CHAPTER I
Mazdak and Mazdakism
This is the Bolshevism we meet with, as early as the fifth century, in Persia. Its exponent and leader, a man named Mazdak, was a priest in Neishapur before he became a prophet. King Kobad, the little father of the great Nushirvan, was then on the throne; and Christianity, which had penetrated Persia, was still convulsed by the controversies of the single and the double nature of Christ and the persecutions that generally followed or accompanied them.
The theology of the Fathers and the philosophy of St. Paul carried the dissensions through Armenia to Persia, thus weakening the newly acquired faith, which had but a slight hold upon the people. It certainly had little or no influence upon King Kobad. As for Mazdak, he must have found his original inspiration in St. Paul. "The law worketh wrath; where no law is, there is no transgression." This he announced as a divine revelation to the people and proceeded to draw his own conclusions and enlarge upon them. His second revelation was that all men are born equal and have a right to maintain this equality through life. His third: Everything belongs to God, and it is impious in man to claim or to appropriate to himself what is the property of the Creator.
The law worketh wrath; all men are born equal; God is the direct source and owner of all things: with these three cardinal doctrines, Mazdak embarked upon his utopian career, pursuing the fatal phantom of his logic. He took St. Paul by the letter, shaking the spirit out of his words. Or he may not have been endowed with sufficient grace to see the true essence of the Gospel, considering as mere theology or mysticism such doctrines as are calculated to elevate the believer to the free life of the spirit.
Mazdak wanted freedom—the sort of freedom, in fact, that is today the object of popular clamor. "Where no law is, there is no transgression." St. Paul was twisted into a universal negation, which Mazdak pretended to have discovered, through the medium of Fire, in Zoroaster's own divine bosom. For he would destroy the new religion by invoking the aid of the old. And he would establish the reign of perfect equality on earth to justify divine ownership and power. For if all titles of worldly things are vested in God, they are destined for the common use of all human kind.
Mazdak's three cardinal fallacies were more attractive, indeed, to the people than Christianity. And they were excellent vehicles for a counter-movement. Mazdak moved and many others moved with him. In spite of his initial success, however, he knew that, without royal sanction and support, the new Temple—the Temple of Fire and Freedom and Common Ownership—would not long endure. But with a king and a prophet at its head, the new cult would spread, would prosper, would triumph. The prophet was there; and he set out to convert the king. His qualifications were traditional. He began by setting the first example in sanctity and abstemiousness. He clothed himself in coarse wool, denied himself at first all worldly things, and retired into seclusion for meditation and prayer.
And when King Kobad demanded a miracle before he embraced the new faith, he was not disappointed. Mazdak invited him to the Temple, where he heard the Fire speaking to the Prophet. The fact that a man was hidden behind the altar to lend the flames a tongue, did not much matter. From Tabari to Gibbon, all historians agree that Mazdak was a downright impostor. They are also agreed that Kobad was a royal scoundrel. The new cult appealed to him for more than one reason, and he was predisposed to accept any penny wonder as divine.
For he had an illicit carnal desire which could be sanctioned only by some such religion as Mazdakism. "He was not nice in point of conscience," as one historian puts it; nor was he happy on the throne. His brother and his courtiers cast an enchantment upon his crown and, as soon as he became a Mazdakite, they whisked it away. And he was cast into prison as a warning to Mazdak and his followers. But the warning was of no avail; for in addition to a prophet and a king, the movement gained the support of a queen. Kobad's wife became an ardent Mazdakite. And by smiling assent to the jailer one night, she succeeded in having her husband, hidden in a mattress, carried away. This was a signal triumph for the new cult. And Mazdak, son of Bambadan, thereafter called himself the Sign, the Demonstration, the Word, the Redeemer.
And his followers set out zealously, violently to prove themselves faithful to his creed. Everything was to be held in common, "Goods, Women, Children and the Rest." And for more than fifty years there was no relaxation in the practice, which, of course, was accompanied by plunder and bloodshed, by all the crimes, in fact, that lawlessness and anarchy engender. Everywhere his votaries seized the wives, the daughters and the property of others. And the King could not punish them, having become himself a Mazdakite.
When Kobad escaped from prison, he fled to the White Huns, a powerful tribe of Central Asia, who invaded Persia, and were defeated by the great Bahram Gur, to whom Omar pays the mocking tribute:
"And Bahram, the Great Hunter, the wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, but can not break his sleep."
But the White Huns were still camping on the frontier, awaiting the opportunity for another Great Offensive. The opportunity came when Kobad arrived and straightway made an alliance with his country's enemies. And at the head of an army of White Huns he led the invasion, entered the capital in triumph, smote his infidel brother off the throne and regained the crown.
And Mazdakism, which had suffered a momentary check in his absence, became again a power of terror and frightfulness in the land. In the name of Equality, Lawlessness and Communism, the tables were turned, every crime was sanctioned or condoned, the rich, in consequence, becoming poor, the poor becoming rich, and everywhere the mob ruled supreme. Morality and religion were renounced, abolished; man became a law unto himself; and the strong, whether of the proletariat or the bourgoisie of those times, prevailed.
But the most amazing things about Mazdakism, is the inconsistency that is scarcely found outside the Orient, where piety and crime go hand in hand. For while it encouraged, even sanctioned all kinds of unspeakable abominations, it imposed upon its followers a rigid observance of the sacredness of animal life. Mazdak himself was a vegetarian, and he prohibited the killing of animals for food or for sport. Indeed, to kill a man who had an abundance of the things of the world, was in his eye, a virtue; but to kill even an insect was a crime. And he continued to pray and to wear coarse wool even in his last days, when his own wealth and his harim were re-distributed among the people. How true of him the Arabic couplet:
"He wore bells on his sandals to warn
the insects from his path,
While in his hand the dripping dagger
sought the victims of his wrath."
When King Kobad died, his son the Great Nushirvan took a real pious interest in the new cult. He introduced it to the higher equality, led it to the final communism—Death. On his coronation he made a speech worthy of a great monarch, in which he promised many good things to all his subjects and called upon them to help him make good his promise. Whereupon, he ordered the chiefs of the Sect, Tabari, tell us to appear before him and had their heads cut off. Others say that he imitated Jehu in the Book of Kings. Which means that he had the Mazdakites assemble in the Temple, and at his command, his executioners descended upon them and introduced them in a jiffy to the higher equality.
And he issued an edict abolishing the practice of Mazdakism and confirming the domestic rights of Society. The wealth and property of the Mazdakites were divided among the poor; such as could be identified were returned to their lawful owners; and the women held in the slavery of communism were freed and given the option of either returning to their former homes or of remaining, as legal wives, with whom they had accustomed themselves to live.
Such was the justice of Nushirvan. But in spite of the heads that were cut off and the Jehu method of extermination, Mazdakism continued to squirm in the dust and succeeded in making its way to other lands. For the new law of the community of women was later observed and promulgated in Syria; and, with the other doctrines of Mazdak, it spread to the West and was embraced, archeologists tell us, by what remained of the ancient Gnostics.