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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
part has a great deal in common with the Damdat Nask, they can be satisfactorily explained on much more convincing grounds.
874
[SEPTEMBER, 1902.
It remains, then, to consider the principal indictment, to wit, that the whole system of the Gathic precepts, the fundamental tenets of the Zarathushtrian faith, is a feeble echo of Hellenistic philosophy, and mainly that of Philo Judæus. The Amesha Spentas do not belong to the ancient Mazdayasnian religion, but are philosophic, neo-Platonic ideas; in fact, Iranianized sons. And this simply because Voho-mano, the Amesha Spenta most intimately connected with Ahura Mazda, displays a few points of contact with the Logos of Philo. I have on another occasion analyzed the utter impossibility of this hypothesis and have shown that probably out of two of the Amesha Spentas, positively one appears as a god on the coins of the Indo-Scythian Kings Kanishka and Huvishka, though behind names that have been corrupted almost out of recognition;40 and that going so far back as Plutarch we find him correctly acquainted with the denominations and the import of the Amesha Spentas. Now Philo died about 25 A. D., which well nigh coincides with the date of Plutarch's birth. And the first-mentioned king ascended the throne in the year 78 A. D. Within, therefore, half a seculum the works of the Alexandrian philosophers must have been studied by the Persian theologians; the system which they created must have been worked ont and written down and made known to the Greeks. Moreover, the philosophic personifications, which they imitated from Philo, must have been so thoroughly transformed into popular deities that their names became totally deteriorated and it became possible for foreign potentates to assume them. This is simply inconceivable, and hence the hypothesis itself is nothing but an ingenious delusion.
Darmesteter is prepared to allow antiquity to a few of the precepts incorporated in the Avesta ; and of a truth he cannot but make the concession. Even Aristotle knew of Oromazdes and Arimanios and the extravagance of the dualism as referring to the Supreme Being. Theopompus speaks of the Zoroastrian Doctrine of palingenesis. Consequently both must have heard of these Avestan articles of faith prior to Alexander. The worship of Haoma cannot but have been in vogue for a long time previously, despite the omission of its mention in Herodotus or other Greek authors. It attests the Soma service of the tribally allied Indians. Finally, the tout ensemble of the practical and utilitarian moral code of the Parsis, perhaps the dogma, too, of universal genesis out of Boundless Time was not thought of so late as after the downfall of the Persian empire. But the doctrine of the Amesha Spentas and the Yazatas was unknown anterior to this epoch, and Ahura Mazda was a natare-god at the head of the entire pantheon of nature divinities. Hence this, and much besides which is peculiar to the Avesta, it is contended, dates from the Arsacides and the Sassanides. Now, to say nothing of other objections, it is not competent to us thus off-hand to brand some tenets as primitive because they happen to be mentioned here and there, and to hold as of latter-day growth what is dissociably joined with the creed and what constitutes the proper soil in which this article of belief has taken root, vis., the doctrine of Ahura Mazda being the sole real and beneficent deity, the creator exalted above his creatures and with his saints around and under him, because, forsooth, Plutarch is the first to advert to it. At any rate, we cannot raise the undoubtedly younger doctrine of Boundless Time, the origin of all creation, to the level of the well-founded tenet which regards Mazda as the uncreate God. The remote antiquity of the Amesha Spentas is directly proved by the mode in which Plutarch rehearses the doctrine. He knows and mentions the idea which subsequently grew so prominent, that over against the seven highest good spirits are arrayed seven evil genii, so that each of them has his antagonist in the realm of darknessa conception which is alien to the Avesta proper.
The most important positive proof for the antiquity of the Avesta lies in the language in which it is written. That the language was no longer current in the beginning of
40 Comp. the essays referred to ante.
41 Darmesteter conoludes this from the words hada bagaibis vithibis occurring in the ancient Persian inscrip tions, which words he altogether wrongly interprete. Comp. Verslagen in Mededeelingen der K. A. te Amsterdam,
