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On Mysticism and Esotericism among the Zoroastrians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James R. Russell
James R. Russell*
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
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Extract

The idea of Zoroastrian mysticism might at first glance seem a contradiction in terms. The Good Religion, after all, is čīmīg, “rational,” above all else: Zoroaster elegantly solved the most intractable mystery of all faiths, theodicy, by the revelation of cosmic dualism. The mere assertion that there are esoteric doctrines within Zoroastrianism has been criticized. This criticism springs in part from a flawed perception of mysticism itself, which, as it will be argued, is not an independent entity, everywhere the same. Rather, each religion has a mysticism of its own, often irreconcilable in some of its features with the mainstream, and, in the case of Zoroastrianism, with some of the religion's plain logic. Also, the existence of mysticism within a religious tradition does not imply its centrality to that tradition. Mysticism exists in Christianity, but could scarcely be called essential to it, considering the claim, elaborated as the Christian church rose to universal prominence, to the radically overt and sufficient truth of the Gospel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1993 , pp. 73 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1993

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Footnotes

*

The research for this essay was carried out with the generous support of a Lady Davis Fellowship at the Hebrew University. I thank the Trust and my colleagues in Israel, whose helpful comments and learned company were of great benefit. I am solely responsible for the audacity to approach this topic, and they share no responsibility for the many inadequacies readers will, undoubtedly, discover.

References

1. One might contrast to Zoroaster's clear vision of the beginning of all things and of their true nature in his hymns the theophany in Job. “All categories in which meaning can be identified are wiped out and the only voice Job can hear is that of the archaic thunder God, El or Ba'l, who speaks in enigmas of an ultimate premoral mystery” (Wilder, Amos N., “The Rhetoric of Ancient and Modern Apocalyptic,” Interpretation 25, no. 4 [October 1971]: 444Google Scholar, commenting on Cross, Frank M., “New Directions in the Study of Apocalyptic,” Apocalypticism [JThCh 6] [New York, 1969]: 161–5)Google Scholar. I am indebted for this reference to my colleague, Professor Michael Stone.

2. In his Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books, 2d ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), xxix, Sir Harold W. Bailey wrote that Shaul Shaked, in his “Esoteric Trends in Zoroastrianism,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 3 (1969): 175–222, had “tried, by surveying the use of rāz, to discover some mysticism in Zoroastrian orthodox tradition where J. de Menasce had found none. It is evident for whatever reason that Zoroastrian commentators avoid stressing such an aspect. It was therefore left to European scholars, whose mental basis has been saturated for 2,000 years with Hellenistic fantasy, to ignore the constant appeal to the … rationality of [Zoroastrian] tradition.” This criticism appears to have been based on a misunderstanding. Shaked never meant, in fact, to suggest that the Zoroastrians promulgated mystical doctrines or practices, only that they restricted access to religious learning which might be misused by the ignorant, by foreign enemies of the Iranian faith, or by heretics within. One may compare this with the Mishnaic injunction to build a fence round the Torah. Professor Shaked would have been fully justified in speaking of Zoroastrian mysticism or esotericism in its fullest sense, had he chosen to approach the topic.

3. Zoroastrians are associated in New Persian literature, from its very beginnings to the present time, with mystical practices and religious intoxication. Thus, we find an early New Persian poem in the Tārīkh-e Sīstān dedicated to the sacred fire of Karkoy in Sistan, cited from the earlier Ketāb-e Garshāsp of Abu'l-Mu'ayyad Balkhi. The fire temple in that work is itself reputed to have been built by two Iranian epic heroes, Kaykhosrow and Rostam (see, most recently, Bosworth, C. E., “The Coming of Islam to Afghanistan,” in Friedman, Y., ed., Islam in Asia, Vol. I: South Asia (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew Univ., 1984), 4Google Scholar. In that poem, the hōš, “consciousness” of Kərəsaspa (an Avestan hero discussed below) is supposed to reside, and the worshipper is invited to nūsh kon may nūsh/dūst bar āghūsh, “Imbibe ambrosial wine,/The loved one in (thine) embrace.” This may be a cliche; if not, it has the typical ambiguity of a Sufi poem linking wine and love to the mystical state of nearness to God.

