The History of Antiquity, Vol. 5 (of 6). Duncker Max
Iran. Pliny, it is true, exclaims: "Who knows the Medes, who were taught by Zoroaster, Apusorus, and Zaratus, even by hearsay, for no memorials of them are left?"169 According to this the religion of Zoroaster spread even in the West by the influence of eminent men among the Medes. But the date of the persons mentioned cannot be fixed, though Porphyry represents Pythagoras as going to the Chaldæans and Zabratus, by whom he was purified from the evil of his former life, and instructed as to the things from which the disciple should restrain himself, and about the nature and beginning of all things,170 and this Zaratus or Zabratus may be intended for Zarathrustra himself. Hermodorus tells us that Zarathrustra had been followed by many Magians as teachers, one after the other, down to the time when Alexander marched against Persia: these teachers were Osthanes, Astrampsychus, Gobryas, and Pazates.171 Others also assert that Zoroaster was followed "by Osthanes and Astrampsychus."172 Pliny observes that so far as he could discover, Osthanes who accompanied Xerxes in the war against the Hellenes, was the first who had written on the doctrine of the Magians. The second Osthanes, whom Alexander had received among his followers, had caused this religion to be of great importance. From the work of one of these two persons, Philo of Byblus quotes a passage – the work he calls the Octateuch – and Pliny notes down apparently some of the doctrines of the first Osthanes. If then there were men under the Achæmenids in the West of Iran who could write on the doctrine of Zarathrustra from the beginning of the fifth century B.C., we can without hesitation believe the statement that long before this time there were prophets and teachers of the doctrine among the Medes and the Persians.
Can we go beyond the result thus gained by our investigation? – that the doctrine of Zoroaster flourished in Eastern Iran about 800 B.C., and advanced towards the West from this period; may we assume that at this date it was already in possession of written monuments, and even that the fragments of the Avesta which still remain were in existence then? We must first answer the question whether the use of writing in Iran, especially in the East, goes back so far.
According to the statements of Herodotus, the West of Iran was not only in possession of the art of writing by the year 700 B.C., but made considerable use of it. He tells us that Deioces required complaints to be sent in to him in writing, and gave out his decisions also in writing. If processes at law were conducted in writing in Media about the year 700 B.C., it cannot be surprising that Herodotus should also inform us that letters passed between Media and Persia about the year 560 B.C.173 We learn from the Hebrew Scriptures that when Cyrus allowed the Jews, whom Nebuchadnezzar had removed to Babylon, to return to their homes, he gave his permission for the restoration of the temple in writing. This document was afterwards discovered in the archives of Ecbatana.174 We know it for a fact that Darius I. gave his orders to the satraps in writing, and we are acquainted with the seal of Darius by which they were authenticated. The oldest inscriptions which have come down to us from the Achæmenids, not to mention a seal of Cyrus from Senkereh, belong, if not to Cyrus himself, to Darius, and begin about the last quarter of the sixth century B.C. It is the cuneiform writing of Assyria and Babylon which forms the basis of the writing in these inscriptions, but with considerable alterations. The highly complicated syllabarium of the Eastern Semites is reduced to a phonetic system; we might almost say to an alphabet of about 40 letters. A change of this kind can hardly have been made at one stroke. If it was after they entered into closer combination with Assyria, i. e. after their dependence on the king of Asshur, which began with the accession of Tiglath Pilesar II. (745 B.C.), that the Medes became acquainted with the Assyrian system of writing, this must have been completely mastered before it could be abbreviated and altered, as it was altered by the Medes, whose changes were adopted by the Persians. The cuneiform writing of Western Iran, as we find it in the inscriptions of Darius, can therefore hardly have been established before the year 600 B.C. However this may be, the facts mentioned prove that the writing of the Assyrians in the seventh century B.C. was not unknown in the West of Iran. This would therefore have passed into the East of Iran in its original or simplified form, either at some earlier period, or when the East came under the dominion of the Achæmenids. But it did not, and this is a plain proof that the East, when the cuneiform writing of the West came in that direction, was already in possession of another kind of writing. This Eastern mode of writing, the Arian, which rests on an entirely different basis from the cuneiform, is first known to us from coins and inscriptions of the third century B.C.; but it certainly would not have maintained its ground under the Achæmenids against the writing of the West, and of the rulers, magistrates, and dominant nation, unless it had been in vigorous use before, this period. We must therefore assume that the Arian character was in use in the East of Iran a considerable time before the date of Cyrus, and hence we have no reason to deny the existence of it in that region in the eighth century B.C., since we must allow the neighbouring Arians of India to have been in possession of their written characters from the year 800 B.C. at the least (IV. 155).
