Zoroaster
Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster or Zarathustra, was an Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. In the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, which he is traditionally believed to have authored, he is described as a preacher and a poet-prophet. Some have claimed, with much scholarly controversy, to find his influence in Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, and, perhaps less controversially, in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly through concepts of cosmic dualism and personal morality.
He spoke an Old Iranian language, named Avestan by scholars after the corpus of Zoroastrian religious texts written in that language. Based on this, it is tentative to place his homeland somewhere in the eastern regions of the Greater Iran versus deception. He is said to have gained royal patronage under King Vishtaspa, spread his teachings, and founded a community, marrying three times and having six children. Zoroastrian texts portray his philosophy as emphasizing free will, ethical responsibility, and aligning with asha through good thoughts, words, and deeds.
Name and etymology
Zoroaster's name in his native language, Avestan, was probably. His translated name, "Zoroaster", derives from a later Greek transcription, , as used in Xanthus's and in Plato's First Alcibiades. This form appears subsequently in the Latin Zōroastrēs, and, in later Greek orthographies, as. The Greek form of the name appears to be based on a phonetic transliteration or semantic substitution of Avestan with the Greek and the BMAC substrate with.In Avestan, is generally accepted to derive from an Old Iranian. The element half of the name is thought to be the Indo-Iranian root for 'camel', with the entire name meaning 'he who can manage camels'. Reconstructions from later Iranian languages—particularly from the Middle Persian , which is the form that the name took in the 9th- to 12th-century Zoroastrian texts—suggest that might be a zero-grade form of. Subject then to whether derives from or from, several interpretations have been proposed.
If is the original form, it may mean 'with old/aging camels', related to Avestic :
- 'with angry/furious camels': from Avestan, 'angry, furious'.
- 'who is driving camels' or 'who is fostering/cherishing camels': related to Avestan, 'to drag'.
- Mayrhofer proposed an etymology of 'who is desiring camels' or 'longing for camels' and related to Vedic Sanskrit, 'to like', and perhaps also to Avestan.
- 'with yellow camels': parallel to Younger Avestan.
In Middle Persian, the name is, in Parthian, in Manichaean Middle Persian, in Early New Persian, and in modern, the name is.
The name is attested in Classical Armenian sources as . The most important of these testimonies were provided by the Armenian authors Eznik of Kolb, Elishe, and Movses Khorenatsi. The spelling was formed through an older form which started with, a fact which the German Iranologist Friedrich Carl Andreas used as evidence for a Middle Persian spoken form. Based on this assumption, Andreas even went so far to form conclusions from this also for the Avestan form of the name. However, the modern Iranologist Rüdiger Schmitt rejects Andreas's assumption, and states that the older form which started with was just influenced by Armenian , which therefore means that "the name must have been reinterpreted in an anti-Zoroastrian sense by the Armenian Christians". Furthermore, Schmitt adds: "it cannot be excluded, that the Middle Persian form, which the Armenians took over, was merely metathesized to. ".
Date
There is no consensus on the dating of Zoroaster. The Avesta gives no direct information about it, while historical sources are conflicting. Some scholars base their date reconstruction on the Proto-Indo-Iranian language and Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, while others use internal evidence. While many scholars today consider a date around 1000 BC to be the most likely, others still consider a range of dates between 1500 and 500 BC to be possible.Classical scholarship
Classical scholarship in the 6th to 4th century BC believed he existed 6,000 years before Xerxes I's invasion of Greece in 480 BC, which is a possible misunderstanding of the Zoroastrian four cycles of 3,000 years. This belief is recorded by Diogenes Laërtius, and variant readings could place it 600 years before Xerxes I, somewhere before 1000 BC. However, Diogenes also mentions Hermodorus's belief that Zoroaster lived 5,000 years before the Trojan War, which would mean he lived around 6200 BC. The 10th-century Suda provides a date of 500 years before the Trojan War. Pliny the Elder cited Eudoxus which placed his death 6,000 years before Plato,. Other pseudo-historical constructions are those of Aristoxenus who recorded Zaratas the Chaldeaean to have taught Pythagoras in Babylon, or lived at the time of mythological Ninus and Semiramis. According to Pliny the Elder, there were two Zoroasters. The first lived thousands of years ago, while the second accompanied Xerxes I in the invasion of Greece in 480 BC. Some scholars propose that the chronological calculation for Zoroaster was developed by Persian magi in the 4th century BC, and as the early Greeks learned about him from the Achaemenids, this indicates they did not regard him as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great, but as a remote figure.Zoroastrian and Muslim scholarship
Some later pseudo-historical and Zoroastrian sources place Zoroaster in the 6th century BC, The Seleucid rulers who gained power following Alexander's death instituted an "Age of Alexander" as the new calendrical epoch. This did not appeal to the Zoroastrian priesthood who then attempted to establish an "Age of Zoroaster". To do so, they needed to establish when Zoroaster had lived, which they accomplished by counting back the length of successive generations, until they concluded that Zoroaster must have lived "258 years before Alexander". This estimate then re-appeared in the 9th- to 12th-century Arabic and Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrian tradition, like the 10th century Al-Masudi who cited a prophecy from a lost Avestan book in which Zoroaster foretold the Empire's destruction in 300 years, but the religion would last for 1,000 years.In Zoroastrian scriptures, King Yima and the legendary Pishdadian dynasty preceded the time when Zoroaster proclaimed his teachings.
