ZOROASTER.*
THIS work on Zoroaster is an expression of the vigorous learning now being cultivated in the larger American Univer- sities, and it is,",indeed, a monument of exact research. It opens with a list of works on the subject, then contains an account of the life of the great Persian sage, and in a series of appendices discusses with ripe scholarship many of the disputed points about Zoroaster, such as his name, his date, his native place, the scene of his ministry, and the numerous allusions to him in various literatures. There can be no doubt that, from the point of view of biography, this must be now regarded as the authoritative work on Zoroaster; and every student of the history of religions will be thankful to Professor Jackson for his learned and masterly work. In one important respect, however, this book is deficient. There is no critical account of the actual content of the religion imposed on Persia by Zoroaster. We are told of all the known events of the life of the Iran sage, we are told of his revelations, of his preachinge, of his alleged miracles, but we are not told what the religion of Zoroaster was, what was the basis of its philosophy, what was its conception of the spiritual principle, how the ideas of Zoroaster differed from the religion which had been accepted, and what ethical changes it manifestly produced in the lives of its converts. Scholarship rather than philosophy is evidently the author's forte, and the reader who wishes to know what is the ethical and spiritual significance of Zoroastrianism must go to the works of Tiele and Darmesteter for that side. In Professor Jackson's work he will find what is known of Zoroaster's life.
It is now agreed that the prophet of Iran is a historical personage, all the mythical elements having been cleared away. We know his career from the Avesta and the Pahlavi writings, and from tradition which, as Professor Jackson says, enjoys far more authority now than it did in the days of subjective criticism. Zoroaster probably arose in Western Iran in the middle of the seventh century B.C., —an important era in the history of mankind, as Solon, Thales, and Pythagoras flourished in Greece about the same time, Buddha arose in India just a little later, and the Hebrew prophets of the Captivity also adorned the same age. Is it possible that a wave of spiritual enlightenment swept over the world unknown to its varied recipients ? Zoroaster had a long line of distinguished ancestry, and his birth was foretold, just as he himself was made to foretell the birth of Christ. The early years of his life are represented by many miraculous events. A divine light is said to have shone round the house when the child was born, and it is a tradition that he laughed loud when he came into the world, also that his brain throbbed so violently as to repel the hand laid on his head. All attempts to injure and destroy him are thwarted. When he comes of age he retires, like so many great teachers, from the world. Pliny tells us that Zoroaster lived for twenty years in desert places on cheese, and Porphyry says that he passed his time in a cave which he had symbolik cally adorned so as to represent the earth and the heavenly bodies. When thirty years of age he received the Revelation, and then entered on his ministry.
The essence of the Revelation seems to consist in the archangel of Good Thought appearing to Zoroaster and lead.
• Zeeman., the Prophet of Ancient Iran. By A. V. Williams Jackson. Pro. fessor of Indo-Iranian Languages in Oolumbia University. London ; Macmillan and 0o. (12s. 6d. net.]
ing his soul in a trance into the presence of God. During the next ten years he beheld seven visions of Deity and the archangels, carrying with him the divine knowledge where- with to purify mankind. Then comes the temptation by the Lord of Evil, withstood by Zoroaster, soon after which he wins his first disciple. The prophet was depressed because in ten years only one soul had answered to his call, and he is said to have uttered the words : " In ten years only one man has been attracted by me." But the great success was at that very time about to dawn, for Zoroaster converted King Vish- tasp, the Constantine of the Iran religion. The story of the conversion of this potentate is so mixed up with miraculous events that we must hesitate to receive it as it is set down, and one must prefer to say that the religious ideas of Zoroaster had found entrance into the Monarch's mind rather than be- lieve that conversion was due to very unspiritual doings. The King and Queen are said to have quaffed the "fountain of life," and the King's son to have received from Zoroaster a cup of milk which he drank and became undying till the Resur- rection. The essential fact is that the prophet triumphed and the religion spread, and that in spite of intrigues against Zoroaster's life. The preaching of the prophet seems to have won over many, missionary efforts carried the Avesta to foreign lands, tales being told of Hindoo, and even of Greek, conversions to the faith. The fire-cult was introduced, much of Zoroaster's time being given to this branch of his work. Among the fires there are three which symbolise the social division into three classes,—priests, warriors, and workmen. Zoroaster certainly came not to bring peace, but a sword. Iran was twice invaded by the Turanian Arjasp, the object being to destroy the new faith. The great Iranian crusader, Isfendiar, won the final victory which established the faith of Zoroaster on firm foundations. The seer himself, however, did not live to witness the complete triumph of his faith, for he met with a violent death at the hand of a Turanian at Balkh. We know nothing of the details of his death, but we may reject the stories of his being struck by lightning, as asserted in Greek and Latin patristic literature.
Even if the accounts of conversions in foreign lands cannot be accepted, it must be admitted that the religion of Zoroaster exercised no little influence outside the land of its birth. Pythagoras and Plato paid much attention to the Magian wisdom, and that phase of Zoroastrianism known as Mithra- worship played a great part in the worship of the Roman Empire. Under the Christian Church, the dualistic thought of Zoroaster caused much controversy, the Manichean heresy being related to Persian ideas. The student of Old Testament criticism knows how the Persian thinking affected the Jewish people so that the post-exile writers imported many Persian ideas into the Aberglaube of the ancient Hebrew religion. It cannot be said that the religion of Zoroaster is a world-faith like that of Buddhism and of Christianity. Its miraculous elements and its dualism seem to militate against it, and it was never more than a kind of national faith. But it easily lent itself in some of its aspects to other modes of religious thought ; and the mere fact that it persists to-day in India, though its believers are so few, shows some vital idea in it which evades absolute decay. Must we not reckon it as a disaster that in its ancient home the religion of Zoroaster was superseded by the faith of Islam ?
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