Introduction. The period immediately following the Islamic conquest of Iran was referred to over a thousand years later by a Parsi priest as “a period of decadence” for the Zoroastrian community, about which information is sparse, and comes mostly from Muslim writers (Dhalla, 1938, p. 322).

For a couple of centuries after the downfall of the Sasanids, both priesthood and laity continued to write and read Middle Persian and would have had access to Middle Persian works concerning the life of Zarathuštra, such as the Dēnkard (see particularly bk. 7), Būndahišn, Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram, and the mantic text Zand ī Wahman Yašt (see Boyce, 1988, p. 49). Such works reflect a legendary, rather than historical, representation of Zarathuštra (Dhalla, 1938, p. 310). The late 9th- or early 10th-century The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg refers to Zarathuštra anachronistically as Mobadān Mobad (high priest), the most senior ecclesiastical office in late Sasanid times (47.21; Williams, II, pp. 79, 226). This text and the earlier Pahlavi books celebrate such qualities of Zarathuštra as “wisdom,” “compassion,” and “the performance of good deeds.” He is perceived as one who advocated moderation—paymān “the right measure”—in all things, emphasizing justice and morality, rather than extremist revolutionary or ascetic behavior (62.18; Williams, II, p. 108; I, p. 17).

New Persian. From the 10th century onwards, Iranian Zoroastrians wrote mostly in New Persian, using Arabic script, but relying on Pahlavi writings, particularly instructional or devotional materials. The transcription of the late Sasanian Xwadāy Nāmag “Book of kings” (see HISTORIOGRAPHY ii) from Pahlavi into Arabic, subsequently rendered into Persian prose, became the basis for Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma. The dynasties, events, and chronology of the Šāh-nāma are placed within a Zoroastrian framework (Boyce, 1988, p. 58). The section narrating the story of Zarathuštra, composed largely by the poet Daqiqi (d. ca. 976), was instrumental in setting his role as messenger of the faith and mentor to King Goštāsp (Av. Vištaspa) in the struggle between the forces of good and evil. Zarathuštra is described as the one “who slew Ahriman the maleficent” and who advocated wisdom and the religion of goodness, without which kingship is worthless (Ferdowsi, Šāh-nāma, tr. R. Levy, pp. 191 f.).

The Zardošt-nāma, a 13th-century New Persian work in verse from within the Zoroastrian community, was also based on a Pahlavi book containing hagiographic materials consistent with Dēnkard and Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram and including some additional legends (de Blois, p. 174). Zardošt-nāma has endured as the principal source of information and inspiration for Zoroastrians concerning the birth, childhood, and early mission work of Zarathuštra, culminating with the conversion of Goštāsp. It provides significant testimony to the divine mission of the prophet, incorporating the concept that Ohrmazd pre-ordained his birth as a means of releasing the world from the grip of Ahriman (see AHREMAN; Rosenberg, ed. and tr., pp. 4 f.). In Zardošt-nāma, Zarathuštra’s biography is perceived as beginning long before his actual birth; issuing from the “glorious stock” of King Faridun, he inherits the farr (“divine fortune or glory”) through his mother, Dugdōw, and is thus portrayed as a hero of equal standing with his legendary precursor, although his agency is spiritual rather than feats of arms (Geiger, II, p. 190 f.).

The Zardošt-nāma, while including much of the material found in the earlier texts, incorporates additional legends relating to the birth of Zarathuštra (Rosenberg, pp. 5 f.) and places particular emphasis on the miracles he performed, both as a child and as an adult. The narrative elaborates on the account of Zarathuštra’s cure of Goštasp’s favorite black horse, indicating that this incident was a crucial factor in persuading the king to convert (see Molé, pp. 374 ff.).

The fact that the Zardošt-nāma was written in Persian meant that it remained accessible to Zoroastrian laity in both Iran and India at a time when the Middle Persian texts were no longer available to them. Several groups of Zoroastrians had emigrated to India in the 10th century, settling mostly in Gujarat. Under the influence of Muslim rule in the 15th century, New Persian became the literary and theological language of the Parsis. In the intervening centuries, there had been no new writings alluding to Zarathuštra, but the Zardošt-nāma, with its focus on the miraculous nature of Zarathuštra’s life and early actions, continued to inform Zoroastrians’ understanding of his person. Oral transmission of religious knowledge from generation to generation also continued to keep much of the tradition alive, particularly stories about Zarathuštra as an embodiment of actions and teachings which prescribe beliefs and practices.

The New Persian Rivāyats, collections of questions and answers on practical and ritual observances exchanged between the Iranian priesthood and the Parsi community from the 15th to the 18th centuries, provide some insight into the theological beliefs of both communities. It appears that the Parsis, although uncertain on some religious matters, remained convinced that the “one path of righteousness” revealed by Ahura Mazdā to Zarathuštra, was the only way to salvation (Persian Rivayats, tr. Dhabhar, pp. 277 f.). Zarathuštra’s fravaši (“protective or guardian spirit”) was venerated on a daily basis through the liturgy, and each year, the whole community commemorated the anniversary of his death (Persian Rivayats, tr. Dhabhar, p. 423). One belief gleaned from the Rivāyats was that yasna offerings in the name of Zarathuštra or “other sainted, dead persons” could counter the evil plots of enemies, rout demons (divs; see DĒW) and fairies (peris), oppose tyrannical rulers, withstand famine and disease, prevent the evil consequences of bad dreams, and secure various other advantages (see Dhalla, 1914, p. 308).

European accounts. Alongside the later Rivāyats are 17th- and 18th-century reports by Europeans who lived among Zoroastrians in both India and Iran. Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605-89) recorded miraculous stories about the prophet that he had heard from the Zoroastrians, including well-informed priests, in Kerman. Many elements in his account of Zarathuštra’s life correspond to earlier Middle Persian texts, such as the Dēnkard (Firby, p. 42): his mother glowed “with a celestial light” during her pregnancy; he laughed at his birth; he healed Goštāsp’s horse prior to the king’s acceptance of the faith; his three miraculously conceived sons would continue his mission and bring about the final overthrow of evil (Rose, p. 90).

Such European accounts were influenced by their own, often deistic, view of theology, emphasizing “reason,” natural theology, and morality (Firby, p. 174). This approach may later have influenced the way Zoroastrians perceived their own tradition, but contemporary European reports make it clear that it was the life of the prophet and the stories of his miracles, rather than the spiritual philosophy of the Gathas, which was the focus of popular religion (see Hinnells, 1978, p. 22; Dhalla, 1914, p. 308). This perspective was remarked upon by A. H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), whose encounters with Parsi priests and his reading of Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram, Zardošt-nāma, and Šāh-nāma revealed the emphasis the prophet’s followers placed on “the miraculous aspect,” concerning the mission of Zarathuštra (Anquetil-Duperron, p. 62).

During this period, Parsi mystics composed several treatises in Persian, asserting that Zarathuštra had couched his teachings in figurative and enigmatic language, which hid the deeper truths of the religion from the ignorant, but were understood by the adept (Dhalla, 1914, pp. 314 f.; this notion was continued by Parsi theosophists). The 17th-century Dābestān-e maḏāheb (see also ĀẔAR KAYVĀN) summarizes such mystical teachings. The Desātir, another “Parsi” mystical text (now generally considered to be inauthentic; see Boyce, 1979, p. 197), alleges that Zarathuštra was preceded by fourteen prophets named Mahabad (Dhalla, 1914, p. 311) and that, in the Avesta, he had taught using allegorical references.

The missionary challenge. In the mid-19th century, the Parsi community was galvanized into examining its own beliefs and practices through the influence of Christian missionaries, particularly the insidious attack by Rev. John Wilson, a Church of Scotland missionary, who was also president of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In his book The Parsi Religion (1843), Wilson repudiated the authority of Zarathuštra, challenging Parsis to prove “that Zoroaster had a divine commission and that his doctrines were in every respect pure and holy” (p. 40) and to seek for certain evidence for the miraculous works associated with Zoroaster. The Parsis themselves did not always know the textual sources for their information about Zarathuštra, reporting to Wilson that they had heard it from their parents or read about him “in books” (ibid., p. 65).

By that time only a few Parsi priests could read and understand Avestan and Pahlavi, and the community was, therefore, generally unable to counter the translations and exegeses of the texts utilized by Wilson. Instead, concerned Parsis quoted from Zardošt-nāma, and Šāh-nāma, as well as Dabestān and Desātir, in a bid to prove the miracles and mission of Zarathuštra (see Wilson, p. 408; an early 19th-century Gujarati translation of Zardošt-nāma was accessible to the Parsis, and Wilson included Eastwick’s English verse rendition at the end of Parsi Religion).

Such missionary attacks on the person and teaching of Zarathuštra (particularly on the concept of dualism) pushed many Parsis towards an approach to their religion that was more consonant with Christianity (Henning, p. 47). They claimed that the miracles of Zarathuštra were as authenticated as those of Christ (Wilson, p. 70), and could conceive of Zarathuštra as the first “prophetic revolutionary” to reveal the way to paradise, beginning the millennium that ended with the advent of Jesus (see Dhalla, 1938, pp. 25, 150, 166).

Beginning in the 19th century, iconography of Zarathuštra resembles Victorian Sunday school portraits of Christ, depicting him with a beard, flowing robe, and halo (FIGURE 1). But he is also often garlanded like a respected Hindu swami, or coroneted with a rayed nimbus. Sir John Malcolm records that Zarduštis in both India and Iran informed him that the majority of paintings or sculptures depicting Zoroaster distinguish him by a crown of rays, or glory (Malcolm, p. 545). The particular image shown in FIGURE 2 is a late 19th-century portrait, taken from a rock relief at Ṭāq-e Bostān (although the original carving is now thought to depict Mithra; see ART IN IRAN v, p. 588; for an analysis of this and other imagery of Zarathuštra at the turn of the century, see Jackson, p. 289).

Eastwick described the prophet’s appearance in Zardošt-nāma, “with dazzling wand” and “lustrous glory” around the head (Wilson, p. 481). This image, with variations, is still frequently replicated. The front of the recent Legacy of Zarathushtra (see Rivetna, ed.,) shows a stained-glass depiction, in which Zarathuštra wears similar clothing and carries a metallic staff; his right index finger points upwards in an ancient gesture of salutation (for historical antecedents and significance of this gesture, see Shahbazi, pp. 166 f.).

A significant response to the missionary challenge was the development of a Gujarati Catechism, initially translated into English by Dadabhai Naoroji, then D. C. E. Pavry (1901), and J. J. Modi (1911). The emphasis is on worship of Ahura Mazdā, and on “Zarathuštra Spitama of the Immortal Soul” as the great prophet who taught the Mazdayasnan (Mazdā-worshipping) religion to the people of ancient Iran (Modi, p. 4). In the Catechism, Zarathuštra is presented as a wise man, admitted into the presence of the divine, but not himself divine in any way. The reference to followers of the religion as “Zoroastrians” is not because Zarathuštra was perceived as the son of Ahura Mazdā, or as a savior (since “every man is his own savior” through his own deeds; Modi, p. 15), but because belief in Mazdā accords with Zarathuštra’s teaching (Modi, p. 4).

A Gujarati Khordeh Avesta of 1880 includes a monajat (religious hymn) “in praise of the holy prophet Zartosht.” The later English translation declares Zarathuštra “a true prophet, whose religion is brighter than the Sun, [who] is the best among the Saints of God and the most perfect amongst all the prophets and the indicator of the path of religion to all deviating people. [He] removed from the world all pollution and made the world brilliant like the sun” (Khordeh Avesta, ed. and tr. Kanga, pp. 416 f.).

The “Gatha-only” school and the reformers. In the mid-19th century, philological research by European scholars brought other startling ideas to the Parsis, who, until then, had attributed all Avestan compositions to Zarathuštra (Dhalla, 1914, p. 336). The elevation of the Gathas to a position of theological, as well as ritual, prominence was influenced by Martin Haug, who maintained that Zarathuštra’s doctrines “untouched by the speculations of later ages,” were to be learned only from the older Yasna, primarily the Gathas (Haug, p. 300). Some Parsi scholars now claimed that the Gathas alone contained the true teachings of Zarathuštra, and that later texts distorted the purity of his words, attributing doctrines and rituals that the prophet never taught (Dhalla, 1914, p. 336). This “Gatha-only” school was resented by many priests and laity alike, who admitted the significance of other scriptures in the canon.

The most extreme reformists (sometimes termed “Parsi Protestants;” Dhalla, 1914, p. 350) maintained that, in the Gathas, Zarathuštra had preached a simple monotheism with few rituals, and that modern Zoroastrians should return to this approach, which was worthy of respect in the modern world. They felt that, in order for Zarathuštra’s teachings to continue to be meaningful for the modern community, prayers should be recited in the vernacular, rather than Avestan, which was by then an unintelligible, dead language. In contrast, traditionalists maintained that Avestan was the sacred language through which Zarathuštra had taught the religion, and that, as such, it possessed “inherent magical efficacy” (Dhalla, 1914, p. 345). This approach was supported by the occultists (see Boyce, 1979, p. 206).

Towards the end of the century, disparagement of the religion, by outsiders and from within, led to a determined educational drive amongst the Parsis. Several, such as M. N. Dhalla (later high priest in Karachi), went to study abroad. Dhalla pursued Ancient Iranian Studies under A. V. W. Jackson at Columbia University, New York City. There, he had access to the most recent philological scholarship, which he was concerned to make accessible to his co-religionists. He subsequently wrote several books, including Zoroastrian Theology (1914) and History of Zoroastrianism (1938), combining some of the prevalent ideas of Western academia with his own blend of ritual reform and traditional beliefs.

In both texts, Dhalla traces the person of Zarathuštra from the Gathic period down to “the revival” of the 19th century, maintaining that, although the prophet’s mission and teaching remained the same, aspects of his life were expanded upon or introduced as time progressed; in the Pahlavi works the historical author of the Gathas has been transformed into a myth, and his personality magnified by miracles and extravagant legends (Dhalla, 1938, p. 322; 1914, p. 195). Although Dhalla himself continued to venerate the yazatas (“beings worthy of worship”), he refers to Zarathuštra as the earliest revolutionary prophet, who introduced a new spiritual order based on monotheism (Dhalla, 1938, pp. 26, 150).

Modern Zoroastrian perceptions. In the late 1920s, translations of the Gathas and Yašts into Persian by an Iranian (Muslim) patriot, Ibrahim Pour-Davoud (Ebrāhim Purdāwud; see HISTORIOGRAPHY ix) were printed in Bombay (see IRAN LEAGUE). Pour-Davoud presented Zarathuštra as the bearer of “a grand message to humanity”—that of adhering to the principle of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds (see Boyce, 1979, p. 220; see also Pour-Davoud). In promoting the image of Zarathuštra as one of the brave and just ancestors of Iran as part of his attempt to regenerate the glory and greatness of ancient Persia, Pour-Davoud engendered an increased respect amongst liberal Irani Zoroastrians for their own religion, and a renewed interest in the words of Zarathuštra.

Individual Zoroastrians, influenced since the 1860s by European attempts to understand the language and religious expression of the Avesta, have sought to voice their own understanding of the Gathas and of the intention of Zarathuštra. In The Divine Songs of Zarathushtra (1951), Irach Taraporewala produced a literal translation (based largely on the work of his mentor, the German lexicographer Chr. Bartholomae), followed by a free interpretation inspired by his position of faith. This approach has been adopted by other Zoroastrians, with the assumption that the words of the Gathas were spoken by the historical Zarathuštra.

Dhalla’s perception of Zarathuštra (1938, p. 13 ff.) as a “paragon of reason” and a “practical common-sense thinker” clothed in divine wisdom, who was his own teacher, learning through observation and thinking, is echoed in the writings and understanding of many modern Zoroastrians, who seek to emulate those qualities. They regard Zarathuštra as a great religious teacher, whose ideas “do not belong to any single period and to any single people, but to all ages and to all peoples” (Dhalla, 1914, p. 369), and whose legacy of beliefs and practices have influenced “the religious and philosophical precepts and paradigms of the larger world” (Rivetna, ed., p. 10).

The Zoroastrian conception of Zarathuštra incorporates multiple identifications, and debate continues as to his person. Some view Zarathuštra as an enlightened philosopher and scholar, but clearly mortal. Those of a more mystical persuasion claim that Zarathuštra is an incarnate Amesha Spenta (see AMƎŠA SPƎNTA) possessing thaumaturgical, supernatural abilities. These conflicting perceptions were evident in the reactions to the 1986 film about the history of the religion, On Wings of Fire (for an account of the ensuing debate, see Luhrmann, pp. 73-76). There are now many children’s and adult books by Zoroastrian authors about the person and teaching of Zarathuštra. He is generally depicted as special even before birth, growing up to be a “fine and clever young man” and going off by himself to find the answers to his questions (see, for example, Mehta).

There also remains a diversity of opinion amongst Zoroastrians as to what their prophet originally taught. Present-day “reformists” in both India and Iran tend to accept the teachings of Zarathuštra based exclusively on the Gathas. They focus on the metaphysical message of the prophet, maintaining that he was a monotheist who eschewed ritual (see Hinnells, 1996, p. 242). “Traditionalists” view Zarathuštra as the priestly authority for many of the religion’s rites, and therefore recognize the continuing power of ritual (see Mistree, pp. 60 ff., 65). Both groups accept that the prophet was an ethical dualist (that is, that he urged humans to make the right choice between that which is good and that which is evil), but individuals differ as to their understanding of his teaching on cosmic dualism (see Rivetna, ed., pp. 15 ff.).

Despite internal differences, there has never been any question amongst Zoroastrians as to whether Zarathuštra actually existed or not. Recently, however, some Zoroastrians have expressed concern about a trend amongst non-Zoroastrian scholars to challenge the view that a historical individual named Zarathuštra composed the Gathas. This approach was first suggested in the 1960s by the young French scholar Marijan Molé, and has subsequently been developed by Jean Kellens and P. O. Skjærvø. The Zoroastrian community, alarmed by this departure from its own understanding of the authenticity of Zarathuštra, staunchly maintains its allegiance to him as the founder of the world’s oldest revealed religion, and to his innovative vision for the transformation of the world. The name “Zarathuštra” is still often translated as “He of the Golden Light,” indicating the concept that his spiritual and moral vision was a turning point in history, which continues to illuminate the way towards the renovation (see FRAŠŌ.KƎRƎTI) of creation. Modern adherents recognize that Zarathuštra’s teachings and philosophy are ideal in addressing the discontent, restlessness and suffering of today (see Nadjmi, p. 23). For Zoroastrians, Zarathuštra remains a powerful, central figure, whose image as a determined force for Aša (“order,” “right,” “truth”) presents the ultimate role model.

Bibliography:

A. H. Anquetil-Duperron, Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre, 3 vols., I, Paris, 1771. F. de Blois, Persian Literature: A Bibliographic Survey V: Ninth to Eleventh Century, London, 1992.

M. Boyce, Zoroastrians, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, London, Boston, and Henley, 1979.

Idem, “Middle Persian Literature,” HO 1.4.2.1, Leiden, 1988.

Idem, Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour, Costa Mesa, Calif., 1992.

M. N. Dhalla, Zoroastrian Theology from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New York, 1914; repr., 1972.

Idem, Our Perfecting World: Zarathushtra’s Way of Life, New York, 1930.

Idem, History of Zoroastrianism, New York, 1938.

Ferdowsi, Šāh-nāma, tr. R. Levy, The Epic of the Kings: Shah-Nama the National Epic of Persia by Ferdowsi, London, 1967; repr., Costa Mesa, Calif., 1996.

N. K. Firby, European Travellers and Their Perceptions of Zoroastrians in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Berlin, 1988.

W. Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times, 2 vols., tr. D. P. Sanjana, I, London, 1886.

M. Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings and Religion of the Parsis, 2nd ed., E. W. West, rev., Boston, 1878.

W. B. Henning, Zoroaster: Politician or Witch Doctor? London, 1951.

J. R. Hinnells, “British Accounts of Parsi Religion 1619-1843,”Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute [Bombay; henceforth JKRCOI] 46, 1978, pp. 20-39.

Idem, Zoroastrians in Britain, Oxford, 1996.

A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster: The Prophet of Ancient Iran, New York, 1898; repr., 1926.

D. F. Karaka, History of the Parsis, 2 vols., London, 1884; repr., New Delhi, 1999.

Khordeh Avesta, Comprising Ashem, Yatha, the Five Neyayeshes, the Five Gahs, Vispa Humata, Namsetayeshne, Patet Pashemanee, all the Nirangs, Bajs, and Namaskars, and Sixteen Yashts, ed. and tr. M. F. Kanga, Bombay, 1993.

T. M. Luhrmann, The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society, Cambridge, Mass,, 1996.

Sir. J. Malcolm, The History of Persia, 2 vols., new rev. ed., I, London, 1829.

A. Mehta, The Story of Our Religion, Bombay, 1988.

K. P. Mistree, Zoroastrianism: An Ethnic Perspective, Bombay, 1982.

J. J. Modi, A Catechism of the Zoroastrian Religion, Bombay, 1911.

M. Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien, Paris, 1963. B. Nadjmi, “Zarathushtra in the Past, Present and Future,” FEZANA Journal, Summer 2002, p. 23.

The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz and Others, tr. B. N. Dhabhar, Bombay, 1932.

I. Pour-Davoud, “The Age of Zarathushtra,” JKRCOI 28, 1935, pp. 46-81.

R. Rivetna, ed., The Legacy of Zarathushtra: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Culture of Zarathushtis (Zoroastrians), Hinsdale, Ill., 2002.

J. Rose, The Image of Zoroaster: The Persian Mage Through European Eyes, New York, 2000.

F. Rosenberg, ed. and tr., Le Livre de Zoroastre (Zaratusht Nama) de Zartusht-i Bahram Pajdu, St. Petersburg, 1904.

A. S. Shahbazi, “Iranian Notes 7-13,” AMI 19, 1986, pp. 163-70.

I. J. S. Taraporewala, The Religion of Zarathushtra, Adyar, India, 1926; repr., Bombay, 1979.

A. V. Williams, The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, 2 vols, Copenhagen, 1990.

J. Wilson, The Parsi Religion as contained in the Zand-Avasta and propounded and defended by the Zoroastrians of India and Persia, unfolded, refuted, and contrasted with Christianity, Bombay, 1843.

Jenny Rose

According to the set of information that was inherited from antiquity (see Bidez and Cumont), Zoroaster was identified with a descendent of Noah—the usual candidates are Ham, Mizraim, Kush, and Nimrod—and he was regarded as a Bactrian king who had fought a war against Ninus and had lost his life during this war. Zoroaster was held to have composed two million verses and to have written down the seven liberal arts (artes liberales) on two columns. It was assumed that Zoroaster had wanted to present himself as a god. In order to achieve that aim it was reported that he had excessively consulted a demon, who would eventually cause Zoroaster’s death. The presumed fact that he had laughed when he was born—a motif that can also be found in the Pahlavi legends—would foreshadow his demonic nature. Moreover, he was held to have invented the cult of fire and, worst of all, magic.

Magic, indeed, is one of the main topics connected to Zoroaster in European intellectual history. Again we are dealing with a motif that is first attested in antiquity and goes all the way to modern esotericism and the contemporary scene of middle-class magic and witchcraft. Most prominent European scholars of magic of the early modern period devoted at least one brief passage to the supposed inventor of that discipline. Here, it may suffice to mention the names of authors such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Giambattista Della Porta (ca. 1535-1615), Jean Bodin (1530-96), Gabriel Naudé (1600-53), and Eliphas Lévi (1810-75). Contrary to the authors mentioned in the previous section, most of these authors (on whom and others see Stausberg 1998a, pp. 503-69) were in favor of a ‘pure’, or ‘natural’, version of magic that was carefully distinguished from its ‘demonic’ branch. Correspondingly, Zoroaster came to be regarded as a wise man, who would know about the secrets of nature and heaven.

The distinction between two sorts of magic gained prominence during the Renaissance, and that period witnessed a powerful revival of the figure of Zoroaster. The most important author in this respect is the Florentine Neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), who is also famous as the translator of some writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos (on Ficino and Zoroaster, see Stausberg 1998a, pp. 93-228). Zoroaster appears in many of Ficino’s writings, where he is consistently referred to as a figure of authority. Starting with his commentary to the Platonic dialogue Philebos, Ficino mentions Zoroaster as the first of a series of six “ancient theologians” also comprising Hermes Trismegistos, Orpheus, Aglaophamos, Pythagoras, and Plato. The last is held by Ficino to have incorporated the wisdom of his predecessors in his writings, which in turn were revived and commented upon by Ficino. In this way, Zoroaster came to be regarded as the fountainhead of the entire Platonic tradition. Ficino, and many after him, argued in favor of a substantial congruency between, on the one hand, the ancient tradition which culminated in Platonism and, on the other, Christian revelation. For Ficino, and for some other Christian Platonists such as Agostino Steuco (1497/1498-1548), Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529-97), and Philippe de Mornay (1549-1623), this congruency was considered as an apologetic ‘proof’ of the truth-claims of Christianity. However, such Zoroastrian-Platonic Christianity to a considerable extent transformed the idea of what Christianity was all about. Platonic notions of the cosmos, ontology, interpretation of the object of understanding, language, and epistemology competed with Aristotelian notions, and the latter would triumph in the age of the Counter-reformation. In the course of that process, a major work of Patrizi, in which he strongly drew on the evidence of Zoroaster, was placed on the index of prohibited books (On Patrizi and Zoroaster, see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 291-393.) One stimulus emerging from Ficino’s Neo-Platonism that was turned into a Christian dogma, however, was the idea of the immortality of the soul. Significantly, Ficino had argued in favor of that idea by referring to the authority of, among others, Zoroaster.

