How Indian Zoroastrians helped shape modern Iran
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
The ruler summoned the Parsi representatives to his court. When asked how would they assimilate in the local society, the Parsis asked for some sugar and milk. They mixed it in front of the ruler and said that this is how they will assimilate, not changing the society but making it sweeter.
Even today the Parsi dialect of the Gujarati language is polite and sweet.
> That the Zoroastrian migrants to Sanjan were basically a mercantile group is borne out by records as well as by excavated material. Andre Wink goes further and adds that the migration was not so much due to religious persecution as much as ‘a readjustment of commercial patterns which had arisen long before Islam, and, to an extent at least, a response to new opportunities in the transit trade between the Islamic world and al-Hind’
THE LANDING OF THE ZOROASTRIANS AT SANJAN The archaeological evidence - Rukshana Nanji and Homi Dhalla
And from the 3 major classical Iranian empires and eras, it was not the very assertively Zoroastrian Sassanid empire that was memorialized and used as a vehicle to promote nationalism by Pahlavi Shahs, but rather the Hakhamaneshian (Achaemenid) dynasty. When the late Shah of Iran held his memorial to 2500 years of Iranian kings, he saluted Cyrus the Great, not some zealously Zoroastrian Sassanid Shah.
http://irancollection.alborzi.com/2500/index.htm
Note the missing "flame". Note, instead, the Cylinder of Ku-Rosh (Cyrus the Great). And Cyrus, unlike his equally great successor Dariush, was rather cagey about his actual religious beliefs.
Even in what passes for native "neo-classical" architecture, it was again the Achaemenid era that was front and center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iranian_Foreign_Affaire_M...
I think the article fairly represents that it was a complicated situation - with the Pahlavis using Zoroastrianism sourced from India as a tool to fuel Iranian nationalism, i.e.:
"At the core of this tension lay the “implicit contradictions between the liberal goals of the Parsis and the more nationalist goals of many Iranians” during the interwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s."
Perhaps as a result of the sponsorship of the Pahlavis, nearly every Iranian I've met outside Iran (including many who lived there before 1979) have good understanding of Zoroastrianism's role in Iran's history and culture - and a reason why many people in post-Islamic Iran have liberal values despite living under a theocracy.
> Iranians were rather fed (and many actually believe this!) an interesting fable about how Shia Islam is the Iranian version of Islam.
Persia had a significant influence on Islam even before the Arab conquest of Persia, evidenced by the Persian loanwords in Arabic [1]. It's hard to imagine how Persian culture wouldn't have had a huge influence on Islam inside Persia itself.
1. https://burjbaabil.com/2014/05/31/persian-loanwords-in-arabi...
> Perhaps as a result of the sponsorship of the Pahlavis, nearly every Iranian I've met outside Iran (including many who lived there before 1979) have good understanding of Zoroastrianism's role in Iran's history and culture - and a reason why many people in post-Islamic Iran have liberal values despite living under a theocracy.
Zoroastrians are not "liberal". No religion with priests can ever be "liberal". It's the original religion with a zillion rules of dos and donts.
Iranians are liberal because that is our nature. Because our poets constantly drill it in to our national psyche to be tolerent, generous, think of others, etc. Was Saadi a Zoroastrian? Ferdosi? Hafiz? Attar? Rumi? Khayam? Even illiterate Iranians can recite chapter and verse from the literally wealth of our nation.
The first "theocracy" in Iran was, as a matter of historic fact, the Sassanid Empire. And the original Ayatollahs of Iran were called Mobed Mobedan. _ALL_ of instances of extreme intolerance in Iran have happened during periods when the -clergy- was powerful and involved in matters of state. First time around was in the decidedly Zoroastrian Sassanid empire, and then after that so-and-so :) Shah Abbas II divided the state between Court and Mosque, under Shia Mullahs, which is how the Mullahs came to have so much power in Iran.
(Read "Religious developments") https://www.britannica.com/topic/mobedan-mobed
[https://iranicaonline.org/articles/borzmehr-pahlavi-lit]
Pay attention there to a man named Ferdosi. We got our history from him. The -ludicrous- notion that Iranians were unaware of our history and heritage of Zartosht until some Zoroastrians from India came to instruct us is just too much.
Read all about the "liberal" treatment of Christians in a theocratic Iran ("II. The Persecution of Bahram V"):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_the_Histor...
> Persia had a significant influence on Islam even before the Arab conquest of Persia, evidenced by the Persian loanwords in Arabic [1]. It's hard to imagine how Persian culture wouldn't have had a huge influence on Islam inside Persia itself.
Of course. Iran has had a huge impact in history and all sort of matters. And yes, Allah uses a Persian word to name Paradise and he even calls ITself "Ahura-Mazda" (in Arabic, naturally :)
I don't know about ancient things, but I can say being raised Zoroastrian I was never, ever given a rule worded with a "don't".
Do good deeds - Yes
Do say good words - Yes
Do think good thoughts - Yes
I was never (based on religious reasons) asked to not drink or smoke or be a glutton, etc.
