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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JULY, 1904.
THE RELIGION OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLES.
BY THE LATE C. P. TIELE. (Translated by G. K. Nariman.) (Continued from Vol. XXXIV. p. 66.)
5. Was the reformation influenced by Semitism ? Tue theory has often been advanced that the Zarathushtrian roformation has not sprung from a purely Aryan origin, but that it exhibits obvious indications of a Semitic influence. This is not impossible. Assyrians, and, prior to them, even Babylonian kings, according to their annals and the accounts of their wars, not only repeatedly extended their conquering expeditions into the depths of Media, but fouaded colonies there before the Aryans had gained the upperhand, or even perhaps made a settlement a long while previous to their domination of the country. Occasionally we tiad Assyrian sovereigns as overlords of undoubtedly Aryan princ. of Media or Persia or as arbiters between the latter. The description given by Herodotus (1, 98; of th: citadel of Ecbatana, the Mediar metropolis, reminds us of the Zikurats, the terrace temples of the Babylonians and the Assyrians. At any rate, the Babylon-Assyrian empire was the immediate neighbour, whose advanced culture must of itself have impressed the gifted young and undeveloped Aryan community, who stood below then in knowledge, arts and refinements of life. When the most powerful empire on the Euphrates and the Tigris finally fell to ruins, the martial Aryans became the masters of all Assyria as ar as the Halys and eventually of Babel. In many respects they now became the pupils of their subjects. The Persian architecture and sculpture, the Persian cuneiform script, and the later Persian alphabet are all imitations perhaps of Elamite, but undoubtedly of Assyrian and Aramaic, prototypes, although the Aryan genius does not belie itself in its methods of assimilation and simplification. Over the head of the sacrificing kings on the reliefs we notice a winged figure hovering, which marks the supreme Deity of Assur. Borrowed by the Assyrians from the Egyptians, it is taken over by the Persians, not direct from the latter but from the former, and adapted to serve as a symbolic representation of Ahura Mazda or his Fravashi. And may not the religious ideas themselves have been touched by this Semitic influence? It was well known to the Greeks that the Persians were highly susceptible to what was foreiga and were ever prone to adopt it.
However plausible this may appear by itself, still no scholar has succeeded in proving to demonstration that Semitic conceptions have actually co-operated in the production of the Zarathushtrian religion.26
Stray words and the objects they connoted may have been received from the Semites, and others originally Iranic may have had their significance modified owing to their intercourse with them, bat such instances of concord are scant, in part extremely dubious, and on the whole they date from no high antiquity. With regard to what the Achæmenides borrowed from the Semitic races or to what they adopted in imitation of them, for instance the symbol for Ahura Masda, and subsequently under Artaxerxes II., the goddess who was called Anahita by the Persians, the simple answer is that it has nothing to do either with the genesis or the erolution of the latria of Mazda, which at the period in question had long since been consolidated and was in fact on the decline. Much emphasis is laid on the circumstance that Mazda is called the creator of heaven and earth, men and beasts, and everything besides. This it is contended is no Aryan conception, and must, by consequence, have
4 The great advocate of the hypothesis that tangible portion of the doctrine of the Avesta must be Semitie, is F. von piogel, who has repeatedly defended it. See especially his onany "Der einfluss des Semitismus auf das Avesta" and "Zur Geschichte des Dualism" in his Arische Studien, 1. pp. 46 seq. and 62 seq. My criticism has reference to these treaties.