Prior to Ficino, within the confines of the Byzantine empire, the Platonist revival was inaugurated by the philosopher Georgios Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1355-1360 to 1454). At least according to his adversaries, Plethon’s Platonism was part of his anti-Christian campaign culminating in his attempt to create a new law and compose a new confession of faith. In this project, Plethon referred to Zoroaster, the foremost of the ancient lawgivers and sages (Alexandre, p. 30), as his prime authority. In that way, Plato’s supposed teacher Zoroaster substitutes for Moses as the prime lawgiver, and the creed that Plethon has written is entitled Summary of the Teachings of Zoroaster and Plato (text in Alexandre, pp. 262-69). Zoroaster is the champion of Plethon’s program of religious revival and nativism (On Plethon and Zoroaster, see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 35-44, 57-82; 2001a; Tardieu suggests that Plethon’s (presumed) mentor, the Jew Elisha, was an adherent of Sohrawardi’s [d. 1191] illuminationism. While these ideas were soon forgotten, Plethon made a lasting impact on Zoroaster’s place in later Western history in that he attributed a collection of obscure fragments, possibly of Middle Platonist origin, the so-called Chaldean Oracles (see Majercik) to Zoroaster. Thus, like Hermes Trismegistos, with whom Zoroaster finds himself on common ground throughout much of the early modern period (witness Ficino and Patrizi, but also later alchemical writings, on which see Stausberg, 1998, pp. 947-48), Zoroaster acquired a ‘scripture’ and could from then on be ‘quoted’ and commented upon. Throughout the 17th century, in connection with the rise of antiquarianism and philological scholarship, the Zoroastrian origin of these texts was doubted and eventually replaced by ‘authentic’ Zoroastrian sources such as the Sad dar (tr. by Hyde in 1700) and later the Avestan texts (tr. by Anquetil in 1771). This development, however, was not irrevocable, for within the later Platonic and some esoteric traditions both Zoroaster and the Chaldean Oracles retained much of their charm.

While Zoroaster appeared as a figure of highest repute in the Neo-Platonist discourse and its corresponding hermeneutics, mostly in Italy, for many learned scholars from the northern Protestant countries such as Gerhard Johann Voss (1577-1649), Johann Heinrich Ursin (1608-67), and Theophile Gale (1628-78), Zoroaster was, rather, connected to negative ideas such as idolatry and the teaching of two principles (see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 604-51; 2001b). If anything of worth was to be found in Zoroaster, then it was only insofar as he originally was identical with Moses as claimed by Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721; see Stausberg 1998a, pp. 654-70). In nascent Orientalism, the image of Zoroaster was not positive either, for Islamic stereotypes came to be mixed with European traditions. The results of that process can be seen in the writings of Barthélmi d’Herbelot (1625-95; see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 671-79).

In his Historia religionis veterum persarum (History of the religion of the ancient Persians, 1700; 2nd ed., 1760), the Oxford orientalist Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) presents an ingenious combination of all the relevant source materials available at the end of the 17th century. According to Hyde, originally the religion of ancient Persia was “orthodox.” However, it had fallen into decay and was subsequently reformed by Abraham. Afterwards, it degenerated again, and Zoroaster took upon himself the task of again reforming it. Zoroaster was just the right person to achieve that aim, because in his youth he had been the servant of a Jewish prophet, and he was responsible for transferring the knowledge that he had gained in this way to Persia and the Persians. According to Hyde, Zoroaster had acquired so deep an insight into the mysteries of revelation that he was able to make a valid prediction of the birth of the Messiah. (On Hyde, see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 680-712; 2001b.)

In his Natural History of Religion (1757), sec. 7, David Hume refers to Hyde’s ideas about the ‘monotheism’ of the Persians (see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 718-23). In turn, Hyde’s thesis of the basic ‘orthodoxy’ (in Protestant Christian terms) of the ancient Persians and their main ‘sect’ was in part a response to the challenge resulting from an intellectual experiment made by Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). In his famous Dictionary, Bayle had sketched a debate between the philosopher Melissos (the spokesman of the monistic position) and Zoroaster. whom Bayle casts in the role of spokesman for a dualistic position and as a forerunner of Mani (see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 724-35; 2000). The stage was set for a debate which would continue throughout the 18th century, and the question if Zoroastrianism is a ‘monotheistic’ or a ‘dualistic’ religion has still been a hot topic in 20th-century scholarly debate.

The idea that Zoroaster’s biography had a Jewish side was not unknown; in an alchemical treatise published in 1738 (on which see Stausberg, 1998, pp. 948-52), Zoroaster was even referred to as a “famous Jew and Rabbi.” This gave Hyde the opportunity to assign an important role to him in the history of humanity, but a number of later authors used this information to drag Zoroaster through the mud. Most influential in this regard was Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724), who considered Zoroaster to be the greatest impostor who had ever lived on earth (Stausberg. 1998a, pp. 740-56). In part, this polemic against Zoroaster was actually directed against deism and the idea of ‘natural religion’.

As a matter of fact, Zoraster was a key figure in Enlightenment discourse focusing on these issues. In 1751, Zoroaster, as the perfect enlightened king appeared as the hero of a philosophical novel; its author, Guillaume Alexandre de Méhégan (1725-66) soon found himself in the Bastille (see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 884-94). References to Zoroaster can be found in the works of almost all major French Enlightenment thinkers (for references, see Stausberg, 1998a, index), most prominently perhaps in the several writings of Voltaire (1694-1778) in which Zoroaster played different and often contrasting or even contradictory roles, ranging from the champion of reason to the incarnation of nonsense (on Voltaire and Zoroaster, see Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 901-46). Voltaire refers to Zoroaster in novels, letters, dictionaries, historical texts, etc.; and this may be regarded as typical for the 18th century, where we find Zoroaster in a broad range or discursive practices and contexts (for references see Stausberg, 1998a), such as letters, novels, prophecies, tragedies, astrological drama (idem, 1998a, pp. 966-67), fictive reviews (pp. 963-65), Kabala (pp. 965-66), political propaganda (idem, 1998c), and on the stage of the opera (idem, 1998a, pp. 869-84; Handel’s [1685-1759] Orlando is to be added; on Mozart’s [1756-91] The Magic Flute,see Rose, pp. 120-47; there are later adaptations!).

Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805) published his Zend-Avesta some years after his return from India, where he had entertained an intense, albeit problematic, working relation with two Zoroastrian priests (Stausberg 1998b). Among the many materials contained in this set of three volumes, there is a biography of Zoroaster (Vie de Zoroastre), which was partly based on New Persian (Zoroastrian) materials. Contrary to Hyde, Prideaux, and others, Anquetil no longer places Zoroaster in the parameters provided by Biblical history, but he tries to elucidate Zoroaster’s contribution to the history of human civilization. According to Anquetil, Zoroaster lived in the 6th century BCE (589-512), which he considers to be a revolutionary period in the history of human thought, for it was in this century that Pherecydes founded Greek philosophy and taught the immortality of the soul, that Confucius reestablished moral purity and simplified the cult of the first Being, and that Zoroaster propagated the idea of time without limits, i.e., eternity. (Some years later, de Pastoret published a comparison of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Moḥammad.) Despite his lasting achievements, however, according to Anquetil Zoroaster ultimately failed because of his weak character: his “enthusiasm” and his arrogance led to imposture and the eruption of war (Stausberg, 1998a, pp. 790-809). Reactions to Anquetil’s work were mixed (and his character doubted). While scholars (such as William Jones) severely criticized Anquetil, others (such as Johann Gottfried Herder in Germany) were electrified. Several English Romantics received part of their inspiration from Anquetil’s Zend-Avesta. While references to ancient Persia or Zoroastrianism abound in English Romanticism (Rose, pp. 155-67), with the exception of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Zoroaster is rarely directly mentioned. In Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1819) the Earth states (Act I): “Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw.”

Later in the 19th century, (Francis) Marion Crawford (1854-1909), an American novelist living in Italy, published Zoroaster (1894),a historical novel set at the court of Darius. The novel recounts Zoroaster’s unhappy love story with a Jewish princess and his prophetic mission that, in Crawford’s report, in part was inspired by his teacher Daniel.

In the history of the Western perceptions of Zoroaster nothing remained the same after Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published the four parts of his Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spoke Zarathustra)from 1883 to 1885 (a compiled edition was first edited and published in 1892). As Jenny Rose has pointed out, within those years “more than thirty books relating to Zoroastrian texts were published in German” (Rose, p. 178), and Nietzsche did in fact, in a transformational mode, draw back on a number of Zoroastrian traits in these books. However, it seems that Heraclitus (see HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS) had first been the candidate for the hero of the book (Wohlfart). In a later poem (“Sils-Maria”), one of the 14 Lieder des Prinzen Vogelfrei (Nietzsche, III, p. 648),Nietzsche recounts his first encounter with Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and in Ecce homo (1889) he complains that nobody had ever asked him what the name Zarathustra did actually mean to him, “the first immoralist.” According to the explanation given here, the unique significance of the historical Zarathustra in the history of humanity consisted in his metaphysical interpretation of morality, in his idea that the fight between good and evil was the real force in the order of things (Nietzsche, VI, p. 367). As “that Persian” was responsible for this “fatal error,” Nietzsche argues that Zarathustra, who, he feels, was “more veracious than any other thinker,” was also the first who had realized his error; and hence he was the right choice to become the spokesman of the opposite position that overcomes his initial error (ibid.). Just as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was not intended to be a faithful copy of the historical Zarathushtra, so Nietzsche did not simply identify with his hero who announces that “God is dead.”

Nietzsches enigmatic, yet powerful prose stimulated the composer Richard Strauss to a famous tone poem (used by Stanley Kubrick as film music for 2001: A Space Odyssey), and it attracted many readers, few of whom, however, will ever have read the entire volume. (It is reported that many soldiers during World War I carried a copy of the book in their luggage.) Nietzsche’s unique style also stimulated others to follow suit and continue Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (for five examples, see Stausberg, 2002, p. 1 [with n. 2]). This process continued all the way down to Osho, formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931-90; see bibliography).

Apart from Osho, some other new religious movements refer to Zoroaster. For instance, this is the case with OHASPE, theosophy (which, in turn, made quite an impact on the Parsis [see Stausberg, 2002b, pp. 112-18]), anthroposophy, the Grail Movement of Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, 1875-1941), and, most significantly, Mazdaznan (on this movement see Stausberg, 2002b, pp. 378-400). Otoman Zar Adusht Hanish (1844[?]-1936), the ‘master’ of the movement, was by his adherents regarded as a reincarnation of Zoroaster (Stausberg, 2002b, pp. 392-94). Throughout the 20th century, as in the 18th century, one finds references to Zoroaster in a wide range of source materials and textual genres, stretching from astrology (see idem 1998a, p. 968) to novels (Gore Vidal, Creation, 1981), and fantasy (Herbert W. Franke, Zarathustra kehrt zurück [Zarathustra returns],1977).

Apart from literary sources, since the 15th century (but possibly already the 11th) the Western perception of Zoroaster has also materialized in the form of paintings. In a rather bizarre manner, he is represented in a Florentine picture-chronicle (Stausberg, 1998d, pp. 342-45 with illus. 42). Possibly, he is presented in Raphael’s “School of Athens” (idem, 1998d, pp. 345-50 with illus. 44-46). Moreover, we find him in illustrated chronicles (idem, 1998d, pp. 345-46 with illus. 43), in an illuminated MS from the southern Netherlands (idem, 1998d, pp. 350-51 with ill. 47), and in emblematical books (idem 1998d, pp. 350-52 with illus. 48). A painting by Eduard J. F. Bendemann (1811-89) that was part of the composition of the throne room at the royal palace at Dresden, Saxony (idem, 1998d, pp. 351-54 with illus. 49) was very influential in that it in some way was disseminated in India, where it is still popular among the Parsis.

Last but not least, it should not be forgotten that modern scholarly discourse is equally involved in the history sketched above. Iranologists and historians of religion have certainly had an impact on the public perception of Zoroaster, if only by providing new ‘biographical’ materials. On the other hand, the perception of Zoroaster by students of Zoroastrianism needs to be critically reflected upon. Zoroaster the shaman, the politician, the pious prophet, or the sacrificial priest: All these images at the same time continue older traditions of perception and stimulate scholarly imagination—and do so to an extent that goes clearly beyond the scanty evidence provided by the primary sources. Moreover, the history of Western perceptions of Zoroaster has evidently influenced modern Iranian and Zoroastrian discourses. In this way, ‘Zoroaster’ is an important node in the tight web of several intercultural relations.

Bibliography:

C. Alexandre, Pléthon. Traité des lois, Paris, 1859. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Zarathustra the Laughing Prophet. Talks on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra, Cologne and Boulder, Colo., 1987.

Idem, Zarathustra. A God that Can Dance, Cologne and Boulder, Colo., 1997.

J. Bidez and F. Cumont, Les mages hellénisés, 2 vols, Paris, 1938; repr.,, 1973.

Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, Oxford, 1700; repr. as Veterum persarum et parthorum et medorum religionis historia. Editio secunda, Oxford, 1760.

R. Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles. Text, Translation and Commentary, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 5, Leiden, 1989.

F. Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. G. Colli and M. Monatanri, Munich and Berlin, 1980.

J. Rose. The Image of Zoroaster. The Persian Mage through European Eyes, Persian Studies Series 21, New York, 2000.

M. Stausberg. Faszination Zarathushtra. Zoroaster und die europäische Religionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 42, 2 vols, Berlin and New York, 1998a.

Idem, “The Revolutions of an Island (1776): Zoroaster und die politische Opposition in England,” in Begegnung von Religionen und Kulturen, ed. D. Lüddeckens, Dettelbach, 1998b, pp. 157-69.

Idem, “‘Mais je passai outre’ oder: Zur Frühgeschichte des Orientalismus: Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Duperron und die Zoroastrier in Surat (1758-1760),” Temenos 34, 1998c, pp. 221-50.

Idem, “Über religionsgeschichtliche Entwicklungen zarathuštrischer Ikonographien in Antike und Gegenwart, Ost und West,” in P. Schalk and M. Stausberg, eds., ‘Being Religious and Living through the Eyes’. Studies in Religious Iconography and Iconology. A Celebratory Publication in Honour of Professor Jan Bergman, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Religionum 14, Uppsala, 1998d, pp. 329-60.

Idem, “Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) und die Erfindung des europäischen Neomanichäismus,” in R. E. Emmerick, W. Sundermann, and P. Zieme, eds., Studia Manichaica IV. Internationaler Kongreß zum Manichäismus, Berlin, 14.-18. Juli 1997, Berichte und Abhandlungen der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sonderband 4, Berlin, 2000, pp. 582-90.

Idem, “Neo-Zoroastrian Hellenism in the 15th-Century Byzantine Empire: The Case of Georgios Gemistos Plethon,” in K. R. Cama Oriental Institute. Third International Congress Proceedings, January 2000, Mumbai, 2001a, pp. 81-88.

Idem, “Von den Chaldäischen Orakeln zu den Hundert Pforten und darüber hinaus: Das 17. Jahrhundert als rezeptionsgeschichtliche Schwelle,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 3, 2001b, pp. 257-72.

Idem, Die Religion Zarathushtras. Ges chichte—Gegenwart—Rituale, 2 vols., I, Stuttgart, 2002a; II, Stuttgart, 2002b.

M. Tardieu, “Pléthon lecteur des oracles,” Metis 2, 1987, pp. 141-64.

G. Wohlfart, “Also sprach Herakleitos,” in Heraklits Fragment B 52 und Nietzsches Heraklit-Rezeption, Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich, 1991.

Michael Stausberg

The Greeks constructed two different types of Zoroaster: (1) Zoroaster the prophet or magus, and (2) Zoroaster the philosophical and astrological author. Before we examine these two types, we should look first at the difficulties faced by the Greeks in reconstructing an historical Zoroaster in any form, and also at the Greek conventions for reconstructing remote persons as founts of religious or philosophical wisdom. In the latter undertaking, the Greeks permitted themselves far greater license than do we today.

Even if the Greeks had wished to reconstruct a historically accurate Zoroaster, the task would have been impossible. The distance in space, time, and language between Zoroaster and them was simply too great. Furthermore, the only possible intermediaries, Iranian magi, were themselves historically distanced from Zoroaster; and, at least after Alexander and the Greeks had humiliated their religion by bringing down their empire, they were not particularly interested in educating the Greeks about that religion or its founder. Culturally and politically, circumstances did not favor the easy communication of religion, as they did, for example, in Hellenistic Egypt.

In any case, dry historical accuracy was of no more interest to the Greeks than to the Iranians. The Greeks had two goals for the reconstruction of prophets and wise men. The first was that the reconstructed persona be appropriate in imputed character and biography to the tradition he founded (never “she,” except in the case of the exotic alchemical tradition). The second, much more insidious, goal was that the sage be a convincing peg on which to hang home-grown Greek philosophy or other forms of learning and so give it a patina (to change the metaphor) of authority derived from the far away and the long ago. The Greeks considered the best wisdom to be exoticwisdom or — to use the title of Arnaldo Momigliano’s masterly study of the phenomenon — “alien wisdom.” What better and more convenient authority than the distant — temporally and geographically — Zoroaster?

Coldly stated, these two goals and the methods of construction necessary to attain them seem flagrantly dishonest. To the Greeks of those times they would have appeared less so. On the charge of fictitious biography, was it not reasonable that a prophet should be made to exemplify the religion he founded? And if data were scarce, why not fill out the portrait with touches from the picture of the generic sage? The false attribution of learned texts was a graver charge. However, the intent, it must be allowed, was seldom to deceive. What was misattributed to Zoroaster, as will be discussed below, were for the most part not original compositions, but compilations of pre-existing material for which the compilers sought a persuasive author. Their decisions to attribute their compilations to Zoroaster — because Zoroaster might have written it, might he not? — says more about their poor taste in philosophical literature than about their deceitfulness.

We shall start our explorations with Zoroaster the prophet of Persian religion. First, however, we should dispose of a third type of Zoroaster: Zoroaster the magician. This Zoroaster is obviously generated out of the pejorative use of the term “magus” to mean “magician.” Thoughtful Greeks knew very well that the original magi were Persian priests; but their language, and subsequently Latin too, soon overwhelmed that original meaning. Furthermore, together with the new denotation “magician,” the “magic” of the “magi” usually carried sinister connotations, up to and including necromancy, i.e. conjuring with the spirits of the dead.

Logic would seem to dictate that, once the magi were associated with magic in the Greek imagination, their prophet Zoroaster would necessarily metamorphose into a magician too. And so it was: the encyclopedic naturalist Pliny the elder (first cent. CE) names Zoroaster as the inventor of magic (Natural History 30.2.3). However, a principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds. That dubious honor went to another fabulous magus, Ostanes, to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was attributed. For Zoroaster, as we shall see, was reserved the astrological literature. Magical works specifically attributed to Zoroaster are few and very late; and although Pliny calls him the inventor of magic, he develops no accompanying magician’s persona for him.

Zoroaster as the prophet of Persian religion. Albert de Jong (pp. 76-250) has isolated five principal passages from Greek authors in which substantial information (some accurate, some not) is transmitted concerning Persian religion: Herodotus 1.131-2, Strabo 15.3.13-15, Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 46-7, Diogenes Laertius 1.6-9, and Agathias 2.23-5. The last three of these passages refer to Zoroaster in his foundational role. (1) Plutarch (first to second cent. CE), discussing dualistic theologies, states: “Others call the better of these a god and his rival a daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the Magus, who lived, so they record, five thousand years before the siege of Troy. He used to call the one Horomazes and the other Areimanius” (trans. de Jong). (2) Diogenes Laertius (early third cent. CE?), discussing the religion of the magi in very favorable terms, acquits them of the charge of sinister magic and adduces as evidence the Greek etymology of their prophet’s name: Zoroaster = astrothútēs = star-worshipper (literally. “one who sacrifices to the stars”). Interestingly, the friendly re-characterization is as groundless as the hostile portrait of the evil magician. (3) Agathias (sixth cent. CE), condemning certain “innovations” in Persian religion (“innovations” which are in fact genuine earlier features of Mazdaism), states: “But the Persians of today … have adopted new ways … seduced by the teachings of Zoroaster the son of Horomasdes. When this Zoroaster or Zarades … first flourished and made his laws is impossible to discover with certainty. The Persians of today say that he was born in the time of Hystaspes, without further qualification, so that it is … impossible to tell whether this Hystaspes was the father of Darius or someone else…. [Zoroaster] was their teacher and guide in the rites of the magi; he replaced their original worship by complex and elaborate doctrines” (trans. de Jong). Other than the basic fact that Zoroaster “established the laws” of Mazdaism then current, the only nugget of biographical fact here is the link to Hystaspes, certainly not “the father of Darius” but “someone else,” namely Zoroaster’s authentic royal patron Vištāspa.

The first and the third passages suggest hugely different dates for when Zoroaster lived and instituted the faith, and this sharp divergence is echoed in many other Greek and Latin sources. At one extreme Zoroaster’s remoteness is measured in millennia, at the other in mere centuries, and Zoroaster is made the contemporary and teacher of historical Greek sages, notably Pythagoras. In two important articles, Peter Kingsley has shown that the late dating is no more grounded in fact than the earlier. The earlier datings (six thousand years before Xerxes or Plato, as well as Plutarch’s five thousand before the Trojan War) reflect in one way or another Zoroastrian ideas of world ages and historic turning points (Kingsley 1995), while the later, in particular that to 570 B.C.E, stems from the attempt of Aristoxenus (fourth cent. B.C.E) to co-opt Pythagoras, and through Pythagoras Zoroaster, into a philosophical confrontation with Platonism (Kingsley 1990). Kingsley’s invalidation of the sixth-century date has repercussions beyond just the Greek perception of Zoroaster, for that date entered the Iranian Zoroastrian tradition too.

The “biographical” data on the fictitious Zoroaster in Greek and Latin sources were gathered and analysed in the fundamental two-volume study of the “Hellenized magi” by Joseph Bidez and Franz Cumont (data on the life of “Zoroaster,” vol. II, pp. 7-62; essay on the life, vol. I, pp. 5-55). It would be impossible here to track through all the data, so a single brief narrative, that found in Dio Cocceianus (Oration 36.40 f. — seeEIr. VII, Fasc. 4, p. 421), will be given by way of example. Dio’s portrait story is highly favorable, not merely because he puts it in Iranian mouths, but also because the Greeks, commendably, held Zoroaster and other founders of alien wisdom in high regard. “For the Persians say that Zoroaster, because of a passion for wisdom and justice, deserted his fellows and dwelt by himself on a certain mountain; and they say that thereupon the mountain caught fire, a mighty flame descending from the sky above, and that it burned unceasingly. So then the king and the most distinguished of his Persians drew near for the purpose of praying to the god; and Zoroaster came forth from the fire unscathed, and, showing himself gracious towards them, bade them to be of good cheer and to offer certain sacrifices in recognition of the god’s having come to that place. And thereafter, so they say, Zoroaster has associated, not with them all, but only with such as are best endowed with regard to truth, and are best able to understand the god, men whom the Persians have named Magi, that is to say, people who know how to cultivate the divine power, and not like the Greeks, who in their ignorance use the term to denote wizards” (trans. H. Lamar Crosby).

Zoroaster was also co-opted into Graeco-Roman religion as the founder of one of the mystery cults, Mithraism. Why this was so can be demonstrated almost syllogistically. To the Greek way of thinking, all religions have their founders; Zoroaster was the founder of Persian religion; the Mithras cult by self-definition was “the mysteries of the Persians”; therefore Mithraism must have been founded by Zoroaster. Whether Mithraism really was a Graeco-Roman continuation of Persian religion (though an interesting question in its own right) is here irrelevant. Porphyry, a third-century CE Neoplatonist, paints an elegant portrait of this fanciful Zoroaster instituting Mithras-worship in the archetypal mithraeum: “… Zoroaster was the first to dedicate a natural cave in honor of Mithras, the creator and father of all; it was located in the mountains near Persia and had flowers and springs. This cave bore for him the image of the cosmos which Mithras had created and the things which the cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided him with symbols of the elements and climates of the cosmos. After Zoroaster others adopted the custom of performing their rites of initiation in caves and grottoes which were either natural or artificial” (De antro nympharum 6, trans. Arethusa edition).