4. As one might expect, arguments about hallucinogens in Zoroastrianism have involved very deep-seated cultural prejudices. The nature of haoma is still disputed, but its function of inducing ecstasy is not. Certainly, the literature of the Iranian faith is replete with allusions to mystical journeys assisted by the consumption of psychoactive substances, and, as seen above, this carries over into the image of the Good Religion in Persian Muslim sources. In the Persian Zardosht-nāme, Zoroaster is supposed to have given Vishtaspa a draught of wine which enabled him to see the next world (see discussion by Boyce, M., “On the Antiquity of Zoroastrian Apocalyptic,” BSOAS 47, no. 1 [1984]: 60–61)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One may suppose that in some literary sources, if not, perhaps, in actual practice, the distinction between a psychedelic drug that released the soul from everyday reality and the poison that separated it from the body forever might have been somewhat blurred. The pseudo-Democritean Physica et Mystica, perhaps garbling an Iranian source, claims that the legendary Persian sage Ostanes “died … having used poison to release the soul from the body” (cited by Fowden, G., The Egyptian Hermes [Cambridge, 1986], 90Google Scholar, n. 66).

5. The Avestan word appears in Yasna 43:15, as an attribute of Ahura Mazda. The Scholiast to the Platonic Alcibiades, 211 E, asserts that Zoroaster fell silent at the age of seven, to resume speech only at age thirty, when he began to instruct the king Vishtaspa (Hystaspes), and adds that Zoroastrians greatly revere Mithra and connect him with the number seven. According to the traditional Zoroastrian hagiography, the prophet left home at twenty, received his revelation at thirty, and began to convert the court of Vishtaspa thirteen years later. There is no indication he was silent during his ten years' wandering, during which he was accompanied by his wife, fathered a son, and performed rituals which must have required the recitation of manthras.

6. The prayer reads: Yathā ahū vairyō athā ratūŝ aŝātčīt hačā/Vanghəuŝ dazdā mananghō śyaothananam anghəuŝ Mazdāi/ Xšathrəmčā Ahurāi ā yim drəgvbyō dadāt vāstārəm. One reasonable rendering might be: “As the Lord he is desired; so is he as Judge, according to truth./He establishes the ways of action of the Good Mind in life for Mazda:/And the Kingdom belongs to Ahura, who has made him Pastor of the Poor.” The ahū and ratū seem to be Vishtaspa and Zarathustra, the exemplars of righteous temporal and spiritual authority. The second verse belongs to the sphere of ethics: the ways of action of the Faith are established through Zoroaster's revelation, which the Good Mind, Vohu Manah, enables his intelligence to receive and to shape into a way of life in this mixed state of good and evil which we now inhabit. The last line is probably eschatological, and has to do with Kingdom Come. The Pastor is Zarathustra or his remote progeny, the Saošyant; and the Poor (Av. drəgu-, from which derives ultimately N. Per. darvīsh) are the faithful, who stand in need of God— spiritual poverty (the Phi. texts distinguish between this state and material destitution, the latter seen as evil)—and who will inherit the Earth. See Yasna chs. 19, 62; and, e.g., Dhabhar, B. N., tr., The Persian Rivāyats of Hormazyār Framarz (Bombay, 1932), 2–15Google Scholar et seq.

