Understanding The
Zoroastrian Religion
Are the sacred writings other than ‘Gathas’ non-Zoroastrian?
Is there any rational and reasonable basis for
the belief that only' Gathas' were written in
Zarathushtra's time?
"Inherent in you are the faults of the flesh.
They tempt you towards sins, and lead you away
from the path of God. Fight them, aspire to
conquer them, and for that, learn to control the
mind". This is the great lesson all prophets and
sages and saints have taught to us.
We know that mind is the source of all our
thoughts, words and deeds, good or evil. But
what is mind? How does it function? Where is it
in us.
We are given an impression that it is in our
heads. A most complicated organ -brain is there
and it is the mind's functionary or emissary.
But brain is another mystery. It is said to be
"the darkest continent of the 20th century"; and
that for two reasons: the first is that it works day
and night in a dark chamber within 'your head;
and second, that much about it is wrapped in an
unknown unexplored darkness.
A GHOST?
We have thus two mysterious things mind
and brain. There is a third and still
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(2)
deeper mystery; what is the relation between the
two? How does the mind 'direct' the brain to act?
Brain is a system composed of "ten thousand
million neurons" says Sir John Eccles, a great
Australian neurophysio logist, (Neurons mean
nerve-cells). He adds that they are "momentarily
poised close to a Just -threshold level of excitabi -
lity". They are ever ready to be excited but
something is required to excite them. There is
such 'something' in us, but what is it we do not
know. It may be that mysterious mons ter 'mind'.
The brain, says Eccles, "Is the kind of machine
that a ghost could operate, If by 'ghost' we mean
in the first place an 'agent' whose action has
escaped detection even by the most delicate
Instruments" (I). He means, 'mind' Is that ghost.
A gho st operating some machine in ever
darkest chamber-really a ghostly affair! And we
all live and do everything by that! No doubt our
attempt to understand the ghost
and its agent fails, because all our under standings
come from that very ghost and he mar be chary In
allowing us to under
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stand its real self
Whatever may be our 'scientific' attem pts to
understand mind, all great Religions have taught
us certain basic Truths about how this ghost of a
mind functions, and what we have to do about it.
Mind, they teach, is an apparent reflection of
certain forces and energies deep within us. These
forces ar e two -fold, or in other words, these
energies flow in two different directions. One
tends the minds towards God, human ity and the
Path leading towards God and humanity. The
other directs the mind towards evil and away
from the Path of God. In an ordinary human, the
latter force is more powerful. It is for him to go
against this force, by trying to direct his thoughts
towards God and Religion. Because mind is a
controllable thing. If you earnestly try to bend it
towards God and the Good, the good forces
within will help.
WHY RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINES AND
EXERCISES?
But that is not easy The tendency 'of a
THE UNSTEADY Intelligence
When the mind of a person encourages
any of the wandering carnal senses, that
sense drags away his intelligence like the
wind dragging away a boat in water.
Therefore Oh Mahabaaho (Arjun)! that
person's intelligence becomes steady whose
senses have become free of passions and are
in his complete control. - Lord Krishna Gita
Ch. 2-67, 68
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normal human mind is stronger towards evil,
and it is a strenous exertion not to
allow it to be d rifted away in the strong currents
of evil. That is why all Religions have given
certain spiritual disciplines, 'Yogas'. exercises and
institutions. They are meant, devised and
prescribed to keep the mind inclined towards the
Good and God.
For Zarathushtrlans, Sudreh -Kushtl and
Manthra-prayers are two of several such
spiritual exercises and disciplines. They are to be
performed in a certain prescribed way and w ith
certain thoughts passing in the mind. They are the
great purifying agents for the mind, (Every Kushti
done properly in its actions and thoughts, is a
"Barashnoom", a spiritual bath to our whole
being).
"The tongue should speak only the truth and
the Manthra" is another such spiritual exercise (2).
Manashni, Gavashni, Kunashni is another.
THE MIND THAT DECEIVES
The ghost - mind - has some deceiving
characteristics. When it desires to lead its human
keeper towards the wrong way. It induces in him
all sort s of arguments and excuses. A killer is
made to think he is killing for "the good" of the
society. A lier is consoled by the thought that
after all he is doing it for some 'good'. The sexual
sinner is made to argue; what is wrong In it? Why
should" I not enjoy the physical pleasures when I
am gifted with them" by nature herself? A man
who wants to flout the Orders of his own Prophet,
would say 'Oh! that is quite old and orthodox and
outdated!" A Parsi who is too inert and lazy to
appreciate the spiritual va lue of the Zoroastrian
disciplines, Yogas, exercises and institutions and
to act on them would
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take refuge in: "Oh! that is all external!
Zarathustra did not teach all this. Some priests
have fooled us in doing them".