Zoroaster as the author of astrological literature. The extant fragments of, and testimonies about, the writings falsely attributed to Zoroaster are collected in Vol. II of Bidez and Cumont, pp. 137-263; they are discussed in Vol. I, pp. 85-163. They are also the subject of a full analysis by the present author: Beck, pp. 521-53 (including a discussion of the “Zoroaster” of Dio Coccianus’ magian hymns (see EIr. VII, Fasc. 4, p. 421) and of the Gnostic Tractate Zostrianos which was discovered subsequent to Bidez and Cumont).

The present author, while recognizing that Bidez and Cumont both laid secure foundations for the interpretation of the Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha and built much of the necessary superstructure, challenged their claim that the literature was in large part the product of the “Hellenized magi” of the Iranian diaspora in Anatolia and hence reflects the blending of a genuinely Iranian/Zoroastrian tradition (via a Chaldean astrological tradition) with a Greek tradition. To the contrary, he argues (Beck, pp. 492-521) that the Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha are almost entirely Greek products, not even superficially Iranized. The authorial name “Zoroaster” is little more than a label intended to impress and to legitimate.

The literary corpus of this fictitious Zoroaster was immense. Hermippus, a Greek scholar working in Alexandria in about 200 BCE, was said (by Pliny, Natural History 30.2.4) to have edited and commented on two million lines of it. That would amount to about eight hundred volumes or papyrus rolls. The titles and the nature of the contents of two major works are known. One was entirely astrological, the Apotelesmatika or Asteroskopika (i.e. “[horoscopal] outcomes” and “star watchings,” respectively). The other, On Nature (Peri physeōs), was more general, but astrology seems to have preponderated in its contents too. A reason why astrological material would have gravitated to Zoroaster has already been given — etymology. As well as “star-sacrificer” Zoroaster’s name was interpreted, via its initial syllable, as Zōo-, to mean “living star.”

It remains to mention the only instance where Zoroaster’s postulated authorship was contentious. His work On Nature opens with the words: “These things I wrote, I, Zoroaster son of Armenios, a Pamphylian by race, who died in war, whatever I learnt from the gods, while I was in Hades” (for sources, etc., Beck, pp. 518 f., 528-30). This looks like, and probably is, a case of outrageous plagiarism; for the opening words are the same as Plato’s at the start of the great “Myth of Er” which concludes the Republic — with the substitution of Zoroaster’s name for Er’s. Certainly, the plagiarist was not Plato. However, in pseudo-Zoroaster’s defence, it is not impossible that Plato, who is quite credibly said to have had connections with the magi (Kingsley, 1995, pp. 199-207), may in turn have drawn on an earlier Iranian story of an other-worldly journey undertaken by Zoroaster or some other magus (Bivar, pp. 86 f.).

Bibliography:

R. Beck, “Thus Spake Not Zarathustra: Zoroastrian Pseudepigrapha of the Greco-Roman World,” in Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism III, pp. 491-565.

J. Bidez and F. Cumont, Les Mages hellénisés, 2 vols, Paris, 1938, repr. 1973.

A.D.H. Bivar, The Personalities of Mithra in Archaeology and Literature, Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series 1, New York, 1998.

M. Boyce and F. Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism III, Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.8.1.2.2. Leiden, 1991, pp. 361-490.

A. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 133, Leiden, 1997.

P. Kingsley, “The Greek Origin of the Sixth-Century Dating of Zoroaster,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53, 1990, pp. 245-65.

P. Kingsley, “Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks, from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato’s Academy,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5 (Ser. 3), 1995, pp. 173-209.

A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization, Cambridge, 1971, repr. 1990.

Roger Beck

Although Pahlavi was spoken as long ago as the 3rd century BCE, most of the written works that survive were compiled from older Zoroastrian material in the period after the Muslim conquest up to the 10th century CE. These works are in many cases priestly texts, in terms of their religious content and didactic style: as the first and archetypal Zoroastrian priest, Zardušt naturally figures in such Pahlavi texts. He is the central identity marker of the religious community, who distinguishes it from the surrounding Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other communities. He is also the hallmark of the veracity and authenticity of the Zoroastrian tradition, lending authority to what is said in his name. The several texts that recount the legends of the biography of Zardušt function as paradigms of perfect behavior (as in the stories of the life of, for example, Buddha, Jesus and Moḥammad) and as narratives of theological, cosmological, and ritual lore. The main role of Zardušt is the articulation of Zoroastrian teaching, including doctrinal, ethical, philosophical, ritual, and theological traditions. For the modern scholar wishing to reconstruct a historical Zoroaster, however, the evidence of the Pahlavi texts about Zardušt must be used with great circumspection. Nevertheless, for our understanding of the Zoroastrian religion of the Sasanian and early Islamic period, they are of considerable importance. In short, rather than being a historical personage, the Zardušt of the Pahlavi books is a theological and religious figure, whose being, life and teachings are exemplary and definitive for the communities that held him as their figurehead. Even so, as has been pointed out (see ZOROASTER ii), there is a paucity of reference to Zardušt in many of the Pahlavi books and his name is absent from the Sasanian inscriptions.

E. W. West brought together translations of the Pahlavi sources on the life of Zardušt, principal of which are the Dēnkard book VII.1-11 (see DĒNKARD; tr. West, 1897; text, tr., and comm. Molé, 1967) and chaps. 12-24 of the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (see ZĀDSPRAM; tr. West, 1897, pp. 134-70) based on the Pahlavi version of the lost Spend and Čihrdād nasks of the Avesta (see ČIHRDĀD NASK). These are supplemented by the shorter text of the Dēnkard book V.1-4 (tr. West, 1897; text, tr., and comm. Molé, 1967), which summarizes and repeats the account of Dēnkard VII except for a few extra details. M. Molé (1967) also includes a section of the text Wizīrgard ī Dēnīg, with a genealogy and account of the life of Zardušt, but this text is, according to M. Boyce (1975, 182, n. 3), “known to be a fabrication made in India in the 19th century A.C.” See also Boyce’s footnote on Molé’s work on the legends (ibid., p. 182, n. 4). As West says, “These three narratives appear to be the only connected statements of the Zoroastrian legend that remain extant in Pahlavi” (1897, p. xv). West is confident that the original of the Pahlavi versions was translated from an Avestan text (ibid., p. xviii). He gives details of the passages in other Pahlavi and Pazand texts that deal with the legends of Zardušt (ibid., pp. xviii-xix) with the exception of the (then) unedited Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, chap. 47, on the episode of Zardušt’s conversion of King Wištāsp (text, tr., and comm. Molé, 1967 and Williams, 1990). West helpfully lists all references to the Zoroastrian legends in the extant Avesta (ibid., pp. xix-xx) and concludes that they present a fairly complete view of the Zoroastrian legends current in Sasanian times. After reflecting on the contents of the later, Persian Zartušt-nāma, West spends the remaining 21 pages of his Introduction (ibid., pp. xxvii-xlvii) compiling a chronology of Zoroastrianism and dating of Zoroaster based on the millennial system of the Bundahišn, and incorporating the information gleaned from the texts on the life of Zardušt mentioned above, though he himself seems to remain sceptical to the end on how historically useful it may be.

For a summary and discussion of texts containing the legends of Zardušt, see also the work of West’s contemporary, A. V. W. Jackson, who set out to create a narrative of the life of the prophet based on all available sources (1898). This narrative forms the first part of the book, some 140 pages intended for the general reader; the second part, which is slightly longer, comprises seven appendices, most of which are scholarly essays on the name, date, chronology, and geographical location of Zoroaster. Appendix V is a collection of all the Classical Greek and Latin passages mentioning Zoroaster’s name (compiled with L. H. Gray). The works of K. Barr (1952), Molé (1963, pp. 271-83, 348-85; and also 1967, passim), and Boyce (1975, chaps. 7 and 11) display a modern scepticism with regard to the historical use of such “legendary” material. J. Rose (2000, pp. 24-31) succinctly summarizes the debates that have ensued in modern scholarship.

One of the most interesting of modern treatments of the legend is that of H. S. Nyberg (1955/1975): it forms the basis of the following résumé of the Dēnkard VII account. As the only continuous biography of Zardušt that exists, Dēnkard VII must be considered as an independent and unitary text, composed according to a determined principle (Nyberg, 1975, p. 506). It begins with a prehistory going from primordial man and the first king, Gayōmard (see GAYŌMART), to the protector of Zardušt, Wištāsp. This account is entirely theological and, apart from some inserted details, is devoid of all epic movement; it contains the “natural theology” of Zoroastrianism, the history of the revelation before the full revelation effected by Zardušt. Only then does the “Life of Zardušt,” the messenger of the Mazdean religion, begin.

The first section of this “Life” (Dk. VII.2) is entitled “Miracles which were produced before he, the most glorious of creatures, was born of his mother.” Zardušt had a complicated pre-history before coming into the world. His person is composed of three celestial elements: his xwarrah “celestial glory,” his frawahr “individual spirit,” and his tan-gōhr “corporeal substance.” His xwarrah (see FARR[AH]) is supposed to have arisen during the initial divine creative act; his frawahr (see FRAVAŠI) was created 3,000 years before the attack of the evil force against the creation of Ohrmazd; and his tan-gōhr was created last. His xwarrah was sent down here across the celestial spheres: from the endless light to the sun, the moon, and the stars, down to the hearth fire of the house of Frahim.rvānān Zōiš, and transferred to his wife, the maternal grandmother of Zardušt, at the moment she gave birth to a daughter who would become the mother of Zardušt; to her was then transmitted Zardušt’s xwarrah. From this newborn girl came a great radiance, which illuminated everything between the sky and the earth.

Nyberg associates this celestial light with non-Iranian influence: “in all probability the life of Zardušt depends here on the legend of the Buddha” (1975, p. 507). Rose (2000, p. 25) has noticed similarities with several traditions, “Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Christian traditions in particular,” and notes that, decades earlier, E. W. Burlingame (1920) was claiming that certain elements of the Zoroastrian tradition are “obviously derived from the Buddhist legend” and that the other miracles “bear witness of the Buddhist original.” Rose refutes this, referring to the fact that the first miracle in the Zoroastrian account was known to the Greeks long before the first record of the Buddhist legend in the late 3rd century CE (2000, p. 35, n. 85). The account continues to relate that the girl’s radiance also struck the eyes of the demons and the priests who are the adversaries of Zardušt in the Gāthic hymns; they then sent three afflictions to where she lived and incited the inhabitants of the country to rise up against her parents. To save their daughter, they sent her to the village of the Spitāmān clan, where she was brought up in the house of Purušāsp, the man she subsequently married. Then the xwarrah passed to Purušāsp.

Ohrmazd thus decided, in council with the supreme circle of amahraspands (see AMƎŠA SPƎNTA), to have Zardušt born in ordinary human fashion, instead of sending him to earth as a uniquely divine being. Zardušt’s frawahr, which had lain dormant in the world of the amahraspands, was transported onto the earth and set within a stem of hōm, protected by an encircling wall (Dk. VII.2.23). The amahraspands Wahman and Ardwahišt charged two birds with carrying the hōm with the frawahr of Zardušt to a tree. Purušāsp, on a sign from Wahman and Ardwahišt, went to look for the hōm and entrusted it to his wife Dugdhōv (see DUGDŌW) to keep. Only then did Ohrmazd fashion the tan-gōhr of Zardušt and entrust it to Hordād and Amurdād, and to the cloud, which sent it to the earth in the form of rain “quite fresh, drop by drop, perfect and warm, to the delight of cattle and men” (Dk. VII.2.38), whence it passed into the grass. Purušāsp herded six white cows with yellow ears on to the grass and had Dugdhōv milk two calfless cows (awēšān gāwān dō azādagān) into whose milk the tan-gōhr of Zardušt had entered from the grass. She added water to the milk. The miracle is said to be that they produced milk, but the heifers’ own intact state is also highly symbolic. The hōm containing the frawahr was pounded and mixed in with the milk, and so the three elements of Zardušt were reunited in the house of Purušāsp.

The demons were now alerted to the danger. They launched a powerful assault against the village and destroyed it; but Purušāsp and Dugdhōv, the future parents of Zardušt, survived and together drank of the milk of the hōm. Their procreative union was strongly opposed by the demons, but after three attempts they accomplished it, and so the xwarrah, frawahr, and tan-gōhr of Zardušt were reunited in the body of Dugdhōv, and he was born. Thus, prior to his birth, Zardušt’s xwarrah originates from the primeval creative act of Ohrmazd and descends through the levels of existence and all the elements of creation. The symbolism of the story of Zardušt’s creation bears a theological code, but it also alludes to the ritual of the Zoroastrian liturgy. Furthermore, it has been suggested that, through the coalescence of the three elements of his being, Zardušt received his ordination as priest, warrior, and herdsman (Boyce, 1975, p. 278, citing Barr, 1952, alluding to Yt. 13.89 and quoting Zādspram XI.1-2: “Pourušasp said to Zardušt: ‘I thought that I had begot a son who was priest, warrior, and herdsman …,’ to which Zardušt replied: ‘I who am your son am priest, warrior, and herdsman …’”).

During Dugdhōv’s pregnancy, the demons had made the greatest efforts to do injury to her through illnesses. A voice came from Ohrmazd and the amahraspands on high commanding her not to resort to sorcerers’ remedies, but to wash her hands and make offerings of meat and butter to the fire for her unborn child (Dk. VII.2.54). And so she recovered. Immediately before Zardušt’s birth, such a great light came from his mother that the midwives thought that the house was on fire. News of his birth was spread in the language of the animals so that they too would witness his prophetic mission (waxšwarīh). After the story of the birth, the genealogy of Zardušt is given, from the clan Spitāmān through Yam and Hōšang back through 45 generations to Gayōmard, the first man: what has been encoded symbolically is now announced literally.

The following section (Dk. VII.3) treats of the miracles produced in the period from Zardušt’s birth until the conversation with Ohrmazd (ohrmazd hampursagīh). The first thing that Zardušt did at birth was to laugh. Zādspram (ed. Anklesaria, 1964, VIII.14; tr. West, 1897, p. 142) reports that Zardušt laughed because Wahman had entered and mingled with his mind. This provoked the astonishment of his nurses and of his parents, and disquiet in the karb Dūrāsrav (see KARAPAN, DŪRĀSRAW), foremost of the sorcerers against whom the Gāthic hymns directed their most violent attacks. Both he and another karb, Brātrōkrēš, became arch-enemies of the child Zardušt. Dūrāsrav succeeded in inspiring fear in Purušāsp, to the extent that he wished to kill his child, but all endeavors proved abortive, thanks to divine intervention, which thwarted such attempts. The last story of miraculous rescue tells of the child being thrown into a lair inhabited by a she-wolf and her cubs (Dk. VII.3.15-17); the wolf-cubs had previously been slaughtered so that the she-wolf would attack the child with all the more fury. But Wahman and Srōš enable Zardušt to smite the she-wolf, and they send a ewe into the lair to suckle the child. When Dugdhōv approaches the lair, the ewe disappears, and the mother, who mistakes the sheep for the she-wolf, thinks that the child has been harmed. Her anguish disappears when she finds Zardušt alive, and she pledges never more to lose sight of him. The same story in Zādspram (ed. Anklesaria, 1964, X.9-14; tr. West, 1897, p. 146) also replaces the wolf with a ewe. Nyberg (1975, p. 509) comments that this is an Iranian variation of a widespread legendary motif concerning the founders of a dynasty and great prophets, reminiscent of the fate of Romulus and Remus in Livy. Boyce (1975, p. 279, n. 9) concurs, suggesting that the awkwardness of this legend, that required a ewe to suckle Zardušt rather than the daēvic wolf, makes it probable that it evolved under the influence of the legend of Romulus and Remus in late Parthian or Sasanian times.

One day, as the child Zardušt plays with other children, Dūrāsrav and Brātrōkrēš seek to terrify them; the playmates run away from Zardušt, who quietly stands up to his enemies. Then, in a banquet that Purušāsp held in the presence of the two karbs, he asks Dūrāsrav to consecrate the meal on his behalf. The infant Zardušt is violently opposed to this and desires to conduct the ceremony himself. Purušāsp refuses, but in the end the child prevails over Dūrāsrav, even though the latter curses him, and, after repeated fainting fits, Dūrāsrav is smitten by the divinity and dies a most unpleasant death that ends his line of progeny forever.

After that, the book recites, as if in a hymn, all the perfections with which Zardušt was endowed when he was going to receive the divine revelation. The passage is amplified by a fuller account in Zādspram (Anklesaria, 1964, XX-XXI; tr. West, 1897, pp. 155-57). When Zardušt is 30 years old, Wahman comes to him on behalf of Ohrmazd, near to the sacred river Dāitī (see DĀITYĀ), to call him into conversation with Ohrmazd. As Nyberg says (1975, 510) the scene seduces, with its starchy style, solemn, hieratic. In three single bounds Wahman traverses the distance between the celestial world and the river Dāitī, where Zardušt is engaged in drawing water infused with hōm. In Dk. VIII.3.52 Zardušt sees an extremely beautiful man (pēš kirb kū pad tan čašmtar būd) approaching from the south, perfect in all respects (pēš nēk kū pad harw čiš pēš būd). The fourth bound sets Wahman near Zardušt at the moment when he is putting on his clothes, having taken his right foot from the river. They engage in a conversation (3.56-9): The words of Wahman: “Who are you? from whom are you?” The answer of Zardušt: “I am Spitāmān Zardušt.” The words of Wahman: “For what do you suffer … for what do you struggle and for what is your desire?” Zardušt says: “My suffering is for righteousness (ahlāwīh), and my struggle for is righteousness, and my desire is for righteousness.” Wahman enjoins him to cast off his robe (body?), as it is necessary to go without it before Ohrmazd. They go together to the meeting with Ohrmazd, Zardušt following Wahman. In Zādspram (Anklesaria, 1964, XXI.8-22.10) there is a description of Zardušt proceeding to an assembly of the seven amahraspands (i.e., including Ohrmazd), in Iran, on the banks of the Dāitī. Having offered praise to Ohrmazd and the amahraspands, he sits in the seat of the inquirers and asks Ohrmazd a series of questions, which Ohrmazd answers directly. The format of this hampursagīh scene is often repeated in didactic passages of the Pahlavi books. The chapter continues “on the same day,” with a series of revelations of Ohrmazd’s omniscient wisdom. It is the focal point of the portrait of Zardušt in Dk. VII. In the Zādspram account, Zardušt’s cousin Medyōmāh, who was to become his first convert, features significantly in the story of Zardušt’s encounter with Ohrmazd, but his name is never mentioned in Dk. VII.

The following section (Dk. VII.4) tells of the first apparition of Zardušt in the world of men after he has conversed with Ohrmazd and proceeds towards the conversion of Wištāsp. As authorized prophet, he presents himself to the world to ask men to praise the amahraspands and to dishonor the demons. But he asks them also to practice xwēdōdah, that is, the union between near relations (see Williams, 1990, II, p. 10 and II, p. 137, n. 137 for references to parallel passages; see MARRIAGE ii. NEXT OF KIN MARRIAGE IN ZOROASTRIANISM), and he meets bitter resistance. He then turns towards the strong men of Tūrān, led by Urvāitādēng, and he is severely rebuffed by them, such that he calls down upon them the anger and chastisement of Ohrmazd. He seeks in vain to win over other wealthy patrons, and the assault of evil powers breaks out in full force. The evil spirit, Ahriman himself, sends demons to destroy Zardušt, but they fall without force on the ground and injure Ahriman. Zardušt chases him, throwing at him a stone as big as a house. In the episode following the struggle, Zardušt crushes the physical appearance of the demons, with the result that they can no longer circulate around the earth in visible form to play their foul tricks. He achieves this through the most sacred of the prayers, the yathā ahū vairyō, and a hymn to Zardušt is interwoven with a eulogy of his feat. This act is reminiscent of Ohrmazd’s own chanting of the same prayer in Bundahišn I.29-32 that rendered the Evil Spirit unconscious for 3,000 years before the spiritual creation.

Next, Ohrmazd seems to require from Zardušt some explanation of the guilty dealings of men with the demons. The prophet is represented here as a reporter from the human world: the omniscience of Ohrmazd does not seem absolute, at least in so far as evil is concerned. Now, however, Zardušt is himself presented with temptation. He is on the bank of the Dāitī beside the clothes he had discarded before meeting Ohrmazd: a demon (druj) approaches him in the form of a beautiful woman in a bodice of gold. She proposes union and collaboration; she says: “I am Spandarmad.” But Zardušt replies: “I saw Spandarmad in the full light of day and I saw that she was beautiful from the front and back. Turn around, so that I know if you are Spandarmad.” Then the woman replies: “Spitāmān Zardušt, we are of the species that is beautiful from the front but ugly from the back,” and she refuses to do as he asked. But after three requests, she obeys and, as she turns towards Zardušt, he sees a swarm of ahrimanic monsters on her inner thighs, of serpents, lizards, toads, and frogs. Then he pronounces the prayer formula yathā ahū vairyō, and the demon disappears.

There are many instances in the foregoing of the standard formulae “thus it is revealed” and “as the religion says” which reflect translation from an Avestan original further back in time. In his edition Molé indicated such passages by transcribing them in italic font, whereas the passages of a theological character are drafted in a formal, dry prose. Nyberg (1975, p. 512) noted an epic art in the accounts of Zardušt’s childhood and the dangers to which he was exposed: “an intuitive description with repetition of formulary figures, in the manner of epic.” The absence of rhythmic form prevented it from being apparent, and if it had been there at some time, it was effaced in the extant abridgement. Nyberg thought that the episodes of Zardušt’s childhood and also, par excellence, the episode of Wištāsp’s conversion (Dk. VII.4.75-90) retained something of the epic style.

The second great turn in the life of the Zardušt is his meeting with Wištāsp. At first he suffers a series of persecutions by the kayags, karbs, and sorcerers of Wištāsp’s court; they incite Wištāsp to torment him with 31 heavy chastisements, chains and shackles, hunger and thirst, all of which he overcame. This section is cited according to the “words of Zardušt” (gōwišn ī zarduxšt), not as normally by formulae introducing a citation from the canon. Wištāsp publicly gives a decision in favor of Zardušt after the miracle when he performed on the horse of Wištāsp. Zardušt is said to have received permission to preach his doctrine, and he overcame the astrologers of Babel with his power, where Dahāg played his evil tricks as chief of the sorcerers. All this is composed in prose.

With the description of the conversion of Wištasp, Nyberg thought that we enter grand epic poetry, though he admitted he could not discern rhythmic units which coincide with the rhythm of the contents. He provisionally considered these texts as “relatively rhythmic translations of Avestan texts, more especially in that Avestisms are found in great number.” Nyberg sets out the translation of this as if it is poetry (1975, pp. 513-15), an excerpt from which suffices to illustrate (ibid., p. 513):

Then to them Ahuramazda the creator says,

to Vohumanah, Ašavahišta and to Fire, Ahuramazda’s holy son,

Come down, Amešaspentas, to the house of Lord Wištāspa

of many cattle, famed throughout the world,

so that he may accept this religion

and that he responds to the righteous Spitama Zarathuštra.

When they had heard these words,

the Amešaspentas went to the house of Wištāspa

of many cattle, famed throughout the world.

Nyberg refers to the whole scene as a purely religious epic, which he contrasts with the next chapter, a résumé in theological prose of the miracles revealed from Wištāsp’s conversion until Zardušt’s departure for the Best Existence. It may also be compared with the account in the Pahlavi Rivāyat chap. 47 (ed. and tr. Molé, 1967, pp. 116-12; comm., pp. 238-51; Williams, 1990, ed., I, pp. 168-73, tr., II, pp. 76-79, comm., II, pp. 212-26). Suffice it to say here that, though the Pahlavi Rivāyat account of the conversion of Wištāsp is formulaic and repetitive, and scarcely poetic in style, it contains, as Molé says, “definitely ancient elements that are lacking in the seventh book (of the Dēnkard) and whose appearance cannot be due to its influence” (Molé, 1963, p. 276). Such “elements” may derive ultimately from the lost Avestan Wištāsp Sāst or from another, unknown Avestan source (see further Williams, 1990, II, p. 214). Molé’s commentary on this text also includes a transcription and translation of a Pahlavi version of an Avestan text on the conversion of Wištāsp, included in the Zand i Khūrtak Avistāk (ed. Dhabhar, 1927, pp. 181-84; ed. and tr. Molé, 1967, pp. 239-41). This is a lengthy blessing and eulogy of Zardušt upon Wištāsp, and Molé’s comment is insightful:

The object of the eulogy … [is] to wish for the king that his activity be as universal as possible, that it transcend and embody all the aspects of life. Wištāsp will be this ideal king and he will remain so in all Mazdean tradition. … However, the sense of the [Pahlavi] Rivāyat chapter is original, as it is not a matter of a eulogy pure and simple, nor of a benediction, but of an essential element of the apostleship, of an argument used by the Prophet to lead to the conversion of the king” (Molé, 1967, pp. 241-42).