7. Goodman, F. D., in Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990)Google Scholar, has connected varieties of ecstatic experience to particular postures assumed by diviners and shamans. It is noteworthy that the strange epithet xumbya, “ (sitting in a) jar” (Yasht 13:138) is applied to the Avestan Fradhakhshti (cf. N. Per. khom, Gujarati matlu). J. J. Modi, Oriental Conference Papers (p. 294 and n. 7), noted that there is such a meditational posture in yoga. The precise intent of the epithet, however, remains unclear. The Sammohatantra lists among the countries possessing tantric practices Bactria (Bāhlika) and Persia (Pārasīka) —among the others are Greece, Nepal, Gandhara, Tibet, and China (see Banerji, S. C., A Brief History of Tantra Literature [Calcutta, 1988], 71)Google Scholar. Apart from the references, this source is unreliable. The list is very broad, and most likely post-Islamic, so tantra might here refer only to Sufism.

8. Cited by Weiner, H., 91/2 Mystics: The Kabbala Today (New York, 1969), 57–8Google Scholar. For the mystic, Scholem continues, “The substance of canonical texts, like that of all other religious values, is melted down and given another form as it passes through the fiery stream of the mystical consciousness … hard as the mystic may try to remain within the confinements of his religion, he often consciously or unconsciously approaches or even transgresses its limits, becoming then an either recognized or unrecognized heretic.” In the Zoroastrian case, the mystical yearning for a primal unity as the object of devotion verges upon heresy against the primary tenet of dualism and thereby shares aspects of the philosophical school which elevated Zurvan—infinite time—above both Ohrmazd and Ahriman.

9. Avestan frya-. One may compare this with the manner whereby the Sufi addresses Allah as yār or dūst. The Zoroastrian mystical path completely lacks the sense of numinous terror that is so integral to other mysticisms.

10. See Russell, J. R., “On the Armeno-Iranian Roots of Mithraism,” in Hinnells, J. R., ed., Studies on Mithraism (Rome: Bretschneider, 1992)Google Scholar.

11. Mithraism should not be regarded as a distinct religion in its own right, but rather as a secret society within the larger framework of Iranian religion, conferring rites of initiation. On the justifications for such a classification, see Russell, J. R., “Mithraism and the Craft Reconsidered,” in Transactions of the American Lodge of Research (Masonic) (in press)Google Scholar.

12. The Sun shines out of the 360 windows of Mt. Terag. The Srōš Yašt Vadi borrows at various points from the Mihr Yasht; and in Yasna 57:21, Sraosha has a mountain palace as well. See also Zaehner, R. C., The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroaslrianism, 111Google Scholar.

13. The cave seems to be, in diverse cultures, the symbol of time suspended. One might compare with this the uncanonical Jewish tradition of Abraham's concealment in a cave during the tyranny of Nimrod, whence he emerged speaking lāšōn haqōdeš —Hebrew. There is in this legend the clear sense of transformation and epiphany, and Abraham's life is said to have been a “third creation,” the original Creation of Bərēšīth and the preservation of Noah and his progeny through the Flood having been the first two. The Zoroastrian cosmology, as already noted in the discussion above of the Ahuna Vairya prayer, postulates three World Ages: Bundahišn (Creation), Gumezišn (Mixture [of good and evil]), and Wizārišn (Separation [of good from evil]). In a sense there are three Creations also: the essentially static creations of the spiritual beings (mēnōgān) and earthly creatures (gētīgān); the slaying of Gayomard, the replication of earthly beings, and the introduction of sin—exemplified in the human world by the division of Man into Man and Woman (Masya and Masyanag), with their frailties and carnivorousness (see below); and the advent of Zoroaster, parallel to Abraham. The Prophet prefigures the perfection of the world, since the Savior, Sōšyans, will come of his seed; and with him, in a sense, is the inception of Wizārišn.

