Indian Antiquary Vol 31

SR No.: 032523
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 556
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1902.
cæsura, and they are always separately declined. So also in the remaining Gathic scripts. In the later books the position Mazda Ahura appears only in citations from the Gathic literature and in standing formulæ like the fire of Mazda-Ahura, and Manthra Spenta, the friend of Mazda-Ahura. Moreover, here we but rarely find A hura or Mazda singly as names of the Divinity, which isolated names are freqnently presented by the poets of the Gathas. With the exceptions indicated above, Ahura Mazla is the most common appellation in the posterior Avesta; yet the consciousness that it consists of two distinct words is not yet extinct. Leaving out of account a couple42 of very young passages, both the members are individually declined. In the inscriptions of the Achæmenides, however, Ahura Mazda has become one name, nor are the two substantives divided off by the sign which in the old Persian denotes the terminations of words. Excepting once only, 13 the second component alone is declined. Lastly, the Greeks recognize the name not otherwise than as a unity, Oromazes. and as such it remains among the Iranians of post-Alexandrian times, who abbreviate it into Auharmazd, Hormazd or Ormazed.
We shall not have to go far to arrive at the result of this investigation, if we reflect upon the exalted veneration in which the name of a god, and that the highest, was held in the past. The periods in which the combined names could be put down at pleasure, that is, could be disjoined or associated, or each member could singly be used, in which stages consequently there was still a vivid consciousness of their significance, must precede that stage in which they are arrayed in one fixed order, although they are uniformly considered as individual vocables and dealt with as such. And this transitional stage, again, must be older than the one during which the two-fold name has crystallized into one compound word, the first component of which is nerer or only exceptionally declined. The whole Avesta, therefore, represents a more archaic period of religious evolution than that evidenced by the rock-cut writings of the Achæmenides. Not, however, that every text of the later Avesta was drawn up in the pre-Persian times, for in the priestly schools the old tradition must have survived longer ; but we contend that in respect of its main position it is assignable to an age when the Ahura Mazdu had not developed, nor stratified, into the Aura Mazda of the later Persians. Briefly, the history of the Iranian equivalent of God corroborates what other facts teach us about the age of the Avesta and the form of the religion as exhibited in the latter."
I shall cursorily touch on the other arguments, which have been brought forward for or against this antiquity; but I cannot altogether pass them over unnoticed. Darmesteter opines that the political conditions reflected in the Avesta harmonize but with those of the Parthian monarchy. The Parthian sway was feudal. The large landholders ruled independently and were bound to follow the king only in war. Now, to Darmesteter the Avesta is cognisant of no higher political civic grade than that of the judiciary of a canton. Hence it cannot have been written during the Median or Persian monarchy. But, in the first place, the political institution under the Persian domination, prior to the introduction of a rigidly absolute monarchy by Darius Hystaspes, was the same as the Parthian, and it can scarcely be distinguished from the Median constitution. And, besides, it is not correct that the Avesta never speaks of a king or suzerainty. We need only call to mind the struggles for the possession of the regal glory or majesty of the Aryan lands, which so repeatedly turn up.
Of far greater moment are the pleas for the remote antiquity of the Avesta which are derived from reference in it to the political and economic relations of the countries. None of the tribes which have played an important part in history subsequent to the 9th century B. O., the Medians, Persians or Parthians, are once mentioned, The Avesta is aware of only the Aryans, such as, according to
+2 These are Yasna 7, 24 and 13,5: Ahura Mazda. The last passage may contains parely olerical oversight, for were we have a quotation from toe Yama Haptanghaiti. The genitive Ahuro Mazdao, Vendidad 19, 15, and Yama 71, 10 (where Justi and Darmesteter wrongly conjecture & vocative), is of another kind: simply a grammatioal mistake.
* In C (o and b) 10 and 17 (Xertea) we find the double genitive aranya mazdaha. 64 Comp. the exhaustive demonstration in my oft-cited treative "Over de Ordheid vou'l Avesta."