Zend Avesta Part 01

Author(s): James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford

Page 18

INTRODUCTION, I.
Χν
Zoroastrianism was never more eagerly studied than in the first centuries of the Christian era, though without anything of the disinterested and almost scientific curiosity of the earlier times. Religious and philosophic sects, in search of new dogmas, eagerly received whatever came to them bearing the name of Zoroaster. As Xanthos the Lydian, who is said to have lived before Herodotos, had mentioned Zoroastrian Mbyla 1, there came to light, in those later times, scores of oracles, styled Abyla roll Zwpokotpov, or Oracula Chaldaica sive Magica,' the work of Neo-Platonists who were but very remote disciples of the Median sage. As his name had become the very emblem of wisdom, they would cover with it the latest inventions of their everdeepening theosophy. Zoroaster and Plato were treated as if they had been philosophers of the same school, and Hierocles expounded their doctrines in the same book. Proclus collected seventy Tetrads of Zoroaster and wrote commentaries on them '; but we need hardly say that Zoroaster commented on by Proclus was nothing more or less than Proclus commented on by Proclus. Prodicus the Gnostic possessed secret books of Zoroaster 8; and, upon the whole, it may be said that in the first centuries of Christianity, the religion of Persia was more studied and less understood than it had ever been before. The real object aimed at, in studying the old religion, was to form a new one.
Throughout the Middle Ages nothing was known of Mazdeism but the name of its founder, who from a Magus was converted into a magician and master of the hidden sciences. It was not until the Renaissance that real inquiry was resumed. The first step was to collect all the information that could be gathered from Greek and Roman writers. That task was undertaken and successfully completed by Barnabé Brisson 4. A nearer approach to the
1 See Nicolaus Damascenus, Didot, Fragm. Hist. III, 409. • Fabricius, Graeca Bibliotheca, fourth ed. p. 309 seq. * Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata I. Cf. Porphyrius, de vita Plotini, $ 16.
• De regio Persarum principatu libri tres,' Paris, 1590. The second book is devoted to the religion and manners of the ancient Persians.
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