14. See discussion by Merkelbach, R., Mithras (Koenigstein-in-Taunus: Hain, 1984), supp. “Armenische Erzaehlungen,” 253–8Google Scholar. Romantic tales set in faraway Persia, both modern and ancient (the legend of Zariadris and Odatis in the Deipnosophistai of Athenaeus, for example), became popular in the eighteenth century. See Bonnerot, O. H., La Perse dans la littératture el la pensée françaises au XVIIIe siècle: De I'image au mythe (Paris, 1988Google Scholar), wherein the author stresses the popularity of Zoroaster. The men of the Erklaerung were convinced that their initiatory mysteries had roots in the ancient East which conferred upon them a venerable legitimacy superseding that of the Christian faith, against whose dominion many struggled. Thus, Mozart uses a crypto-Persian frame story in Die Zauberfloete with many parallels to the narrative of Rhodanes and Sinonis.

15. In Christendom Armenia was a stronghold of heresy from the Paulicians to the Tondrakites, who seem to have flourished down to the 19th century (see, most recently, J. R. Russell, “The Mother of All Heresies: A Late Mediaeval Armenian Text on the Yuškaparik,” REArm [in publication]). The non-Christian sect of the Arewordik', “ Children of the Sun,” survived there down to the 1915 Genocide (see Russell, J. R., Zoroastrianism in Armenia, Harvard Iranian Series 5 [Cambridge, Mass., 1987]Google Scholar, ch. 16). In northwestern Iran, the Mazdakite heresy of Zoroastrianism persisted for centuries in the vicinity of Alamut fortress after its suppression elsewhere in Iran. Indeed, Hasan Sabbah encountered Mazdakites there. It is no coincidence that the Ghulat extremists within Shi'ism retain features of ancient Iranian religion.

16. See Widengren, G., “Babakiyah and the Mithraic Mysteries” in Bianchi, U., ed., Mysteria Mithrae (EPRO vol. 80) (Leiden, 1979), 676Google Scholar. He points out that the sect believed in metempsychosis—as do Khshnumist Zoroastrians, some Sufi Muslims, and some Jewish Kabbalists, though the orthodox of all three faiths reject such a doctrine. A recent writer rejects any substantially Iranian origin for Mithraism, arguing that Mithra is not involved in any Iranian sacrifice of bulls (Ulansey, D., The Origin of the Mithraic Mysteries [Oxford, 1989]Google Scholar). But Professor Mary Boyce showed the sacrifice of a sheep by traditional Zoroastrians as an essential part of the worship of Mithra on the festival devoted to him (“Mihragan among the Irani Zoroastrians,” in Hinnells, J. R., ed., Mithraic Studies, vol. 1 [Manchester, 1975], 106–18Google Scholar). In the Manichaean MS T.M. 180r published by A. von le Coq, “Tuerkische Manichaica aus Chotscho, II,” APAW 3 (1919): 5, Maitreya, the son of God (mitrii burkhan tangrii oghlii), is destined to come, but he is opposed by the demon-son, the “false Maitreya” (igid mitrii) whose mount is a bull. If there is a connection between Mithra and Maitreya, then the bull might be borrowed from Iranian iconography of the yazata.

17. The Spartacists' avowal of the Dionysian cult is the classic example of religion in ancient society as the unifying force for political action by the oppressed. Josephus' “Fourth Philosophy” of the Zealots who opposed Roman and plutocratic rule in Palestine is another case in point. The Ghost Dance rebellion of the Native American Indians, with its tenet asserting that White European rule actually made the land impure, presents a paradigmatic parallel to the case of the Zealots.

18. The pact, which Mithra personifies, is to be kept even with an enemy, as the Mihr Yasht cautions. In Plutarch's De hide el Osiride, Mithras is the intermediary between Oromazes and Areimanios—the witness to their agreement that the cosmic battle will have a limited term. Amongst the “Avestan” people, as in primitive societies of the present day, what would seem to us an inordinate amount of time was spent visiting and offering hospitality, even in wartime, to maintain bonds of relationship. It is natural that this be the context for observance of a covenant—one visits unarmed. Zoroaster uses the word mithra- (thus, as a common noun meaning “covenant“) only once in the Gathas: Y. 46.5, where the righteous man, who receives a follower of the Lie in consequence of a covenant between them, is allowed to warn his family of their guest's deceitful character, but is bound to receive him nonetheless. This seems a mitigating commentary on a central and rigid aspect of the yazata's function, exalted at the outset of this Avestan hymn and reflected, at least a millennium later, by Plutarch.

