Persian Literature, by Elizabeth A. Reed

105. “Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?”Jupiter?” (Acts xix, 35.) This question of the town clerk is strangely illustrated by an inscription found by Chandler near the aqueduct at Ephesus, which states that “It is notorious that not only among the Ephesians, but also everywhere among the Greek nations, temples are consecrated to her,” etc.

106. Anthon’s Class. Dict.

107. A principal seat of Ishtar’s worship.

108. The end of this line, and all the remaining lines of Column I, are lost, but some mutilated fragments indicate that Namtar is commanded to afflict Ishtar with dire diseases of the eyes, the feet, the heart, the head, etc.

109. A sign of violent grief in the East, forbidden in Deut. xiv, 1; also Lev. xix, 28.

110. Nabonidus says in his inscription (Col. II, 17) Oh, sun, protect this temple, together with the moon, thy father.

111. A genius often mentioned, who here acts the part of a judge, pronouncing the absolution of Ishtar.

112. Tablet K, 162, British Museum, translated by H. Fox Talbot, F.R. S. Records of the Past, Vol. I, 1st Series.

113. The statement of Herodotus concerning the attack upon the sacred bull is probably correct, even though the Egyptian monuments claim that Cambyses, and also the Roman emperors, bowed down to the Egyptian gods. We may conclude that Cambyses, in doing reverence to the gods of Egypt, was following in the footsteps of his cool and politic father (Cyrus), and was guided in these acts by the precedent which his father had set in reference to the gods of Babylonia.

114. Hindu Literature, p. 59.

115. .sp 1

“Let down our golden everlasting chain,
Whose strong embrace holds heaven and earth and men;
I fix the chain to great Olympus height,
And the vast world hangs trembling in my sight.”—Il.viii, 19-26.

117. Ninth tablet of the Epic of Gisdhubar.

118. Hindu Literature, pp. 126-148.

119. Anderson—Norse Mythology, pp. 104-434.

120. Hindu Literature, p. 126.

121. Alborz, being changed into Elburz, became the name of a mountain range on the southern shore of the Caspian sea, and Mount Demavend, its highest peak, is looked upon as the home of the Simurgh, and it is also the scene of many mythical adventures.

123. Trans. by Paul Guieysse. Rec. of P., Vol. III, p. 48. The belief in the celestial origin of the Nile survived in Egypt as lately as the time of Joinville. (Histoire de Saint Louis, Chap. II.)

124. Hel, the world of the dead, irrespective of character.

125. The first record of the worship of Ardvi Sura is in a cuneiform inscription by Artaxerxes Mnemon (404-361), in which her name is corrupted into Anahata. Artaxerxes Mnemon appears to have been an eager promoter of her worship, as he is said to have first erected the statues of Venus-Anahita in Babylon, Suza, and Ecbatana, and to have taught her worship to the Persians, the Bactrians, and the people of Damas and Sardes (Clemens Alexandrians, Protrept. 5, on the authority of Berosus; about 260 B.C.).

126. Hindu Literature, p. 39.

128. Sayce, Lec. Rel. Babylonians, pp. 293-299.

129. Hymn to Osiris on the stele of Amon-em-ha. Translated by D. Mallet. Rec. of P., IV, 21.

130. Hindu Literature, p. 267.

131. Anderson—Norse Mythology, pp. 75-190.

132. Bahram Yast, vii.

133. Bahram Yast, xiii.

134. Minokhirad—62 and 87. Trans. by West.

135. Rig-veda Sanhita—Wilson’s Trans., Vol. V, p. 102

137. See the Bundehesh.

138. This word is frequently spelled Daeva.

140. Chinvat, the popular orthography of this word, is adopted as it represents the pronunciation.

141. History of Vartan by Elisaeus (Newman’s trans.), p. 9.

142. Gibbon, Chap. 23.

144. Hindu Literature, p. 27.

145. Chips, Vol. I, p. 82.

146. Prof. Darmesteter and M. de Harlez claim that the Zend was the language of Aryan Media.

148. Haug’s Rel. of Parsis, p. 123.

149. Diodorus (xvii, 72) and Curtius (v. 7) declare that Alexander burned the citadel and royal palace at Persepolis in a drunken frenzy at the instigation of the Athenian courtezan Thais, and in revenge for the destruction of the Greek temple by Xerxes. Arrian (Exped. Alex., iii, 18) also speaks of his burning the royal palace of the Persians.

150. Sacred Books of the East, Vol. IV, Int., p. 39.

151. This is a literal rendering of the passage, the meaning of all the words being certain, except the four which are written in italics.

152. In the Elamite and Babylonian versions Avesta is simply rendered “law” or “laws.”

153. Shapur II ascended the throne about A.D. 309.

154. Sa. Books of East, Vol. IV. Int., p. 2.

156. Chips, Vol. I, p. 119.

162. Codex numbered 5.

163. Dastur Jamaspji Minocheherji Jamasp Asana, Ph. D. of Tübingen, Hon. D.C. L. Oxon. Dr. L.H. Mills applied to the Dastur for the loan of his manuscript to enable him to complete a critical edition of the Zend and Pahlavi texts of the Gathas, and Dastur Jamaspji not only loaned it to Dr. Mills, but most generously presented it to the University of Oxford.

