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earnest speculations, wise deductions, rare inspirations, and pure revelations, as, with the addition of ceremonial specialties, doctrinal petrifactions, and prejudices and beliefs whose inner meaning has been forgotten, make up the religious tradition of a nation.

Our own system we draw from the Hebrews, whose oriental idealism we have hardened by our occidental practicality into a doctrinal body of our own.

Similarly the Hebrews, apart from what was mystically born among them (all great ideas, as we know them, are in part a renewal of old ones, and in part a new birth of earth and heaven acting upon ourselves), drew largely from Egypt in their early days, from Assyria in a later day, and from Medo-Persian influences later still.

The head of the Hebrew tribe was a Chaldean nomad, and the people themselves were directed (Deut. xxvi., 5) to make acknowledgment of their origin thus :"A Syrian wanderer was my father, and he went down into Lower Egypt, and sojourned there with a few men, and became there a nation."

If we affiliate ourselves to the Hebrew traditions, we have a son's right to examine into that lore's ancestry.

The links with Assyria, manifesting themselves in parallel deluge legends, dovetailing records of events and kindred elements of language, we will not here recount, but turn to the Babylonian influences of the second captivity, a time when the Assyrian empire fell and a Medo-Persian sove

reignty was established. Then flourished in great power and repute the Magi or priestly caste, who at that time were followers of the Zoroastrian religion. The late Emanuel Deutsch, being a Jew,

expresses himself with some caution respecting these foreign influences, but even he cannot but allow that they were of the highest importance: "The analogies between the Persian creed of the time and the Judaism of the captives is so striking that we may fairly doubt which have most influenced the other; we only see clearly the extraordinary and radical change which, within the space of a few generations, came over the exiles under the influence of the civilisation and religion of Persia."

We have three reasons, then, for our interest in the Aryan legacy-We have an Aryan strain in our blood, derived from the westward emigrants; we own as subjects a considerable group of the eastern emigrants; and our reli gious traditions are derived from a so-called Semitic tribe that claimed to have its origin somewhere in that sweet ancient spot between the rivers where the spiritual myth of Eden was attempted to be localised. And before those traditions were delivered to us they had received a new and great religious impulse from the long sojourn of the people among purely Aryan surroundings, and under the influence of the religious and scientific caste of the Medes and Persians.

We may yet have other interests in old Aryana, or at least in its western borders: it is strange, indeed, for instance, that English enterprise and Hebrew patriotism together should not ere now have bought Syria from its bankrupt sovereign, and by making a track through the mid-river valleys to the Persian Gulf, have reopened the fabled garden of the world. Now that the rich land has lain fallow so long, is it not time to cleanse out its ancient choked canals, and banish the desolation that broods over it-a desolation that is not so fatalistic but that it

would flee before the busy hand of man ?

The language of the ancient Aryans, whose traditions are now represented by the scanty remnant of the Bombay Parsis, is the sister of the Sanscrit of the Vedas. The Mohammedan extension of the seventh century drove out the Magi from their ancient haunts, but the Masdayasnian or Zoroastrian doctrines are not yet quite extinct, even after their continuance for four thousand years. The Parsis themselves are working like western students at the gathering up of the fragments of their scriptures; and, as regards ourselves more particularly, we do not yet know how much we are contributing to the preservation of these thoughts, in the sacred literature we hold so dear, until we know how much we owe to the sojourn of the Jews in Babylon, at the time when that city fell under Medo-Persian rule.

The date when the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) flourished is considered by those who have the best right to form a judgment to be about 2300 B.C., and the field of his earliest influence to have been Bactria, the modern Bokhara. Here was a great trade centre for merchants dealing with the woollen and the gold, and manifold other products, of central Asia.

Balkh (Bakhdi, Berekhdha in the Zend Avesta) was the capital city, and in the great fire temple there the seer is supposed to have preached to a large audience whom he addresses as those that have come from near and from far."

He declares that the wise (the seven immortal benefactors or archangelic beings, who are all personifications of qualities and emanations from God) have manifested this universe as a duality. There is a contrariety between the lifegiving and the destructive powers in this world, between this life and

the other life, between the knowledge acquired by study and experience and the inborn celestial wisdom of the pre-existent Spirit. God is ruler through the good mind. Immortality and wholesomeness are the attainment of the

soul of the pure. Punishment is not arbitrary for shameful deeds, but the wicked man's own hatred for good impels him away from good. Whatever we do is stored in the dwelling place of the heavenly singers, and meets us, when come the increasers of the days, the holy ones who assist at the resurrection; and when the weightiest life begins, which is the destruction of the terrestrial creation.

