Sacred Laws of Aryas

Book Title: Sacred Laws of Aryas
Author(s): Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford

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Page 970
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INTRODUCTION.
Ixix
incautiously by Christians, has been advanced so strenuously that it has often been admitted even by Parsis themselves, as regards the mediæval form of their faith. But neither party seems to have fairly considered how any religion which admits the personality of an evil spirit, in order to account for the existence of evil, can fail to become a dualism to a certain extent. If, therefore, the term is to be used in controversy, it behoves those who use it to define the limits of objectionable dualism with great precision, so as not to include most of the religions of the world, their own among the number.
'If it be necessary for a dualism that the evil spirit be omnipresent, omniscient, almighty, or eternal, then is the Parsi religion no dualism. (The Bundahis distinctly asserts that the evil spirit is not omniscient and almighty (Chap. I, 16); that his understanding is backward (1, 3, 9), so that he was not aware of the existence of Adharmazd till he arose from the abyss and saw the light (I, 9); that he is unobservant and ignorant of the future (1, 19) till it is revealed to him by Adharmazd (I, 21); that his creatures perish at the resurrection (1, 7, 21), and he himself becomes impotent (I, 21, III, 1) and will not be (1, 3, XXX, 32). Nowhere is he supposed to be in two places at once, or to know what is occurring elsewhere than in his own presence. So far, his powers are considerably less than those generally assigned by Christians to the devil, who is certainly represented as being a more intelligent and ubiquitous personage. On the other hand, Aharman is able to produce fiends and demons (Chap. I, 10, 24), and the noxious creatures are said to be his (III, 15, XIV, 30, XVIII, 2); in which respects he has probably rather more power than the devil, although the limits of the latter's means of producing evil are by no means well defined
The origin and end of Aharman appear to be left as uncertain as those of the devil, and, altogether, the resemblance between these two ideas of the evil spirit is remarkably close; in fact, almost too close to admit of the possibility of their being ideas of different origin. The only important differences are that Zoroastrianism does not believe in an
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