I'd find it hard to imagine you would even find such a "rule", let alone "zillion".
You know, you can pick random Jews, Christians, and Muslims (myself included) who'll tell you a variation on the same religious rigor in their families. But the guidance and teachings of the prophet Zartosht are not a 3 line self-help pamphlet. After all, what is "good"? How do you make this determination? To be a follower of Zartosht, means signing on to the cosmic battle between Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. To aid in the "Renovation of the Creation".
So to sum up, yes, I believe you, and thus consider that your "religion" is basically no different than the "religion" of your contemporary Jew, Christian, or Muslim, and thus not really worth making a distinction about. How is that for a good thought?
That's pretty ridiculous on it's face. It is no more true than the claim that all Muslims are obliged to put the infidel to the sword or subjugation if they don't convert to Islam, or that Hindus are obliged to adhere to the idea that they are polluted if a lower caste person's shadow falls on them, or likewise for any religion.
> How is that for a good thought?
As a rule, anonymous targeted sarcasm on the Internet is never a good thought.
The analog of the cosmic battle between Ahura-Mazda (in the Arabic Qur'an called Al Aziz-Al Hakim, in English The Mighty-The Wise) and Ahriman in the Qur'an is when God tells Adam that Satan is "My enemy and your enemy, so treat him as an enemy". This metaphysical duality, presented as a central issue for sentient beings in both religions, with assurances in both religions as the ultimate "victory" of God and the "right minded" and vanquishing of the enemy, is a metaphysical (or if you prefer psychological) matter. The essence of the matter is the ontological requirement of "distinguishing" for the emergence of "form", which arises from division of the continuum (which is a Unity), i.e. the number 2. In capsule, the fundamental difference between sentient perceptions is that of those who believe in the primacy of meaning to form, and those who believe meaning arises from form. This is "the choice".
& Apparently it is left to this Iranian "neo-Zoroastrian" Muslim to elucidate what precisely was the defining moment in the history of our people, the Iranian People. Iran, a feminine name (the sister of Iraj), is the name that our people adopted to distinguish ourselves from our "Indo-European" brethren. It means Aryan, and Aryan means "Noble Minded". (In the Gita, you have Krishna utter "Among the people I am the Arianman".)
And what was the reason for this departure from the understanding of our Indian brethren? It was the message of the prophet Zartosht. Zartosht rejected the "Deava" and plutora of "gods" and properly considered them as "daemons". Zartosht asserted the primacy of the Creative Spirit and the corrosive destructive spirit of "The Lie" (or 'error', for the materialist). He rejected the pollution of the Earth, rejected the destruction of built environment, and rejected the "destructive" mindset.
This is why in Iranian tongues, a "Deev" is a daemon while in Indian and European tongues is is "divine". And as Iranians we see comical manifestations of this metaphysical misunderstanding, such as for example, when the "Indo-European" readings of Buddhist scripture has "daeva" ("Gods" according to them) come to Buddha for "instruction", whereas we correctly note that these are "daemons" who come to the Realized One for illuminating instruction. (And in the Qur'an we have the "Jinn" -- in Sura 72 -- just as in Buddhist scripture, listen to the words of the Prophet to be instructed and illuminated.)
The error of closed minded individuals who cling to cultural manifestations of timeless realizations of profound individuals of mankind is to seek the "other" in their kin and fall into the error of creating imaginal and false boundaries where none exist. This, properly understood, is the work of the "destructive enemy", on whom and its adherent there is an eternal ban in the 'Kingdom of God'. And to fight this, which is ultimately a personal and internal matter, is the foremost task of the thinking sentient being.
As a matter of fact, for the thoughtful sentient, all metaphysical and "cosmic" matter are understood to be inner, psychological, affairs, the "inner Jihad".
Truly for Seekers I shall speak of those
things to be pondered,
even by one who already knows,
With Praise & Worship,
for The LORD of Good Purpose
The Mighty Wise One,
and for Truth.
Hear with your ears the best things,
reflect with clear purpose,
each man for himself,
on the two choices for decision,
being alert indeed to declare yourselves for Him
before The Great Requital
- Zartosht
You seem to be here to give a religious sermon, not discuss the article.
Sure, sounds like a very good thought.
> After all, what is "good"? How do you make this determination? To be a follower of Zartosht, means signing on to the cosmic battle between Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. To aid in the "Renovation of the Creation".
Yeah, as far as I've understood it, the metaphysical stuff was just a way to get the message across and as a form of motivation because the implementation is difficult. Meanwhile, the message at its core is simple:
Based on modern language Zarathustra would likely define "good" as "actions that directly and indirectly reduce scarcity for every individual", and/or "abundance mentality", and/or "act as if all games are positive sum games". FWIW, this would include reducing the scarcity of serotonin and/or dopamine and/or other chemicals in the brains of individuals.