STUDY MODERN SCIENCE
This is actually happening in our Community
since the beginning of this century. Time to time
somebody pompously turns up and shouts: "Do
away with these nonsenses: Follow the pure
Religion". They are the victims of that great
treacherous ghost-mind. That ghost. In Its usual
way. sweeps them away from the right path and
they then close their eyes towards the truth as
shining as the mid -day sun. They would talk of
modern scienc<!, but never care to see that the
most modern discoveries of science have started
showing us in a very faint way the great spiritual
truths and wisdom behind all our religious
practices. traditions, discip-
lines, and Yogas. To -day, If you desire to
appreciate the Zoroastrian Religion with all its
existing institutions, go to most modern sciences
like nuclear physics astrophysics, biology, and
ESP. (This humble Dini Avaz will from time to
time give you some idea about the truth of this
proposition.)
THE GRAND EXCUSE
To ignore modern science while trying to
dabble in Zoroastrian Religion is the sin of
omission induced by a tricky mind. But there is a
sin of commission also prevalent amongst us,
which tries to find excuses for ignoring and
discarding our religious disciplines. One of such
grand excuses is that: Only some portion of the
Gathas are the writings of Zarathushtra; all other
Avesta writtings -like Vendldad, Yasna,
Visparad. Y.,shts. Niyaish etc -Iearn-
edly termed 'later Avesta' -were written much
after Zarathushtra. And the Gathas do not teach
any "external thing" like Sudreh - Kushti or Manthra - prayers, or Yasna-ceremonies or Fire-
temples or Dokh mas. Gathas teach "pure
religion". All the other writings ar e impure and
defiled and all external rituals and ceremonies
have no significance; they were devised by "later
priests" for professional interests.
The late Dr. Dhalla was the champion of this
theory, and he called himself 'a reformist'. His
satelltes are still there with us and go on singing
the same off tune song.
What reasons and arguements are adv anced
for this escapist theory?
POETRY AND PROSE
The first argument is that Gathas are in verse.
while non -gathlc writings are in prose. This
means, Zarathushtra was a poet; so He was
incapable of writing prose; or He perhaps thought
it below His dignity to do so! If you are a poet.
please take care not to write any prose, because
after a few thousand years. the then learned
savants will say. you were not and could not be
the author of that prose! Macaulay wrote some
good poetry and some better prose In a flowery
style and drafted some laws in very stony legal
language, In 3020 A. D. the pundits will perhaps
declare In a very pompous heavy technical
language that poet Macaulay was different from
that dry lawyer who drafted Indian Senile Code.
(This Is on a conjecture that the word 'Penal' will
by then be transformed to 'Senile' by substitution
of's' by 'p' and other linguistic fluctuations by then
invented). As a poet, you cannot write even a
letter in prose. If you wrote some good letters in
poetry to your girl-friend when
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she was a beautiful spinster, then it is neither
capable of nor permissible for you you to write a
letter in prose to the same lady, now your wife,
with some of her pervious poetry-inspiring beauty
damaged.
ARGUMENTS IN A CIRCLE
But there are some real beauty points In these
poetry-pose agrument about the the Zoroastrian
writings. For instance. Dr. Dhalla, the great
champion of that theory, used the term 'poet' for
the writers of Ram Yashta, Zamyad Yashta. and
Homa Yastha in his 'Zoroastrian Theology' (3).
He did not say that these yashts were poetries and
therefore must have been written by Zarathushtra
Himself. He said. they were not written by Him,
because they were Yashts and not Gathas! But
that is just a merry -go-round. There must be
something different in the Gathic and non-Gathic
poetries, indicating their alleged different times.
But no such poetic differences are shown. Are we
to conjecture that the two poetries have different
meters and therefore they belong to different
ages?
But that way, as the late E rvad Phiroze
Masani pointed out, the Gathas, as poetry, have
no uniform meter (4). There are different lengths
of lines, different number of words in one line,
different number of lines in one stanza and
different rhyme and rhythm in different stanzas.
Should we then say: as poet Zarathushtra could
not write prose, so He could not write poetry in
different meters; therefore only one particular
meter should be considered as that of
Zarathushtra and all others of those poor
creatures: "later priests"!
In fact, this theory and its other ingre dients
have led these "Doctors of Theology"
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to say that only some portion of Gathas are
written by Zarathushtra!! So, discard disciplines,
throwaway non -Gathic Avesta, eliminate some
portion of Gathas and what remains is this Great
Religion of Zarathushtra! ! Why not eliminate
that remainder also on the ground that it; was
written In primitive times, and is out of date and
out of tune with our 'progre ssive' and 'scientific'
times? It is very easy
to find flimsy arguments and excuses to eliminate
and cut down a thing. It is difficult to be able to
see the common thread or current running in it.
That requires not an escapist tendency but pains -
taking effort, and truth cannot be reached without
pain.
Although 'writers' of Yashta and non -Gathic
Avesta are very often referred to
THE WHIM!
