CHAPTER XXXIII
ZARATUSHT IN THE PAHLAVI WORKS
Miracles as credentials of a prophet's mission as God's messenger. Credulity creates miracles. They are due to man's hunger for the marvellous, his disposition to believe in the impossible, and his readiness to give credence to the incredible. They flourish where childlike innocence, ignorance is ready to be duped and deluded. The faith of the masses rests on the foundation of signs and prodigies, portents and miracles. Perternatural interference with the course of nature has been a commonplace everywhere. The omnipotent God, it has always been agreed, could change anything and everything at his own free will, and so he could set aside the physical laws that govern the universe. Miracles transcend natural laws. The prophets are believed to have been endowed with the power of producing supernatural events. The multitude always look upon them to work wonders that would establish their supernatural mission. The miracles strengthen the faith of the masses in the messengers of God. The movements of the prophets are devoutly magnified into miracles and credulous persons are always found to attest, as witnesses, the working of miracles. Buddha condemned miracles in most emphatic words, yet tradition has invested him with many more miracles than have been ascribed to any other prophet. Mohammed is asked to work miracles to prove the divinity of his mission as Noah and Abraham, Moses and Jesus had done. He is asked to cause the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the dead to rise, and to change the course of nature. Mohammed replies that the Koran itself is the greatest miracle and he cannot work other miracles. Yet pious credulity, during the second generation, credits him with several miracles.
Legend grows about the prophet of Iran that obscures his personality. The Pahlavi works that give us the account of the happenings in the life of Zaratusht have been written in about
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