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Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu and the Bounteous Immortals

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Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu and the Bounteous Immortals CHAPTER EIGHT AHURA MAZDA, ANGRA MAINYU AND THE BOUNTEOUS IMMORTALS All the indications suggest considerable intellectual activity in the priestly schools of the "Avestan" people before Zoroaster was born; and this activity appears to have led to sober philosophical concepts, by which it was sought to establish a primeval simplicity and unity behind the diversity of physical phenomena. Thus it was postulated that at the beginning of the world there had been only one plant, one animal, one man; and that from these unique prototypes had come the vast variety of present being. There was also, one may reasonably deduce, vigorous discussion in matters of ethics and worship, for controversy about the cults of daeva and ahura is not likely to have originated with Zoroaster. Probably during his years of training as a priest, and his time of wandering thereafter, the prophet studied and disputed with more than one master and pursued more than one course of intellectual and spiritual_inquiry. What is certain is that he must also have spent many hours in lonely meditation, before his ponderings led him both to newly formulated doctrines and to the illumination of his vision at the river's bank, which gave his intellectual conclusions the force of revealed truth, and filled him with the sense of mission necessary for their promulgation. The core of Zoroaster's new teachings appears to have been his ap­ prehension of primeval unity in the sphere of the divine also, a counter­ part to the primeval unity already held to haveexistedforphysical things. In the beginning, he taught, there was only one good God, only one divine being worthy to be worshipped, a yazata, namely Ahura Mazda, the Lord Wisdom. At first all divine goodness was comprehended within his person, and plurality and diversity came about only because of the existence also of evil divinity-for together with Ahura Mazda in the beginning, and likewise uncreated, was another being who was opposed to him, the Hostile Spirit, Angra Mainyu.l These two Zoroaster saw with prophetic eye at their original encountering: "Now these two spirits, which are twins, revealed themselves at first in a vision. Their two ways of thinking, 1 The expression Angra Mainyu occurs once in the Gathas (Y. 45.2). It is commonly used in the rest of the Avesta in its later dialect form of AIJra Mainyu, which yields the familiar Middle Iranian Ahriman. AHURA MAZDA, ANGRA MAINYU, BOUNTEOUS IMMORTALS 193 speaking and acting were the better and the bad.-Between these two (ways) the wise choose rightly, fools not so.-And then when these two spirits first met, they created both life and not-life, and that there should be at the last the worst existence for the followers of the Drug, but, for the followers of Asa, the best dwelling. Of the two spirits, the one who follows the Drug chose doing the worst things, the Most Bounteous Spirit who is clad in the hardest stones chose asa, and (so do) they who will willingly come with true actions to meet Ahura Mazda" (Y. 30.3-5).2 The "Most Bounteous Spirit", Sp~nista Mainyu, who chose asa, is evidently Ahura Mazda himself, "clad in the hardest stones", that is, the crystal sky; and the "two spirits" are duly explained by the Pahlavi commentator on these verses as "Ohrmazd and Ahriman".3 This and the commoner expression, "Bounteous Spirit", Spanta Mainyu, are used, however, in complex fashion elsewhere in the Giithiis; for sometimes they seem to represent the power in Ahura Mazda himself through which he thinks or perceives or acts, 4 at others an independent divinity who hypo­ statizes this power. The former appears to be the dominant concept, to judge from both the Giithiis and the tradition, which usually identifies Ahura Mazda with his "Bounteous Spirit". s Later the Zurvanites, a heterodox Zoroastrian group, came to interpret literally the words "these two spirits which are twins" as meaning that the two great opposed beings were actually twins in the sense of having been born together from one womb; and they postulated accordingly a father for them, namely Zurvan or Time. This doctrine was rejected by orthodox Zoroastrians as flat heresy, demon-inspired;& but a number of European scholars have followed the Zurvanites in taking the expression "twins" literally, and have attempted to justify this by supposing that the "Most Bounteous Spirit" of Y. 30 is to be identified with Spanta Mainyu as a separate divinity, Ahura Mazda being the "father" of both Bounteous and Hostile Spirits. This "child­ birth" (it has been suggested) "consisted in the emanation by God of undifferentiated 'spirit', which only at the emergence of free will split 2 The translation given above follows the Danish rendering by Kaj Barr, "Prin­ cipia Zarathustriaca", @st og Vest, Afhandlinger tilegnede A. Christensen, Copenhagen 1945, 134· On v. 3 see also Gershevitch, JNES XXIII, 1964, 32-3. On v. 4 see Gershevitch, ibid., 13, and differently Humbach, Die Gathas I, 84. 3 See Darmesteter, ZA I, 220 n. g. 4 Y. 33.12; 43.2; 44.7; 51.7. On this usage see A. Meillet, Trois conferences sur les Gatka de l'Avesta, Paris 1925, 59; Lommel, Rel., 17-21. 5 For some Pahlavi passages identifying Ohrmazd with "Spannii.g Menog" (the Middle Persian rendering of Sp:mta Mainyu), see L. Casartelli, The philosophy of theMazdayasnian religion under the Sassanids, transl. by F. J. Jamasp Asa, Bombay 188g, 18-19. 6 Dinkard IX.30.4 ff., ed. Sanjana, Vol. XVII, 85 f., Madan, II 828 f. See Darmesteter, ZA I, 221 n. 10, and in detail H. H. Schaeder, Iranische Beitriige I, 288-gr. .
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