Dk. VII.5 is a short chapter, covering in a few lines all the rest of Zardušt’s earthly life (said to be 35 years). There is no mention at all of his decease in Dk. VII: he simply disappears from the text in chap. 5.8, in a summary of his medical knowledge and healing. Zādspram (Anklesaria, 1964, XXV.5; tr. West, 1897, p. 165) mentions only that “in the 47th year (i.e., since his meeting Ohrmazd) Zardušt, who is 77 years and 40 days, passes away” (pad 47 sālag[īh] widerēd zardušt ke bawēd 77 sālag 40 rōz). The tradition that he was assassinated by the karb Brātrōkrēš is alluded to in a brief notice in Dk V.3.2 and the Pahlavi Rivāyat (Molé, 1975, 120-21; Williams, 1990, chap. 47.23). Nyberg (1975, p. 516) speculates that it is possible that the old tradition simply spoke of an ascension of Zardušt. In any case, what is apparent from the lack of reference in these sources to the mode of his demise is that the older tradition was less interested in his physical death than in his life and spiritual significance.

The rest of the Dēnkard VII account is concerned with the events before and after Wištasp’s death until the coming of the unnamed non-Iranian invaders who put an end to the Sasanian dynasty, which also ends the millennium of Zardušt (i.e., the 10th). The text also accounts for the 11th and 12th millennia and the eschatological roles of Zardušt’s three miraculously begotten future sons (see ASTVAT̰.ƎRƎTA) who lead the faithful into the renovation and future existence. This eschatological after-life of Zardušt is the subject of several Pahlavi texts, including chapters 33 and 34 of the Bundahišn, chapter 9 of the Zand ī Wahman Yasn (Cereti, 1995), and chapter 48 of the Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg (Williams, 1990, and see Commentary, II, pp. 226-38; see also ESCHATOLOGY i).

Nyberg saw Christian and other influences in the Pahlavi accounts of Zardušt’s life in the Dēnkard VII such that he announced (1975, p. 517): “Then it is easy to admit that the Life of Zardušt in the Dēnkard constitutes a replica of the Gospel, to whose strong power of attraction and the missionary virtue forced the Zoroastrians to react.” If this is actually unprovable, then he could be correct in seeing a parallel in “the harmonizing tradition that is represented in the Diatessaron of Tatian and which was for a long time, in the Sasanian epoch, spread in the Syrian church.” There is, as Nyberg admits, an ancient Zoroastrian stratum to these legends, and texts other than the Dēnkard can be shown to have direct connection with Avestan texts that pre-date Christian influence. It may be said, however, that legendary stories appear to have a universally common function, to transmit robust, religiously charged, larger-than-life traditions of their protagonists, to provide exemplars of perfection and embodiments of theological and cosmological narrative for the religious community of the day.

There are hundreds of instances in the Pahlavi texts that refer to the few central, well-known narratives such as have been discussed above, each alluding to, amplifying and even extending aspects of Zardušt’s life that are accepted as more or less canonical. He is also, by association, symbolically united with past and future perfect men, such as Gayōmard, Hušēdar, Hušēdarmāh and Sōšāns (see, e.g., the Dādestān ī Dēnīg and Dēnkard books VIII and IX). Dialogue (hampursagīh) between Ohrmazd and Zardušt, based on those of the well-known stories, is a genre all of its own. Sometimes Zardušt asks the questions of Ohrmazd on spiritual, cosmological, and ritual matters (e.g., in Pahlavi Rivāyat chaps. 1-3, 6, etc.), and the precedent for this is the original meeting of Zardušt with Ohrmazd, referred to above. Sometimes such a dialogue is to extol a practice or explain an idea, for instance, truthfulness and charity, wisdom and omniscience, or the fate of the soul after death (ibid., chaps. 10, 22, 23). Ohrmazd’s explanation of the absolute need for man to be mortal in this world is a fine example of the creative use of Zardušt’s life, in the Zand ī Wahman Yasn (Cereti, 1995, chap. 3) and the Pahlavi Rivāyat (Williams, 1990, chap. 36), also summed up in the aphorisms of Dk. VI.B5 and B6 (Shaked, 1979, pp. 134-35). Again, sometimes a monologue is addressed to Zardušt, as in, for instance, Dk. IX.204-7 (West, 1892, pp. 210-11). The dialogue has sometimes a disarming intimacy, such as when Zardušt asks Ohrmazd “Did you ever make an offering?” and Ohrmazd says “I did so, for when I created the world then I made an offering; when I gave the soul to Gayōmard, then I made an offering; when you, Zoroaster, were born from your mother, then I made an offering. When you received the religion from me, then I made an offering” (Pahlavi Rivāyat, chap. 16; see also ibid., 8a2-3).

Of all the instances of Zardušt appearing in the Pahlavi texts, one would expect to find those most apparently independent of the legendary tradition in the philosophically and theologically oriented Dēnkard book III (ed. de Menasce, 1973). Yet most instances in this book are directly linked to this tradition. For example, Dk. III, chap. 184 directly alludes to the story of the conversion of Wištāsp (cf. chap. 420). Dk. III, chap. 343 lists the best and worst of men, naming Yam as the best of kings, and Zardušt as the best of priests, and Tūr ī Brātrōkrēš, the karb “who made the body of Zardušt perish,” as the worst of heretics. The principle of the collaboration of best sovereign governance and best priesthood is several times summed up in Yam and Zardušt (chaps. 129, 227). He is rarely referred to in the aphorisms of Dēnkard book VI, however, though there are exceptions at VI.163, 295 and B5-6. In terms of theological characterizations of Zardušt, Dk. III, chap. 195 is paradigmatic, wherein Zardušt’s ten supreme counsels are presented; in chap. 196 they are contrasted with the ten blasphemies of the sorcerer Axt, which are sacriligious inversions of Zardušt’s counsels. A similar contrast occurs between the righteous Sēn and the heretic Rašn Rēš (chaps. 197 and 198) and the righteous Adurbād ī Mahraspandān and “the accursed” Mani (chaps. 199 and 200).

In conclusion, it may be said that the categories “legend” and “history” are each unsatisfactory in themselves to describe a prophetic and religiously dynamic icon such as the Zardušt of the Pahlavi books. His legendary stories nearly always have a didactic, not merely informative, purpose. Elements are incorporated as a conscious attempt of the tradition to exalt the prophet in the eyes of those faithful who might be tempted to turn to other religions. Like the Sira of the prophet Moḥammad, or the life of Jesus or Buddha, Zardušt is the main artery of the salvation history of the religion that claims him as inspiration. His legends are not merely hagiographical or romanticized in the sense historians sometimes dismiss them. Certainly, they are heroicized histories, played out on a stage of cosmic, not mundane, time. There is evidence of influence and development in the stories that make up his religious persona, but nonetheless, Zardušt emerges from the Pahlavi texts as a fully formed prophet, who embodies the ancient wisdom first known in the Gāthās. His life is a paradigm of Zoroastrian religious teaching, from his celestially originating conception, through his struggle against demonic forces in life, to his future eschatological role through his miraculously conceived future “sons” and the faithful he inspires to triumph over evil. He is not himself an object of worship or veneration, but the example to his followers of heroic virtue and uncompromising struggle against injustice and oppression.

Bibliography:

B. T. Anklesaria, Zand-Akāsīh, Iranian or Greater Bundahišhn, Bombay 1956.

Idem, Vichitakiha i Zatsparam, Bombay, 1964.

K. Barr, “Irans Profet som Τἔλειος Ἂνθρωπος,” in Festschrift til L.L. Hammerich, Copenhagen, 1952, pp. 26-36.

M. Boyce, “Some Remarks on the Transmission of the Kayanian Heroic Cycle,” in Serta Cantabrigensia, 23rd International Congress of Orientalists, Cambridge, 1954, pp. 45-52.

Idem, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. I. The Early Period, HO I.1.2.2A, Leiden, 1975; 3d corr. repr., 1996.

E. W. Burlingame, “Buddhist-Zoroastrian Legend of Seven Marvels,” in Studies in Honour of Maurice Bloomfield, New Haven and London, 1920, pp. 105-16.

C. Cereti, The Zand ī Wahman Yasn, a Zoroastrian Apocalypse, Rome, 1995.

B. N. Dhabhar, Zand i Khūrtak Avistāk, Bombay, 1927.

A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster the Prophet of Ancient Iran, New York,1898; repr., 1965.

J. de Menasce, Le troisième livre du Dēnkart, Paris, 1973.

M. Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien, Paris, 1963.

Idem, La legende de Zoroastre selon les textes pehlevis, Paris, 1967.

H. S. Nyberg, “Zaratustrabiografien in Dēnkart. Presesföredrag vid Nathan Söderblom-Sällskapets årshögtid den 15/1 1955,” Religion och bibel, 14, 1955, pp. 3-19; reprinted in French as “La biographie de Zarathuštra dans le Dēnkart. Discours presidentiel prononcé a la Société Nathan Söderblom en la séance anniversaire du 15 janvier 1955,” in Monumentum H.S. Nyberg IV, Tehran and Liège, 1975, pp. 503-19.

J. Rose, The Image of Zoroaster the Persian Mage through European Eyes, New York, 2000.

S. Shaked, The Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages (Dēnkard VI), Boulder, Colorado, 1979.

E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts Part V. Marvels of Zoroastrianism, Oxford, 1897.

A. V. Williams, ed., The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1990.

A. V. Williams

ZOROASTER’S LIFE ACCORDING TO THE AVESTA

Biographical sketch according to the Old Avesta. Zaraθuštra was born into the clan of the Spitamids, whose ancestor Spitāma is mentioned in the Gathas several times (Y. 46.13, 51.12, 53.1). Zaraθuštra’s name is related to camels (uštra-); therefore we can deduce that he grew up in a pastoral society living on camels and cows. His family is mentioned outside of the Gathas: his father is named as Pourušaspa (Y. 9.13; Yt. 5.18) and his mother Duγδōuuā (FrD. 4; see DUGDŌW). In Y. 46.15 a certain Haēčat̰.aspa is mentioned, who according to later Zoroastrian tradition was thought to be Zaraθuštra’s great-grandfather. Three sons of Zaraθuštra are mentioned in Yt. 13.98, namely Isat̰.vāstra (cf. Y.23.2, 26.5; N. 31), Uruuatat̰.nara (cf. Yt. 13.127; Vd. 2.43), and Huuarəčiθra; the names of three daughters are given in Yt.13.139 as Frə̄nī, Θritī, and Pouručištā; usually Y.53.3 is seen as a reference to Pouručistā’s marriage.

We do not know exactly when Zaraθuštra received his formal teaching as a priest; but in Y.33.6 he refers to himself as zaotar “priest” (cf. Yt. 13.94), and on some other occasions he says he is one with “spiritual knowledge” (Y. 28.5, 48.3: vaēdəmna-). Perhaps we can also deduce from the cosmological stanzas in Y. 44 that Zaraθuštra was ordained as a priest, knowledgeable in both ritual and theological speculations. According to Zoroastrian tradition, at the age of 30 Zaraθuštra encountered Ahura Mazdā and chose his most prosperous spirit (cf. Y. 43.16). We can take this as a starting point and as some kind of revelation that leads to Zaraθuštra’s new career, his search for and furthering of “truth” (aṣ̌a). But in the following years his fellow-countrymen paid no attention to his words (Y. 31.1), with his cousin Maidiiōi.māŋha (Yt.13.95; Y. 51.19) being his first—and almost only—follower. Zaraθuštra refers to this situation in Y. 46.2: “I know wherefore I am lacking in vigour, O Wise One. (It is) on account of the scantiness of my cattle stock, and because I am one of few men (only)” (tr. Humbach, 1991, p. 168). As we can deduce from other passages in the Gathas, Zaraθuštra and his followers faced opposition, which was based on, not only theological differences, but also economic ones (cf. Y. 31.15, 32.9-11, 46.5, 49.1). According to some interpretations, names of Zaraθuštra’s adversaries are mentioned in the Gathas: Y. 32.13 f. may refer to a certain Grə̄hma, under whose influence the karapans prefer (ritual) practices that are not shared by Zaraθuštra himself and which are interpreted by Zaraθuštra as a means of destroying existence. Another adversary of Zaraθuštra is Bə̄ṇduua (Y. 49.1 f.), who not only differs from Zaraθuštra in economic wellbeing, but also religiously, as he gives shelter to a deceitful teacher, who leads people astray from truth and life. Apart from such individual persons, Zaraθuštra also faced opposition from the side of the karapans and kauuis. Both are groups of people who obviously perform some religious functions, but—according to the world-view of the Gathas—through their religious practices they yoked the people with evil actions, to destroy their existence. Perhaps some of these karapans and kauuis also could influence the political leaders in Zaraθuštra’s environment, as Y. 48,10 mentions them together with bad rulers (dušəxšaθra-; cf. Y. 48.5, 49.11).

Such kind of opposition between religious authorities or practitioners and Zaraθuštra may have led to separation of Zaraθuštra from his immediate “home-land;” one reminiscence of this situation may be found in Y. 46.1, which asks where Zaraθuštra should graze his cattle, as the mighty of the land do not satisfy him. But it is important from a historical point of view that we do not deduce from this reference that Zaraθuštra did flee far away from his original home, as there are no indications in the Avesta that he ever came to a new environment that differed socially or linguistically in any substantial way from the situation of his early life. Therefore we can assume that Zaraθuštra moved from the patronage of one clan to another one, but the geographical change—we can suppose—was rather limited. In the course of these movements, Zaraθuštra met with his principal patron, Vištāspa (cf. Y. 51.12; Yt. 13.99 f.; see GOŠTĀSP). Generally speaking, one may assume that, without Zaraθuštra’s meeting with Vištāspa, he and his religious efforts might never have been remembered by the following generations. From the Old Avestan texts no further details are known about Zaraθuštra’s teaching and the growing number of his followers. It is assumed that he was able to organize some kind of community and that they practiced some rituals to revere Ahura Mazdā and those deities who were known in the later tradition as the group of seven Aməṣ̌a Spəntas (cf. Y. 37.4, 39.3). This can be deduced from Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Y. 35.2-41), which can be taken as the liturgical text of the earliest Zoroastrian community, celebrating the worship of the Zoroastrian gods; the text focuses on the identity of that community by referring always to a group in the first person plural; therefore the text may reflect an early stage of the development of the Mazdayasnian community that originated from Zaraθuštra’s teaching.

Aspects of Zaraθuštra’s legendary life according to the Younger Avesta. As in many religions with only limited interest in the historical facts about their founders, Zoroastrian tradition as reflected in the Younger Avesta does not concentrate on the life of the historical Zaraθuštra. The Younger Avesta describes or refers to an ideal Zaraθuštra: He is the person who lived fully according to the will of Ahura Mazdā and practiced the religion he was fostering in a perfect way. Thus the scanty historical facts known from the Old Avesta gave way to a theological biography of Zaraθuštra, leaving behind history. The most important such text is Yt. 13.87-94. In this long passage Zaraθuštra’s Frauuaši (see FRAVAŠI) is worshipped (cf. also Y. 3.2, 4.23, 13.7; Vr. 13.0, 16.2; Yt. 8.2). By the use of the word yaz-, which regularly has either Ahura Mazdā or the Yazatas as object, Zaraθuštra is rendered as no longer a human being; his Frauuaši is elevated to the same level as other spiritual beings. The whole passage can be seen as the first (theological) description of Zaraθuštra’s life; to quote just the beginning:

We now worship Aši and the Frauuaši of righteous Zaraθuštra the Spitamid, the first who has thought the ‘good’, the first who has spoken the ‘good’, the first who has done the ‘good’, the first priest, the first warrior, the first agriculturalist, the first who finds (for others), the first who causes himself to find, the first who has gained (for himself), the first who has gained (for others) the Cow and the Word and Obedience to the Word and Dominion and all the Mazdā-created Good that originates in Truth; who was the first priest, who was the first warrior, who was the first agriculturalist, who first turned (his) face away from the daēwic and human brood; who first of the material world praised Truth, vilified the daēuuas, chose (the religion as) a Mazdā worshipper, a Zoroastrian, an enemy of the daēuuas, a follower of ahuric doctrine. (Yt. 13.87-89; after Malandra, 1983, p. 114)

With Zaraθuštra there came an end to the daēuuas, and the spread of the religion all over the seven regions (see HAFT KEŠVAR) started with him. That is the theological core of interest in the life of Zaraθuštra within the Younger Avestan tradition. Therefore close to the end of Yt. 13 the texts characterizes Zaraθuštra as follows:

We worship Zaraθuštra, the ahu and ratu, and the first teacher of all material existence, of beings the most beneficent, of beings having the best dominion, of beings the most intelligent, of beings having the most glory, of beings the most worthy of worship, of beings the most worthy of praise, of beings the one most to be pleased, of beings the most lauded, a man who is called ‘worshipped’, ‘worthy of worship’, ‘worthy of praise’, just as (he is called) by each of the beings according to Truth which is best. (Yt. 13.152, after Malandra, 1983, p. 116)

Other verses from the Younger Avesta give a comparable interpretation of Zaraθuštra: Y. 70.1 (cf. Vr. 2.3) mentions Zaraθuštra and Ahura Mazdā together as ratus who are worshipped together; in Y 42.2 (cf. Vr.21.2) the community—referring to themselves as “we”—worships Ahura Mazdā and Zaraθuštra side by side. From such lines we can deduce for the Younger Avesta that Zaraθuštra was conceived as no longer on the level of common humans, but close to the yazatas, worthy of praise and worship (cf. Y. 3.21).

The abovementioned lines from Yt. 13 do not illuminate Zaraθuštra’s life from a historical point of view but give us a glimpse of a legendary and theologically reformulated life of the founder of the Zoroastrian religion. Thus these lines already faintly reflect the theological Pahlavi texts about Zaraθuštra’s life, and from Dēnkard 8.14 it can be seen that the original Avesta seems to have already incorporated such a theological description (lost in the extant Avesta). The so-called Spand Nask most probably had the following themes: Zaraθuštra’s conception and birth, his youth, his encounter with Ahura Mazdā at the age of 30, his wisdom and miracles, and an outline of his doctrines.

Conclusion. From the Avestan texts we thus can deduce a rough outline of some biographical data of Zaraθuštra, provided that we accept that the Old Avestan texts reflect some (faint) knowledge about a historical person, Zaraθuštra by name (but cf. below). For the Younger Avestan texts it is remarkable that they already present another “Zaraθuštra” to us, namely a quasi-mythological hero who is on par with spiritual beings, but no longer a historical figure. Thus for further considerations about Zaraθuštra’s time and homeland we have to refer primarily to the Old Avestan texts.

ZOROASTER’S TIME AND HOMELAND

The Dating of the historical Zoroaster. Within the Avesta there are no references to any historical situation that can be connected directly with some extra-Avestan data and chronological frame. Therefore any attempt to reach a conclusion about the dating of the historical Zaraθuštra has to rely first on the dates given in Greek and Hellenistic traditions: (For details see especially Kingsley, 1990, pp. 245-65; de Jong, 1997, pp. 317-23; Rose, 2000, pp. 40-41, 49-51.)

(a) The longer chronology may go back to Xanthos of Lydia, who says that Zaraθuštra lived 6,000 years before Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont into Europe. The same number of years is also referred to by Alcibiades, Eudoxos of Knidos, or Aristotle. At Plato’s academy a comparable number was known, as Plato’s disciple Hermodoros mentions (quoted by Diogenes Laertius, 1.2.) that Zaraθuštra lived 5,000 years before the Troian war, which was then dated to 1,000 years before Plato. From such numbers we can deduce for our historical interest, that within this branch of Greek tradition in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE it was only known that Zaraθuštra lived during some far remote times.

(b) A second tradition handed down by the Greeks goes back to the Hellenistic era, saying that Zaraθuštra appeared 258 years before the “coming of Alexander.” Most probably, this dating originated with Aristoxenos, who lived at the end of the fourth century BCE and was a disciple of Aristotle. He mentions that Zaraθuštra was the teacher of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. (On Aristoxenos, whose works are only preserved by quotations by various classical authors, see Kingsley, 1990, pp. 252-53 and Rose, 2000, p. 49.)

During the second century, Apollodoros gave a more precise calculation: in 570 BCE Pythagoras met with Zaraθuštra—for Apollodoros this year marks the “coming of Zaraθuštra” to the Greek world; reckoning according to the Seleucid era that started in 312 BCE, Apollodoros reached the number of “258” years for Zaraθuštra’s advent before Alexander the Great. Of course, Apollodoros’s calculation does not carry any historical credibility and relevance, but this first “precise” date within Zoroastrian history was handled down through the ages, within the Pahlavi literature of the Zoroastrians and in the texts of Islamic historiographers alike. During the nineteenth century, Western scholars also made use of this fictitious date, which resulted in a kind of consensus (e.g., Henning, 1970, pp. 149-58; Hinz, 1961, pp. 23-25; most recently, Gershevitch, 1995, pp. 3-9) that Zaraθuštra was a contemporary of the first Achaemenids and that Vištaspa (Y. 51.12) was to be identified with Hystaspes, the father of Dareios I (r. 522-486; see DARIUS iii).

The two Greek traditions are contradictory and cannot be reconciled. Therefore they do not lead to a definite solution of Zaraθuštra’s time with an absolute date. Judging from the Avestan linguistic and philological evidence, one can only approximately define the most probable chronological frame for Zaraθuštra Taking the Old Avestan language as starting point, we can compare this language with the Vedic language (see IRAN vi), thus reaching a conclusion that leads to the second millenium BCE; further comparison even gives the impression that the Old Avestan language is more archaic than the Vedic language. Judging the time-span according to linguistic criteria between the Old and Young Avestan language, Jean Kellens reckons (2000, p. 37) with about 400 years that separate the Young Avestan texts from the Old Avestan ones, while the Young Avestan language is linguistically older than the Old Persian language. For Old Persian the earliest evidence is comprised in the precisely dateable inscriptions (522 to 521 BCE) of Dareios I. As a result of such linguistic arguments, we can rule out with certainty that Zaraθuštra was a contemporary of the early Achaemenids, because the language of the Avesta does not allow such a late date.

Further argument for an early date of Zaraθuštra is furnished by the slim evidence within the Avesta that allows some historical reconstruction of the early history of Zoroastrianism. The Farwardin Yašt mentions a certain Ahumstut with his son Saēna (Yt. 13.97) and 100 pupils who trained for priesthood. Some descendants of this Saēna are named in Yt. 13.126; altogether there are five generations, so one can reckon a time-span of perhaps 200 years for the spreading of Zaraθuštra’s religion long before the Achaemenid empire came into sight. Further information can be added from external evidence provided by Assyrian cuneiform sources of the ninth-eighth centuries. Igor Diakonoff argued (1985, p. 140) that Iranian onomastic materials from these sources contain hints about the spreading of Zoroastrianism to the Median area in that period. He mentions Iranian words written in Assyrian cuneiform such as masda– (cf. Av. mazdā “wise”), arta (cf. OPers. arta; Av. aṣ̌a– “truth”), satar or kaštar/kištar (cf. Av. xšaθra– “authority”) and parna/barna (cf. Median *farnah, Av. xᵛarənah “glory”). It is further possible to take the divine name D Assara D Mazaš (from a ninth-eighth century Assyrian source) as the cuneiform adaptation of Zaraθuštra’s god Ahura Mazdā, who is mentioned in a list of gods from Assyria, Urartu, northern Syria, and Elam. From such Iranian words in Assyrian texts, referring geographically to Media, we can deduce that Zoroastrianism was already known in western Iran in the ninth century. But, as western Iran is beyond the scope of the Old Avestan texts, these references can only have originated in a period later than Zaraθuštra’s lifetime.

Horse-drawn chariots are referred to in the Avesta (Yt. 5.50; 19.77; see CHARIOT) with, for example, reference to the “turning post” of the horses in competitions. Already Old Avestan texts refer to such turning posts and races in metaphorical language (Y. 50.6), so we find a terminus post quem for Zaraθuštra’s date. Philological evidence for a terminus ante quem can be seen in the sedentary society depicted in the early Avestan texts, with no hint of the historical migration of Iranian people from Central Asia to within the borders of present-day Iran and Afghanistan (see CENTRAL ASIA iii). That migration started about 1100 BCE (Hutter 1996, p. 25; cf. Boyce, 1975, pp. 15-17). In the Avesta, no impression is given that such long-way migration was already going on.