With that framework in mind, do whatever you want and don't worry about stumbling from the framework, just keep trying again and again. e.g. Its understood that it takes energy to follow this (or any) framework and some days you won't have the energy. Just try to follow the framework more often than you don't. e.g. its understood that we are not able to comprehend enough into the future or retain all data simultaneously, so just make the best decision you can in an appropriate timeframe and when appropriate (like if you indirectly/accidentally hurt someone) learn from previous mistakes. One extra suggestion is to make decisions that reduce the energy it will take you to follow the framework in the future.
If needed, to motivate select individuals, you can add the metaphysical stuff back to the message. However, given how much we have already climbed the hierarchy of needs and no longer need a metaphysical reason to discuss the elimination of scarcity, I feel Zarathustra would no longer find it necessary to involve the metaphysical in their message.
Anyways, I don't speak to the dead, nor am I a significant/profound individual from history, so read into how I've been raised and my inference with doubt. However please note, its not just me that is like this. I know no Zoroastrians (young or old) that would put the metaphysical above the physical, and I know quite a few Zoroastrians :)
From the introduction to the paper:
"Visitors to the Vatican Museum in Rome will remember that the very first monuments, flanking the entrance to the first room in the vast gallery that leads ultimately to the Sistine Chapel, are neither saints not angels but what appear to be devils: for at each side of the entrance door, guarding it with their baleful presence, stand two most un-Christian deities with the head of a lion and gaping jaws. In both hands they bear keys, a snake encircles their bodies, and the Signs of the Zodiac are impressed on their limbs.[2] Coming face to face with these awesome figures Christians may well recall the words of St. Peter: "Be sober and watch; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour" (i Pet. 5 . 8 ). The serpent too which envelops the body of the lion-headed deity is all too familiar, and one is tempted to identify it with that selfsame serpent which tempted our first mother, Eve, to eat of the forbidden fruit.
Yet, interesting though the Christian parallels may be, we have long known that this rather repulsive deity has nothing to do with the Christian devil, for he figured in a cult that was for long Christianity's most potent rival in the early Roman Empire. This rival religion which has left monuments throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire is known as Mithraism, and its roots were originally in Iran; for the god Mithra, from whom the New Persian word mehr, meaning both the "sun" and "affection" derives, was, in the Zoroastrianism of the later Achaemenian Empire, second only to the supreme Deity, Ahura Mazdah himself."
The paper concerns a discovery in the 1960's of an incomplete 600,000 word story written during WW2 by a mysterious Iranian by the name of Ali Mirdrekvandi[3], which Zaehner deduced must have been a retelling of ancient Zoroastrian myth and which, Zaehner argued, confirmed his identification of the lion-headed figure (the "Lionish god" in the story) as Ahriman, the false deity and enemy of their true god, Ahura Mazdah (Ohrmazd).
[1] - https://archive.org/details/ZaehnerZorSurvivalsFolklore
[2] - http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/images/cimrm545.gi...
https://www.tripadvisor.it/Attraction_Review-g1064663-d10823...
Christianity’s rivals in the early Roman Empire were basically every other faith, because, unlike most Roman religions they were monotheistic. Arguably their most potent political rival was the imperial cult.
The Persians, who were mostly Zoroastrian, were a major rival, but mostly for more mundane reasons.
The old synthetic polytheisms were all pomp and circumstance, with the elite atheists, and poor treating it more like fortune telling + some light collective obligations for sacrifices and whatnot + entertainment. They weren't a serious competitor on religious grounds as there was no fervor of belief.
Mithraism, on the other hand, was another "new-age cult". Like today's, the older religious origins (Zoroastrianism) probably did more to legitimize it / add mystique than actually reflects a strong continuity of belief. Mithraism had the zeal and singular focus to be an actual competitor to Christrianity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mercury#Early_life
[0] https://bookshop.org/books/a-short-stay-in-hell/978098374842...
In India the Devas are gods and the Asuras are demons.
In Persia, Asuras (called Ahuras) eventually came to become singular Ahura and identified with the supreme God and the Devas became demons.
Thus the gods and demons are reversed between India and Persia.
The polarization of the two into inimical identities is thought to have happened at some point in antiquity, but it cemented after the Indian Vedic period. During the Vedic period the Asuras weren't all bad - indeed many import demigods of the pantheon are Asuras. They are quite analogous in this way to the Norse Æsir and Vanir, who are not strictly good and evil, and like them often had their conflicts play out on Earth.
While some scholars have suggested that the Asura/Deva split must represent an actual schism that took place between the Zoroastrians and the Vedic peoples, it could just as well be the result of cultural drift or the influence of other adjacent cultures.
King Bali is the perfect example. Bali was called an asura, but he never did anything wrong. He waged wars with devas, and even when devas pleaded vishnu for defeating him, Vishnu recognized his virtues and agreed to push him to paatala (below earth) using trick instead of killing him.
King Prahlad is also another example, he is born to an asura father, but is worshipped as deva. His cousins/sons were again be treated as asuras.
Deva/Asura is calibrated to the speaker. as BBC once said, one man's hero is other man's villain.
