Of all the Oriental races inhabiting our Indian dominions, perhaps there is no one so fitted to excite interest and inspire respect as that of the Parsees. They are the lineal descendants of the people belonging to the celebrated nation of old, ruled over by kings bearing such names as Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. They belong to the Indo-European family of mankind; in other words, they are more akin to ourselves than they are to the Jews, the Arabs, and other nations of Semitic descent. Though the Persians warred so long and so fiercely with the Greeks, yet were they ethnographically allied to them, as is proved from their language. If it be conceded that the Zend, the language of the Parsee sacred books, was once a genuine form of human speech ; and that, though perhaps originally Median, it did not essentially differ from that of the Persian tribes, who subsequently rose to be the dominant power in the Medo-Persian empire, then, was the affinity of the Persians to the Greeks more close than either party ever admitted. For example, where, in conjugating a well-known verb, the Greeks thus proceeded— didomi, didos, didoti, the people using the Zend tongue said dadhami, dadhahi, dadhaiti ; and for the word with which the Greeks finished off, didõnti, the Zend had didĕnti. The overthrow of the Persian army by Alexander the Great, for a time snatched from the Persians the sceptre they they so long had borne ; and when the Greek dominion was at length overthrown, it was not they, but the Parthians, who succeeded to power in the East. Though the Parthians were for a time so formidable that they struck terror into the heart of imperial Rome, and figure in the literature of the Augustan age, very much as the Turks did in our own, two or three centuries ago, yet were they too uncivilized long to continue in possession of sovereign power on so large a scale ; and, in the third century of the Christian era, the Persians revolted against the semi-barbarous domination, and succeeded in setting up a new empire, which proved an insurmountable barrier to Roman progress in the East. To give this revived Persian sovereignty cohesion, it was deemed politic that if possible there should be unity of faith, which was the reason for those fierce persecutions of Christians by the Persian Zoroastrians with which the students of ecclesiastical history are familiar. The weapon of religious intolerance which they had stooped to use, was ultimately wielded against themselves by the Mohammedans with murderous effect ; and, before the contest ended, the Persians of the national Zoroastrian faith were but few in number, and of those few, a very large proportion had been compelled to flee from their native country and seek an asylum in the West of India. There they are still to be found. In 1847, Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, to whose elaborate writings on the subject of the Parsees and their faith, we have been much indebted in the preparation of this article, estimated their numbers as follows:— "The Parsees," he says "in Western India, now amount to about 50,000 souls. Of these, according to a census made about five years ago, 20,183 are resident in Bombay. In the collectorate of the Northern Konkan, there are 1451. There are about 200 in the Portuguese settlement of Daman. About fifteen years ago, 10,507 dwelt in the town of Surat ; but the number of these is now understood to be very considerably reduced." There are a few in most other Indian cities ; we believe they are in the British settlements in China ; and we have met one in the City of London, clad in the ordinary costume of his race. Indeed, a good many are known to be in the English metropolis. In connection with the wide diffusion of this fragmentary remnant of an ancient dominant race, it is interesting to note a passage in the prophecies of Jeremiah. " And upon Elam [the province of Elymais, or Persia generally] will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them towards all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come. . . . But it shall come to pass in the latter days that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the Lord." (Jeremiah xlix. 36 and 39.)
The religion of this ancient people is one of no slight historic interest. Amid all the idolatries of the East, there has always been a tendency in the more intellectual heathen minds, to admit a supreme Being ruling over the inferior gods. The Persians seem to have been less successful in groping their way to the conception of a supreme Being than some other heathen nations ; for the name given to their highest divinity is Time without bounds. There is here lamentable deficiency. One of the many attributes of God is, undoubtedly, time without bounds ; but the personification of that one quality of the divine nature gives a very inadequate conception of that nature as a whole. If a catechism of Parsee doctrine were to be drawn out, one question would naturally be, "What is God?" To which the answer would be returned, "Time without bounds." How inferior to the reply in a noted Christian catechism — that drawn up by the Westminster Assembly of Divines. " God is a spirit ; infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." How different the emotion, excited by the answer, God is "time without bounds," from that inspired by the brief, but all-comprehensive Scriptural reply, " God is Love."