In summary, the state of the religion shown in the Younger Avesta shows change and development compared with that of the Old Avestan period, as well as the linguistic development from the Old to the Young Avestan language—historical changes that are earlier than our fixed dates from early Achaemenid history. The collected data from Assyrian sources for western Iran in the ninth-eighth centuries BCE reflect the presence of Zoroastrian ideas in Media, but since references to Media are missing in the Old Avestan corpus, these texts must pre-date the ninth century. The most probable conclusion, taking also into account the migration of Iranian people from Central Asia to Iran, is that the most suitable date for Zaraθuštra’s life may be sought in the last centuries of the second millenium BCE, perhaps in the middle of the millennium at earliest (Boyce, 1975, p. 184). An earlier date, such as the “6,000” years in Greek tradition, cannot be upheld with any arguments. But this Greek tradition has a valuable aspect: it makes clear that the Greeks perceived Zaraθuštra as living at some remote time, from their point of view. Thus the idea of Zaraθuštra as a contemporary of the Achaemenids is indirectly excluded, as Greek historiography was fairly well informed about the Achaemenids. The Greek evidence in this way adds to the Avestan arguments, which rule out a late date for Zaraθuštra living in the sixth century.

Zoroaster’s homeland. Avestan geography only refers to eastern Iranian regions, and within the texts there is a clear preference for the land of Airyanəm Vaējah (see ĒRĀN-WĒZ). The list of lands in Vd. 1.3-19 provides the chief evidence for Zaraθuštra’s homeland; it mentions 16 different countries, running from north to south, with Airyanəm Vaējah at the topmost position. Airyanəm Vaējah is considered as the best country in the world, even though its winter lasts as long as ten months and summer only two months. A shorter, but nevertheless useful, list is in Yt. 10.13 f.; the countries it mentions run in a sequence from south to north. Comparison of both lists leads to the conclusion that Airyanəm Vaējah is to be located north of Sogdiana. One can deduce that Airyanəm Vaējah was characterized as the best one, in spite of its harsh climate, because of the Young Avestan remembrance that Zaraθuštra originated historically from that area (cf. also Y. 9.14, Yt. 5.104).

More problematic is the question of the geographic location of this (mythological and symbolic) country. Several scholars, comparing the two lists, came to the conclusion that Airyanəm Vaējah might be identified with ancient Chorasmia in modern Uzbekistan. Mainly Walter Bruno Henning favored such an identification, basing his arguments on linguistic comparisions between Avestan and the (scanty) evidence for the Chorasmian language, but other scholars did not share his arguments; the Zoroastrian tradition itself never refers to Zaraθuštra as an offspring of Chorasmia.

Arguments that put Zaraθuštra’s homeland in the region east of Mashad and in the area of Bactria in Afghanistan (Humbach, 1991, pp. 40-44) have gained greater acceptance. W. Hinz (1961, pp. 22-23) reckons with Zaraθuštra’s origin from Chorasmia or Bactria, before he left his homeland (Y. 46) and went to Kešmar (i.e., modern Kāšmar in Khorasan Province, Iran), where the Šāh-nāma places his activity (see, e.g., Jackson, p. 255 ff.). Another suggestion, favored by Gherardo Gnoli (1980, pp. 23-57), does not base itself on Airyanəm Vaējah: he takes the references to Airyanəm Vaējah only as mythological geography with no historical relevance, but looks to Sistan and Drangiana (cf. Yt. 19) as the actual area of Zaraθuštra’s life and work. Interpretations of Zaraθuštra’s origin in (younger) Zoroastrian tradition refer to Bactria, but also to western Iran, namely Media and Azerbaijan. Zaraθuštra’s place of birth thus is sought in Urmia; in some Zoroastrian traditions the Median city of Raga (present-day Ray south of Tehran) also is mentioned as Zaraθuštra’s home.

Most probably one should uphold the “Airyanəm Vaējah thesis” and place Zaraθuštra’s origin in that area; and one can argue that Airyanəm Vaējah may be situated north of ancient Chorasmia. Perhaps further evidence is furnished by the reference to the “White forest(s)” in Yt. 15.31; this can refer to birch trees, which were famous in the area north of the Jaxartes river (Syr Darya). Additionally, the list of early followers of Zaraθuštra in Yt. 13.143 f. includes people of different ethnic backgrounds, namely Aryans (Airiia-), Turanians (Tūiriia-), Sairima-, Sāinu- and Dāha- (see DAHAE). For the geographical background of Zaraθuštra’s work, this may be an argument that Zaraθuštra lived in an area at the borderlands of Iranian ethnicity, thus meeting with and winning people of other ethnic stocks for his religion. To interpret that fact for the question of Zaraθuštra’s homeland, the best suggestion seems to be to locate it at the border of northeastern Iran, that is, within a vast area covered today by parts of the republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. A more limited demarcation is not possible based on Avestan sources.

ZOROASTER AND THE OLD AVESTAN TEXTS

The sketch of Zaraθuštra’s life given above depends on the conviction that the Gathas and the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, as Old Avestan texts, go back to Zaraθuštra himself. For the Gathas this point of view is held by the Zoroastrian tradition, and in recent years Johanna Narten has given convincing arguments that there are no differences between the Gathas and the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti that necessarily lead to the conclusion that the latter, a prose text, goes back to a different author. Both are ritual texts, and one may take them as the core texts of early Zoroastrian rituals, composed by Zaraθuštra to praise Ahura Mazdā and to provide a liturgical text for his followers, Both tasks can be attributed to Zaraθuštra as priest. This point of view in recent years has been questioned by Jean Kellens (2000, pp. 85-90), who states that all the Gathas refer to Zaraθuštra only in the third person or in the vocative (Y. 46.14). But as at least Y. 43.8 and Y. 49.12 seem to refer to Zaraθuštra in the first person, possibly also Y. 28.6 (cf. Humbach’s translation: “to me Zaraθuštra, and to all of us”; zaraθuštrāi… ahmaibiiācā). According to J. Kellens, therefore, the Old Avestan texts do not offer any information about the historical Zaraθuštra, either for his time or for his origin, as the Old Avestan language cannot be inserted into the historical linguistic framework for the Old Iranian languages and dialects. Kellens even goes one step further, questioning the individuality of any author of the Gathas, taking them as the result of the religious ideas of a group of people. Thus Kellens rules out the existence of a founder-personality for Zoroastrianism. The best one can get from the Gathas may be the idea that Vištāspa was the composer of these texts—taking kauui- not as “ruler,” but as a “poet” who knows how to arrange mantras and ritual spells. He concludes that we cannot say anything about a historical Zaraθuštra, but only about a mythological Zaraθuštra who only is known as the focus of identity for the Zoroastrian community. (cf. the related discussion of Zaraθuštra and Vištāspa as possibly mythological figures in Skjærvø, 1996; see now idem, 2003.)

The present writer stills holds the view that although they are ritual texts, and not selections of Zaraθuštra’s teaching or sermons that propagate some of Zaraθuštra’s dogmas, we can deduce from the Old Avestan texts an outline of Zaraθuštra’s life. But it is important for the picture of “Zaraθuštra in the Avesta,” that the Younger Avestan texts have no interest in historical recollection, but already present an idealized Zaraθuštra—the first person who lived according to Ahura Mazdā’s religion, which he propagated.

Bibliography:

M. Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism. Vol. 1: The Early Period, Leiden, 1975.

I. M. Diakonoff, “Media,” in I. Gershevitch, ed., Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 2: The Median and Achaemenian Periods, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 36-148.

I. Gershevitch, “Approaches to Zoroaster’s Gathas,” Iran 33, 1995, pp. 1-29.

Gh. Gnoli, Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland, Naples, 1980.

Idem, De Zoroastre à Mani, Paris, 1985.

W. B. Henning, “Zoroaster,” in B. Schlerath, ed., Zarathustra, Darmstadt, 1970, pp. 118-64 [abbreviated German translation of W. B. Henning, Zoroaster. Politician or Witch-Doctor? London, 1951].

W. Hinz, Zarathustra, Stuttgart, 1961.

H. Humbach, “About Gōpatšāh, His Country, and the Khwārezmian Hypothesis,” in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, Acta Iranica 24, Leiden, 1985, pp. 327-34.

Idem, The Gāθās of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts. In Collaboration with Josef Elfenbein and Prods O. Skjærvø. Part 1: Introduction – Text and Translation, Heidelberg, 1991.

M. Hutter, Religionen in der Umwelt des Alten Testaments I: Babylonier, Syrer, Perser, Stuttgart, 1996.

Idem, “Avesta,” in U. Tworuschka, ed., Heilige Schriften, Darmstadt, 2000, pp. 131-43.

A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, New York, 1928.

A. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, Leiden, 1997.

J. Kellens, Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, tr. and ed. P. O. Skjærvø, Costa Mesa, 2000.

J. Kellens and E. Pirart, Les textes vieil-avestiques, 3 vols., Wiesbaden, 1988-91.

P. Kingsley, “The Greek Origin of the Sixth-Century Dating of Zoroaster,” BSOAS 53, 1990, pp. 245-65.

W. W. Malandra, An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion. Readings from the Avesta and the Achaemenid Inscriptions, Minneapolis, 1983.

M. Mayrhofer, Iranisches Personennamenbuch. Vol. 1. Die altiranischen Namen, Wien, 1979.

J. Narten, Der Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, Wiesbaden, 1986.

J. Rose, The Image of Zoroaster. The Persian Mage Through European Eyes, Persian Studies Series 21, New York, 2000.

P. O. Skjærvø, “Zarathustra in the Avesta and in Manicheism. Irano-Manichaica III.,” in La Persia e l’Asia centrale da Alessandro al X secolo… (Roma, 9-12 novembre 1994), Rome, 1996 [1997], pp. 597-628.

Idem, “Zarathustra: First Poet-Sacrificer,” in Paitimāna. Essays in Iranian, Indian, and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter Schmidt, 2 vols. in one, ed. S. Adhami, Costa Mesa, 2003, pp. 157-94.

M. Stausberg, Die Religion Zarathushtras. Geschichte – Gegenwart – Rituale, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 2002, pp. 21-68.

Manfred Hutter

The name. The name Zoroaster derives from Greek Zōroástrēs. In his own Gathas he refers to himself as Zaraθuštra, and this is the form of the name used throughout the Avesta. There has been considerable discussion concerning both the form and meaning of the name (see ZOROASTER, THE NAME). Uncontroversial is recognition of the name as a compound whose final member uštra- is the common word for ‘camel.’ But, what sort of camel(s)? The prior member zaraθ ˚ appears to be a present participle with θ for expected ṯ, which is the normal spelling of word-final tin pausa, irrespective of whether the word is verbal or nominal. Among the Western Middle Iranian languages are found Pahl. zltw(h)št, MMPers. zrdrwšt, and NPers. Zardušt, all of which have been thought to derive from *Zarat-uštra, with regular voicing of the intervocalic stop t. However, Parthian has zrhwšt, and the Eastern Iranian language Manichean Sogdian [SogdM.] has zrwšc. As Gershevitch (1995) showed, the starting point for all forms of the name must be *zarat-. If the derivation is a present participle of the verb zar– ‘to be, become old’ we can compare the Old Indian evidence, where numerous compounds, including some proper names, have jarat/d- as prior members. In Old Indic jara- does occur in compounds, but only as final member. Further, I count eighteen Avestan names that are compounds whose prior members are present participles ending is ˚aṯ ˚. These facts militate against assuming that there were actually two etymologically distinct forms of the name current in ancient Iran, namely, *Zarat-uštra- and *Zara-uštra. The latter, which is the basis of Gr. Zōroástrēs, owes its form to a common phonetic development within Old Persian, whereby word final tin pausa disappears. That is why Darius I’s name is Dāraya-waʰuš and not *Dārayaδ-waʰuš (cf. Av. Dārayaṯ.raθa- nom. pr.). In Parth. zrhwšt the h may derive from θ or be a non-etymological prothetic h/x. The latter, being suggested by SogdM. xwštr ‘camel’, would be possible if first Parthian had borrowed OPers. *zara-uštra– and then changed to ʰušt. The word for ‘camel’ is not attested in Parthian, nor is prothetic h. The Sogdian form of the name is problematic. According to Gershevitch, an Old Sogdian *Zaraθuštra- would have passed into Middle Sogdian as *Zarθušc, not as attested Zrušc. This indicates that Zrwšc was borrowed, probably from Parthian, whose medial h would have disappeared.

Still, through all this, it remains to explain the θ of the Avestan name. Gershevitch proposed that this was actually an Old Sogdian (Zaraθuštra’s native language; see below) name, originally *Zarat-huštra-. The sequence th would have gone to θ, and it was as such that he became known. Of, course this is pure guesswork, as neither *huštra- nor th > θ has any verification for hypothetical Old Sogdian. Since θ > h is well-attested in Parthian (e.g., the present stem dh-, Av. daθa-), Zrhwšt can be derived safely from *Zarθušt. That is, Parthian assumed the Avestan pronunciation, as did also Sogdian, by whatever route the name took. Why did the dental t not enter Middle Persian as a fricative? Perhaps it did. In Middle Persian the normal outcome of θ is h. However, where the spelling is historical, Pahlavi uses t to represent θ, as it lacks a separate sign for θ. Perhaps the name did come into Middle Persian at first as zltwšt /Zarθušt/; subsequently the t, rather than > h, was treated as a dental stop that developed the pronunciation zard˚ on the false analogy of words like zlt /zard/ “yellow,” slt /sard/ “cold,” dlt /dard/ “pain.” As for the θ itself, one may guess that it is nothing more than final t becoming a fricative. If the name of the prophet were no longer felt to be a compound, then the unvoiced dental fricative would have been written as θ rather than the normal ṯ.

Finally, what is the meaning of zaraṯ? The obvious candidate is “old, aging,” thus Zaraθuštra- “whose camels are old.” However, to some sensibilities this would be an inexplicably inappropriate name, especially in comparison to his father-in-law Frašaoštra- “whose camels are wonderful.” Also found in the frawaši (see FRAVAŠI) lists of Yt. 13 are Wohuštra- “whose camels are good” and Arawaoštra- perhaps “who has snarling/bellowing camels.”

Zoroaster’s date and place. “When and where Zaraθuštra lived, one does not know.” Those words of H. Lommel (1930, p. 3) ring as true today as they did when he wrote them. Despite many attempts to situate Zaraθuštra in historical time and geographic place, all we have are possibilities that may strike one as more or less reasonable.

Date. Controversy over Zaraθuštra’s date has been an embarrassment of long standing to Zoroastrian studies. If anything approaching a consensus exists, it is that he lived ca. 1000 BCE give or take a century or so, though reputable scholars have proposed dates as widely apart as ca.1750 BCE and “258 years before Alexander.” In order to present the matter in an orderly fashion I shall (1) give account of the facts offered by our various sources, then (2) proceed to a presentation of the various theories.

(1) The sources. Since there are no events mentioned in the entire Avesta which can be linked to any historically verifiable chronology, the only arguments made on the basis of the extant Avesta necessarily are founded on assumptions such as those regarding glottochronology or the reliability of genealogical sequences or the place of Zaraθuštra and the Gathas within the corpus of Standard Avestan texts or even a sense of what may seem reasonable to an individual scholar. These arguments ultimately boil down to a judgment that for such-and-such to have occurred so-and-so many years must have elapsed.

There are Iranian sources outside the Avesta that offer dates for Zaraθuštra. They are contained both in the Pahlavi books and in Arabic and Byzantine sources which drew on Sasanid traditions. In order to evaluate these sources, it is necessary to appreciate that they are dependent on Zoroastrian ideas about time and chronology. Unlike dynastic chronologies, where time is reckoned by regnal years, Zoroastrian chronology is based on a cosmic calendar that is essentially mythological. According to the myth, history unfolds from the beginning in a series of four ages each of three-thousand years. Time will cease at the end of the twelfth millennium with the Frašegird (see FRAŠŌ.KƎRƎTI). Given this model, events, whether legendary or historical, were placed within the millennial continuum of cosmic history in such a way that the modern critic must pay attention to the necessity imposed on the Sasanid chronographers to fit “history” within the parameters of the cosmic calendar.

The Pahlavi Bundahišn Chap. 36 is “On the calculation of years of the time of 12,000 years” and lays out world history according to the 4 x 3,000 year scheme. However, these 12 millennia, it becomes immediately apparent, are conceived on the model of the year as it passes through the 12 signs of the zodiac, beginning with Warrag/Aries and concluding with Māhīg/Pisces. Only with the 3rd age does the history of the material world (gētīg; see GĒTĪG AND MĒNŌG) commence. Its first millennium begins with the creation of the first mortal, Gayōmard (see GAYŌMART), and concludes with Jamšēd (see JAMŠID), the first king; its second millennium is dominated entirely by the evil dragon Dahāg (see AŽDAHĀ); its third millennium begins with the defeat of Dahāg by the hero Frēdōn and concludes with Wištāsp, last of the Kayanid dynasty, up to the time of his conversion. The 4th age commences with the conversion of Wištāsp by Zardušt, and its first millennium appears to conclude with (the Sasanid dynasty of) of Ardašīr. The dynastic chronology of this millennium is given as: Wištāsp (post-conversion) 90, Wahuman ī Spanddādān 112, Humāy ī Wahuman duxt 30, Dārāy ī Cihrzādān 12, Dārāy ī Dārāyān 14, Alaksandar 14, Aškānān 284, Ardašīr 460. The sum of years from Wištāsp up to Alexander = 258 years, and this “258 years before Zardušt” was taken in our sources as the established date for Zoroaster. Note that the title of Bd. 36 given above is according to the Indian Bundahišn; the Iranian Bundahišn adds “year of the Arabs” implying that the author was drawing on histories in Arabic sources (Christensen, pp. 50-51). It is curious that, after giving “460 years until the brood of Arabs usurped (the) throne,” the author adds “to the Persian year 447; it is now the year 527 of the Persian year.” Noteworthy also is that the total sum of years = 1,016, rather than the even 1,000 each of all previous millennia. As scholars have pointed out, the period for the Arsacids (Aškānān) was drastically truncated ostensibly to accommodate the millennial ideology. Compounding the problems in this regnal/dynastic chronology is the presumption that its creators were also confronting the problem posed by having to square the millennial calendar of Zoroastrianism with historical time reckoned according to the Seleucid era, beginning 312 BCE (for a discussion of the “traditional date” see Shahbazi, 1977; Boyce, 1992, pp. 20-21).

Classical sources also give chronologies for Zoroaster (see ZOROASTER: AS PERCEIVED BY THE GREEKS). While Herodotus (ca. 480-424 BCE) never mentions Zoroaster, a contemporary, Xanthos of Lydia, is cited by Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE) as placing Zoroaster’s date 6,000 years before Xerxes’ Greek campaign. If this date has a basis in Persian informants, it probably represents a confusion on Xanthos’s part over the last two ages of 3,000 years of the Zoroastrian world calendar. Plutarch assigned a date of 5,000 years before the Trojan war.

(2) The theories. On the face of it, the most reasonable date is the one offered by the Pahlavi tradition, namely, “258 years before Alexander.” Reasonable, it seems, because it gives a precise reckoning that is not outlandish, such as the Greek 6,000 years, and fits in well with the established dates for the rise of the Achaemenid empire. The “258” has been espoused by various Iranists over the years, though none so vigorously as W. B. Henning (1951, pp. 35-42) and, subsequently rallying to his defense, I. Gershevitch (1995). However, the context in which this dating occurs (see above) hardly inspires confidence in respect to its historicity (see Shahbazi, 1977). This does not mean that Zoroaster did not live just prior to the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty under Cyrus the Great (549-530 BCE), only that the traditional date cannot be employed to establish when Zoroaster lived.

Once relieved of the necessity of accepting the “258” date, scholars have been free to speculate on a wide range of possibilities, though serious proposals must fall within the range of the mid-second millennium to the early 6th century. Early dating is bounded by the very approximate dates of the oldest hymns of the Ṛgveda; late, by the Achaemenid empire. The basic reason for accepting the Ṛgveda as a limit, vague as its dating is, is that, once one crosses that boundary, one enters a realm of unbridled speculation. The Achaemenid empire sets a limit of a different sort. Since within the entire Avesta not a single Achaemenid king is mentioned, and since the geographical locus of the Avesta is eastern Iran, the inference is drawn that most of its texts were composed outside the temporal and geographical sphere of the empire. The case is even more compelling if Darius I can be regarded as a convert, though, in any event, the calendar reform, probably during the reign of Artaxerxes II (404-358 BCE) (see Boyce, 1982, pp. 243-46) suggests a prior period of time during which Zoroastrianism gradually became accepted.

Place. There is really nothing in the Gathas which might give a clue where Zoroaster lived or the areas in which he was active. In the Avesta, the geography of the Vendīdād and of the Yašts make it clear that these texts locate themselves in eastern Iran. Even though there are later traditions which place him in Azerbaijan and Media, it is more reasonable to locate Zoroaster somewhere in eastern Iran along with the rest of the Avesta. Further, the two Avestan dialects belong linguistically to eastern Iran (for details, see AVESTAN GEOGRAPHY; Boyce, 1992, pp. 1-51). Inconclusive arguments have been made for Chorasmia (Henning, 1951, pp. 42-45) and Sogdiana (Gershevitch, 1995, whose arguments are based on the slimmest of evidence), while Boyce’s attempt to place him on the Inner Asian steppes of Kazakhstan prior to the migrations onto the Iranian plateau was motivated by misguided ideological considerations (see Malandra, 1994). Perhaps we are safe in placing him somewhere in the northeast, rather than in the southeast in Sistān.

Zoroaster in history and legend. The position taken in this article is that there are really two Zoroasters. The one is a flesh-and-blood historical figure: the author of the Gathas, the great reformer of ancient Iranian religion, and the most skilled poet of pre-Islamic Iran, whose name became identified with the religious movement he founded. The other is a mostly legendary personage celebrated in the Standard Avestan texts and the Pahlavi books, and accorded a certain awe by various Classical authors. However, there have been attempts to situate Zoroaster exclusively in the realm of legend.

In the late 19th century J. Darmesteter (III, 1893, pp. lxxv ff., lxxxv ff.) tried to demonstrate that the Gathas were a creation of the 1st century BCE at the earliest on the grounds that the ideas which they express were inspired by Neo-Platonism. For Darmesteter, Zoroaster was simply a legendary figure whose story is told in the Pahlavi sources and who only provided an ancient authoritative name to the linguistically anachronistic writings. While not denying that Zoroaster may have been an historical figure, Darmesteter relegated him to the domain of legend and thoroughly cut him off from authorship of the Gathas. Although Darmesteter’s ideas were immediately rejected, attempts to separate Zoroaster from the Gathas have resurfaced. In his 1963 voluminous work on ancient Iranian ritual, M. Molé took up the problem of Zoroaster in history, declaring that “Zoroaster the Spitamid remains totally unknown to us” (p. 271). For Molé Zoroaster is entirely the creation of myth and legend. On the one hand, he stated clearly in the Preface to his book that it was “far from us to want to deny the historical reality of the Iranian Prophet and of his entourage; but that reality only appears to us transformed in conformity with a ritual schema” (p. vii). On the other hand, when he denied that the opening words of Y. 46 (“What land to flee to? Where should I go to flee? From my family, from my clan they banish me”) “can in any case be interpreted in the sense of a historical event” (p. 273), one wonders who, in Molé’s mind, composed words like this. Was it Zoroaster creating his own ritual-symbolic fiction? or someone else? A generation later there came the categorical denial of his very existence as the author of the Gathas by Kellens and Pirart (I, 1988). Kellens’ ideas about Zoroaster have been embraced by the prominent scholar P. O. Skjærvø.(1997, p. 105) who wrote in his review: “As far as I am aware no Western scholar since [Bartholomae] has made any attempt to present arguments for the historicity of Zaraθuštra. It is just accepted. When pressed for arguments, at most scholars refer to the “common opinion.” But of course the common opinion is only as good as its foundation, which in this case is nonexistent!” M. Stausberg (2004, p. 203) could write in a general handbook on ancient religions: “It is not clear when Zaraθuštra lived (if there ever was such a person).”

The presuppositions that formed the basis of Darmesteter’s theory about the dating of the Gathas and their fictional relationship to Zoroaster, were so errant that it was easy for scholars to dismiss his theory out of hand. As for Molé, we can say that his work on the legend of Zoroaster was exemplary (see below) and that his speculations on the place of the Gathas within the Yasna were so conceptually flawed that we need not consider them further. For Kellens the crux of the argument against Zoroaster being the author of the Gathas is the occurrence of his own name in the Gathas. The starting point for the argument is Y. 46.14:

“O Zaraθuštra,
who is thy righteous ally
for the great maga?
Or, who wants to be praised?
So, it is he, Kawi
Wištāspa, at the contest.
But those, O Mazdā,
whom Thou *settled in (Thy) abode, O Ahura,
I shall invoke
with the words of Good Mind.”