In Zoroastrianism, the purpose in life is to become an ashavan (a master of Asha, the life force) and to bring happiness into the world, which contributes to the cosmic battle against evil. Zoroastrianism's core teachings include:
Follow the Threefold Path of Asha: Humata, Huxta, Huvarshta (Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds).
Charity is a way of maintaining one's soul aligned to Asha and to spread happiness.
The spiritual equality and duty of men and women alike.
Being good for the sake of goodness and without the hope of reward.
Defeated Persians walk back. It is a long journey and by the time they reach home their numbers are low and moral is broken, one of those tribes would split further to become the modern day Zoroastrianism. World's first monotheistic religion.
Technically, Zoroastrianism is at direct conflict with Hinduism and yet both religions have thrived side by side in India and average Hindu has very positive opinion of Parasi people (Zoroastrianism). Examine the language of both religions. In Sanskrit Asura means evil people (demon), in Persian Asura becomes Ahura which means Lord.
I have always felt that Parasi and Hindu communities are exceptional example of how religious groups with opposite viewpoints can live next to each other and peacefully.
I think the primary reason for this is that neither religion has a concept of converting someone to their religion. Same is true for Judaism, and probably for most ancient religions. As no one was actively trying to convert the other person, wars were fought over territory and resources, and not over who had better gods. It is only when proselytizing became a requirement did we start seeing religious wars.
Thank you for sharing that. That was exactly my point, when neither group is interested in converting the other and are comfortable in their own traditions, the interaction is very civil and beneficial to all parties.
Hinduism had a rich tradition of Shastrartha (Sanskrit शास्त्रार्थ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shastrartha where scholars debated the meaning and their interpretation of scriptures. Which meant that the religious books were always open to interpretation and never taken literally, which is unlike what we see in several modern religions where the text is applied literally and interpretations are considered sacrilegious.
In fact, it may have echoed forward directly for centuries. The daasharajna yuddha, as it is called in Sanskrit, may have both inspired the epic Mahabharata composed centuries later, and which is also centered on a great war.
Even more, the tribes and kingdoms that participated in Mahabharata war may have been descendants of Sudas from the battle of 10 kings. They are certainly cultural descendants, as they carried forward the story of the 10 Kings' Battle in the Vedas.
We also know with near certainty that those tribes mentioned in the Mahabharata inhabited the area spanning modern Afghanistan through the Gangetic plain [1], which is just east of the border region between the Vedic/Indian and Persian/Zoroastrian worlds.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchala#/media/File:Late_Vedi...
They refused to accept any civilizational could be older than 4000 years because of the great flood.
So often they tried to fit the evidence into their narrative. As we know today very many civilizations can be dated to much further in time.
Fwiw I’m Hindu.
Character assassination based on your subjective psychoanalysis is not a polite thing to do on a public forum.
'The Horse, The Wheel, and Language' - those are slim evidences made to fit a narrative.
The narrative clearly starts with negating the out of India theory instead to favour a Central Asia/European roots.
But really what kind of evidence do we have for the existence of a sophisticated culture in Germany that predates Harappa.
I don't know why Indian nationalists take a root at pontic Caspian steppes as an attack against antiquity of our culture. It doesn't take anything away from us. They were not Europeans or something. They didn't attack and invade the indigenous mostly mixed with them. Before them there were migrations from zagros mountains etc..
> Central Asia/European roots.
They are not the same.
> But really what kind of evidence do we have for the existence of a sophisticated culture in Germany that predates Harappa.
You clearly have not read the book. It's not Germany, it's Pontic Caspian steppes, approximately in modern day Ukraine if I recall correctly.
Fly in the ointment, there hasn't been any land at the North pole for quite some time. Why the choice ? perhaps to help themselves to some notion of exceptionalism, uniqueness, so on and so forth.
I get it, everyone wants to feel a little special, it gets dangerous when that becomes a sizeable political force. More so, if they feel they have not been given their rightful due and/or humiliated. Wish there was a moral analogue of "now now dont be hurt, yes baby you are so very special, have a candy bar" in the international arena.
I am ethnically Hindu but an athiest (which, by the way, does not disqualify me from being a Hindu)
As I have said earlier the racial contours of USA/West in general have vested interest in polluting research in this field.
It's the Indian nationalists who were multiple times caught faking evidence to assert indigenous Aryans theory.
There is a strong reason to believe it is biased.
Let them produce physical evidence of cultural artifacts that predates and connects those found all accross the Indian subcontinent.
We can then discuss out of India vs Aryan invassion theory.
Everything including genetic evidence supports that.
You seem to be highly convinced by nationalistic pseudoscience. Open your mind and apply some logic.
Indian sources and Puranas themselves point to a much older timeline.
> nationalistic pseudoscience
That applies more to the kind of theories and other race sciences spewed by the colonists that ultimately lead to the holocaust in Germany.
Please update yourself with the latest findings and learn to be suspicious of the material from the colonial times.
Please update yourself from well credited academia and not suspicious newspaper articles or pop culture.
