a mouth-covering when he tends the holy fire, lest his breath defile it. Especially are death and a dead body unclean. A corpse may not defile earth, fire nor water. So, as everyone knows, Mazdæans put dead bodies on their Towers of Silence, to be eaten by vultures. Burial, and still more cremation, are horrible to them. They have also a great aversion to any kind of asceticism. Life and pleasure are gifts of Ahura Mazda; not to enjoy them is positively sinful: it is perhaps the only religion which considers fasting actually wicked. They hate celibacy. Their sexual morality is correct, save for one extraordinary point: they allow, even command, incest, and may (often did) marry their own sisters.[1]
This religion, then, under the Sassanid kings was the state religion of the Persian kingdom. It had not died out under the Parthians; but it was now more closely identified with Persian nationality, and became intolerant and persecuting. It was death to apostatize from it; the mobeds continually stirred up fierce persecution against other religions, so that, as we shall see, Christians in Persia suffered even more than under Pagan Rome. But Mazdæism was not the one cult of all the Great King's possessions. Its home was among the Aryans of Old Persia, down by the Gulf. Among the subject Semites other cults, the last remnants of Babylonian mythology, still lingered. The first pagans whom Christianity met in Mesopotamia and Adiabene[2] were not Mazdæans but polytheists, worshipping Nature-forces, wells and trees.
We have said that the Sassanid kings took up the old quarrel against Rome. During nearly all their time war rages along the frontier, with varying success. But they brought new energy to their side, so that on the whole the advantage seems to be with them. Julian (361–363) died fighting the Persians (against
- ↑ A good short modern account of Mazdæism is V. Henry: Le Parsisme, Paris, 1905 (Les religions des peuples civilizés). The modern Parsi resents being called a dualist, and maintains that his religion has always been pure monotheism. Ahura Mazda is simply the old Persian name of God. Anra Mainyu is no more a rival bad god than our devil. This is modern purification under Christian influence. The Brahmin too now says he is a monotheist. But there seems to have been always the idea of a final triumph of Ahura Mazda.
- ↑ Ḥadyab, the country between the Tigris and the Zab.