Modern scholarship
In modern scholarship, two main approaches can be distinguished: a late dating to the 7th and 6th centuries BC, based on the indigenous Zoroastrian tradition, and an early dating, which places his life more generally in the 15th to 9th centuries BC.Late date
Some scholars propose a period between 7th and 6th century BC, for example, or 559–522 BC. The latest possible date is the mid 6th century BC, at the time of Achaemenid Empire's Darius I, or his predecessor Cyrus the Great. This date gains credence mainly from attempts to connect figures in Zoroastrian texts to historical personages; thus some have postulated that the mythical Vishtaspa who appears in an account of Zoroaster's life was Darius I's father, also named Vishtaspa. However, if this was true, it seems unlikely that the Avesta would not mention that Vishtaspa's son became the ruler of the Persian Empire, or that this key fact about Darius's father would not be mentioned in the Behistun Inscription. It is also possible that Darius I's father was named in honor of the Zoroastrian patron, indicating possible Zoroastrian faith by Arsames.Early date
Scholars such as Mary Boyce used linguistic and socio-cultural evidence to place Zoroaster between 1500 and 1000 BC. The basis of this theory is primarily proposed on linguistic similarities between the Old Avestan language of the Zoroastrian Gathas and the Sanskrit of the Rigveda, a collection of early Vedic hymns. Both texts are considered to have a common archaic Indo-Iranian origin. The Gathas portray an ancient Stone-Bronze Age bipartite society of warrior-herdsmen and priests, and that it is thus implausible that the Gathas and Rigveda could have been composed more than a few centuries apart. These scholars suggest that Zoroaster lived in an isolated tribe or composed the Gathas before the 1200–1000 BC migration by the Iranians from the steppe to the Iranian Plateau. The shortfall of the argument is the vague comparison, and the archaic language of Gathas does not necessarily indicate time difference.It has been suggested by Silk Road Seattle, using its own interpretations of Victor H. Mair's writings on the topic that Zoroaster could have been born in the 2nd millennium BC.
Almut Hintze, the British Library, and the European Research Council have dated Zoroaster to roughly 3,500 years ago, in the 2nd millennium BC.
Place
The birthplace of Zoroaster is also unknown, and the language of the Gathas is not similar to the proposed north-western and north-eastern regional dialects of Persia. It is also suggested that he was born in one of the two areas and later lived in the other area.9 and 17 cite the Ditya River in Airyanem Vaējah as Zoroaster's home and the scene of his first appearance. The Avesta does not mention the Achaemenids or of any West Iranian tribes such as the Medes, Persians, or even the Parthians. The refers to some Iranian peoples that are unknown in the Greek and Achaemenid sources about the 6th and 5th century BC Eastern Iran. The contain 17 regional names, most of which are located in north-eastern and eastern Iran.
However, in 59.18, the, or supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, is said to reside in 'Ragha'. In the 9th- to 12th-century Middle Persian texts of Zoroastrian tradition, 'Ragha' and many other places appear as locations in Western Iran. While the land of Media does not figure at all in the Avesta, the, or "Primordial Creation", puts Ragha in Media. However, in Avestan, Ragha is simply a toponym meaning 'plain, hillside.'
Apart from these indications in Middle Persian sources that are open to interpretations, there are a number of other sources. The Greek and Latin sources are divided on the birthplace of Zoroaster. Among the Greek accounts, Ctesias located him in Bactria, Diodorus Siculus placed him among Ariaspai, Cephalion and Justin suggests east of greater Iran, whereas Pliny and Origen suggest west of Iran as his birthplace. Moreover, there is the suggestion that there has been more than one Zoroaster.
On the other hand, in post-Islamic sources Shahrastani, an Iranian writer originally from Shahristān, in present-day Turkmenistan, proposed that Zoroaster's father was from Atropatene and his mother was from Rey. Coming from a reputed scholar of religion, this was a serious blow to the various regions which all claimed that Zoroaster originated from homelands, some of which had then decided that Zoroaster must have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there. Arabic sources of the same period and the same region of historical Persia also consider Azerbaijan as the birthplace of Zarathustra.
By the late 20th century, most scholars had settled on an origin in eastern Greater Iran. Gnoli proposed Sistan, Baluchistan as the homeland of Zoroastrianism; Frye voted for Bactria and Chorasmia; Khlopin suggests the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan. Sarianidi considered the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex region as "the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself." Boyce includes the steppes to the west from the Volga. The medieval "from Media" hypothesis is no longer taken seriously, and Zaehner has even suggested that this was a Magi-mediated issue to garner legitimacy, but this has been likewise rejected by Gershevitch and others.
The 2005 Encyclopedia Iranica article on the history of Zoroastrianism summarizes the issue with "while there is general agreement that he did not live in western Iran, attempts to locate him in specific regions of eastern Iran, including Central Asia, remain tentative".