Ahura Mazda and Varuna:Varuna (“Oath”) is frequently juxtaposed with another more familiar deity, Mitra (“Covenant, Agreement”) in a collective role as upholders of order. Mazda is similarly juxtaposed with Mithra in some Avestan material. Varuna, or Varuna-Mitra, it can be argued, must have been the supreme deity of pre-Zoroastrian religion (this is the “Zoroaster wasn’t…

The most prominent Deva/Daeva were highly martial beings, such as Indra and Agni of the Rgveda. Among the fundamentals of Zoroaster’s teaching appears to have been the idea that martial prowess could not be inherently virtuous. This is evident in e.g. the “Zoroastrian Creed”, Yasna 12, which is usually thought to date to the earliest…

The Proto-Indo-Europeans probably originated somewhere in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, i.e. what is today eastern Ukraine or southern Russia. They lived in a socially stratified society that was heavily patriarchal (in the literal sense of “rule by the father”) and which idealized and venerated male virtue. Possibly the two most important deities were Father Sky (Dyeurs…

Vedic religion and Zoroastrianism must share roots in a common Indo-Iranian religious tradition extant in about 2000 BC, around and after which we see the cultures diverge as the Indo-Aryan migration begins. This religion would have featured common points such as veneration and ritual surrounding water and fire, belief in common souls of beast and…

Mary Boyce’s Zoroastrians: Their Beliefs and Practices. She notes in the introduction:[Zoroaster] was an Iranian, and lived in what for his people were prehistoric times. It is impossible, therefore, to establish fixed dates for his life; but there is evidence to suggest that [his teachings] flourished when the Stone Age was giving way for the…

The primary sources for the figure of Zarathustra can be divided into a couple of categories: The Gathas. Seventeen archaic Avestan hymns attributed to Zarathustra himself. (Additionally, there’s the Yasna Haptanghaiti, typically attributed to Zarathustra’s students)Iranian legends in Avestan and Persian. Here, Zarathustra appears, among other things, as a mentor to the young king Vishtaspa,…

Fire is frequently referred to in the Gathas as an instrument or emanation of Mazda’s power. Some archaic fragments mention fire as “the son of Ahura Mazda”. It certainly must have had great ritual importance as a “pure element” as did Earth and Water. The fire temple cult though, dates to around the Achaemenid era.…

The AvestaThe Avesta is the portion of Zoroastrian scripture written in an obscure Iranian language conventionally called Avestan. Avestan, especially in its archaic form, is by far the oldest Iranian language, with the earliest preserved material dating back to the mid-2nd Milennium BC. It has a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility with Vedic Sanskrit,…

Modern linguistic evidence does not support a 6th Century date for Zoroaster, but most mainstream academics accept that date today.The Avestan hymns, prayers, and scriptures – and the Avestan language by extension – was on of the earliest topics studied in comparative linguistics. Even the earliest 18th century linguists noticed the close relationship between Sanskrit…

Article Introduction Four questions: The presumed historical existence of the Buddha is reflected in many of the early suttas where the Buddha is situated in actual historical places alongside real historical figures. This is not to deny the possibility that some of this material could have been invented by skillful fabricator(s), but the style of…