Academics also agree nazi stuff was pseudoscience. You are attacking a straw man.
The linguistic and genetic evidence points at a migration, you can't read r/chodi and believe it's true, while simultaneously hating Nazis.
Indian nationalists are considered annoying for a reason. You people take offense at people saying Indians didn't invent aeroplanes 10K years ago. Go read some science.
With all your colonial hate, your "indigenous" ""science"" is limited to claiming smoke from havanas purifies air, and sanskrit is best computer language.
You stand against everything your founder, Vinayak Savarkar, fought for.
It is incredible that Wikipedia too just quotes this single individual on hundreds of pages somehow giving him and his claims credibility. His claims have been refuted by many using plethora of evidence but his citation cartel will simply dismiss it by attacking the authors instead of their research.
One thousand years doesn't take anything away from it though.
Horse,
Early British researchers claimed Harrapans (aroun 3500 BC) did not know horses and since Vedas rely so much on horses, clearly Vedas were much later inventions. This theory was repeated so many times that a lot of people assume this to be true. It gets quoted again and again. In reality this is as false as Trump's claim of re-election victory. The oldest domesticated horse bones in India were found in Rajasthan around 4500 BCE. However the white researchers have not bothered at all to revise any of their theories despite new evidence. There are over 15 different instances of domesticated horse bones ranging from 2500 BCE to 3000 BCE have been found. Please read Srikant Talegari's paper on the topic.
Linguistic evidence:
This is actually pretty lame evidence to begin with and can very easily be repudiated. Early white christian researchers believed that Aryans invaded India killing native people (to justify why British rule of India) and they claimed these Aryans came from Russia 3000 BCE. How did they arrive at this conclusion ? Linguistics shows that all 12 branches of Indo-European languages were together sometime around 3000 BCE. It was not clear when, but the "south russia" claim is completely random and unsubstantiated. During these times Avesta, the holy book of Zorostrasians was the only non Hindu text that would talk about Vedic culture but it was orally transmitted and hence had not physical artifacts. Much much later, Mittani treaty was discovered in Syria which was around 1500 BCE old which clearly indentified itself as Indo-Iranian. So many western scholars took this as contemporary of Rigveda without analyzing both books in details.
Rigveda which has 10 books is generally classified as core and non-core. It is unanimous opinion that core is much older than non-core. It turns out Mittani shares a lot of words and linguistic traits with the non-core where as nearly none with the old core. Mittani's own languages is a "residue" of old vedic languages which they picked up centuries earlier. Hence some of the researchers think that Rigveda predates Mittani by significant amount of time.
Note: I am not emotionally involved in any of the dates, other that pure academic curiosity I think it is irrelevant if it s 3900 years old or 5000 years old. The only point I am trying to make is that Rigveda dating is not a "settled" matter as some claim and we will see more interesting research in future.
Reas Srikant's paper here: https://www.amazon.com/Rigveda-Historical-Analysis-Shrikant-...
I am not entirely sure how genetic claims could even play role in dating rigveda.
Also peer review is not just “approval by white people”. There’s plenty of non-white scientists (eg: me)
I am not very familiar with Genetic theories to be honest and only work I have read on this topic is from Manu Joseph's not very scientific summary of research on this topic but it is barely conclusive in any direction.
> There’s plenty of non-white scientists
That is besides the point, they will let in those who tow their lines and keep out those who disagree claiming them to be either "they haven't published anything in journals reviewed by us". Afterall british controlled India not through white soldiers but brown soliders handpicked from Indians.
It basically is a citation cartel to begin with very little concern for actual research or truth. Also this is not specific to Indology either. In this day and age it matters very little though as better quality research by such as likes of Talegari or Elst or Danino et al. stands on its own even after decades.
In the essay I refer to elsewhere in this thread [1], Zaehner writes:
"What do we know of these so-called "demon worshippers"? The Persian for demon is div (Middle Persian dev , Old Persian daiva, Avestan daeva). All these words correspond to the Sanskrit deva and are etymologically connected with the Latin deus. Originally, they must have been gods.
In the Avesta there are two words for supernatural beings, ahura and daeva , and these correspond etymologically exactly to the Sanskrit asura and deva. In the Rig-Veda, the earliest literary monument of the whole Indo-European group of races, both terms mean divine beings, the asuras being more remote from man, the devas closer to him. In the course of time, however, the asuras, who always had an uncanny element in them, became purely maleficent powers, whereas the devas remained gods similar to the gods of Greece and Rome and other Indo-European peoples.