Philosophy, astronomy, and law are ascribed to Zoroaster. And the race which had attained these powers soon began to spread and extend itself.

it

The mythical region from which

originally springs, its semifabulous Eden, is Airyana-vaêjô (Sanscrit, Erangvejadesha; Pazand, Era-vezh). This is Iran the pure, of the good creation. It was a creation of delight, but unapproachable, else the whole corporeal world would have gone after it. But a curious historical reminiscence appears to mingle with the legend of Paradise. After the contrariety of the earth life has manifested itself, the region of bliss is found to have ten months of winter and only two of summer. This

would point to the north of the route from Turkestan to China, or to the territory now known as Siberia. The antithesis here is very singular, and reminds us of another garden legend, where the primitive state is perfection, the after condition one of briars and thorns. In the undisturbed city, men live long; there is no weeping, no falsehood, no avarice. In every forty years, from one woman and one man, one child is born. Their

law is goodness and their religion the primeval religion, and when they die they are righteous. Their ruler is a messenger angel from God, Srôsh the obedient, and their chieftain a homotaurus, who lives on the seashore.'

From this very inconsistent region the Aryans emigrate in lands. Sogdiana, Merve, Margiana, Bactra, Nisa, Herat, Cabul, Candahar, Arachosia, Etymander, Khorasan, India, and Ragha in Media are more or less identified as the quarters of the Orient over which they squatted, the designations being according to modern or classic names.

Herodotus tells us that the Medes were anciently called by all people Aryans. They were indeed Aryans, and probably the most important of the groups of emigrants, perhaps the mother-tribe. They must have extended themselves even to the South-west of what was afterwards Media proper, for in 2234 B.C. Babylon, which so often in after days changed hands, became the seat of a Median dynasty. It seems probable that Armenia, too, was in part absorbed by these dominant Aryans, for an inscription of Sargon at Khorsabad, describing Assyrian victories eighth century B.C.) refers to far-distant Media, stretching onward to Albania. That is to say -past Ararat toward the north.

We have not at present any conLeted history of the Zoroastrian Medes from their earliest period. History says little more of them than does the Book of Genesis, which (x., 2) refers to the Madai as of the descendants of Japheth. But their literature makes us conscious of their presence. It was spoken of by tradition some two Centuries before our era as having

consisted of two millions of verses; a development which, it has been said by competent authorities, would require the effluxion of a thousand years.

In the ninth century B.c. the Medes were an independent and distinct people, whom the Assyrians (in a monument of 880 B.C.) claim to have defeated. Probably in the earlier references to them they were not differentiated from the general Aryan stock.

In the eighth century B.C. Ecbatana, the Median capital, was built. In the Book of Tobit is a reference both to this city and also to the ancient city Ragha, the capital of the earliest Aryan settlement in Media, according to the Zend Avesta. In this century, too, a Median monarch conquered Persia, and his granddaughter married a Persian noble, and became the mother of Cyrus.

Afterwards we find the Medes and Persians regarded as a sort of twin race. They had descended from the same mother Arya, and each seems to have helped the other. Media was the cradle of the Persian power, producing a hardy race, breeding fine horses, and themselves not to be bought by gold. Under Cyrus the fortunes of Persia obscured the name of the Mede; but the latter was the more advanced in the arts, and the influence of the Magian tribe was prominent in the Persian system. The book of the chronicles kept by the learned caste was before the monarch for his instruction.

ever

The Medo-Persian empire extended itself over all the Asiatic regions that lie between the Mediterranean and the Indus. Luxury followed upon the increase of wealth and centralisation; and

• Vida Avonte Vandidad Faroard I Mainvo-i-khard, XLIV. and LXII.

the stern Macedonian at length overran the whole empire, and brought in a new dynasty and a new régime. In the burning of the palace at Persepolis, through a foolish weakness of Alexander, the royal copy of the Zoroastrian scriptures was destroyed, and by far the greater part of them is not now extant. Perhaps, as the scriptures of other nations have been so unexpectedly recovered, there may yet be found among ruins at Pasargada, Ecbatana, Ragha, Susa, or Persepolis, some records of Aryan thought, as it was both before and at the date of the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius. The language in which what we have of the Aryan scriptures is written is older than that variety of cuneiform. The more modern Parsi books, such as were gathered, translated, or composed in the early centuries of our era under the Sasanian dynasty of Persia, are still faithfully Zoroastrian, and serve to explain the allusions in the older books. There is, therefore, something substantial to turn to when we seek to examine the influences that so strongly affected our religious ancestors, the Hebrews, when they came under the Medo-Persian rule during the period of their stay in Babylonia, consequent upon the various deportations of Nebo - kudurri- ussur in the sixth century B.C. Some never returned from this and the earlier transportations, having become naturalised in the strange land which they had been carried off to populate, and having obtained, some of them, political employment, others a comfortable position with foreign servants under them, others again a profitable opening for traffic. Even the literary classes did not all return to Judea at the time of the patriotic revival, when Jerusalem was allowed to be reestablished. Nahardea, in Baby

lonia, remained a centre of Jewish colleges from the time of the exile for several centuries, and was the seat of learning which produced Hillel the Great, who left Babylon to take the Presidency at Jeru

salem.

