suggest the west. Later, the Iranian writer Shahrastani, who lived from 1086 to 1153 and came from Shahristān in present-day Turkmenistan, proposed a father from Atropatene and a mother from Rey. Coming from a respected scholar of religion, this was a serious blow to regions that had claimed Zoroaster as their own. Some had gone so far as to say he was buried, wrote the Gathas, or preached on their soil. Arabic sources of the period also named Azerbaijan.

  By the late 20th century, most scholars had settled on the east of Greater Iran. Gnoli proposed Sistan and Baluchistan, in a much wider sense than the modern province. Frye favored Bactria and Chorasmia, and Khlopin the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan. Sarianidi considered the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex region 'the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself.' Boyce included the steppes west of the Volga. The medieval 'from Media' theory is no longer taken seriously. Zaehner suggested that it was a Magi-driven bid for legitimacy, but Gershevitch and others rejected that. A 2005 reference article on the history of Zoroastrianism sums up the position: general agreement that he did not live in western Iran, but only tentative attempts to name a specific eastern region. Tradition is far more confident about his family than about his country.

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• 5. A Life in Tradition

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  Pourushaspa of the Spitama family and a woman named Dugdōw are recorded as Zoroaster's parents, with Haēčataspa as his great-grandfather. All of these names suit a nomadic tradition. His father's name means 'possessing gray horses,' since aspa is the word for horse. His mother's name means 'milkmaid.' Tradition gives him four brothers, two older and two younger, named only in much later Pahlavi writing.

  His training for the priesthood probably began around the age of seven. He likely became a priest at about 15. According to the Gathas, he left his parents at 20 and learned from other teachers and from his own travels. Then, at 30, came the revelation. During a spring festival, on a river bank, he saw a shining being who identified himself as Vohu Manah, or Good Purpose. This being taught him about Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and five other radiant figures.

  Zoroaster soon grasped that there were two primal spirits, the second being Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit. They stood for opposed principles, asha, meaning order, and druj, meaning deception. He resolved to spend his life teaching people to seek asha. Further revelations followed, including a vision of the seven Amesha Spenta, and his teachings were gathered into the Gathas and the Avesta.

  At about 42, he won the patronage of Queen Hutaosa and a ruler named Vishtaspa, an early adherent who, according to the Shahnameh, may have come from Bactria. By tradition Zoroaster lived many years after Vishtaspa's conversion, established a faithful community, and married three times. His first two wives bore three sons, Isat Vâstra, Urvatat Nara and Hvare Chithra, and three daughters, Freni, Thriti and Pouruchista. His third wife, Hvōvi, had no children.

  He died at 77 years and 40 days old, and the accounts of his death conflict. The most common says a karapan, a priest of the old religion, named Brādrēs murdered him while he was performing at an altar. The Dēnkart and the epic Shahnameh blame a Turanian soldier named Baraturish, possibly a retelling of the same figure. Other traditions merge the two accounts, and some say he died of old age.

  Legend also gave him a tree. The Cypress of Kashmar was said to have grown from a branch Zoroaster carried from Paradise. It stood at Kashmar in northeastern Iran, planted to honor King Vishtaspa's conversion. The Iranian physicist and historian Zakariya al-Qazwini wrote in his work on the wonders of creation that Vishtaspa planted it himself. According to him, in 247 AH, which is 861 AD, the caliph Al-Mutawakkil had the cypress felled and carried across Iran to supply beams for his new palace at Samarra. The Iranians protested and offered a very large sum to save it. Al-Mutawakkil never saw the tree. A Turkic soldier, possibly in the pay of his son, murdered him on the night the timber reached the banks of the Tigris.

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• 6. The Choice Between Order and Lie

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  In the Gathas, the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, traditionally credited to Zoroaster himself as a preacher and poet-prophet, the human condition is a mental struggle between aša and druj. Aša is a highly nuanced word that is difficult to translate. It underlies all Zoroastrian doctrine. Ahura Mazda is aša, creation is aša, existence is aša, and aša is the condition that makes free will possible. A second early text, the Yasna Haptanghaiti, is a series of hymns in Old Avestan that cover core beliefs.

  The purpose of humankind, like that of all creation, is to sustain aša and align itself with it. For people, this means active ethical participation in life, ritual, and the practice of good thoughts, words and deeds. Examples include helping the needy, doing good works and conducting good rituals. Each such act increases aša in the world and in the person, and brings that person a step closer along the everlasting road to Frashokereti.

  The choice belongs to the individual. Zoroaster stressed freedom to choose right or wrong and personal responsibility for one's deeds. Accepting aša and rejecting druj is a person's own decision, not a command from Ahura Mazda.

  The system of religious ethics he founded is called Mazdayasna, an Avestan word translated as 'Worship of Wisdom/Mazda.' In 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zoroaster first in its chronology of philosophers. Elements of Zoroastrian thought reached the West through Judaism and Platonism, and Heraclitus is often described as inspired by him. Scholars argue fiercely over claims of influence on Pythagoras and Plato. Pliny's Natural History says Zoroastrians later educated the Greeks, beginning with Pythagoras, who used the term philosophy, 'love of wisdom,' for the search for ultimate truth. The sharpest test of this dualism came after the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran.

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• 7. A Prophet in Many Faiths

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  Under the Sassanid Empire, Zoroastrianism enjoyed official sanction, after rising to become Greater Iran's most prominent religion from around the 6th century BC. In the 7th century AD it began to decline after the Arab-Muslim conquest. The scholar Gherardo Gnoli argues that the conquest hit the doctrine hard. After many Zoroastrians migrated to India and met Islamic and Christian argument, the Parsis there went so far as to deny dualism and call themselves complete monotheists.

  Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla traces the same pressure in the Gayomarthian sect. In his account, Muslim mockery of a religion that seemed to worship two gods led Zoroastrians to see dualism as a flaw. Some claimed that Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were both created from time. Others held that Ahura Mazda allowed evil, or that Ahriman was a corrupt angel who rebelled. A Persian book of the 15th century even states that the Magi believe Allah and Iblis are brothers. Arthur Christensen noted that sources from the Sasanian era do not match the Pahlavi books written after the empire fell. He concluded that clerics reshaped the faith to resemble Islam and keep their followers. Parallels with Islam include a resemblance between the Amesha Spenta and the archangel Gabriel, prayer five times a day, and covering the head during prayer.

  Muslim scholars had their own Zoroaster. The 11th-century Cordoban Ibn Hazm argued that Zoroastrians could not count as people of the Scripture, since they say Alexander destroyed their books. The historian al-Tabari reports a Zaradusht bin Isfiman, an inhabitant of Israel and servant of a disciple of the prophet Jeremiah. He defrauded his master, who cursed him with leprosy. Ibn Kathir adds that the exiled Zoroaster moved to what is now Azerbaijan, ruled by Bashtaasib, whom he names as a governor of Nebuchadnezzar. Sibt ibn al-Jawzi says instead that he was once a disciple of Uzair. In another passage, al-Tabari has Zaradusht accompany a Jewish prophet to King Bishtasb, translating the sage's Hebrew teachings and so persuading the king. In the 12th century, al-Shahrastani sorted the Majusiya into three sects, the Kayumarthiya, the Zurwaniya and the Zaradushtiya, and held that only the last truly followed Zoroaster. The Ahmadiyya Community regards him as a prophet and reads Ahura Mazda and Ahriman as symbols of the good and evil forces that let humans exercise free will.

  Mani, who lived from 216 to 276, saw Zoroaster as a link in a chain of prophets that ended with himself. Manichaeism took in Zoroaster's ethical dualism and many names of supernatural beings, though these often differ from Zoroastrian usage. The Bahá'í Faith lists him as a 'Manifestation of God,' alongside Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh. Shoghi Effendi placed him roughly 1000 years before Jesus. European Christian writers tried to fit him into the Bible. Athanasius Kircher identified him with Ham, and the Jesuit missionary Joachim Bouvet thought Zoroaster, the Chinese hero Fuxi and Hermes Trismegistus were all the patriarch Enoch. Some legends identify him with Baruch. Greek and Roman writers had built a stranger Zoroaster of their own centuries earlier.

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• 8. Sorcerer, Mask and Muse

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  Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius and Agathias all understood Zoroaster as the prophet and founder of the religion of the Iranian peoples. Roger Beck, summing up their accounts, says the rest was mostly fantasy. They set him six to seven thousand years before the Common Era and called him a king of Bactria or a Babylonian. His biography followed that of a Neopythagorean sage, with a mission preceded by ascetic withdrawal and enlightenment. In his Moralia, Plutarch gave him the name Zaratras, called him a teacher of Pythagoras, and described his dualism: 'Others call the better of these a god and his rival a daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the Magus, who lived, so they record, five thousand years before the siege of Troy.'

  Greeks and Romans also made him a sorcerer and astrologer. From the 3rd century BC onward, a mass of writing circulated around the Mediterranean under his name. It was mostly in Greek and Hellenistic in outlook, and its false attribution lent borrowed authority from a remote and exotic sage. Zoroaster and the magi did not compose it. Pliny credits him with two million lines, which suggests a large forged corpus once stood at the Library of Alexandria. Galen and a 6th-century commentator on Aristotle explain why. Royal libraries paid well for manuscripts of famous ancient authors, and that created a market for fakes. Named works include On Nature, four rolls, and the Asteroskopita, a five-roll astrological handbook. A third, On Virtue of Stones, ran to one roll, and nothing else is known of it.

  The one nearly complete survivor was found in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi library. It is a Coptic tractate, 131 pages long, called Zostrianos. A cryptogram at its end reads 'Words of Zoroaster.' Yet the text is Gnostic in content, style and purpose, with nothing noticeably Zoroastrian. Pliny called Zoroaster the inventor of magic and recorded that he laughed on the day of his birth. He also wrote that Zoroaster's head pulsed so strongly that it pushed back a hand laid on it, a sign of future wisdom. The magical literature went mostly to a different figure, the magus Ostanes. Lydus even credited the seven-day week to Babylonians in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes, who chose seven because there were seven planets.

  In 1643, Sir Thomas Browne wrote in Religio Medici: 'I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers that writ before Moses.' In 1885, Friedrich Nietzsche borrowed the Iranian form of the name for the hero of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In Ecce Homo he explained: 'Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle of good and evil the true driving-wheel in the machinery of things.' Nietzsche argued that this made him the first to recognize the error of morality. Yet Nietzsche preached atheism and moral nihilism, the opposite of Zoroaster's philosophy. Some admirers of pre-Islamic Persian culture still take his use of the name as a mark of respect.

  The face most people picture arrived late. From the 19th century, artists gave Zoroaster features borrowed from other traditions. He is almost always bearded, looking slightly upward as if in prayer, like 19th-century portraits of Jesus. A widely circulated 19th-century painting was inspired by a Sassanid rock carving at Taq-e Bostan. It shows a figure holding a baresman, with a halo, standing on a lotus at a coronation of Ardashir I or II. Scholars now identify that figure as Mithra, so the image behind many modern portraits of Zoroaster may not show him at all.

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