Zend Avesta Part 01

Author(s): James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford

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signal for a revival of the old national spirit, made Mazdeism one of the corner stones of the new establishment 1. Therefore it seems strange to hear that the first step taken to make Mazdeism a state religion was taken by one of those very Philhellenic Parthian princes, who were fully imbued with Greek ideas and manners. Yet this view must not be accepted unreservedly. Ardashîr is nowhere mentioned as professing a religion different from that of his predecessors. In the struggle between Ardavân and Ardashîr, there was no religious interest at stake, but only a political one; and we are expressly told by Hamza' that Ardashîr and his adversaries belonged to the same confession. Nay, we shall see that one of the charges brought against him, by his adversaries, was his wanton infraction of the Zoroastrian laws. There is therefore nothing that makes it impossible to admit that in the time and at the court of a Parthian prince a Zoroastrian movement may have originated.
§ 10. There were four kings at least who bore the name of Valkhash: the most celebrated and best known of the four was Vologeses I, the contemporary of Nero. Now that Zoroastrianism prevailed with him, or at least around him, we see from the conduct of his brother Tiridates, who was a Magian (Magus); and by this term we must not understand a magician 5, but a Zoroastrian priest. That he was a priest appears from Tacitus' testimony; that he was a Zoroastrian is shown by his scruples about the wor
INTRODUCTION, III.
1 S. de Sacy, Mémoires sur quelques antiquités de la Perse. Cf. Maçoudi, IL, 125.
⚫ Hamzae Ispahensis Annales, ed. Gottwaldt, p. 31 (in the translation).
* Perhaps five (see de Longpérier, Mémoire sur la Numismatique des Arsacides, p. 111).
• Magus ad eum Tiridates venerat' (Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXX, 6).
• Pliny very often confounds Magism and Magia, Magians and Magicians. We know from Pliny, too, that Tiridates refused to initiate Nero into his art; but the cause was not, as he assumes, that it was 'a detestable, frivolous, and vain art,' but because Mazdean law forbids the holy knowledge to be revealed to laymen, much more to foreigners (Yast IV, 10; cf. Philostrati Vita Soph. I, 10).
Nec recusaturum Tiridatem accipiendo diademati in urbem venire, nisi sacerdotii religione attineretur' (Ann. XV, 24).
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