The Avesta is the scripture of Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest living religions, founded by the prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) in ancient Iran. It was once the faith of three great Persian empires. Today it has perhaps 100,000 to 200,000 followers worldwide, many of them the Parsis of India, yet its ideas of a cosmic battle between good and evil and a final judgment echo through later religions.
Zarathustra’s dates are uncertain. Many scholars place him somewhere around 1500–1000 BCE, because the language of his hymns is so close to the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda; older tradition put him much later. His own words survive in the Gathas, seventeen hymns preserved within the Yasna, the main liturgy. They are the core of the Avesta and some of the hardest ancient texts to translate.
Most of the original Avesta is lost. What survives was passed down orally for centuries and written down only around the 5th–6th centuries CE, in an alphabet invented for the purpose; the oldest manuscripts we have date from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Illustration: the two spirits, and the choice between them
Ahura Mazda — the “Wise Lord”, the supreme creator, wholly good
Asha and Druj — truth and cosmic order against the lie and disorder
Free choice — in the Gathas (Yasna 30) two primal spirits, one better and one bad in thought, word and deed, stand before every person; the wise choose rightly
Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta — good thoughts, good words, good deeds: the whole of Zoroastrian ethics in three words
The renovation — at the end of time evil will be defeated and the world made new (frashokereti)
Fire is central to worship, but Zoroastrians do not worship fire itself; it is a symbol of purity and of Ahura Mazda’s light. In some fire temples the sacred fire has been kept burning for centuries.
After the Arab conquest of Iran, a group of Zoroastrians sailed to India. Their own chronicle, the Qissa-i Sanjan (1599), tells of their landing at Sanjan in Gujarat, perhaps in the 8th to 10th centuries; the local ruler is said to have welcomed them on condition that they adopt the local language and dress. Their descendants, the Parsis, have given India a remarkable share of its industrialists, scientists and artists, from the Tatas to the physicist Homi Bhabha.
Many scholars think Zoroastrian ideas, such as angels and demons, a final judgment and the resurrection of the dead, influenced Judaism after the Persian king Cyrus freed the Jews from Babylon (the Book of Isaiah calls Cyrus God’s “anointed”), and through it Christianity and Islam, though how much is still debated. And when Nietzsche wanted a prophet for his own new morality, he chose Zarathustra, explaining in Ecce Homo that the first prophet to treat morality as the engine of the cosmos should be the one to overcome it.
Oldest part: the Gathas, 17 hymns in the Yasna, attributed to Zarathustra
Language: Avestan, a close cousin of Vedic Sanskrit
Related: The Persian Empires, Nietzsche, The Vedas
Avesta on Wikipedia · Encyclopaedia Iranica: Avesta · Zoroastrianism on Britannica · The Persian Empires