That beautiful patriotism which took the exiles home, did, notwithstanding, in spite of the cosmopolitan influences that had been acting upon them through their intercourse with other peoples, eventually give rise to a very narrow and bigoted Judaism. That this Judaism was at no time supreme, may be seen from the foreign elements that are to be found in the Apocalyptic and Apocryphal books, the Talmud, and the New Testament.

The Talmud affirms that the very names of the angels the Jews learned in Babylon. They had, indeed, learned what became the Kabbalistic theory of existence; and, with a beautiful angelistic faith, had borrowed also a too large reliance upon the petty powers of demonology.

It has been said that, while the Hindus and the Greeks regarded as animated the whole of nature, the Persians imparadised the creation as being the abode of angels. Different nations explore different channels of the allpervading life.

man is always

The origin of likely to be a matter of interest; we will accordingly gather together from the various corners where it lies in fragments the legend of the Aryan protoplast, and endeavour to rehabilitate our mythical ancestor in order to compare him with his Hebrew congener.

an

First must be exhumed ancient theory which we will venture to designate that of double evolution. One process is confined to the physical world, regarded as the nidus of life. In the Aryan mytho

logy, a bull is the first and sole inhabitant of the earth, to which succeeds man. In the Indian books the succession of animals is much more complete. The incarnations of Vishnu, some of which are not without their parallel in Assyrian legend, are successively as a fish (ef. Dagon, Oannes, Jonah), a turtle, a boar, a lion, a pigmy, a rude man armed with an axe, a hunter or warrior with a bow, one furnished with a plough, a priest or religious teacher. The final incarnation seems to imply a mysterious subversal of the whole order, a completion of the cycle, a saviour heralding destruction. Another similar scheme is of a transmigratory succession consisting of plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, wild animals, man.

This may fairly be taken to represent the evolution of natural life.

The simultaneous process which eventually results in man is that of a spiritual being gradually descending, by a sort of fall as it were, into a region of grosser life. The Parsi Bun-daheshn, or Book of Genesis, which is a compilation of old fragmentary lore, refers to a statement in the Law, or ancient seripture, concerning beings who have fed first on water, then on the fruit of trees, then on milk, finally on meat. Eating, it will be remembered, had something to do with the Adamite fall, but here it would really appear that a gradual materialisation is adumbrated, the spiritual entity becoming more corporeal stage by stage until eventually he can make organic the chemical atoms of the terrestrial sphere, and is fitted to adopt the embryo animal body, which, by its own process of evolution, is being prepared for him. The reverse process with regard to food heralds the millennium, to which

we will refer more fully, in its place.

The cosmogony to which these developments belong is cyclic. A period passes in tranquillity without evil, then ensues a period of evils and wars; then, as good and evil mingle, appears the level of life as we know it.

In the works of Mirkond, the Persian historian, we find it stated that a being bearing the name of Kaiômart is asserted by the Magi to be synonymous with the Hebrew Adam. The following passages from the Avesta will serve as introduction to the myth of our Aryan ancestor, who, like as the Kabbalists regarded the first or archetypal Adam, is not so much the actual protoplast as the medium of production of the human race:

"The Fravashi (angelic counterpart) of the pure Gayomarathan praise we, who first heard the mind of Ahura Mazda, and His commands, from which he created the race of the Aryan regions, the seed of the Aryan regions:" (Farvardin Yasht 24, 87).

"This word have I (Ahura Mazda) spoken. . . . before the creation of this heaven, before the water, before the earth, before the trees, before the creation of the four-footed bull, before the birth of the pure man, the two-legged, before the body of this sun was created according to the wish of the Ameshaçpentas [the seven personified divine attributes whose duty is the preservation of the universe]." (Yaçna XIX. 16). The "pure man" here is Kaiômart or Gayomarathan.

"All the good, mighty, holy Fravashis of the pure, praise we, from Gayômarathan unto Çaoshyanç the victorious: " victorious" (Yaçna XXVI. 32.)

We

will refer later to this Çaoshyanç or Sosiosh.

"Praise to the Fravashi of the Bull, of Gayômarathan, of the holy

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