If we may assume that the Arian character was in use in the East of Iran about the year 800 B.C., the prayers and sayings of Zarathrustra might have been written down about this date, and the doctrine might have passed on to the West supported by written documents. But the fact that the prayers might have been written down is in no way a proof that they were so written.
It is true that at first sight it seems that the part of the law which has come down to us (the Vendidad) leads to the conclusion that it was written down long before the Persians gained the dominion over Iran, and Media became a powerful state under Cyaxares. The book does not mention the name of the Persians or the Medes, of Ecbatana or Persepolis, while Bactria is spoken of as the seat of the empire; the most westerly district mentioned in the Vendidad is Ragha in Eastern Media.175 If we add that the book reproaches certain districts in the East, the land of the Arachoti and others, with deviations from the doctrine of Zarathrustra, and that Ragha is indeed Zoroastrian but wavering in its fidelity, we may easily conclude that the Vendidad was written when the doctrine of Zarathrustra had not as yet thoroughly penetrated the East, and was still unknown in the West, when it had just reached, but had not yet completely conquered, the district of Ragha. The Medes were still dependent on Asshur, living separately according to their tribes, Ecbatana was not yet the centre and metropolis of Media, and the kingdom of Bactra was still in existence in the East. This points to a date about 750 B.C. as the time when this doctrine must have spread widely over Media; at any rate to a date before the rise of the Median power, i. e. before 650 B.C. This conclusion is not, however, absolutely certain. The silence of the Vendidad and of the Avesta generally on Ecbatana and Persepolis, the Medes and the Persians, can be explained in another though a more artificial manner. The nations and chief cities of the West were unknown to the tradition of Eastern Iran, and the royal abodes of the Medes and Persians were not consecrated by the action of Zarathrustra. In the accounts given by the Greeks of the worship of these nations, in spite of much agreement, points are found at variance with the rules of the Avesta, and as a fact certain distinctions did prevail. The doctrine had arisen in the East, and the priesthood there was in possession of the purer and more orthodox dogma. If Persia and Media did not follow this in all respects, it was convenient to be silent about the differences in the time of the Achæmenids, or if any one desired to brand them, to mark out the Median Ragha as the seat of heresy, rather than Pasargadæ or Persepolis. This explanation it is true is somewhat far fetched. The result that the religion known by the name of Zarathrustra had reached the Medes and Persians by the middle of the eighth century B.C. is in no way weakened by it, though the assumption that at this period written documents of this doctrine were in existence, and that the book of the law of which we have fragments arose in the first half of the eighth century B.C., is rendered more doubtful if such a mode of interpretation is admitted.
The forms of language preserved in the Avesta have not survived with sufficient distinctness to assist us in fixing the time at which it was written down. As was shown above (p. 65), the manuscripts date from the later period of the Sassanids; they are written in the later East-Pehlevi character, and at a time when the old forms must have undergone changes owing to the language which had come into use in the mean time, and can in fact be
Plin. "H. N." 30, 2; 28, 19.
"Vita Pythag." 12.
Diogen. Laert prooem.
Suidas, Μάγοι.
Herod. 1, 100, 124, 125.
Ezra, c. v., vi.
The Niça of the Vendidad is the Eastern Niça, Parthorum Nisæa, not very far from Merv; above, p. 10,