One such pet theory (of the self -styled)
reformers is this: The Gathas constitute the
earliest and most reliab le Scriptures, all other
Avesta is later and younger. Any thing in the
latter that is Rot found in the Gathas may thus
be challenged-if it does not suit the whims of
the heterodox. It is very conveniently
forgotten that the Gathas are a small portion
of the Avesta literature containing hymns and
cannot therefore be expected to embody either
a complete philosophy Or an exhaustive
ritual; nay being mere hymns cannot
legitimately be expected to deal with these
subjects at all.
JEHANGIR J. VIMADALAL In Introduction
to Phlroze Masani's '!Zoroastriansim, Ancient
and Modern" (p. vi-vii.)
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by the theorists, nobody has found out who were
they and what were their names and when did they
write. Only vague and arbitrary statements are
made that they were "later" priests and wrote their
Avesta 'later' than Zarathusthra. (I do not know
why on this theory, they can be only 'priests' and
not non-priestly Zoroastrians
or even non-Zoroastrians).
'LINGUISTIC' DIFFERENCES?
The second argument for the belief that non-
Gathic writing were written much latter than
Gathas, is that the Avesta of the two is different.
This is what Is known as the linguistic basis of
that theory.
No doubt Gathas have long accents and
syllables, while non -Gathic writings sound
different. But can we be so sure about the two
being separated In point of time? Could they not
be languages of the same times but spoken or
written in different places? There is a very
significant proverb In Gujarati: "The dialect
changes every twelve miles" (5). Thi s can be a
complete answer to the argument of time -
separation. To-day Gujarati of Kathiawar is
very much different from Gujarati of Surat.
The words having the same meaning are, though
slightly comparable. differ in many ways. It can
be space separation. We cannot be dogmatic about
time-separation merely be cause of comparable
linguistic differences.
That of course is an argument of a layman like
me, who has no good fortune to have a deep
study of science and art of languages. But a
renowned scholar and aut hor of the Western
studies of Zoroastrianism, Dr. Wilhelm Geiger,
advance the same argument. In his "Civilisa tion
of The Ancient Iranians" (translated by Dastur
Darab Peshotan Santana) Dr. Geiger says:
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\
--"
...
"Although (the Gathas) bear (s) many marks
of great antiquity, still it Is not quite free from
later and more polished forms of expression.
Again the lang uage of the Gathas is
essentially a distinct dialect, the difference of
which from that of the rest o f the Avesta may
be easily explained by its having belonged to
a different country" (6).
In an objective impassioned manner Dr.
Geiger says that space-separation can account for
the difference in the languages of Gathic and non-
Gathic writings.
Again, the difference may be due to the
subject matters of the writings. Word worth’s
poems and Stephen's Law of Evid ence were
written in the same period of
time, but the languages are entirely different.
One is anxious to use literary and figura tive
language; oth er is anxious to avoid any poetic
expression to make the meaning
as clear and unambiguous as possible. If Gatha's
theme is philosophical and devoti onal and
Vendidad's theme is the laws of practical day -to-
day living, the languages would be very much
divergent. To convey the same meaning, entirely
different expressions and words would be used.
THE CONTENTS THEORY
I must state, in all fairness, that G eiger does
believe that Gathas are older in point of time, but
he does not found this belief on the linguistic
differences; these accord ing to him,. can be
space-separated. His belief about the antiquity of
Gathas is based on their own contents.
And that takes us to the third argument
that: a comparison of the contents of Gat has and
those of non -Gathic writings indi cate that the
latter were written much after Gathas.
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Here again we are on very soft and even
treacherous ground. There is no uniformity about
the contents of Gathas in the modern linguistic
studies of Zoroastrianism. There are as many
translations as there are savants and pundits and
each is so much divergent
from another that the contents are not
even reasonably ascertainable! Wh at can be the
message of one particular stanza is an body's
guess. And those translations, which are stated,
to be authentic do not contain much of a divine
message or much of a religious philosophy even!
The whole difficulty is that in order to decipher
the sublime message of the Gathas, or of any
Avesta writing, certain words are to taken in their
technical sense. Nobody need scratch his nose for
this. Avesta is the Science of all sciences; and
any science, whether worldly or spiritual, must
have, and alw ays has, its own technical terms,
which have meanings quite different from the
dictionary. "Equity of Redemption" is a special
technical term of the law of prop erty. ,. Work"
has a special meaning in Physics. "Relativity" of
Einstein is a big
monster compared to its ordinary meaning.
'Horse-power' has a very remote indication of a
real horse; in Physics, It is a measure of 'work
done. So, 'Geush-urva' in Gathas has very remote
connection with cattle; its principal meaning is
entirely different. It is a technical term used for
certain living conscious Force or Energy in
Nature, which has a special relation with our
mother-earth (7). But if you read it merely as
cattle, Gathas would be said to be belonging to
"the cattle age" and that would take t he bottom
out of its real esoteric technical meaning!
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