Here the reciter of the stanza, speaking in the 1st person singular, poses a question to Zoroaster, and Kellens concludes that “it is perfectly improbable that he poses a question to himself” with his own name in the vocative. As soon as it is granted that Zoroaster cannot be the speaker in 46.14, then in all cases in the Gathas where Zoroaster is in the 3rd person he cannot be the speaker either. How could, for example, the first person plural voice of 28.6 ask Ahura Mazdā to “give… support to Zaraθuštra and to us” if the creator of the stanza were Zoroaster himself? And once these occurrences are eliminated, all the others fall like dominos. The only logical conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that some important person named Zaraθuštra figures in the Gathas, though not as their author. If the author is not Zaraθuštra, then who? “The Gathas do not present themselves as the labor of one man, but as the expression of an entire religious group. They are not the work of one personality, but the emanation of a mentality” (p. 20). This mentality, we are asked to believe, belonged to a sort of priestly guild, whose almost exclusive concern was the proper performance of ritual and which may have deputized one of their number more skilled as a poet than the others to compose some hymns to accompany the ritual.

This argument begins with what appears to be a perfectly logical deduction and concludes in fantasy. To begin with the fantasy, we know absolutely nothing about Indo-Iranian priests crafting sacred poetry in this way. In fact, the evidence of the Rīgveda is that individual poets laboriously fashioned (note the preponderance of the verb takṣ-) their hymns. Further, the subjective experience that most students of the Gathas have had is, despite all the obscurity of these hymns, the passionate expression of an inspired individual in dialogue with God, other divine entities, and his community. It is hard to imagine how the emanation of a mentality could have produced the Gathas, let alone inspire Iranian peoples over many centuries even to the present day.

Be that as it may, many arguments stand or fall on their premises. The basic premise here is that it is “perfectly improbable” that a poet would address himself by name in the third person. Consider evidence from the Rīgveda. There is a series of hymns in the 7th maṇḍala traditionally ascribed to the ṛṣi Vasiṣṭha. These are highly personal compositions in which the poet rehearses his intimate relationship with the high god Varuṇa, who in many ways bears a striking resemblance to Ahura Mazdā (see Boyce, 1975, pp. 31 ff.). In these hymns the voice shifts back and forth among first, second, and third persons, though all the while it is clear that the author remains Vasiṣṭha. RV 7.88 opens with the 2nd sg. imperative: váruṇāya matíṃ vasiṣṭha… bharasva “O Vasiṣṭha, bring a hymn to Varuṇa!” But, immediately in the next verse the voice is 1st person: ánīkaṃ váruṇasya maṃ si “Me thinks it is Varuṇa’s countenance.” Verse 3 shifts to the 1st pers. dual: ā´ yád ruhā´vaváruṇas-ca nā´vam “when (I) and Varuṇa would mount the boat,” prá yát… īráyāva “when we would go out,” ádhi yád… cárāva “when we would go upon,” īnkhayāvahai “we would rock.” In verse 4 there is another shift to the 3rd person: vásiṣṭham ha váruṇo nāví ā´dhād ṛṣiṃ cakāra... “Varuṇa placed Vasiṣṭha in the boat; he made him a seer.” RV 7.89 is the anguished lament of Vasiṣṭha suffering from dropsy. It begins: mó ṣú varuṇa mṛnmáyam gṛháṃ rājann aháṃ gamam “O King Varuṇa, may I please not go to the House of Clay.” Vv. 2 and 3 continue in the 1st person, but in 4 the poet shifts to the 3rd person: apā´ṃ mádhye tasthivā´ṃ sam tṛṣṇāvidaj jaritā´ram “Thirst found the singer standing in the midst of the waters.” In verses such as these it would make little sense to see the work of some anonymous emanation of a group mentality. The employment of different voices is part of the skillful poet’s craft. Returning to the Gathas, we can be confident, therefore, that when we find Zaraθuštra referred to in the 2nd or 3rd person, it is not some other poet or guild of poets invoking his name; rather, it is Zaraθuštra himself employing traditional poetic conventions which were also the inheritance of the Vedic ṛṣis.

Since Zaraθuštra was the real person who composed the Gathas, we must use these sacred poems as our source for understanding Zaraθuštra and his religious vision. (See especially the comprehensive interpretation of the Gathas already given by H. Humbach under GATHAS i. TEXTS)

The Gathas offer scant information about the life of the prophet (see Boyce, 1975, pp. 182-89). He belonged to the Spitāma family. (See Mayhofer, 1979, p. 77 for the correct explanation of the name, “having shining [white] (aggressive) power.” Note that at Y. 51.11 the name should be read with hiatus as spita-amāi, for which compare wīšta-aspa-.) The names of his parents, Pourušaspa and Duγδōwā (see DUGDŌW), are preserved only in later Avestan and Pahlavi sources. Zaraθuštra had several daughters, though only the youngest, Pourucistā, is mentioned. She is identified in the “wedding” hymn (Y. 53) by two family names. The one, haēcaṯ.aspanā “of the H. family,” would be the name of her mother’s family; the other, spitāmī “(girl) of the Spitāma (family),” would be the name of her father’s family. Allied by marriage, the Spitāma and Haēcaṯ.aspa families must have maintained close ties to Zaraθuštra, as he addresses them in the same breath: “O Haēcaṯ.aspids, I shall speak to you, o Spitāmids!” (Y. 46.15). Another important alliance was with the Hwōgwa family. According to the tradition Zaraθuštra’s third wife, Hwōwī, was the daughter of Frašaoštra Hwōgwa (mentioned six times in the Gathas). Frašaoštra’s brother was Jāmāspa, to whom Zaraθuštra may have given his daughter. Together these two men were among Zaraθuštra’s early and influential converts. In addition to Pourucistā, the tradition credits Zaraθuštra with having three sons, Isaṯ.wāstra by the first wife, Urwataṯ.nara and Hwarә.ciθra by the second (for his mythological sons, see below).

In the course of his activities Zaraθuštra made enemies to whom reference is made frequently in the Gathas. Prominent among them were the karpans and kawis. The former were priests who conducted rituals in ways antithetical to Zaraθuštra’s vision. The latter are hard to identify. In the singular the word appears as a princely title (the Kayanids of Iranian legend). With the plural Zaraθuštra cites them as accomplices of the karpans (Y. 32.14; 46.11) who, through their dominion (xšaθra), corrupt the righteous and pervert the sacrificial rites involving the slaughter of the Cow and pledging aid to Dūraoša (who is either Haoma himself or an aspect of his). Vedic kaví means approximately “poet.” From the meager contextual evidence of the Gathas, one may conclude that the karpans and kawis were the elites of society who controlled sacred and temporal power. Although Zaraθuštra condemns them for their misdeeds, it is not because of the inherent evil vested in the titles, but because “they squandered the karpanship and the kawiship” (karapō.tåscā kәwītåscā, Y. 32.15). Apparently, Zaraθuštra’s position within his own society became so precarious that he was forced to flee. Y. 46 contains a résumé of his flight, stanzas 1-2:

What land to flee to?
Where should I go to flee?
From (my) family
and from (my) clan they banish me.
The community to which
I belong has not satisfied me,
nor have the Drugwant
rulers of the country!
How Thee
can I satisfy, O Mazdā Ahura?

I know the reason why
I am powerless, O Mazdā:
because of my paucity of cattle
and that I am few in men.
I lament to Thee.
Take heed of it, O Ahura!
Granting support,
as a friend would give a friend,
Look upon the power
of Good Mind through Truth!

That satisfaction spoken of in stanza 2 is both the maintenance of the priest by his patrons and the priest’s ability to make the requisite offerings to the god(s). But, in stanzas 13-14 Zaraθuštra identifies his true patron as the one “who bounteously gratified Spitāma Zaraθuštra among men.” And to the question posed to himself, “O Zaraθuštra, who is thy righteous ally?” he responds, “So, (it is) he, Kawi Wištāspa at the contest.” P. O. Skjærvø (1997) has shown how the expression of Zaraθuštra’s complaint is part of a genre shared by the poet/priests of the Rīgveda, yet draws the conclusion that it could have no basis in historical reality because it is a mere literary convention! It is like supposing the sack of Jerusalem in 586 BCE never took place on the grounds that Biblical lamentations draw on an ancient Near Eastern literary tradition of lament for the destruction of a city. Be that as it may, Zaraθuštra regarded securing the patronage and protection of Wištāspa as a pivotal accomplishment.

Before that event Zaraθuštra suffered various wrongs at the hands of his opponents. In Y. 44.18-19 he vents his anger over the withholding of his stipend (mīžda) “ten mares with a stallion and a camel.” Elsewhere, it is their violation of the laws of hospitality. At Y. 51.14:

The karpans are not allies,
contrary (as they are) to the laws of pasturage,
intolerant of the stranger’s (+arōiš) cow,
through their very deeds and proclamations,
a proclamation which, in the end,
will place them in the House of the Lie

Humbach (1959, II, pp. 90-91) was on the right track in citing RV 10.27.8 (on which, cf. Thieme pp.12-13):

gā´vo yávaṃ práyutā aryó akṣan
tā´apaśyaṃ sahagopā´ś cárantīḥ
hávā aryó abhítaḥ sám āyan
kíyadāsusvápatiś chandayāte

The cows of the stranger ate the cowherd.
I saw them grazing together with their barley.
Shouts of the stranger did, indeed, around.
How long shall the owner (of the field tolerate these (cows)?

In this RV passage and Y. 51.14 the problem is either the grazing rights of a stranger or his right of passage. In the RV the cows have trespassed, testing the tolerance of the owner of the field; in 51.14 the Karpans do not tolerate (+asəṇdā) any stranger’s cow in their field, in violation of law.

Beyond that there is little of a biographical nature that one can glean from the Gathas. The gaps are filled in the later tradition. (see below under “Legend”)

One of the most important of Humbach’s contributions has been his attention to the place of the Gathas within the context of the sacrificial ritual (see further under YASNA). The fact that Zaraθuštra identifies himself as a sacrificial priest, zaotar, and makes references to the ritual context of some Gathas puts the matter beyond doubt. However, there are problems with the ritualist approach. It is not at all obvious that some of the Gathas have any ritual context at all. For example, the “Cow’s Lament” (Y. 29) deals with the question of the source of Zaraθuštra’s authority as a poet who can give voice to his Vision (daēnā) which is the source of divine revelation and who can exercise adequate power to advance that Vision. An analogy can be drawn with the Rīgveda. In that massive collections of hymns most are connected in one way or another with the ritual. The hymns of praises to the various deities were certainly composed for recitation in the worship of the specific deity at the sacrifice; yet, most are not linked in any particular way to the ritual performance. Hymns like those of Vasiṣṭha cited above, are personal expressions of the poet’s relationship to the god. The commentator Sāyaṇa, who carefully noted the ritual context of each hymn, for these has gato viniyogaḥ (“gone is the (ritual) application”). The danger is that when the ritual application of the entire collection of Gathas is sought obsessively, one can become deaf to the spiritual and ethical dimensions of the poetry. So, for example, Kellens’ understanding of daēnā in certain contexts as “une abstraction rituelle” (Kellens and Pirart, II, 1990, p. 252) or his translation of šyaoθana as “acte (rituel)” (ibid., p. 323) neatly sidestep these dimensions. Another problem with the ritualist approach, as exemplified in the poorly conceived work of M. Molé (1963), is that the Yasna and its accompanying ritual are the products of developments of the ritual which took place long after Zaraθuštra’s time. We know next to nothing about what rituals Zaraθuštra performed or about how he performed them. We cannot be sure even whether he banned the use of haoma that is so central to the yasna.

Ethics plays a predominant role in Zaraθuštra’s thought. The starting point is the myth of the Twin Spirits (Y. 30.2-6; 45.1-2). For Kellens and Pirart (III, p. 48), Y. 30.4 was a crux for proclaiming “there is no “myth of the two spirits.” Yet they failed to notice that jasaētəm is preterite, rather than injunctive, and ignored S. Insler’s defense (1975, p. 166) of Bartholomae’s positing dazdē as 3rd dual perfect. Compare Y. 29.1 kahmāi mā θβarōždūm “for whom did ye shape [aorist] me” and the answer in 29.6 θβā… θβōrәštā tatašā “the shaper did fashion [perfect] thee” (tr. Insler, p. 31). Moreover, we must recognize Zaraθuštra’s genius in taking a well-known ancient amoral myth about primordial twins, one of whom butchers the other and from his body parts creates the world (see Lincoln), and transforming that myth into a fundamental paradigm about choosing good over evil. The texts are Y. 30:

(2) Hear with (your) ears the best (tidings)!
Regard with a clear mind
the two choices subject to discernment
—each man for himself—
before the great *contest,
being aware to address us!

(3) Now, these are the two original Spirits
who, as Twins, have been perceived in a dream.
In both thought and speech,
in deed, both the better and bad.
Between these two, the pious,
not the impious, will choose rightly.

(4) Furthermore, it was that the two Spirits
confronted each other; in the beginning they created
for themselves life and non-life.
And as in the end there will be existence,
the worst for the Liars,
so Best Mind for the Righteous one.

(5) Of these two Spirits
the Liar chose the worst course of action.
The most beneficent Spirit (chose) Truth,
(he) who is clothed in the hardest stones,
and (those) who propitiate Lord
Mazdā, believingly, with true deeds.

(6) Between the Two they did not choose rightly
even the Daiwas, in that delusion
came upon them as they were taking council,
so that they chose the Worst Mind.
Then, together they ran to Wrath
with which mortals infect life.

and Y. 45:
(1) Thus I shall proclaim.
Now hear, now listen,
those (of you) who are nearby
and those who are seeking from afar!
Now keep ye in mind this,
for it is all clear!
“Let not for a second time
the one of bad doctrine ruin existence,
through (his) evil choice,
the Drugwant who has chosen through his tongue!”

(2) Thus I shall proclaim
the original two Spirits of existence.
Of the two, the very beneficent
would have spoken thus to the evil one:
“Neither our minds
not our pronouncements nor our intellects,
nor yet our choices
nor our words nor yet our deeds,
nor our visions
nor our souls are in agreement.”

For Zaraθuštra, the effects of what happened in illo tempore permeate the present; and so he exhorts his people, the righteous followers of Truth (ašawans) not to let existence be ruined a second time by the follower(s) of the Lie (drugwants; see DRUJ).

Part and parcel of Zaraθuštra’s ethical vision was the belief in rewards and punishments in the afterlife (see extensively under ESCHATOLOGY). Although it is impossible to know whether or not it was his innovation, Zaraθuštra was the first in recorded human history to articulate a clear theology of a heaven for the righteous and a hell for the wicked. For example, Y. 31.20:

He who shall come to the Ašawan,
to him belongs heavenly splendor instead of lamentation.
A long time of darkness,
with bad food, the uttering of ‘woe!’,
o Drugwants: to this existence
‘your daēnā shall lead you on account of your own deeds.”

Here the daēnā (see DĒN) is the personified aggregate of one’s deeds described in the later tradition as a beautiful maiden for the righteous and an ugly hag for the wicked. She conducts the soul (urwan) onto the Cinwat bridge (see CINWAD PUHL), where it will pass on to Paradise, called the Best (Y. 46.10), the House of Good Mind (Y. 32.15), and the House of Song (Garō Dəmāna, Y. 45.8; 50.4, 15; see GARŌDMĀN), or fall into the dark abyss of Hell, “for ever and ever guests in the House of the Lie” (Y. 46.11; also 51.14), also called House of Worst Mind (Y. 32.13).

What is not explicit is whether, beyond individual eschatology, Zaraθuštra had a theology of world history that would terminate with the establishment of a paradisiacal state, which in later Avestan texts is called frašō.kərəti “making marvelous.” As A. Hintze has shown (see FRAŠŌ.KƎRƎTI), Zaraθuštra’s use of fraša– and ākərəti- with ahu– “existence” is not inconsistent with Standard Avestan usage, and, that his vision of existence transformed through the triumph of Truth foresees, at the least, such a transformation within his own life, if not at some time in the more distant future. In any case, passages such as Y. 50.11:

Let the Creator of existence
promote through Good Mind
the making real what, according to (His) will,
is most wonderful (fərašō.təməm)!
contain the idea that the end will repeat the primal creation,
while Y. 43.5 extends the idea of the end to entail judgment:
Holy (spəntəm), then, Thee
do I consider, O Mazdā Ahura
in that I see Thee
as the first in the birth of life,
in that Thou dost assign
deeds and also words which entail recompense,
the bad (recompense) to the bad,
the good reward to the good,
through Thy skill
at the final turning point of creation

A term used in later texts in connection with the conclusion of history is saošyant. A future active participle, it means “who will bring about benefit, i.e., benefactor.” In two passages (Y. 48.9, 53.2) the saošyant appears to be Zaraθuštra himself. In the somewhat obscure Y. 45.11 the saošyant is a future one (aparō). The three remaining passages (Y. 48.12, 34.13, 46.3) present saošyants (plural) as acting in the future. The only solid conclusion we can draw is that Zaraθuštra considered himself to be saošyant and believed that there would be others in the future. Is this merely the kernel of a concept that developed later? Was Zaraθuštra a monotheist, dualist, or polytheist? These are questions which seem to be as old as the appearance of Zurwanism (on which, see DUALISM and EVIL i.), perhaps already in the Achaemenid period, and remain the subject of lively discussion today among both scholars and Zoroastrians. Labels can be misleading, and depending on what one means all three labels can be made to apply to Zaraθuštra’s theology. There is nothing in the Gathas to suggest that dualism was primordial, as expounded in the orthodox (non-Zurwanite) creation theology of the Bundahišn. Rather, dualism is the outcome of the choices made by the Twin Spirits (see above), who are best understood as themselves creations of Ahura Mazdā. In Y. 44.3-5, Zaraθuštra asks rhetorically:

(3) This I ask Thee,
speak to me truly, O Lord!
Who through his generative power
is the original father of Truth?
Who fixed
the path(s) of the sun and the stars?
Who is it through whom the moon
waxes, now wanes?
Even these, O Mazdā,
and others I wish to know.

(4) This I ask Thee,
speak to me truly, O Lord!
Who supports
both the earth below and the heavens
from falling down?
Who the waters and plants?
Who to the wind
and the clouds doth yoke the two steeds?
Who, O Mazdā
is the creator of Good Mind?

(5) This I ask Thee,
speak to me truly, O Lord!
What artificer
created days and nights?
What artificer
created sleep and wakefulness?
Who is it through whom
dawn, midday and evening (come to pass),
which remind
the conscientious (man) of his duty?

The strong implication is that Ahura Mazdā is the supreme deity who has created and ordered the cosmos. Yet, it is clear that He is not alone in the universe. The group of divine abstractions or entities (the Aməša Spənta of later Avestan texts)—Aša (Truth), Spənta/Spəništa Mainyu (Holy(est) Spirit), Wohu Manah (Good Mind), Xšaθra (Dominion), Ārmaiti (Right-mindedness), Haurwatāt (Wholeness; see HORDĀD) and Amərətāt (Immortality; see AMURDĀD)—function as autonomous modalities of Ahura Mazdā’s nature which have absorbed functions of a number of the traditional deities. While this can be seen as a step toward monotheism, Ārmaiti, as Ahura Mazdā’s daughter (Y. 45.4), is a thinly veiled member of an older divine household. The Indo-Iranian demiurge, θβōrəštar, appears in the “Cow’s Lament” (Y. 29) as a fully independent deity, as do the collectivity of Ahuras in other passages. Indeed, Zaraθuštra frequently moves back and forth between “Thee” and “you” when addressing either Ahura Mazdā or the deities. In the end, it is pointless to try to assign a label to Zaraθuštra’s theology, for he was an inspired prophet, not a systematic theologian.

Zoroaster in the Avesta outside the Gathas. The Gathas provide no link to any known dateable event, unless one should accept the generally rejected view of Herzfeld that the Wištāspa whom Darius names as his father was the very same person as the kawi Wištāspa named by Zaraθuštra as his royal patron. Even though the Gathas cannot be placed with confidence at any particular point in time, they bear witness to an individual and his community who were flesh-and-blood people. This is in marked contrast with the Zaraθuštra of the Standard Avestan texts.

As noted above, in terms of the world calendar Zaraθuštra’s life straddled two cosmic periods, his conversion of Wištāspa marking the beginning of the first millennium of the 4th age. The previous age began with the first mortal, Gayōmard. The Frawardīn Yašt (Yt. 13.87-94) presupposes this chronology and makes an implicit claim that Zaraθuštra is the second “Adam.” Thus, vs. 87 states: “We worship the frawaši of righteous Gaya Marətan (Gayōmard), who was the first to hear the mind and teachings of Ahura Mazdā, from whom (Ahura Mazdā) fashioned the families of the Aryan peoples, the seed of the Aryan peoples.” This is followed immediately by the worship of Zaraθuštra’s frawaši. In the series of stanzas Zaraθuštra is proclaimed to be the first priest (āθrawan), warrior (raθaēštā), and commoner (wāstryō.fšuyant), a clear indication that, like primordial Gaya Marәtan, he too embraced the totality of Aryan society (see AVESTAN PEOPLE); he is also hailed as the first teacher of the Ahuric religion and repudiator of the daēwas. Moreover, at his birth and growth there was a rejuvenation of the cosmos. Yt. 19.81 states that through his correct recitation of the sacred ahuna wairya prayer, he alone drove all the daēwas underground, repeating, one may infer, the first recitation of that mąθra by Ahura Mazdā that caused Ahriman to swoon prior to the material creation (following the cosmogony of the Bundahišn). This is repeated in the Hōm Yašt (Y. 9.14-15), where Zaraθuštra ‘s birth concludes a series beginning with Yima, the first king, and continuing with Thraētaona (Frēdōn) the slayer of Aži Dahāka, and the brothers Urwaxšaya and Kәrәsāspa, all well-know characters of myth and legend. The list of supplicants who petition Anāhitā for success in the Abān Yašt begins with Ahura Mazdā asking that he “instigate righteous Zaraθuštra, son of Pourušaspa, to think according to the Religion, to speak according to the Religion, to act according to the religion” (Yt. 5.18). After a series composed of legendary heroes and villains (Yt. 5.21- 83) and an interruption (Yt. 5.84-102), the list resumes with Zaraθuštra asking with the identical formula of Ahura Mazdā, that he instigate Kawi Wištāspa to think according to the Religion, etc.” He is followed by Wištāspa, Zairi.wairi (Zarēr), and the villain Arәjaṯ.aspa (see ARJĀSP), all prominent in the legend of Zaraθuštra. Yt. 5, therefore, is consistent with the idea that Zaraθuštra occupies a place in cosmic time and at the beginning of a new age, which he initiates with a repetition of a divine act.

For the compilers of the Avesta, Zaraθuštra was the conduit of revelation from Ahura Mazdā and other deities. Thus, like Moses in Leviticus, didactic passages, in which laws and ritual instructions are given, are introduced with a common formula: Zaraθuštra asked Ahura Mazdā… Ahura Mazdā said to Zaraθuštra … Of course, these revelations can lay no claim to historical experiences, being as they are simply framed in a fiction that lends ultimate authority to the ruling.

The legend of Zoroaster. The legendary biography of Zardušt/Zaraθuštra is given extensively in the seventh book of the 9th-century Dēnkard, with briefer references in Dk. 5 and the Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg 47. Texts, translations and commentary were published by Molé (1967; in English, the old translation of West). Beyond these texts there is a paucity of references to Zardušt in the Pahlavi Books, and his name is absent from the Sasanid inscriptions, even of Kardēr.

Dk. 7 begins the legend with a genealogy of the revelation and propagation of the Dēn, starting with the Amahrspandān and Yazdān in the spiritual state (mēnōg), then with Gayōmard in the material (gētīg). He is followed by a list of legendary notables, 20 in all including Gayōmard, with Zardušt as last of “historical” figures, himself followed by the three future saviors of his own seed, Ušēdar, Ušēdarmāh and Sōšyans. Noteworthy is the situation of Zardušt within the cosmological calendar. Chap. 2 details the creation (dahišn) of Zardušt out of basic elements of the yasna. His xwarrah (see FARR[AH]) was first created in the mēnōg and subsequently transferred to the gētīg as it passed down through the various celestial stations to the fire in the house of Zōiš and thence into his daughter Dugdōβ, the future mother of Zardušt. His frawahr (frawaši) was fashioned in the mēnōg by the Amahrspandān at the end of the 2nd world age, just prior to the Assault (ēβgad). The frawahr had human form and was in the likeness (hankirbīh) of an Amahrspand. In the transfer to the gētīg, the frawahr was placed in a stalk of hōm (see HAOMA), which was brought to a bird’s nest on Mt. Asnawand 330 years before the end of the 3rd world age. Eventually Purušāsp found the hōm, brought it home, and gave it to his wife, Dugdōβ. Finally, Zardušt’s bodily substance (tan-gōhr) passed to the two Amahrspandān, Amurdād and Hōrdād in a cloud whose rain passed into plants. The plants were eaten by cows which Dugdōβ milked. After combining milk and hōm, she and Purušāsp drank the mixed drink and in this way the xwarrah, frawahr, and tan-gōhr of Zardušt entered his parents. In spite of interventions by the dēws, Zardušt is conceived and born. The stuff of the rest of the story of his life fits within the literary genre of the romance, where miracles and fantastic events abound. While the conversion of Wištāsp and the conflict with Arjāsp occupy a prominent place in the narrative, there is almost nothing of substance beyond some names which might have an historical basis. According to the tradition, Zardušt died at the age of 77, killed by a hostile priest (karb) named *Brādrēs.