In Iran, however, exactly the opposite happened. Owing to the reform of the Prophet Zoroaster, no ahura was any longer allowed to exist in his own right, and Ahura Mazdah, the "Wise Lord", was raised to the position of the one true God, maker of heaven and earth and all that in them is. The daevas, on the other hand, were regarded by the Iranian Prophet as being maleficent powers, the henchmen of Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, whose real origins remain obscure. The Zoroastrian reform, however -- which put an exalted monotheism in the place of the more ancient polytheism which the Iranians had formerly shared with their Aryan cousins who had moved on into India -- this Zoroastrian reform was far too radical and politically too weak to eliminate the worship of the daevas altogether. In what was later to become Zoroastrian orthodoxy, a place was made for many of the old ahuras like Mithra and Anahita, but not for the old daevas, whose cult was in all probability associated with bloody sacrifice; and it is this cult, in my opinion, which reappears in Mithras' sacrifice of the Bull in the Mithraism of the Roman Empire.
It seems plain, however, that the cult of the daevas co-existed with orthodox Zoroastrianism until the reign of Xerxes, when it seems to have been suppressed, at least officially. It maintained an underground existence, however, in all probability up to Muslim times as the constant attacks on it in the Pahlavi books show..."
Latin also contains a cognate of "deus" that retains more features of the PIE form, namely Jupiter.
I don’t know thr actual history at all here, but the logic here seems dangerous; the repeated attacks on the “witchcraft” that was intimately described and attacked in European Christian documents aren’t evidence that it continued to exist (or ever existed in the form described) throughout the period those documents were written.
"The relationship between the Æsir and Vanir parallel the Asuras and Devas in another way; like the Æsir, the Asuras were associated in Vedic myth with human phenomena (contracts, the arts, fate), while the Vanir, like the Devas, are associated with the natural world (such as Njord and Freyr, associated with fertility)." [0]
Very interesting.
[0] https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Aesir-Asura_correspondence
Are you sure? I was under the impression this is a mistaken translation. Rakshasa would be the more demonic one and not asura.
(This is far from the only case where a generic word ends up being used to refer to something specific that has that category. Everyone in Hindu mythological stories has a bajillion alternative names that are generic-sounding but only apply to them, based around some aspect of their personality or actions.)
A Rakshas is just someone blinded by the need to accumulate wealth and power, they may be kind but often take the wrong path.
Poonawalla, Gheewalla, Daruwalla, Canteenwalla, Something-wala. Or even more straight: Driver, Carpenter, Broker, Sethna etc all real surnames.
There are probably elements in both coming from even more ancient Indo-European religions. I wonder if you could also find similarities with German and Greek deities as well and try to reconstruct a proto-Indo European religion.
I am asking because Aphrodite can be traced back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte and then to Ishtar / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna
As in good deeds = making other humans happy or whatever.
Yah, I am not big on religion.
When a Martian delegation visited Earth in the 1950's, they studied the dominant lifeforms in order to understand the hierarchical organisation of any potential Earth defences.
After several weeks of undercover observation, the chief Martian explorer reported that life on Earth had at its apex the most powerful and revered predator which had subjugated all other lifeforms on all 5 continents.
Whilst the Martian term for this predator is unpronounceable, NASA cryptographers determined that the organism identified by the explorers was the automobile.
You've rather missed the point if you seek a religion not focused on humanity, because in every case religion is an explanation for the persistent mystery of the purpose of our own self-knowledge. If a cosmology does not present a teleological explanation for the existence (and often, attendant suffering) of its followers, it is more a pseudo-science than a religion.
Arguably Scientology strays the furthest from "human centered," with an eschatology apparently centered around humans being mere vessels for other beings. But still, this is an apologia for the existence of humanity.
I found this to be such a welcome change from "me me Me, Hey There, look here its ME" religions. I am not a Buddhist.
Take negotiation or haggling over price. You know you want to pay a max of X, so you offer X-Y and on the other end the same happens in reverse until both sides hopefully reach a Z somewhere close enough to their own X that they agree to make the transaction. You alway ask for something extra in a negotiation that you can give up on or bargain with that doesn't really hurt.
If I apply this to population control via religion, your teachings should be about the absolute best behaviours. You burn in hell if you don't behave like X etc. Makes total sense to me as in reality people as a whole will deviate to a certain extent. But by insisting on X, on average everyone arrives at Z.
Of course this makes no sense to you or me or other atheists that are perfectly capable of being decent human beings without all the religious mumbo jumbo. But if you were charged with keeping a large populous of all sorts of different people under control, how would you do that? "Reasoning" with them is likely not to yield the kind of results you want, especially if we are talking living conditions of hundreds to thousands of years ago.
The trick is to be the high priest, not the sacrifice ;)
I don't understand what you mean by "completely centered around humans".
Judaism is centered around worship of God, who is not human... but like every other human religion the worshipers themselves are human, so I guess in the sense that it has human worshipers it is "centered around humans".. is that what you mean?
"I find these whole "happiness" and "charity" concepts fake and disturbing"
Why do you think they're fake?
"As in good deeds = making other humans happy or whatever"
What's the problem with that?
What really pissed me was the insistence that god > hebrews > other humans> animals. What utter junk
You're totally in your right to be skeptic.
Yet, one hour of your time reading a part of it without introduction or reference may not be how you will gain anything from it (whatever the gain would be, confirmation/deepening/deconstruction of your skepticism).