19. An English translation of the passage in the Ayādgār ī Jāmāspīg is provided by B. N. Dhabhar, ed. and tr., Jamaspi (Bombay, 1930), 31, para. 18. On Phi. rāz, “secret,” Arm. eraz, “ dream,” and related concepts, see J. R. Russell, “Dreams and Dreaming in Armenian,” in J. Greppin, ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Armenian Linguistics, Cleveland State University, Sept., 1991 (in press). The word is found in Gatha Ha 50.6, where Zoroaster asks in his own name that Ahura Mazda, as creator of counsel, guide through Vohu Manah the secrets of his speech as he recites manthras.

20. With the murder of a bull that sets the living world as we know it in motion, and the corresponding sacrifice at the end of the world which will prolong human life into infinity, we deal with the earliest strata of Indo-Iranian cosmology. See, for example, Lincoln, B., Priests, Warriors, and Cattle (Berkeley, 1981Google Scholar). The Indie puruṣa-, the primal man whose sacrifice gave life to a previously static universe, is sometimes interpreted as being composed of pu- ‘ man' and vrṣa- ‘ bull'. The idea that a primal event of tragic character prefigures an eschatological redemptive one is a commonplace of Christian typology. That the end mirrors the beginning is summed up in Christ's assertion that he is the Alpha and Omega. That it will be better than the beginning is an article of faith of the Old Testament prophets carried over to the Qur'an (wa'l-ākhiratu khayrun laka mina'l-awwala, “ and the End is better for thee than the Beginning“).

21. Plainly, Zahhak is the Arabic of Isaac, and the monster's faith was identified by the Pahlavi writers with Judaism. See J. R. Russell, “Our Father Abraham and the Magi,” Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute 54 (1987): 56–72Google Scholar. Peshyansai, where Karasaspa lies, should be identified with modern Pishin, on the road through the passes of Afghanistan linking Iran and India (see Russell, J. R., “Two Armenian Graffiti from Ziarat, Pakistan,” R.E.Arm. 21 [1988–89]: 471–5Google Scholar).

22. Thus Mayrhofer, M., Iranisches Personennamenbuch, I: Die altiranischen Namen, no. 312 (Vienna, 1979), I: 81–2Google Scholar.

23. See Biddulph, J., Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (1880, repr. Lahore, 1971), 133Google Scholar; Leitner, G. W., Dardistan in 1866, 1886, and 1893 (1889, repr. Karachi, 1985), 9Google Scholar; and Jettmar, K., Religii Gindukusha (rev. Russian tr. from German) (Moscow, 1986), 50Google Scholar, 252^t. It is noteworthy that this reflex of the Iranian legend contains several details found also at the Western periphery of Iran—in Armenia—but not in Iran itself. In Armenia, Artawazd, the deposed king, plunges on horseback into a pit. He is held captive by yaksa-like k'ajks, who steal from humans just as here. The diffusion, in quite recognizable and detailed form, of this legend of the overthrow of the tyrant by the hero is the most eloquent argument possible for its vast significance as a carrier of the deep religious values of the Iranian peoples.

24. Yǝzī adāiš ašā drujīm vǝnghāiti hyat ansašūta yā daibitanā fraoxtā amǝrǝtaitē doēvāišcā mašyāišcā at tōi savāiš vahməm vaxšāt Ahurā//Vaocā mōi yā tvəm vīdhvā Ahurā parā hyat mā yā mǝng pǝrǝthājimaitī kat ašavā Mazdā vənghāt drəgvantəm hā zī anghəūš vanguhī vistā ākərətīš//At vaēdəmnāi vahištā sasnanam yam hudā sastī ašā Ahurō spəntō vīdhvā yaēcīt guzrā sənghānghō thwavas Mazdā vanghəūš xrathwā mananghō;. In Yasna 31:14, also, Zoroaster implores God: tā thwā pərəā Ahurā yā zī āitī jənghatičā, “ These things I ask Thee, O Ahura, which are impending, which will come.” I have here translated Aša as “Truth” and Vohu Manah as “the Good Mind,” though they are as much entities as qualities.