In next addressing themselves, to penetrate, if possible, the inscrutable mystery of the " origin of evil," they adopted, if they did not even originate, the well-known doctrine, that the two opposite principles of good and evil proceeded from two divinities about equal in power, who emanated from the Being already described as Time without bounds, and are subordinate to Him, and to Him alone. The good god is called Hormazd, and the evil one Ahriman, From the former sprung all that is good in creation, and from the latter, all that is evil. From Hormazd came light and the celestial luminaries, while Ahriman was the author of darkness. As is well known to all who have inquired into this subject, this doctrine of there being two creators of opposite characters, engaged in the formation of the world, and in perpetual conflict about its government, is censured in those parts of Isaiah, which are specially addressed to the Persian conqueror, Cyrus, as if he held this erroneous belief. " Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden. . . . I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me, that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I FORM THE LIGHT, AND CREATE DARKNESS ; I make peace, and create evil ; I, the Lord, do all these things." (Isaiah xlv. 1, 5, 6, 7.) The language of the prophet is unmistakeably directed against the Parsee faith. There are not, he states, two gods, about equal in power, and in perpetual conflict. Satan is not god, and does not even require to be mentioned in connexion with the subject of creation. There is but one God, Jehovah, and none else. It is not true that it needed an Ahriman — an evil being, to create darkness ; it was done by that same Jehovah. Under Hormazd were a multitude of Amshapands (arch angels), and Izads (angels) ; while Ahriman rules over a hierarchy of evil spirits. The angels and archangels preside over different departments of nature, and are to be worshipped. So are the sun, and fire, with other emblems of and emanations from Hormazd. The will of Hormazd was revealed to men through means of the prophet Zoroaster, who was inspired to produce the Zend-Avesta (the Parsee Bible), the most important portion of which, called the Vandidad, details a conversation, held in the Zend language, between Hormazd and Zoroaster. The pains of hell shall not be eternal, but there shall be a general restitution of all things after the resurrection, Ahriman himself being annihilated, or in the opinion of some purified by the purgatorial fire of hell, and established in holiness and happiness. When Zoroaster lived it is very difficult to ascertain, the opinions on the subject being very conflicting. The most favourite conjecture is that he lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspes. If so, then, like Mohammed, he may have come in contact with Judaism, and borrowed some of its tenets, while incorporating with them speculations of his own. In both systems we have angels and archangels— the ministers of God for good ; in both, too, is an infernal as well as a celestial hierarchy. Both look forward to a resurrection and a judgment ; but Judaism, divinely revealed, avoids the three fundamental errors of the Zoroastrian faith. It does not look on the Supreme Being as a mere abstraction, consisting simply of eternity personified, but it attributes to Him conscious existence with the possession of power, intelligence, and infinite virtue. It will not hear of creature worship, or tolerate the error of according divine honours to the sun, or fire, or light. Finally it looks on Satan as simply a lapsed angel, whom God could in a moment annihilate, and whose power is infinitely small compared with that of God. Surely Zoroaster, or whoever originated the doctrine of the two opposite divinities, must have been a man of melancholic temperament, or must have been in a desponding mood when he first took up the notion that the author of evil was equally potent with the Author of good. Might he not have reflected that in the human frame there is no part of the complex machinery designed to inflict pain ? When deranged, pain will call attention to the fact that a remedy may be supplied ; but, we repeat, no apparatus is provided for the sole purpose of inflicting pain. Had an evil as well as a good creator been at work on our physical frames, it would assuredly have been different. Again, why libel darkness as if it could not emanate from a beneficent being ? Did Zoroaster or the originator of the Parsee faith never feel it a relief to his wearied eyes to have light for a time extinguished? One would have fancied that, when, after becoming wearied by study, he flung himself on the couch of rest, he would have felt that the casting of the soft curtain of night around him, that his eyes might obtain repose, was the work of a God rather than of a demon. And did he never feel that darkness was favourable to reflection, and that his speculations regarding the universe generally made progress, not when he was invited to observation by the sight of a landscape, or of a city lighted up by the luminary of day, but, on the contrary, when observation was precluded, because every object was hidden from view by the thick veil of night ? The instinct of true philosophy was wanting in the man who could not see anything but the doings of a demon in the creation of night.
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