The backbone of all religions is based on the personal mystical experiences of individuals like Jesus, Mohammad, Budha and many others.
They experienced some kind of personal transformation and feeling of being connected with everything around them.
A lot of religious and spiritual practices are based on developing that feeling within yourself through various trainings.
Monks for example are deep in this territory and may practice meditation for hours and hours a day. When you do that you become very sensitive to changes within yourself and start to see how various stimuli might effect you. They might experience that being charitable and loving etc unlocks deep levels of joy and blissfusness but if they do the opposite they might face a decrease in such feelings etc
So it’s not so much you have to be charitable for some moral reason but more you have to be charitable if you want to experience certain feelings within yourself that are much more pleasant than what you may experience if you do the opposite.
Many, not all. Basically newer religions that were founded by an individual such at the ones you mentioned. Ancient, but still practiced, religions, such as Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Native American religions and so on have a different, more nuanced, origin.
It's still pretty strange to expect a human coping / structuring mechanism like religion to not put humans on a prominent (though usually not very respectable) place.
Taking the cynical angle, charity can come from a place of self-interest if it makes you feel good.
In my experience, I've met many people with Buddhist backgrounds that are giving by default. Most of them have come from countries where this way of being is deeply rooted in the culture, and therefore their charity is often reciprocated (or at least not punished), and the behaviour is rewarded. On the flip side, there are some Buddhist monks in recent times who've incited populist violence against minorities, so the picture is complicated. On the whole, though, it's very different to the individualist default of much of the Anglosphere.
Or do you expect human religions to try to appeal to animals?
I'm not religious, so I can't speak from experience; however, I think they speak about people having dominion over nature --dominion here, in that context, meaning stewardship, rather than selfish control. So from that Pov they consider nature.
They seem to represent evolution of lifeforms as well as human society.
We have reached 9, the 10th is a horse faced being, it is either alien, human evolution or a new species that would replace man.
Any animals, plants, trees and rocks are also considered divine and have their own festivals.
Nepali Kukur tihar is a festival for dogs.
Bhagavatam contains 22 avatars of Vishnu. The arbitrary selection of 10 which sometimes include Buddha is a later day invention.
> They seem to represent evolution of lifeforms as well as human society.
This is Theospohical interpretation with no basis in actual scripture. It's like using the Book of Mormon to interpret the Old Testament.
> the 10th is a horse faced being
Kalki is said to ride a horse, not have a horse's head. The horse headed avatar is Hayagriva who oddly enough isn't included in dasavatara.
The Murthis or deities in every temple however small are such manifestation.
Major manifestations are avatars. I took this from this video based on a carving that is more than 2000 years old.
May good thoughts come us from all sides. Full context can be found here https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/36196/context-a...
"How was the religion established in Ancient Persia, what is its body of beliefs and how have they been developed and disseminated? With Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Curator of Ancient Iranian Coins in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum; Farrokh Vajifdar, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society; Alan Williams, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester."
Goes without saying, Mistry's A Fine Balance is probably the best book I've ever read. The story still stays with me years later and I look forward to re-reading it at some point.
Who is upvoting these articles about my mostly forgotten culture and why?
Interesting archeological news, and things about less well know cultures are often shared and upvoted here as well.
I've read some into Zoroastrianism and find it super interesting, that's why I upvoted it.
At this stage of my life I accept for a certain group of the population, they need religion to fill a gap in some people's need to feel like they belong. If that gap is filled with something that has less ties to imperialism and is a general ethos of "Be excellent to each other" I'm totally fine with an upvote now and then.
Rather the opposite, the original Zarathustra is considered the one, who brought the dualistic thinking of good vs. evil into this world.
Nietzsche wanted to get rid of it, to go beyound good and evil, so he lets the creator of this (in his and my opinion) harmful philosophy negate this philosophy.
The following might be an unpopular notion here on HN, but do not entirely understand why the US has a chip on their shoulder about Iran. Seems US is the aggressor in that conflict.
What is surreal is the strong support of quite brutal Saudi regime just next door which doesn't uphold basically any values we hold dear in the west, plus most 9/11 perpetrators came from there. Former strong support of Saddam is also something they would rather ignore.
If one were to wipe last 30~40 years of current affairs from my memory and ask me which countries in the middle east could be among US's allies, I would have gone with Iran and Israel. Their (I mean Iranian people here, they are among the most friendly, open minded and helpful people I have met) value system seems so much better aligned, compared to say Saudi Arabia.
Instead we have US backing Iraq, unprovoked shooting down of civilian jet with no apologies forthcoming, scuttling the future of a democracy.
There is quite a bit of gap between the talk (of spreading democracy) and the walk.
Jewish people and Persian people have a long and harmonious history in settling in various parts in India. This makes it all the more strange to an Indian.
I feel like Zoroastrianism is pretty mainstream, at least in the U.S. Even Obama celebrated Nowruz.
But that's not necessarily to say that you're wrong.