Conclusion. It is difficult to apply a label to Zaraθuštra according to a phenomenological typology. For want of a better word I have used “prophet,” though he cannot be equated neatly with the Biblical nābī’. Attempts to portray him as a shaman (Nyberg) or as a political operative (Herzfeld) have been shown to be in error (Henning). Nevertheless, it is inescapable hermeneutically that every exegete will tend to understand Zaraθuštra through a lens of his own life situation. The fascination of a great religious thinker is that each generation will strive to achieve an understanding that may always remain just out of reach.

Bibliography:

M. Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism I, Leiden and Köln, 1975.

Idem, Zoroastrianism: its Antiquity and Constant Vigour, Costa Mesa, 1992.

A. Christensen, Les Kayanides, Copenhagen, 1932.

J. Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, 3 vols., Paris 1892-93.

I. Gershevitch, “Approaches to Zoroaster’s Gathas,” Iran 33, 1995, pp. 1-29.

Gh. Gnoli, Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland, Naples, 1980.

W. B. Henning, Zoroaster: Politician or Witch-Doctor, Oxford, 1951.

E. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and his World, Princeton, 1947.

S. Insler, The Gāthas of Zarathustra, Tehran and Liège, 1975.

A. V. Williams Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, New York, 1898.

J. Kellens, La quatrième naissance de Zarathushtra, Paris, 2006.

J. Kellens and E. Pirart, Les textes vieil-avestique, 3 vols., Wiesbaden, 1988-91.

H. Lommel, Die Religion Zarathustras, Tübingen, 1930; repr., Hildesheim and New York, 1971.

W. W. Malandra, review of Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce, JAOS 114, 1994, pp. 498-99.

M. Mayrhofer, Iranisches Personennamenbuch I. Die altiranischen Namen, Vienna, 1979.

M. Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien, Paris, 1963 Idem, La legende de Zoroastre selon les textes pehlevis, Paris, 1967.

H. S. Nyberg, Die Religionen des alten Iran, Leipzig et al., 1938; repr. Osnabrück, 1966, with the author’s important added note (“Begleitwort,” pp. vii-xix).

A. Sh. Shahbazi, “The ‘Traditional Date of Zoroaster’ Explained,” BSOAS 40, 1997, pp. 25-35.

P. O. Skjærvø, “The State of Old Avestan Scholarship,” JAOS, 117, 1997, pp. 103-7.

Idem, “Rivals and Bad Poets: the Poet’s Complaint in the Old Avesta,” in M. G. Schmidt and W. Bisang, eds., Philologica et Linguistica. Historia, Pluralitas, Universitas. Festschrift für Helmut Humbach zum 80. Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 2001, Trier, 2001, pp. 351-76.

Idem, “Zarathustra: First Poet-Sacrificer,” in S. Adhami, ed., Paitimāna. Essays in Iranian, Indian, and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter Schmidt, 2 vols. in one, Costa Mesa, 2003, pp. 157-94.

M. Stausberg, Die Religion Zarathushtras I, Stuttgart, 2002.

Idem, “Iran. Appendix: Zoroastrianism”; “Theology. Iran”; “Sacred Texts and Canonicity: Iran” in S. I. Johnson, ed., Religions of the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass., 2004, resp. pp. 202-5, 540-41, 632-33.

E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts, Pt. IV, SBE XXXVII, Oxford, 1892; repr., Delhi, 1965.

A. V. Williams, ed., The Pahlavi Rivâyat Accompanying the Dâdestân î Dênîg, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1990.

W. W. Malandra

ZOROASTER, the name generally known in the West for the prophet of ancient Iran, whose transformation of his inherited religion inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Iran up until the triumph of Islam. The subject is covered in the following entries:

i. The Name

ii. General Survey

iii. Zoroaster the Avesta

iv. In the Pahlavi Books

v. As Perceived by the Greeks

vi. As Perceived in Western Europe

vii. As Perceived by Later Zoroastrians

Life. Apart from his patronymic (konya), Abu’l-Qāsem, and his pen name (taḵallosá), Ferdowsī, nothing is known with any certainty about his names or the identity of his family. In various sources, and in the introduction to some manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, his name is given as Manṣūr, Ḥasan, or Aḥmad, his father’s as Ḥasan, Aḥmad, or ʿAlī, and his grandfather’s as Šarafšāh (Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 458-59). Of these various statements, that of Fatḥ b. ʿAlī Bondārī, who translated the Šāh-nāma into Arabic in 620/1223, should be considered the most creditable. He referred to Ferdowsī as “al-Amīr al-Ḥakīm Abu’l-Qāsem Manṣūr b. al-Ḥasan al-Ferdowsī al-Ṭūsī” (Bondārī, p. 3). It is not known why the poet chose the pen name Ferdowsī, which is mentioned only once in text and twice in the satire (ed. Khaleghi, V, p. 275, v. 3, ed. Mohl, I, p. lxxxix, vv. 4, 6). According to a legend recorded in the introduction to the Florence manuscript, during the poet’s visit to the court of the Ghaznavid Sultan Maḥmūd, the latter, pleased with his poetry, called him Ferdowsī “[man] from paradise” (Khaleghi, 1988, p. 92), which became his sobriquet. According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, p. 75, comm., p. 234) his birthplace was a large village named Bāž (or Pāz, Arabicized as Fāz), in the district of Ṭābarān (or Ṭabarān) near the city of Ṭūs in Khorasan. All sources agree on his being from Ṭūs, the present-day Mašhad. The precise date of his birth was not recorded, but three important points emerge from the information the poet gives on his own age. First, in the introduction to the story of Kay Ḵosrow’s great war Ferdowsī says about himself that he became a poor man at the age of 65, and he twice repeats this date; he then states that when he was 58 and his youth was over Maḥmūd became king (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleqi, IV, p. 172, vv. 40-46). This statement is a more reliable guide than the three occasions on which the poet refers to himself as 65 or 68 years old; and since Maḥmūd succeeded to the throne in 387/997, the poet’s birth date was 329/940. Second, a point occurs in the story of the reign of Bahrām III (q.v.), when the poet refers to himself as being 63, and approximately 730 lines later repeats this reference to his age as 63, adding that Hormazd-e Bahman (the first of the month of Bahman) fell on a Friday (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, VII, p. 213, v. 9, p. 256, vv. 657-59). According to the research of Shapur Shahbazi (1991, pp. 27-29), during the years which concern us, only in the Yazdegerdi year 371, that is 1003 C.E., did the first of Bahman fall on a Friday. If we subtract 63 from this date, we arrive at 329/940 as the poet’s birth date. The third point occurs at the end of the book when the poet refers to his own age as being 71, and to the date of the Šāh-nāma’s completion as the day of Ard (i.e., 25th) of Esfand in the year 378 Š. (400 Lunar)/8 March 1010 (see calendar), which again establishes his birth date as 329/940 (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, IX, pp. 381-82; see further Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 459-62; idem, Ḥamāsa, p. 172, n. 1; Shahbazi, pp. 23-30).

We have little information on the poet until he began writing the Šāh-nāma in approximately 367/977, apart from the fact that he had a son who was born in 359/970 (see below). Therefore the poet must have married in the year 358/969 or earlier. No information concerning his wife has come down to us. Some commentators, e.g., Ḥabīb Yāḡmāʾī (p. 30), Moḥammad-Taqī Bahār (p. 39), and Ḏabīḥ-Allāh Ṣafā (Ḥamāsa, p. 178), have considered the woman referred to in the introduction to the story of Bēžan/Bīžan and Manēža /Manīža (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 303-6) to be the poet’s wife. If this conjecture is correct, it is probable that his wife was both literate and able to play the harp, that is, she, like the poet himself, was from a landed noble family (dehqān; q.v.) and had benefited from the education given to girls by such families, including learning to read and write and the acquisition of certain of the fine arts (cf. the story of the daughters of the dehqān Borzēn, Šāh-nāma, Moscow, VII, pp. 343-44; Khaleghi, 1971, pp. 102-3, 129, 200-2; Bayat-Sarmadi, pp. 188-89). Another point which emerges from the introduction to the story of Bēžan and Manēža is that in his youth the poet was relatively wealthy. Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, p. 75) also confirms this detail. Not only the content of this introduction, but also the diction and the less skillful poetry of the story itself, as compared to the rest of the Šāh-nāma, clearly indicate that it was a product of the poet’s youth, which he later included in the Šāh-nāma (Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 68-70; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 462-64; idem, Ḥamāsa, pp. 177-79). This story, however, cannot have been the only literary work produced by the poet before 367/977, when he was thirty-eight years years old. Up to this time the poet must have produced poetry which has since been lost. The poems (in the qaṣīda, qeṭʿa, and robāʿī forms) attributed to him in biographical dictionaries (taḏkeras), some of which may well not be by him, are probably from this period. Hermann Ethé (q.v.) collected these poems in the last century and printed them with a German translation (see also Taqīzāda, pp. 133-34; Šērānī, pp. 130-35). The narrative poem Yūsof o Zolayḵā is certainly not by Ferdowsī (Qarīb; Šērānī, pp. 184-276; Mīnovī, 1946; idem, 1967, pp. 95-125; Nafīsī, 1978, pp. 4-5; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 488-92; idem, Ḥamāsa, pp. 175-76; Storey/de Blois, V, 576-84). According to legends found in the introductions to a number of Šāh-nāma manuscripts, the poet had a younger brother, whose name was Masʿūd or Ḥosayn (see Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, editor’s Intro., p. xxxiii).

At all events, according to his own statement, the poet began work on the composition of the Šāh-nāma after 365/975 (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, IX, p. 381, v. 843), and since Ferdowsī specified in the exordium to the poem that he began this task after the death of Abū Manṣūr Daqīqī (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 13) the composition of the poem must have begun in 366-67/976-77. At first the poet intended to travel to the Samanid capital Bokhara (q.v.; ibid., I, p. 13, vv. 135-36) in order to continue Daqīqī’s work, using the copy of the prose Šāh-nāma of Abū Manṣūr b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq (q.v.), which had been used by Daqīqī (qq.v.), and which probably belonged to the court library; but since a friend (identified as Moḥammad Laškarī in the introduction to Bāysonḡorī Šāh-nāma, q.v.) from his own city placed a manuscript of this work at his disposal (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 14, vv. 140-45), he gave up this idea and started work in his own town, where he also benefited from the support of Manṣūr the son of Abū Manṣūr Moḥammad. According to the poet himself, this man was extremely generous, magnanimous, and loyal; he had a high opinion of the poet and gave him considerable financial help (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 14-15; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1967, pp. 332-58; idem, 1977, pp. 197-215; also, after the death of Īraj [ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 121, vv. 513-14], where Ferdowsī moralizes and reproaches the killer of an innocent king, it is probably that by such a king he means Manṣūr). In the whole of the Šāh-nāma this is the only moment at which the poet speaks explicitly of having received financial help from anyone, and since he wrote this after the death of Manṣūr, there is no reason to believe that it was written in order to please the object of his praise. Further, that he did not remove his praise of Manṣūr from the Šāh-nāma even after he added that of Sultan Maḥmūd to the poem’s introduction indicates the extent of his attachment to Manṣūr (and before him to his father Abū Manṣūr), as well as his sympathy for the political and cultural tendencies of Abū Manṣūr (Khaleghi, 1977, pp. 207-11). The year 377/987, in which Manṣūr was arrested in Nīšāpūr and taken to Bokhara, where he was then executed, was a turning point in Ferdowsī’s life; in the Šāh-nāma from this moment onward there is no mention of anything to indicate either physical comfort or peace of mind, rather we find frequent complaints concerning his old age, poverty, and anxiety. Nevertheless, Ferdowsī was able to complete the first version of the Šāh-nāma by the year 384/994, three years before the accession of Maḥmūd (tr. Bondārī, II, p. 276; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1985, pp. 378-406; idem, 1986, pp. 12-31). The poet, however, continued to work. In 387/997, when he was 58 or a little older, composed the story of Sīāvaḵš (ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 202, v. 12) and a year later wrote a continuation of the former narrative, the “Revenge for Sīāvaḵš” (“Kīn-e Sīāvaḵš”; ibid., ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 379, v. 7).

He was then a quite different poet from the pleasure-loving and wealthy young man depicted in the introduction to the story of Bēžan and Manēža. He complained of poverty, old-age, failing sight, and pains in his legs and looked back on his youth with regret. Even so, he hoped to live long enough to bring the Šāh-nāma to its conclusion. In 389/999, he started work on the reign of Anōšīravān (q.v.) and once again complained of old age, pains in his legs, failing sight, and the loss of his teeth and looked back to his youth with regret (Moscow, VIII, p. 52). The poet was, nevertheless, very active during this year. By the time he was 61, in 390/1000, he had composed almost 4,300 of the almost 4,500 verses of the story of Anōšīravān. The poet complained that at his age drinking wine gave no pleasure and he prayed that God would grant him sufficient life to finish the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, VIII, pp. 303-4, vv. 4277-86). Two years later, in 392/1002, the poet was busy writing the narrative of the reigns from Bahrām III to Šāpūr II (four reigns in all, covering 76 years in little more than 700 verses). It is not clear what occurred during this year to make the poet more content, as both at the opening of the first reign and also at the end of the fourth reign he expresses the desire to drink wine (Moscow, VII, p. 213, v. 9, p. 256, vv. 657-59; in the first of these verses the word rūzbeh is used, which can be interpreted as either “fortunate” or as a person’s name, and which appears in the Šāh-nāma with both meanings. In the second case Rūzbeh is probably the name of Ferdowsī’s servant). This period of happiness passed quickly. Two years later, in 394/1004, at the beginning of the story of Kay Ḵosrow’s great war, during the course of a panegyric on Maḥmūd, he complains in accents of despair of his poverty and weakness; he points out the value of his work to Maḥmūd and asks Maḥmūd’s vizier, Fażl b. Aḥmad Esfarāyenī (q.v.), to intercede on his behalf so that some help may be forthcoming from Maḥmūd (ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 169-74).

The year 396/1006, when the poet was 67, was the worst period of his life. In this year his 37-year-old son died. The poet describes his grief in extremely simple and personal language, complaining to his son that he has gone on ahead and left his father alone, and asks God’s forgiveness for him (Moscow, IX, pp. 138-39, vv. 2,167-84). What is most striking in this elegy is the hemistich: hamī būd hamvāra bā man dorošt (“He was always rude to me”; ibid., v. 2,175). Was there a disagreement between father and son? And if so over what? No answer to this question can now be given. The poet inserts this elegy into the narrative of the reign of Ḵosrow Parvēz. Approximately 1,500 lines further on, at the end of this reign, he writes that he has now completed his sixty-sixth year (Moscow, p. 230, v. 3681). This does not seem to accord with his previous statement, but if one takes into account the exigencies of rhyme and the fact that the poet was not always 100 percent accurate over figures, even in such a case, one can draw the conclusion that the reign of Ḵosrow Parvēz (a little more than four thousand verses) was written during the years 395-96/1005-6, when the poet was 66 or 67 years old. This obvious contradiction over the exact age of the poet, however, is not found in the variant “I was sixty five and he was thirty-seven” (marā šast o banj o verā sī o haft) found in certain manuscripts.

In the course of the history of Ḵosrow Parvēz, the poet complains that, due to the calumny of rivals, Maḥmūd has not given his attention to the stories of the Šāh-nāma, and the poet asks the king’s sālār (general), Maḥmūd’s younger brother Naṣr, to intercede for him and turn Maḥmūd’s attention toward the poet (Moscow, IX, p. 210, vv. 3,373-78). From this it is clear firstly that no payment from Maḥmūd had ever reached Ferdowsī, and secondly that Ferdowsī had sent some of the narratives of the Šāh-nāma separately, before he either took or sent the whole poem to Ḡazna (q.v.). The poet mentions his poverty many times during the course of the Šāh-nāma, and frequently praises Maḥmūd, his brother Naṣr, and his governor of Ṭūs, who would seem to have been Abu’l-Ḥāreṯ Arslān Jāḏeb (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 25-27; Eqbāl), but there is nowhere any suggestion that he had ever received any assistance from these individuals. On the contrary, as has been indicated, he everywhere complains of the king’s indifference to his work. At the end of the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, IX, p. 381) he also writes that the powerful came and copied out his poetry for themselves, and the sole profit to the poet from them was their saying “well done” (aḥsant). He only mentions two individuals, ʿAlī Deylam Bū Dolaf and Ḥoyayy b. Qotayba, who helped him. In certain manuscripts, ʿAlī Deylam and Bū Dolaf are mentionedd as the names of two people, which agrees with the statement of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 77-78, comm. pp. 465-66) that the first was a copyist of the Šāh-nāma and the second its reciter (rāwī). If this statement of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s is correct, then these two individuals did not give the poet any monetary assistance. Instead, as a copyist and reciter of sections of the Šāh-nāma for the nobility of the town of Ṭūs, they each profited from the poet’s work. In this case line 849 (Moscow, IX, p. 381) of the Moscow edition is incorrect and should be mended according to the variant readings of the line and the reference in the Čahār Maqāla. Ḥoyayy b. Qotayba, in his capacity as financial controller of Ṭūs, sometimes remitted the poet’s taxes.

Finally, in his seventy-first year, on 25 Esfand 400/8 March 1010, Ferdowsī finished the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, IX, pp. 381-82). According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 75) and Farīd-al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (Elāhī-nāma, p. 367; Asrār-nāma, p. 189, v. 3,204), the total time spent on the composition of the Šāh-nāma was twenty-five years. In the satire, however, there is thrice mention of thirty years and once of thirty-five years (ed. Mohl, Intro., p. lxxxix, v. 11, p. xc, vv. 11, 20, p. xci, v. 4). If we place the beginning of work on the Šāh-nāma in 367 and its completion in 400 the time spent on its composition is thirty-three years, and if we extend the poet’s work to the period before 367—the composition of Bēžan and Manēža—and add to this time spent on revision after 400, the figure of thirty-five years is closer to the truth. There are lines in the Šāh-nāma which, according to some scholars, refer to events of the year 401/1011 (Moscow, VII, p. 114, vv. 18-20; Taqīzāda, 1983, p. 100, n. 3; Mīnovī, 1967, p. 40). Aḥmad Ateş has gone even further than this and claims that since Ferdowsī, during the course of his praise of Maḥmūd in the introduction to the Šāh-nāma, mentions Kašmīr and Qannūj among his territories, and since Maḥmūd first conquered these regions in 406/1015 and 409/1018, Ferdowsī must have made the final revision of the Šāh-nāma and sent it to Ḡazna in 409/1018 or 410/1019. He also draws the conclusion that Maḥmūd sent the poet a financial reward but that this reached Ṭūs in 411/1020, after the poet’s death (Ateş, 159-68). The names Kašmīr and Qannūj, which appear in this panegyric beside other names such as Rūm (the West), Hend (India), Čīn (China), etc. and which occur many more times throughout the Šāh-nāma, is no indication of a conquest by Maḥmūd of these two areas. Their occurance in the panegyric is simply due to poetic license and leads to no historical conclusions.

Our information on the poet’s life after 400/1010 is limited to the matters reported by Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 75-83). According to him, after the completion of the Šāh-nāma, ʿAlī Deylam prepared a manuscript of it in seven volumes and Ferdowsī went to Ḡazna with his professional reciter Abū Dolaf. There, with the help of Maḥmūd’s vizier Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Meymandī he presented the book to Maḥmūd, but because of the calumny of those who envied him, and the poet’s religious orientation, it was not favorably received by the king. Instead of 60,000 dinars (q.v.), payment was fixed at 50,000 dirhams (q.v.), and finally at 20,000 dirhams. Ferdowsī was extremely upset by this and went to a bathhouse; upon leaving the bathhouse he drank some beer and divided the king’s present between the beer seller and the bath attendant. Then, fearing punishment by Maḥmūd, he fled from Ḡazna by night. At first he hid for six months in Herāt in the shop of Esmāʿīl Warrāq, father of the poet Azraqī (q.v.), and then he took refuge in Ṭabarestān with Espahbad Šahrīār, a member of the Bavandid dynasty (see ĀL-E BĀVAND; the report of the poet’s journey to Baghdad, which appears in the introductions to the a number of manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, is merely a legend; similarly, the story of the poet’s journey to Isfahan is based on interpolated passages; see Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 474-76; Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 96-98; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1985, pp. 233-36). While in Ṭabarestān, the poet composed 100 lines satirizing Maḥmūd, but the amir of Ṭabarestān bought the satire for 100,000 dirhams and destroyed it, so that only six lines survived by word of mouth, and these Neẓāmī ʿArūżī recorded. Later, due to events described by Neẓāmī ʿArūżī, Maḥmūd regretted his behavior toward the poet and on the recommendation of the above mentioned vizier had camel loads of indigo to the value of 20,000 dinars sent to Ferdowsī, but as the camels were entering Ṭūs by the Rūdbār gate Ferdowsī’s corpse was being borne out of the city by the Razān gate. In the cemetery the preacher of Ṭābarān prevented his being buried in the Muslim cemetery on the grounds, and so there was no choice but to bury the poet in his own orchard. Neẓāmī ʿArūżī tells how he visited the poet’s tomb in 510/1116 (on this site, see Taqīzāda, 1983, pp. 120-21). According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (pp. 47-51), Ferdowsī left only one daughter, and the poet had wanted the king’s payment as a dowry for her. But after the poet’s death, his daughter would not accept the payment and, on Maḥmūd’s orders, the money was used to build the Čāha caravansary near Ṭūs, on the road which goes from Nīšāpūr to Marv. The year of the poet’s death is given by Dawlatšāh Samarqandī (ed. Browne, p. 54) as 411/1020, and by Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfī (p. 743) and Faṣīḥ Ḵᵛāfī (p. 129) as 416/1025. According to the first date, Ferdowsī was eighty-two years old when he died, and according to the second report he was eighty-seven.

Many details of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s account are inaccurate or even merely legendary (see, e.g., Qazvīnī’s introducton to Čahār maqāla, pp. xiv ff.). For example, he claims that only six lines survived of the satire, but in some manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma the number of lines is as many as 160. Some scholars considered the satire to be genuine (Nöldeke, pp. 29-31; Taqīzāda, pp. 114-16). But Maḥmūd Šērānī established that many of the lines are spurious or are taken from the Šāh-nāma itself, and he therefore rejected the authenticity of the satire. The spuriousness of many lines in the satire, however, does not establish that the satire never existed at all. Besides, there are excellent lines in the satire which are not taken from the Šāh-nāma. Generally, it appears that in his article Šērānī was mainly seeking to vindicate Maḥmūd (Khaleghi, 1984, p. 121; Shahbazi, 1991, pp. 97-103).

There is a line in the satire (Mohl’s edition, Intro., p. lxxxix, v. 10) in which the poet refers to his age as being almost eighty. According to this line, the poet composed the satire before 409/1018. But it is very probable that the vizier who was Ferdowsī’s benefactor was Abu’l-ʿAbbās Fażl b. Aḥmad Esfarāyenī, whom Ferdowsī praised in the Šāh-nāma, and not, as Neẓāmī ʿArūżī writes (p. 78), Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Meymandī. The latter, although holding an important position at Maḥmūd’s court, is never mentioned in the Šāh-nāma. In the legends written in some of the introductions to Šāh-nāma’s manuscripts, Meymandī has been mentioned among Ferdowsī’s adversaries at Maḥmūd’s court. This vizier was a fanatical Sunni, strongly opposed to heretics and the Qarmaṭīs, and it is possible that he was influential in the removal of Esfarāyenī from office in 401/1011 and his murder in 404/1014, and also in the execution of Ḥasanak Mīkāl in 422/1031, who was accused of harboring qarmaṭī tendencies. In like fashion, after he became vizier in Esfarāyenī’s place in 401/1011, he directed that the language of the court records, which Esfarāyenī had caused to be kept in Persian, be changed back to Arabic. Meymandī was vizier until 412/1025. He was then removed from office and imprisoned, and the vizierate was transferred to Ḥasanak Mīkāl. Thus the vizier who is said to have caused Maḥmūd to regret his treatment of Ferdowsī, if the story is to be believed, was probably Ḥasanak and not Meymandī. If Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s story is true, 416/1025 is therefore the more probable date of Ferdowsī’s death (see Taqīzāda, 1983, pp. 111-13).

