Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism goes back to Zarathustra, called Zoroaster by the Greeks, a priest and poet among the Iranian peoples of what is now eastern Iran, Afghanistan or Central Asia. When he lived is uncertain: most scholars place him between 1500 and 500 BCE, often around 1000 BCE, judging by the archaic language of his hymns, the GathasGathas Seventeen hymns attributed to Zarathustra, the oldest and holiest part of the Avesta. Glossary.

Zarathustra called his people to worship Ahura Mazda, the “Wise Lord”, and to take the side of truth against the lie. His teaching spread across the Iranian plateau. The Achaemenid kings, who ruled the first Persian empire from the 6th century BCE, invoked Ahura Mazda in their inscriptions at Persepolis.

Under the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 CE), Zoroastrianism was the state religion of Persia, with a powerful priesthood and great fire temples. After the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Iran gradually became Muslim. Zoroastrians held on in Yazd and Kerman, while a group sailed to Gujarat, in western India, where their descendants became known as the Parsis.

Little is known of Zoroastrianism in the centuries immediately after Zarathustra, but by the 6th century BCE his teaching had reached western Iran. The Achaemenid kings did not impose it on their many subject peoples, yet Darius I (reigned 522–486 BCE) credited his rule to “the favour of Ahura Mazda” in his inscriptions, and the Magi, a priestly group from Media, served at court. How fully Zoroastrian the Achaemenids were is still debated by scholars.

Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire in 330 BCE and burned Persepolis. Later Zoroastrian tradition remembers him as “the accursed”, who killed priests and destroyed the sacred books. Under the Seleucids and then the Parthian kings, who ruled until 224 CE, Zoroastrianism lived alongside Greek and local cults, and temples housing sacred fires became central to worship. Tradition credits a Parthian king named Valakhsh with first gathering the scattered texts.

The Sasanian dynasty, founded by Ardashir I in 224 CE, made Zoroastrianism the religion of the state. In 3rd-century inscriptions the high priest Kerdir boasts of founding fire temples and of acting against Jews, Christians, Manichaeans and others; the prophet Mani died in prison in about 276. In the early 6th century the movement of Mazdak, which preached a sharing of wealth, was crushed by Khosrow I. The Avesta was written down in a script invented for the purpose, probably in the 5th or 6th century, and the priesthood grew wealthy and powerful.

Arab armies defeated the Sasanians at Qadisiyya in about 636 and Nahavand in 642, and the last king, Yazdegerd III, was killed in 651. Under Muslim rule Zoroastrians were a protected people (dhimmis) who paid the jizya tax, and conversion to Islam was gradual, lasting several centuries. In the 9th and 10th centuries priests wrote the Pahlavi books, such as the Denkard and the Bundahishn, to preserve their learning. Over time Iranian Zoroastrians gathered in the desert cities of Yazd and Kerman, where under the Safavid and Qajar dynasties they faced heavy taxes, legal discrimination and occasional violence.

According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, a Parsi account written in 1599, a group of Zoroastrians sailed from Iran and was given refuge by a local ruler at Sanjan in Gujarat; the date of their arrival is uncertain, with suggestions ranging from the 8th to the 10th century. For centuries the Parsis lived as farmers, weavers and traders, keeping a sacred fire, the Iranshah, which has burned at Udvada since 1742. When the British built up Bombay from the late 17th century, Parsis moved there in large numbers and prospered as shipbuilders, merchants and industrialists. Families such as the Wadias, the Jejeebhoys and the Tatas founded businesses and charities, and Dadabhai Naoroji, elected to the British House of Commons in 1892, was a pioneer of Indian nationalism.

Wealthy Parsis also helped their co-religionists in Iran. Manekji Limji Hataria, sent there in 1854, opened schools and lobbied the Qajar court, which abolished the jizya on Zoroastrians in 1882. Since the constitutional revolution of 1906 Zoroastrians have had a representative in Iran’s parliament, and the Pahlavi shahs (1925–79) celebrated pre-Islamic Iran as part of national identity. The constitution of the Islamic Republic, adopted in 1979, recognises Zoroastrians as a religious minority and keeps their seat.

Modern times have also brought debate within the community. Western scholarship in the 19th century, with its focus on the Gathas, encouraged reformers to stress Zarathustra’s ethical teaching over later ritual, while traditionalists defended the practices handed down by the priesthood. In 1908 a Bombay court held that Parsi charitable trusts were meant for Parsis by birth, not for converts. Questions of conversion, of the status of children of mixed marriages and of funeral customs, as vultures have vanished from the Towers of Silence, remain live issues as the community ages and spreads to North America, Britain and Australia.

Zoroastrians worship one supreme and wholly good God, Ahura Mazda, creator of the world. Opposed to him is Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit, source of the lie (druj). Ahura Mazda is served by the Amesha Spentas, “holy immortals”, divine powers such as Good Mind and Truth (ashaasha Truth and right order, the principle Zoroastrians uphold against the lie. Glossary).

Every person is free and must choose between truth and the lie. The path of truth is summed up in three phrases: good thoughts, good words, good deeds. After death, the soul crosses the Chinvat Bridge, which widens for the righteous and narrows for the wicked.

At the end of time the world will be renewed, evil defeated and the dead raised. Ideas such as a final judgement, heaven and hell, and a coming saviour (the Saoshyant) appear in Zoroastrian texts, and many scholars think they influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Fire is the central symbol of Zoroastrian worship, standing for the light, warmth and truth of Ahura Mazda. In fire temples a sacred fire burns without interruption, tended by priests. Worshippers pray in its presence; they do not worship the fire itself.

Children are initiated at the navjotenavjote The initiation in which a Zoroastrian child receives the sacred shirt and cord. Glossary (or sedreh-pushi) ceremony, receiving the white shirt (sudrehsudreh The white cotton undershirt worn by initiated Zoroastrians. Glossary) and the sacred cord (kushtikushti The sacred cord, woven of 72 threads, tied around the waist and retied in daily prayer. Glossary), which they untie and retie during their daily prayers. Keeping water, earth and fire pure is a religious duty, and caring for creation is seen as fighting on the side of good.

The sacred texts of Zoroastrianism are collected in the Avesta. Its oldest part, the Gathas, are seventeen hymns traditionally attributed to Zarathustra himself, in an archaic language close to that of the Indian Rigveda.

The Avesta was passed on orally for many centuries and written down in a specially invented script in Sasanian times. Much of it was lost after the fall of the Sasanian empire. Later works in Middle Persian, the Pahlavi books, preserve teachings on creation, ethics and the end of the world.