Zend Avesta Part 01

Author(s): James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford

Page 67

1xiv
VENDIDAD.
the supreme God, the God of the Heaven, Ahura Mazda; the God of the heavenly light, Mithra; the worship of the elementary divinities, Waters, Fire, and Earth; a number of storm myths and mythical legends; and the worship of Haoma. Purely Iranian are: the dualistic conception of the world, its limited duration of twelve thousand years with its four periods; the continual conflict of Ormazd and Ahriman, and the latter's defeat; the resurrection of the dead, the notion of purity carried to the extreme, the prohibition of burning or burying the dead, and the throwing away of corpses to dogs and birds of prey.
§ 12. Some of the new dogmas may be the independent development of Aryan elements: for instance, the dualistic conception may have grown out of the mythical struggles between gods and demons. But the Great year and the resurrection are things quite new, which seem to betray external influences. Of the Scythian origin of Zoroastrianism it will be idle to speak, till the advocates of the system have brought something like historical or rational evidence in its favour. The only civilisation of which we know in the neighbourhood of Media was that of the Assyro-Chaldaeans, which in many things was the instructor of the Medes and taught them their art, their writing, and their political organisation. Unfortunately, too little is known of the inner aspects of the Chaldaean religion. One may wonder if the Frashô-kereti, that renewal of the world that is to take place at the end of the Great year of twelve millennia, was derived from the Semitic myths of the annual revival of Adonis and Tammuz. Even the idea of resurrection seems to be attested on the so-called Cyrus' cylinder of Babylon. If these hypotheses turn out to be correct, older Magism may be defined as an Aryan growth under Chaldaean influences.
CHAPTER VIII.
AGE AND GROWTH OF THE AVESTA.
§ 1. The internal evidence of the doctrines has thus confirmed the half-historical evidence of the texts, and
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