RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Zoroaster
and probably means “descendant of white” (cf. the English ‘ Whiting’; Jackson, ut sup., p. 13). The derivation of Zarathushtra is doubtful; ushtra means “ camel,” but no agreement has been reached upon the first element in the name.
The question whether Zoroaster is a historical personage may now be regarded as settled in the
affirmative. But that doubts should
2. Zoroaster have been raised is quite explicable.
Historical. As M. Haug well puts it (Essays on the
Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion
of the Parsis, ed. Dr. E. West, pp. 295-296, London, 1878):
“The events of his life are almost all enshrouded in darkness, to dispel which will be for ever impossible, should no authentic historical records be discovered in Bactria, his home. The reports regarding him, given by the Greeks and Romans, . .. are as unhistorical and legendary as those found in the majority of the Avesta books themselves. In the Vendidad and the Yashts he is represented . . . as not a historical, but as a dogmatical personality, stripped of nearly everything that is peculiar to human nature, and vested with a supernatural and wholly divine power, standing next to God himself and being elevated above the archangels. . . . He was the concentration of all wisdom and truth, and master and head of the whole creation. The only source whence we may derive some very scanty historical facts is the older Yasna. In this part of the Scriptures only he appears to the eye as a real man, acting a great and prominent part in the history of his country, and even in the history of the whole human race in general.”
The counts against a historical Zoroaster are three: (1) his figure is so large and in later development so enveloped in legend; (2) classical writers placed him in a hoary antiquity, and (3) details of his life historically verifiable are so few that doubt of his existence was almost a matter of course. These counts seem now of less value since it has become known that the accumulation of legend about the figure of a religious genius is customary, as witness Lao Tzse and Gautama, and no longer furnish presumption against the historicity of a personality. As to the classical references the following is to be said. Pliny the Elder (Hist. nat., XXX., ti. 1) cites Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 368 B.c.), Aristotle (850 B.c.), and Hermippus (c. 250 B.c.) for a date 6,000 years before the death of Plato, 5,000 before the Trojan war; he is followed in substance by Plutarch (“ Isis and Osiris,” xlvi.), a scholion to the Platonic “ Alcibiades ”’ (i. 22), Diogenes Laertius (De vitis philosophorum, proem. 2), and Suidas the lexicographer. Pliny and Suidas agree upon two Zoroasters, one (significantly) in the seventh to the sixth century. Still further, a set of references connect the prophet with the legendary Ninus and Semiramis, evidently intending a reference to a date about 800 B.c. (found in Ctesias, c. 400 B.c., Cephalion, 120 a.p., preserved in Eusebius, Chronikon, i. 43; Theon, 130 a.p., Justin Martyr, 114-165 a.p.; and Arnobius, 290 a.p.). The explanation of this early date is a misunderstanding by these writers of the Zoroastrian apocalyptics, which deal with cycles of 3,000 years (references in Jackson, ut sup., where the passages are collected).
The basis for a historical account of the prophet’s life are the Gathas as noted above, the Bundahish, xxxiv. 1-9, and the Arta-¢ Viraf, i. 2-5. These sum up the native tradition, though of course other literature reflects it, | The Bundahish, in the chronol-
ogy of the world period, makes the era of Zoroaster fall at the close of the third tri-millennium, and his ministry (begun at the age of thirty) at the beginning of the final tri-millennium. Historic-
3. His ally this is placed 272 years before the Early Life. conquest by Alexander in 331, which would make Zoroaster’s ministry begin
in 603 and his birth take place 633 B.c. West and Jackson (see bibliography) settle respectively upon c. 660 and 630 B.c. as the birth-year. This Persian tradition is practically reproduced in the Arab historian and geographer Albiruni (973-1048 a.p.), by Masudi (d. 957), who says that the Magians reckon 258 years between Zoroaster and Alexander (cited in Jackson, ut sup., p. 162), by Tabari (also an Arab; d. 923), and in a series of allusions in Pahlavi and other Persian writings. Very little can with certainty be said of Zoroaster’s origin and the course of his life. Legend was very busy surrounding him with glory. Thus the soul of the primeval bull had a vision of his fravashi (ideal image, spiritual counterpart) 3,000 years before the revelation of his religion (Bundahish, iv. 4-5), and an ox endowed with speech 300 years before his birth predicted his advent. The question of Zoroaster’s native place is one of the vexed questions. Classical allusions (cf. Jackson, ut sup., pp. 186-191) locate it in Bactria (Eastern Iran), in Persia, or in Media; the Persian and (secondary) Arabic literature (Jackson, ut sup., pp. 191-205) is quite generally in favor of Adarbaijan, the modern Azerbaijan, west of the Caspian and including Urumiah. Especially does the native tradition connect the prophet with the River Daryai, one of the tributaries of the Araxes taking its rise in Mt. Savalan and flowing north. This tradition regards Zoroaster’s youth as spent in the same region, and his visions as seen there or to the south of the Caspian. His mother was Dughdhova, a virgin, and he was of triple nature, including the “kingly glory,” fravashi, and material body; his mother, after conceiving him, became so resplendent that she was thought bewitched and sent away from home, where she married. Nature participated in the rejoicing at his birth, the demons fled in terror, and the child at once burst into exultant laughter. The contest with evil was at once precipitated by the evil spirits and their servants among men; attempts to kill him failed and beasts became his protectors. His education began before the age of seven, and his majority came at fifteen; at twenty he gave up the world and began the life of a wanderer seeking religious truth. What little is said of his life from twenty to thirty years of age (cf. Jackson, ut sup., pp. 34, 231 sqq.) leads to the conclusion that something like the life of an Indian ascetic was not unknown in Iran. The tradition includes retirement to a mountain cave (Vendidad, xxii. 19) in a manner which recalls Mohammed’s experience; at the age of thirty he received his first vision, followed by others for ten years at intervals until he had seven, out of which he constructed his religion. The facts of religious psychology and the part which Kestasy (q.v.) played support a construction of his religious development as follows. He early displayed a vigorous mentality, to which his mother and her husband made response in provision for his
Zoroaster