25. The writings of this group are in English and Gujarati. A historical overview, selection of texts illustrative of their main doctrines, and explanation of the name are provided by Mary, Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Manchester Univ. Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

26. The belief in such a place seems to be derived from the legend, in the ninth book of the Dēnkard, about the seven palaces of diverse precious stones and metals belonging to Kavi Usan (Phi. Kay Us). Those who succeed in reaching the place, which is in the Alborz range, are rewarded with rejuvenation. The construction of another such place, KNKRT in Muslim writings, is attributed to him. Probably the latter is to be read as a Middle Iranian toponym, *Kang-kirt, i.e., the City of Kangha. This is the miraculous fortress of immortality (Persian Kang Dez), which Siyavosh built near Samarkand in Sogd. Kavi Haosravah (Persian Kaykhosrow) lives here, awaiting the battle at the end of time. The place seems to have been identified in the Middle Ages with the City of Brass of the Thousand and One Nights (see Russell, J. R., “The Tale of the City of Bronze in Armenian,” in Samuelian, T. and Stone, M., eds., Medieval Armenian Culture, Univ. of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 6 [Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983], 250–61Google Scholar).

27. The legend of Behramshah Shroff's sojourn in Damavand corresponds to narratives of spirit-travel described in terms of visits to magic mountains; cf. the trip of a 16th-century Italian accused of witchcraft to the mountain of Venus where Donna Herodias—the goddess of witches—dwelt (see Gizburg, C., Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath [New York: Pantheon, 1991], 108–9Google Scholar).

28. The various legends of the Ten Lost Tribes are the prototype of such apocalyptic hopes, nurtured by small, persecuted peoples, of a hidden remnant, grown vast, which will emerge for the great redemptive war at the end of time—whether from the caverns beneath the Caspian, or over the perilous, rock-hurling river Sambatyon. An instructive example of how such myths can be re-used is the belief of 19th-century Mormons— a Christian sect persecuted in the United States—that the American Indians themselves were the Ten Lost Tribes, and that many of them, frozen in ice in the far North, would be defrosted, as it were (presumably in the great Fire), and arrive at the end of time in their teeming multitudes (see Barre, Weston La, The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970], 228Google Scholar).

29. It is such details, and not the apocalyptic scheme itself, which were seen, presumably, as secret. As M. Boyce has observed (Elr: APOCALYPTIC), Zoroastrian apocalyptic is already plain in the Gathas and is not in itself a secret revelation subsequent to other doctrines, as is the case in some other faiths.

30. Mahmud of Ghazna is said to have complained that the whole epic was about Rostam, to which the poet retorted that God had created no other creature like Rostam.

31. Shaked, S., The Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages: Dēnkard VI, Persian Heritage Series (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979), xxixGoogle Scholar, observes that it is common in Persian wisdom literature to endow traditional themes with an allegorical religious sense. But Abu Salik Gorgani, ca. A.D. 900, would have none of it. He wrote, Bot parastīdan beh az mardom parast, “ Idolatry is better than the worship of men,” with the Persian hero-cult in mind (cit. by Lazard, G., Les premiers poѐtes persans [Tehran/Paris, 1964], 11:25Google Scholar, noted by Grunebaum, G. E. von, “The Hero in Medieval Arabic Prose,” in Burns, N. T. and Reagan, C. J., Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance [Albany: SUNY Press, 1975], 87Google Scholar).