EDIT: Were the Achaemenid Persians (the "bad" guys in 300) even Zoroastrian? Or did Zoroastrianism come later?
In reality those Persians were Zoroastrian, at least in name. I say “in name” because the Battle of Thermopylae (i.e. 300) would have been 500-2000 years after the creation of the Zoroastrian religion[0], I’m sure more than a little was altered/forgotten.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire
[0] We don’t have much recorded history that dates back that far and it’s a matter of academic debate when exactly the religion started.
For sure. The movie's framing device is a Spartan soldier recounting a glorified version of the Battle of Thermopylae, and building up Leonidas as a heroic figure, as a way to fire up the troops for the next battle against the Persians. That's why I put "bad" in quotes - it's Spartan propaganda.
Though I think many would argue that confucianism is not a religion but a philosophy and my education might have been different than others.
Nowruz isn't an exclusively Zoroastrianism festival. It's also the New Year's Day celebrated as a secular holiday by many ethnic groups.
The Tata Sons Group - one of the world's largest business empires (which incidentally owns Jaguar Land Rover) was created by the Tata Parsi family. Ratan Tata is basically Dale Carnegie and Rockefeller rolled into one.
The second largest Godrej group in India is Parsi.
Home Bhabha is the father of India's nuclear program. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was India's only Field Marshal and probably the most legendary military warrior ever.
The controversial political family of India - the Gandhis are a half Parsi family.
The world's largest COVID vaccine manufacturer and the backbone of India's COVID effort (as well as the global COVAX program) is the Poonawaala family which runs Serum Institute of India.
Zubin Mehta - the world's most famous orchestra conductor is an Indian Parsi.
Oh and I nearly forgot.... Freddie Mercury ...yes that Freddie Mercury is a Parsi. His real name is Farrokh Bulsara.
This is really amazing when you consider that there are barely a few hundred thousand of them in a country of 1.3 billion people.
Hinduism the most popular religion is unlike any other. Over time it is constantly modified and evolved. While Christianity and islam grew by replacing previous practices, Hinduism stitched all into one. So it has trees, fire, wind deity as well as abstract gods. Popular schools with different thoughts evolved and merged into a unified stream.
Sadly recent radicalisation have dented its malleability.
I think to a good extent you can say Catholicism grew by absorbing other religions. It started with Judaism, but then continued to subsume other pagan religions. Christmas itself has pagan roots.
So in European context, think of a religion believing in Norse and Greek gods as well as Christian God simultaneously in a single fabric.
I was under the impression that the "Calculation hypothesis" (Easter + 9 months) was the most likely:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Calculation_hypothes...
If you're going for 'historical accuracy', that'd be an argument, but that may not have been much of a consideration 2000 years ago.
> Christmas is definitely based on pagan traditions though, which you can see in the traditions of bringing a tree into the house and decorating it.
Some early mentions around 700 AD, but didn't really become a big thing until the 1500s and Protestantism it seems. That'd be fairly far removed from co-opting Pagan traditions, which were probably not practiced for a few hundred years at that point:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree#Religious_issue...
Though these are on the secular side of things, as most liturgies don't incorporate them. This was mainly for Europeans, AFAICT.
Not sure how many Christians in tropical countries are doing the tree thing. Though with globalization and mass media, Western practices may be more spreading more places in recent years/decades.
Hinduism includes a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but has no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, no prophet(s) nor any binding holy book; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, pandeistic, henotheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. According to Doniger, "ideas about all the major issues of faith and lifestyle – vegetarianism, nonviolence, belief in rebirth, even caste – are subjects of debate, not dogma.
> Sadly recent radicalisation have dented its malleability.
Hindutva shouldn't be confused with Hinduism: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/on-th...
Christianity and Islam also have many, many different sects and varying beliefs, but Hinduism is even more varied.
If I remember correctly earliest recorded use of the word is in Persian/Zoroastrian text. There it's used not as a name of a religion but as a name for people living on the other side of the Indus river (called Sindhu in Sanskrit)
They are rich, educated, charitable, and polite. Extremely low to non-existent crime rates.
They serve in the armed forces, active in academia and commerce. They are also quite highly involved in Bollywood.
Comparatively, the Tata companies are also better and more reliable than rivals when it comes to corporate governance and ethics.
That is why it is so important to help people to get out of cycles of violence and crime.
If you grew up very poor and managed to make a lot of money, you likely know that people aren't violent or into crime because they like to do, but likely because they don't have money.
The big question is how to make the economic market more inclusive. A lot of people are just out of good options and need to chose which bad affair they can commit to.
Crime and violence is for many, a profession. I have friends which end up going to crime and they were very smart and able, the main issue was lack of opportunities and education.
When I see some people talking about education as if it's some sort of choice, I gotta make that effort to tell them that it is not a choice, it has never been. It's a privilege. Wake up.
Given how much is e.g. sexual violence widespread among the rich and powerful, I am not sure that some people aren't into violence for sick fun's sake.
Lack of money makes everything worse, but let's not pretend that violence can be stomped out by prosperity.