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THE SPREAD of ZOROASTRIANISM in WESTERN IRAN During The CHAPTER THREE THE SPREAD OF ZOROASTRIANISM IN WESTERN IRAN During the latter part of the seventh century Zoroastrianism, which had probably won its bridgehead in Raga even before the era of the Deiocids, is likely to have gained converts more rapidly among the Medes and Persians during the latter part of the seventh century, when they were witness to the ruthless slaughter and destruction in the kingdom of Susa, and suffered themselves for almost a generation from the ravages of the Scythians. A time of such harshness and anarchy must have inclined men to listen to a message of hope, telling of justice and peace in a new age to come, to be ushered in by a World Saviour; and repudiation of the warlike Daevas may well have seemed easier in face of the Scythians' ceaseless marauding, with all the misery which this brought. The religion of the Scythians Herodotus' account of the Scythians' own religion is not easily to be understood, since he presents the gods of their worship under Greek names, with only occasionally some puzzling Scythian equivalents; 1 but from it it appears that their faith was essentially the general Old Iranian one, with, cultically, veneration paid 'in especial' to the hearth fire (Hestia), and carried out without images, altars or temples. The Greek historian records one unusual rite, however, practised by the Scythians in honour of a god of war. In each locality an iron sword-the most powerful weapon of the day-was planted in a mound of brush­ wood; and to these swords, he says, 'they bring yearly sacrifice of sheep and goats and horses, offering to these symbols even more than they do to the other gods. Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in every hundred'. 2 The war-god thus honoured Herodotus identifies as Ares; and he elsewhere mentions a Herakles, without pro­ viding either name with a Scythian equivalent. In the Hellenistic period 1 IV.59 ff. On his account see J. Marquart, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Iran II, Leipzig 1905, go; M. Vasmer, Untersuchungen tiber die iiltesten Wohnsitze der Slaven I: Die !ranier in Stidrussland, Leipzig 1923, 7 ff. (a reference I owe to the kindness of Dr. P. Calmeyer); E. H. Minns, CAH III, 2o4; Nyberg, Rei., 253-6. 2 IV.6z. THE SPREAD OF ZOROASTRIANISM IN WESTERN IRAN 4I Herakles was regularly equated with Iranian Verethraghna; and it is possible that the Scythian Ares was mighty Indra, who for Zoroastrians was the chief of the warlike, amoral Daevas, and a very fitting deity to receive worship from the freebooting Scythians. In the Achaemenian family (c. 6oo +) The nature of the scanty surviving records brings it about that the earliest direct proof of the presence of Zoroastrianism in western Iran comes from proper names in a royal family, that of the Persian Achae­ menians.3 The Achaemenians were still at this period vassals of the Deiocids, although we have met Cyrus (Kurus) I of Anshan sending an independent embassy to Assurbanipal in 639. This king had a younger cousin Arsames (Arsama), who probably flourished about 6oo; and Arsames called one of his sons by the name of Zoroaster's patron, Vistaspa (Greek Hystaspes), using its Avestan form (the Old Persian one would have been *Vistasa).4 This royal name remained rare in western Iran, being recorded sporadically thereafter only in the Achaemenian family itsel£.5 In the next generation of that family Cyrus the Great, grandson of the first Cyrus, called his eldest daughter 'Atossa', a name generally interpreted as the Greek rendering of Hutaosa, that of Kavi Vistaspa's queen. 6 Thereafter Avestan names recur in the Persian royal family. Thus Darius (Darayavahu) the Great, son of Vistaspa, called one of his sons by his father's name; and this second Vistaspa had, significantly, a son called Pissouthnes, a rendering, it seems, of Pisisyaothna. The original bearer of this A vestan name was regarded in Zoroastrian tradi­ tion as one of Kavi Vistaspa's sons. 7 This group of family names, taken together, thus provides evidence that members of both branches of the Achaemenian royal house had accepted Zoroastrianism by the early sixth century B.C., and wished 3 These names are recorded in the genealogies given in the OP inscriptions (see Kent, Old Persian, 158), and by Greek historians. 4 This point is not, however, a cogent one by itself, since all recorded Persian names containing the element 'horse' in the Achaemenian period have the Avestan/Median form aspa, not asa, see R. Schmitt, 'Persepolitanisches I', Die Sprache XVIII, 1972, 51. 5 See Justi, Namenbuch, 372-3. The popularity of the name Gustasp among Zoroastrians in later times seems to have been inspired by the Shahname. Repeated attempts have been made to see in the name ku-us-ta-as-pi, recorded in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III as that of an 8th-century king of Kummukh (Commagene), a form of Iranian ViStaspa, but these have been as often rejected, see lastly M. Mayrhofer, 'Ein altes Problem: "Gustasp" im achten vorchrist­ lichen Jahrhundert ?' Mon. Nyberg II, Acta Iranica 5, 53-7. 6 So first Spiegel, EA I 7oo n. 2. Cf. Lommel, Rei., r6, and see latterly R. Schmitt, 'Medisches und persisches Sprachgut bei Herodot', ZDMG rr7, 1967, 136 n.r36. 7 See Justi, Namenbuch, 253-4. The fravasi of PiSiSyaothna is invoked in Yt XIII.ro3 after that of Spentodata, Kavi ViStaspa's son. .
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