32. L. Alishan, “Rostamica I” (unpublished). I thank my friend Narto for his valuable study.

33. See M. Mole, “Deux notes sur le Rāmāyana,” Collection Latomus 45 (Hommages à Georges Dumezil), 1960, I: “L'initiation guerriѐre de Rāma et celle de Rustam.” This linkage of the hero and savior by the weapon they bear is of Avestan antiquity: in Yasht 19, the Saošyant will bear the same mace heroes had used of old to smite villains.

34. On the wedding song, see Russell, J. R., “Some Parsi Zoroastrian gārbās and monājāts,” J.R.A.S. 1 (1989):.51–63Google Scholar, esp. 60. For a discussion of Rostam's descendants in epic, including Goshasp, see Mole, M., “L'épopée iranienne après Firdōsī,” La Nouvelle Clio 5 (1953): 377–93Google Scholar.

35. Translated by Drower, E. S., The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Oxford, 1937), 372Google Scholar f.; cited also by Corbin, H., Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (London, 1960), 202Google Scholar, n. 69. The mention of Yazdan here may be of significance, even though the word is a common one for God in New Persian. Perhaps the Mandaean legend, then, preserves traditions of the Sasanian period adapted from Zoroastrianism and introduced into Mesopotamia.

36. One has not yet mentioned the most celebrated of Mithraic caves: the one on Ithaka discussed by Porphyry in his De antro nympliarum. It has not, to my knowledge, been suggested heretofore that Mithraists might have chosen the cave of Odysseus as one prototype for their spelaea (the other being the one in which Zoroaster himself was supposed to have lived in quiet contemplation) because the Achaean was a hero and also an intimate of Athena. Within Iran, of course, the coupling of religious and martial values is exemplified by the ‘ayyārān of medieval literature.

37. See Massignon, L., The Passion of al-Hallaj, tr. Mason, H. (Princeton, 1982), 1:48Google Scholar.

38. The Dasātīr is dismissed by many as a forgery, but many of the texts cited by the author of the Zohar to prove the antiquity and authenticity of his views were nonexistent as well.

39. The Qumranic text, The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, describes the apocalyptic battle with great precision in terms of Hellenistic military strategy. The dualistic character of the whole is obvious. Given the primeval antiquity of Zoroastrian apocalyptic and the eschatological and military character of its secret doctrines, it is reasonable to suggest that the text of the Essenes of the Dead Sea region, so striking in its departure from the styles and concerns of the rest of Jewish literature of the age, is nothing other than a copy of Iranian models. For a reasoned treatment of such influence, see: Shaked, S., “Qumran and Iran: Further Considerations,” Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): 433–46Google Scholar; pace Hanson, cited by Stone, M., “Apocalyptic Literature” in his Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 386Google Scholar, n. 14.

40. IV.16: text in Bidez, J. and Cumont, F., Les Mages Hellenises (Paris, 1938), 1:26–8Google Scholar. An antiquated but convenient translation of the whole work by T. Taylor, On Abstinence from Animal Food, was reprinted at London in 1965 (see esp. p. 167). The Greek sources are aware of divisions within Zoroastrianism, perhaps the same that the Pahlavi books separately affirm, though the former refer these to the class of the Magi and call them three “philosophies” (Schol. Ale. 1:122a, 8, in Bidez-Cumont, Mages Hellenises 11:23). As to the distinction between the Magi and the community as a whole, it is perhaps fitting to note that in Aramaic, and subsequently in Arabic, the Zoroastrians as a whole were referred to as “Magians.“

41. Bidez-Cumont, Mage Hellenises 11:67.

42. Greater Bundahišn 220.15–221.11 and 102.9–103.1 (transcribed Pahlavi text with English translation in Anklesaria, B. T., Zand-Akāsīh: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn [Bombay, 1956], 283–1, 131Google Scholar).

43. Dk.M. 299:16–20; Dk.S. vol. 7, para. 288, text p. 332. See Menasce, J. de, Le Troisième Livre du Dēnkart (Paris, 1973), 285Google Scholar and Russell, J. R., “Our Father Abraham and the Magi,” J.C.O.I. 54 (1987): 61Google Scholar.

