Zoroastrianism

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Latins, Indians and other early peoples.
Its other salient feature, namely dualism, was never understood in an absolute, rigorous fashion. Good and Evil fight an unequal battle in which the former is assured of triumph. God’s omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited. In this struggle man must enlist because of his capacity of free choice. He does so with his soul and body, not against his body, for the opposition between good and evil is not the same as the one between spirit and matter. Contrary to the Christian or Manichaean attitude, fasting and celibacy are proscribed, except as part of the purifacatory ritual. Man’s fight has a negative aspect, nonetheless: he must keep himself pure; i.e., avoid defilement by the forces of death, contact with dead matter, etc. Thus Zoroastrian ethics, although in itself lofty and rational, has a ritual aspect that is all percading. On the whole, is optimistic and has remained so even though the hardship and oppression of ...

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appear to have distinguished, from among their gods, the daiva, meaning “heavenly,” and the asura, a special class with occult powers. This situation was reflected in Vedic India; later on, asura came to signify, in Sanskrit, a kind of demon, because of the baleful aspect of the asura’s invisible power. In Iran the evolution must have been different: the ahuras were extolled, to the exclusion of the daevas, who were reduced to the rank of demons.

Zoroaster was a priest of a certain ahura with the epithet mazda, “wise,” whom Zoroaster mentions once in his hymns with other ahuras. Darius and his successors worshipped the Mazda and the other ...

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