Certain other details of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s version of events are confirmed by various sources. For example, the author of the Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (ed. Bahār, pp. 7-8) also gives a report of Ferdowsī’s journey to Ḡazna and his encounter with Maḥmūd. Similarly, Neẓāmī Ganjavī (Haft Peykar, p. 15, v. 47; idem, Eqbāl-nāma, p. 22, v. 14; idem, Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, pp. 24-25, vv. 21-22) and ʿAṭṭār (Elāhī-nāma, p. 367, vv. 11-13; Asrār-nāma, pp. 188-190, vv. 3,203-26; Moṣībat-nāma, p. 367, v. 8) frequently refer to the differences between the poet and the king, to Maḥmūd’s ingratitude toward Ferdowsī, and even to the incident of the poet’s drinking beer and giving the king’s gift away. ʿAṭṭār also refers to the preacher’s refusing to say prayers over the body of Ferdowsī. Further, in the introduction to the BāysonḡorīŠāh-nāma, a statement in Nāṣer-e Ḵosrow’s Safar-nāma is quoted to the effect that in 437/1045 on the road from Saraḵs to Ṭūs, in the village of Čāha, Nāṣer-e Ḵosrow saw a large caravansary and was told that this had been built with the money from the gift that Maḥmūd had sent to the poet, which, since he had already died, his heir refused to accept. This report is absent from extant manuscripts of the Safar-nāma, but Sayyed Ḥasan Taqīzāda (1983, pp., 120-21) is of the opinion that it is probably genuine. Theodore Nöldeke (1920, p. 33) at first considered it spurious but later changed his mind (1983, p. 63, n. 1). Although it is possible to doubt some of the details in Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s account, we do not at the moment have any absolute reasons to reject all the particulars in his narrative.

Social background. In the introductions to various manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, Ferdowsī’s father is referred to as a dehqān (q.v.) who was a victim of oppression by the financial controller of Ṭūs. Even though this account may be no more than a legend, there is no doubt that Ferdowsī belonged to the landed nobility, or dehqāns. According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (p. 75), Ferdowsī was one of the dehqāns of Ṭūs and in his own village “had considerable possessions, such that with the income from his properties he was able to live independently of others help.” According to the same account (p. 83), “within the city gate there was an orchard belonging to Ferdowsī,” where he was buried (see further, Bahār, pp. 148-49). The dehqāns were preservers of traditional civilization, customs, and culture, including the national legends (see Mohl’s introduction to the Šāh-nāma, p. vii; Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, p. 440; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, pp. 62-64). On the one hand, in the Šāh-nāma dehqān appears along with the āzāda (freeborn; see ĀZĀD) with the meaning of “Iranian,” and, on the other, beside mōbad (Zoroastrian priest), with the meaning of “preserver and narrator of the ancient lore.” In the Šāh-nāma, a legend concerning a dehqān by the name of Borzēn (Moscow, VII, pp. 341-46) gives us an opportunity to glimpse, to some extent, the nature of the life of this class. By comparing this with the story of a farmer’s wife in the same reign (ibid., pp. 380-84), the difference between the life of a dehqān and that of a simple farmer is apparent. At all events, Ferdowsī belonged to one of these reasonably wealthy dehqān families, which in the second and third centuries of the Islamic era accepted Islam mainly as a way of preserving their own social position, and for this reason, contrary to what is usually the case with new converts, not only did they not turn their backs on the culture of their forefathers but made its preservation and transmission the chief goal of their lives. The basis of Ferdowsī’s character, and the national spirit of his work, were founded in the first place on this class consciousness of the poet and the milieu in which his genius was nurtured. Khorasan had been a center of political, religious, national, and cultural movements at least since the rise of Abū Moslem (q.v.; killed in.137/755). With the compilation and translation of the prose Šāh-nāma known as the Šāh-nāma-ye abū manṣūrī, which later became Ferdowsī’s major source, on the orders of Abū Manṣūr Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq in 346/957, the national language and culture, which had been lacking in previous movements in Khorasan, found a special place in Abū Manṣūr’s political ambition (Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 52-55). The young Ferdowsī, who was no more than seventeen years old when the Šāh-nāma of Abū Manṣūr was completed, must have been profoundly affected by this national and cultural movement. It was in these years that the education of a dehqān together with the poet’s national sentiment were able to mature in a congenial environment and to take shape, and thus become the foundation of the whole of his poem, so that, as Nöldeke put it (1920, pp. 36, 40-41), the poet’s attachment to Iran is clear in every line of the Šāh-nāma. The effects of Ferdowsī’s love for Iran must be considered not only in the transmission of the culture, mores, customs, and literature of ancient Iran to Islamic Persia but also in the spread of Persian as the national language. In this way the struggle for the preservation of Iranian identity while Persia was in danger of being Arabized in the name of the Islamic community—although the movement had begun before Ferdowsī’s time with the Šoʿūbīya movement—finally bore fruit through Ferdowsī’s efforts. In this way Persia is deeply indebted to Ferdowsī, both as regards its historical continuity and its national and cultural identity.

Education. Since Ferdowsī, unlike many other poets, did not make his work a showcase for his own erudition, discussion of his education is a difficult matter. On the other hand, the intellectual quality of the Šāh-nāma shows that we do not deal simply with a great poet but with someone who judges many of the vicissitudes of life with wisdom and understanding, and this would not have been possible if he had not been in possession of a knowledge of the sciences of his time. However, Nöldeke (1920, p. 40) thought that Ferdowsī had not received formal education in the sciences of his timeFERDA[O]WS AL-MORŠEDĪYA, especially in scholastic theology, but considered him simply to be a reasonably educated person in such matters (for Ferdowsī’s world view, see Ḵāleḡī Moṭlaq, 1991, pp. 55-70). Nöldeke also believed that Ferdowsī did not know Pahlavi (1920, p. 19, n. 1). Taqīzāda (p. 126) and Šērānī (pp. 170-71), on the other hand, believe that Ferdowsī was completely conversant with the sciences of his own time. Badīʿ-al-Zamān Forūzānfar (q.v.; pp. 47-49) and Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmˊḡānī (p. 42) believe that Ferdowsī even had a thorough knowledge of Arabic prose and verse. Similarly, Saʿīd Nafīsī (1978, pp. 9-10), Ḥabīb Yāḡmāʾī (p. 6), and Lazard (pp. 25-41) believe that Ferdowsī knew Pahlavi. However, Moḥammad-Taqī Bahār (pp. 96-135) and Shapur Shahbazi (pp. 39-41) agree with Nöldeke on the matter of Ferdowsī’s knowledge of Pahlavi. In a later article on Ferdowsī, Nöldeke, following Taqīzāda, wrote that he had previously underestimated the poet’s knowledge of Arabic (1983, p. 63), but it appears that he did this mainly to satisfy the amour-propre of Persians. Certainly, it is probable that Ferdowsī learnt Arabic in school. The problem of Pahlavi in his time and for a person like him lay mainly in the difficulty of its script; thus if a person read a text in this language to the poet, he could probably understand it in the main. But in the Šāh-nāma there is nowhere any direct indication that Ferdowsī knew either Arabic or Pahlavi. In the exordium to the story of Bēžan and Manēža, he says that his “loving consort” (mehrbān yār) read a “Pahlavī book” (daftar-e pahlavī; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 305, v. 19, p. 306, v. 22). But Ferdowsī refers to Šāh-nāma-yeabū manṣūrī as being in Pahlavi (ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 14, v. 143), and thus it could be interpreted as meaning “Pahlavānī” or “eloquent/heroic Persian.” There is, however, no evidence in the Šāh-nāma to indicate that Ferdowsī could read Pahlavi.

Due to his upbringing as a dehqān, Ferdowsī was acquainted with the ancient culture and customs of Iran, and he deepened this knowledge by his study of ancient lore so that they became part of his poetic world view. There are many instances of this in the Šāh-nāma, and here as an example one can mention the custom of drinking wine. According to the poet, in accordance with Iran’s ancient beliefs, wine shows the essence of a man as he really is (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, V, pp. 3-4); one must drink at times of happiness (ibid., Moscow, VII, p. 192, vv. 658-59), but it is happiness that is to be sought in drinking wine, not drunkenness (ibid., Moscow, VIII, p. 109, vv. 964-65), and he reproaches the Arabs who are strangers to the custom of drinking wine (ibid., Moscow, IX, p. 320, v. 113). The most important of the poet’s ethical attitudes include maintaining a chastity of diction (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 55, n. 2), honesty (ed. Khaleqi, III, p. 285, vv. 2,879-80; Moscow, VIII, p. 206, vv. 2,626-27; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, p. 203; Yāḡmāʾī, pp. 14-15), gratitude toward his predecessor Daqīqī and, at the same time, frank criticism of his poetry (ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 13, V, pp. 75-76, 175-76). With the same kind of frankness the poet admonishes kings to act justly (Moscow, VII, p. 114, vv. 29-31; VIII, p. 62, vv. 161-66). His belief in the permanence of a good reputation (ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 156-57, vv. 1,061-62), in fine speech (ibid., II, p. 164, vv. 574-76), and in fairness toward enemies (ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 163, vv. 937-38, IV, p. 64, v. 1,014) in so far as this is compatible with the heroic code of behavior, are all apparent. But when it comes to the domination of Iran by her enemies, especially at the end of the Šāh-nāma, he is violently opposed to both Arabs and Turks (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 37, 41). Certainly, these attitudes were in the poet’s sources, but he incorporated them into his work with complete conviction. Generally, it seems as though the ethical values of the poet’s sources and of the poet himself reciprocally acted on one another. In this way, certain ethical values of the Šāh-nāma, such as praise for effort, condemnation of laziness, recommendation of moderation, condemnation of greed, praise for knowledge, encouragement of justice and tolerance, kindness towards women and children, patriotism, racial loyalty, the condemnation of haste and the recommendation of deliberation in one’s actions, praise for truthfulness and condemnation of falsehood, the condemnation of anger and jealousy, belief in the unstableness of the world, which is everywhere evident throughout the Šāh-nāma especially at the ends of the stories, and so forth, are considered also to be values held by the poet himself (see adab; Eslāmī, pp. 64-73).

Other opinions of the poet are his belief in the genuineness of the narratives in his sources (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 12, vv. 113-14) and his strong belief in the lasting values of his own work, a subject referred to frequently in the Šāh-nāma (e.g., ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 173-74, vv. 66-68; for other examples, see Yaḡmāʾī, pp. 15-17; Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 34-35). Finally it seems as though he was a man who was fond of pleasantries and witticisms (e.g., concerning Rūdāba, see ed. Khaleghi, p. 243, v. 1,158; Manūčehr’s joking with Zāl, ibid., p. 253, vv. 1,283-88; Sām’s and Sīndoḵt’s joking with each other, ibid., p. 262, vv. 1,407-9; the joking of the young shoemaker’s mother before the king, Moscow, VII, p. 325, vv. 336-46). The sum of such heartfelt, mature, and eloquently expressed views and ethical precepts regarding the world and mankind have led to his being referred to, from an early period, as ḥakīm (philosopher), dānā (sage), and farzāna (learned); that is, he was considered a philosopher, though he was not attached to any specific philosophical school nor possessed a complete knowledge of the various philosophical and scientific views of his time.

Ferdowsī and Sultan Maḥmūd. In various places in his work the poet devoted in all some 250 lines—some of which are very hyperbolic—to the praise of Maḥmūd, and the name Maḥmūd and his patronymic Abu’l-Qāsem are mentioned almost thirty times; but that sincerity which is apparent in the ten lines Ferdowsī wrote in praise of Manṣūr in his introduction to the Šāh-nāma is never visible in the lines on Maḥmūd, though in many places he either directly or by implication offers Maḥmūd moral advice (e.g., Moscow, VII, pp. 114-15, vv. 29-40; VIII, pp. 153-54, vv. 1,700-04, p. 292, vv. 4,080-81). The climactic point of these allusions addressed to Maḥmūd must be considered to occur at the end of the Šāh-nāma in the letter of Rostam, the Sasanian general, to his brother on the eve of the battle of Qādesīya. In particular, the line in which it is prophesied that a talentless slave will become king (Moscow, IX, p. 319, v. 103) is like a bridge that takes us from the hyperbolic praise of Maḥmūd in the Šāh-nāma to the hyperbolic contempt for him of the satire. The poet’s hopes of a monetary reward from Maḥmūd must be considered one reason for his praise of Maḥmūd (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 34), but, as indicated above, there is no sign anywhere in the Šāh-nāma that any assistance from Maḥmūd ever reached the poet (Nöldeke, pp. 27-29). The praise of Maḥmūd must be considered an entirely calculated gesture, forced on the poet by his poverty (Eslāmī, pp. 59-60). With Maḥmūd’s assumption of power in Khorasan, the Shiʿite Ferdowsī had, at the least, until he had finished work on the Šāh-nāma, to include him in the poem. This being the case he could not, according to the usual custom in Persian narrative poems, wait until the end of the poem and then write a single panegyric to be used in the preface, but was forced to compose separate passages of praise, or to place them at the head of a story that was then sent to Ḡazna. Other passages of praise may well have been placed at the beginning of sections of the seven-volume Šāh-nāma. But the closer he got to the end of the Šāh-nāma, with there still being no sign of Maḥmūd’s paying him any attention, the more pointed his sarcastic allusions to Maḥmūd became, until finally in the satire he took back virtually all his praise. In the satire the poet frequently speaks “of this book” (az in nāma) and this led Nöldeke (1920, p. 29) to conclude that the satire was composed as a supplement to the Šāh-nāma and that the poet’s intention was to take back his praise of Maḥmūd with this satire, that is, the Šāh-nāma was no longer dedicated to Maḥmūd, as the poet himself states in the satire (Mohl’s Intro., p. lxxxix, vv. 3-4). Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 49-50), also makes the same statement (see also Shahbazi, 1991, pp. 83-105).

Ferdowsī the poet and storyteller. The Šāh-nāma has not received its rightful attention in works written in Persian on the art of poetry (e.g., al-Moʿjam of Šams-al-Dīn Rāzī), which works consider eloquence and poetic style largely as a matter of particular figures of speech. So far there has been little serious work on Ferdowsī’s poetic artistry, and our discussion of this subject will not therefore go beyond general principles.

In discussing Ferdowsī’s achievement one must consider, on the one hand, the totality of the Šāh-nāma as a whole and, on the other, his artistry as a storyteller. Throughout the entire Šāh-nāma, a balance is masterfully maintained between words and meaning, on the one hand, and passion and thought, on the other. Ferdowsī’s poetic genius in creating a lofty, dynamic epic language that is brief but to the point and free from complexity greatly contributes to the strength of his style.

The most important figures of speech in the Šāh-nāma include: hyperbole, paronomasia, repetition, comparisons (similes and metaphors), representative images, proverbial expressions, parables, and moral advice. Hyperbole, which is the most important principle of epic language, is present in order to increase the reader’s emotional response. Some kinds of paronomasia are used to create a verbal rhythm, that is to increase linguistic tension by acoustic means. The most commonly used kinds of paronomasia include those that involve a complete identity of two words (be čang ār čang o may āḡāz kon “Bring in your hand [čang] a harp [čang] and set out the wine”; Moscow, V, p. 7, v. 19) and those that involve alliteration (šod az raḵš raḵšān o az šāh šād “He became radiant [raḵšān] because of Raḵš [the name of Rostam’s horse] and happy [šād] because of the king [šāh]”; ed. Khaleghi, II , p. 125, v. 93; kolāh o kamān o kamand o kamar “Cap and bow and lariat and belt”; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 147, v. 676). This effect is sometimes achieved by the repetition of one word (bed-ū goft narm ay javānmard, narm! “He said to him: Gently o young man, gently!”; ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 222, v. 683; makon šahrīārā javānī, makon! “Do not, o prince, do not act childishly!; ed. Khaleghi, p. 363, v. 846). There are also comparisons used to render the language representational, that is, to construct an image visually. Among the kinds of comparison used in the Šāh-nāma one must mention short comparisons which do not use words that indicate a comparison is being made (brief metaphors) and explicit comparisons (i.e., similes; For other examples, see Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 69-71; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, pp. 267-77). Sometimes Ferdowsī uses personification as an image (be bāzīgar-ī mānad īn čarḵ-e mast “This drunken wheel [i.e., of the firmament] is like a juggler; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 56, v. 474), sometimes proverbial expressions (hamān bar ke kārīd ḵod bedravīd “As you sow so shall you reap!”; ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 114, v. 383), and sometimes parables, that is, the explanation of a situation by another exemplary situation (e.g., ibid., p. 216, vv. 770-73). In each of these three figures of speech, the image is constructed by reason. Another example of this is the elaboration of language as moral maxims (tavānā bovad har ke dānā bovad! “knowledge is power”; ibid., p. 4, v. 14). On the other hand, Ferdowsī avoids those figures of speech which involve complex language or which take language far from the intended meaning. For this reason complex metaphors, ambiguities of grammatical construction, riddles, and academic phraseology are rarely found in his work (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 64-65). Metaphors such as “dragon” for a “sword”; “narcissus” and “magician” for “eyes”; “coral,” “garnet,” and “ruby” for “lips”; “tulip” for “a face”; “pearls” for “tears,” “teeth,” and “speech”; “cypress” for “stature”; and so on, that have since been parts of the conventional themes, motives, and images used in Persian poetry.

The most important descriptive passages of the Šāh-nāma are descriptions of war, the beauty of people, and the beauty of nature. Although Ferdowsī himself had probably never taken part in a battle and the descriptions of scenes of warfare are in the main imaginary, as Nöldeke says (1920, p. 59), they are described so variously, with such liveliness and to so stirring an effect that, despite their brevity, the reader seems to see them pass before his eyes. The story of Davāzdah Roḵ (q.v.; ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 3-166) is particularly a case in point (Nöldeke, ibid). Ferdowsī does not simply introduce his heroes, he lives with them and shares their sorrows and joys. He grieves at the death of Iranian heroes, but he does not rejoice at the demise of Iran’s enemies; his sincerity conveys his own emotions to the reader. When he describes the beauty of people, he is at his best when the subject is a women (see, e.g., ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 183-84, vv. 287-93). As a dehqān, Ferdowsī lived in close contact with nature; for this reason the descriptions of nature in his poetry have the lively coloring of nature itself, not the coloring of decorative effects as in the poetry of Neẓāmī. Of his descriptions of nature particularly noticeable are those concerned with the rising and setting of the sun and moon, placed at the opening of many sections of individual stories, and of the seasons of the year, in particular of spring, situated in the introductions to stories (see, e.g., ed. Khaleghi, V, pp. 219-20, vv. 1-9).

Ferdowsī’s poetic artistry go hand in hand with his skill as a storyteller. Major stories usually begin with a preamble (ḵoṭba) which includes moral advice, a description of nature, or an account of the poet himself. In the examples that involve moral advice there is normally a connection between the contents of the preamble and the subject of the story that follows, as in the introductions to the stories of Rostam and Sohrāb, of Kāvūs’ expedition to Māzandarān, and of Forūd (q.v.), the son of Sīāvaḵš. Such a connection is sometimes also found in introductions containing descriptions of nature (Ḵāleqī Moṭlaq, 1975, pp. 61-72; idem, 1990, pp. 123-41). Thereafter begins the story and proceeds quickly. In the important stories of the Šāh-nāma, events are neither given in so direct a manner as to join the opening of the story to its conclusion in the shortest possible manner, nor with such ramifications that the main story line is lost. But the attention of the poet to certain details of the incidents described, without the story ever straying from its main path, fills the narrative with action and variety (e.g., see the quarrel between the gatekeeper of Mehrāb’s castle and Rūdāba’s maids in Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 196, vv. 468-77; Nöldeke, 1920, p. 17). Many of the narrative poets who followed Ferdowsī were more interested in the construction of individual lines than of their stories as a whole. In such narrative poems, the poet himself speaks much more than the characters of his poem, and even where there is dialogue, there is little difference between the attitudes of the various characters of the story, so that the speaker is still the author, who at one moment speaks in the role of one character and the next moment speaks in the role of another. The result is that in such poems, with the exception of Faḵr-al-Dīn Gorgānī’s Vīs o Rāmīn and to some extent the poems of Neẓāmī, the characters in the story are less individuals than types. In contrast, the dialogues in the Šāh-nāma are realistic and frequently argumentative, and the poet uses them to good effect as a means of portraying the inner life of his characters. This is so to such an extent that it is as if many of the characters of the Šāh-nāma lived among us and we knew them well. Since these characters are developed as distinct, genuine individuals, it is inevitable that sometimes differences between them should lead to conflicts that make each episode extremely dynamic and dramatic. An instance is the conflict in the story of Rostam and Esfandīār (q.v.), which has been described as “the deepest psychological struggle in the whole of the Šāh-nāma, and one of the deepest examples of its kind in the whole of world epic” (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 59). Ferdowsī is also very skillful in creation of tragic and dramatic moments, such as the dialogue between Sohrāb and his father, Rostam, when Sohrāb is on the point of death (ed. Khaleghi, II, pp. 185-86, vv. 856-65), Sām’s reaction upon receiving Zāl’s letter (ibid., I, p. 208, vv. 656-66), the disobedience of Rostam’s loyal horse, Raḵš, and his risking his life for Rostam (ibid., II, pp. 26-27, v. 345-46, the anger of the natural world when Sīāvaḵš’s blood is spilled (ibid., II, pp. 357-58, vv. 2,284-87), the minstrel Bārbad’s cutting off his fingers and burning his instruments while mourning for Ḵosrow II Parvēz (Moscow, IX, pp. p. 280, vv. 414-18), and so on. The final part of Ferdowsī’s elegy for his son and the Bārbad’s elegy on the death of Ḵosrow II Parvēz together with certain of the preambles to various stories and other descriptive passages show that Ferdowsī was also a master as a lyric poet (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 64). Such moments in the Šāh-nāma distinguish it from other epics of the world (ibid., p. 63); due to their simplicity and brevity, however, they do not harm the epic spirit of the poem, rather they give it a certain musicality and tenderness; in particular, due to the descriptions of love in the poem, these lyric moments take it beyond the world of primary epic (ibid., p. 54, n. 2).

Since the greater part of the epic poetry before Ferdowsī’s time, and even his own main source, the Šāh-nāma-ye abū manṣūrī, have disappeared, it is difficult to judge how far Ferdowsī’s artistry is indebted to his predecessors. From the thousand lines of Daqīqī in the Šāh-nāma, from certain other scattered lines by poets who had preceded him, and also from the Arabic translation of Ṯaʿālebī, it can be seen that Ferdowsī was not an innovator but rather someone who continued an extant tradition, both in his epic style and in his narrative method. At the same time, as Nöldeke has said (1920, pp. 22-23, 41-44), it can be shown by reference to these same works that Ferdowsī not only succeeded in preserving his poetic independence, but also that Persian epic poetry is indebted to him for its finest flowering.

Bibliography (for cited works not given in detail, see “Short References”):

Ī. Afšār, Ketāb-šenāsī-e Ferdowsī: Fehrest-e āṯār o taḥqīqāt dar bāra-ye Ferdowsī wa Šāh-nāma, Tehran, 2535=1353 Š./1974.

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ʿAwfī, Lobāb, ed. Nafīsī, pp. 269-70, comm. pp. 658-60.

Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd-al-Qāher Baḡdādī, al-Farq bayn al-feraq, tr. M.-J. Maškūr as Tārīḵ-e maḏāheb-e Eslām, Tabrīz, 1333 Š./1954.

D. Bayat-Sarmadi, Erziehung und Buildung im Schahname von Firdausi, Freiburg, 1970. Farīd-al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār Elāhī-nāma, ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul, 1940.

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M.-ʿA. Forūḡī, Maqālāt-e Forūḡī dar bāra-ye Šāh-nāma wa Ferdowsī, ed. Ḥ. Yāḡmāʾī, Tehran, 1351 Š./1972.

B. Forūzānfar, Soḵan o soḵanvarān, Tehran, 2nd ed., 1350 Š./1971, pp. 44-111.

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Idem, “Moʿarrefī wa arzyābī-e barḵ-ī az dastnevīshā-ye Šāh-nāma,” ibid., 3/3, 1364 Š./1985, pp. 378-406; 4/1, 1364/1986, pp. 14-47; 4/2, pp. 225-55.

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M. Mīnovī, “Ketāb-e hazāra-ye Ferdowsī wa boṭlān-e entesāb-e Yūsof o Zolayḵā be Ferdowsī,” Rūzgār-e now 5/3, 1946, pp. 16-36.

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Idem, Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, ed. L. Kh. Taqurov, Baku, 1960.

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E. Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” in Cambr. Hist. Iran III/1, pp. 359-477.

ʿA. Zaryāb Ḵoʾī, “Negāh-ī tāza be moqaddema-ye Šāh-nāma,” in Īrān-nāma/Iran Nameh 10/1, 1370 Š./1992, pp. 14-23.

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