44. I am indebted for much information on ‘elm-e khshnum to Mrs. Silloo Mehta of Bombay, India, and her family. On the source of the evil spirit, her explanation is in accord with that of Tavaria's printed exposition (pp. 18–20), cited also by Boyce, Textual Sources.

45. The translator of the Upanisads, Yoga Vasistha, and Bhagavad Gita, Dara Shikoh was also a patron of Eshraqi mystics such as the Iranian Jew Sarmad. He was killed by his brother Aurangzeb in 1660. Prince Dara is known also for his work Majma' albaḥrayn, “ Confluence of the two Seas,” these being Indian and Muslim wisdom (cf. the Perso-Muslim syncretism of the Sufi poets noted above). Hinduism looms fairly large in Khshnumist explanations of the Avesta. Thus, the sin of Korosaspa was explained to me as his awakening Azhi (Dahaka)—who is the serpent-power of yoga and tantra, kundalini!

46. Cf. also the statement in the Zoroastrian polemic, ‘Olamā-ye Eslām (Dhabhar, Persian Rivāyats, 445): “The sect which opposes our Good Religion contradicts our propositions and says that good and evil are from God, but Zartost Asfantaman has not ascribed falsehood, perfidy, ignorance, oppression, and deceit to the nature of God.“

47. Our information on the magousaion ethnos in Cappadocia comes from a letter of A.D. 377 of St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, who alludes to their Zurvanism in a rather garbled form: ”… they claim a certain Zarnouas as the founder of their race” (see Boyce, M., A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 3 [Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.8.1.2.2] [Leiden, 1991], 277–8Google Scholar).

48. Mrs. Mehta informed me (written comm. of 12 August 1989), for instance, that the recitation of the prayer Cithrəm buyād will hasten the coming of Sosyans.

49. See Mole, M., “Une ascétisme moral dans les livres pehlevis?” R.H.R. 155 (1959): 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. The Pahlavi doxology is discussed in Russell, J. R., “The Do'ā-ye Nām Stāyišn' in Emmerick, R. and Weber, D., eds., Corolla Iranica: Festschrift D. N. MacKenzie (Frankfurt, 1991), 127–32Google Scholar. I was informed by Mrs. Mehta in a conversation that the Khshnumists consider people of different faiths as born under the influences of different planets. They should not intermarry, any more than one planet ought to risk collision with another by entering its orbit. This theory corresponds to the ancient Near Eastern belief that each nation is under the influence of a particular sign of the zodiac.

51. This, of course, is the posture of prayer amongst Christians also. The Armenian name of the orans attitude, bazkatarac (“with arms outstretched”), may be a caique on the Avestan expression.

52. Sura 7:172: “And when your Lord held from the sons of Adam and made them to testify on themselves. Am I not your Lord (alastu bi-rdbbikumyi they said. Yes, we bear witness to it—lest you say on the day of Resurrection, Indeed we were unaware of this.” Cf. Greater Bundahišn 3.23–4: “In the hour of the noon watch, Ohrmazd with the Amahraspands performed a spiritual yasna ceremony, and during its performance He made all the creatures. He deliberated with the consciousness and spirit (bšy ud frawahr) of humanity, and, having granted mankind omniscient wisdom, he asked, Which seems more advantageous to you: that I fashion you in the material world and you contend in bodily form with the Lie and you destroy the Lie, and in the end I restore you healthy and deathless and create you in material form anew, forever undying and imaging, and you will have no more enemy; or should there be made for you eternal protection against the incursion? And the spirits of mankind saw, through that omniscient wisdom, the evil that is from the Lie, Ahriman, which would arrive in the material world on account of him and the final removal of his deleterious opposition; and for the sake of the healthy and immortal return to the material being of the Final Body forever and ever, they consented to go into the material world.“