166. Clement, who is supposed to have written in the first century of the Christian era, claims that the original name was Nebrod, but that “the magician being destroyed by lightning, his name was changed to Zoroaster by the Greeks on account of the living Ζωσαν stream of the star (ἀστέρος) being poured upon him.”—Clementine Homilies, IX, Chap. 5.

167. Masudi, the noted Arabian historian and traveler who wrote about A.D. 950, remarks that “according to the Magi, Zoroaster lived two hundred and eighty years before Alexander the Great,” or about 610 B. C, in the time of the Median king Cyaxares.

168. Dr. Haug, while maintaining the personality of Zarathustra Spitama, claims that after his death, and possibly during his life, the name of Zarathustra was adopted by a successive priesthood. (Essays, p. 297).

169. Vendidad, Farg. xix, 4.

170. Rig-veda, ii, 30, 40.

171. The bird Karsipta dwells in the heavens. Were he living on the earth he would be the king of birds. He brought the law into the Var of Yima, and recites the Avesta in the language of birds (Bund. xix and xxiv). As a bird, because of the swiftness of his flight, was often considered an incarnation of lightning, and as the thunder was supposed to be the voice of a god speaking from above, so the song of a bird was often thought to be the utterance of a god.

172. Chips, Vol. I, p. 167.

173. Clas. Dict., p. 1015.

174. Clement says: “The Persians, first taking coals from the lightning which fell from heaven, preserved them by ordinary fuel, and honoring the heavenly fire as a god, were honored by the fire itself, with the first kingdom, as its first worshippers. After them the Babylonians, stealing coals from the fire that was there, and conveying it safely to their own home and worshipping it, they themselves also reigned in order. And the Egyptians, acting in like manner, and calling the fire in their own dialect Phthaë, which is translated Hephaistus or Osiris, he who first reigned amongst them is called by its name.”—Clementine Homilies, IX, Chap. vi.

175. Chips, Vol. I, pp. 162-177.

176. Sa. Bks. of the East, Vol. IV, Int., pp. 56, 83.

177. Sa. Bks. of the East, Vol. XXXI, pp. 6-194.

178. Having an especial Yast.

179. The first month is called Fravisha, and indicates the particular time of this celebration. Fravisha also means the departed souls of ancestors, and these angels or protectors are numberless. Every being of the good creation, whether living, dead or still unborn, has its own Fravisha or guardian angel, who has existed from the beginning.

180. Haug was the first to call attention to this striking coincidence with Hindu mythology; in the Aitareya, and Satapatha Brahmanas, in the Atharva-veda, and in the Ramayana, the gods are numbered at thirty-three.

182. See Yasna, xix.

183. This expression probably points to an immigration of Zarathustranism.

186. From the fifth to the twelfth.

187. When a dog dies his spirit passes to Ardvi Sura, the goddess of the living waters that pour into the celestial sea. The penalty for frightening a pregnant dog was from ten to two hundred stripes.

188. As the symbol and instrument of sovereignty. He reigned supreme by the strength of the ring and of the poniard.

189. Spenta Armaiti is a general name for heavenly counsellors, and they represent also the genii of the earth and waters. Under Ahura were six Amesha Spentas, which were at first mere personifications of virtues and moral powers, but as their lord and father ruled over the whole world, in later times they took each a part of the world under especial care. The dominion of the trees and waters was vested in Haurvatad and Ameretad, or Health and Immortality; here we find the influence of the old Indo-Iranian formulæ, in which waters and trees were invoked as the springs of health and life. Perfect Sovereignty had molten brass for his emblem, as the god in the storm established his empire by means of that “molten brass,” the fire of lightning, and he thus became the king of metals in general. Asha Vahista, the holy order of the world, as maintained chiefly by the sacrificial fire, became the genius of fire. Armaiti seems to have become a goddess of the earth as early as the Indo-Iranian period, and Vohu-mano, or Good Thought, had the living creation left to his superintendence. These Amesha Spentas projected, as it were, out of themselves as many demons who were hardly more than inverted images of the gods they were to oppose; for instance. Health and Immortality were opposed by Sickness and Decay, but these very demons were changed into the rulers of hunger and thirst when they came in contact with the genii of the waters and the trees. Vohu-mano, or Good Thought, was reflected in Evil Thought, and after these came the symmetrical armies of numberless gods and fiends.—Darmesteter in Sa. Bks. E.

190. According to the hymns of the Rig-veda, “Yama the king, the gatherer of the people, has descried a path for many which leads from the depths to the heights; he first found out a resting place from which nobody can turn out the occupants; on the way the forefathers have gone, the sons will follow them.”—Rig-veda, X, 14, 1, 2.

191. The Druj went back to hell in the shape of a fly. The fly that came to smell of a dead body was thought to be a corpse-spirit that came to take possession of the dead in the name of Ahriman.

192. Rig-veda, X, 18, 1.

193. Hindu Literature, p. 35.

194. Strabo XV, 14; Herod. I, 138.

195. The Mosaic law mentions only seventeen crimes as being worthy of capital punishment.

196. Blackstone’s Commentaries, IV, 4. 15, 18.

197. Says Prof. Darmesteter: “It may be doubted whether the murder of a water-dog could actually have been punished with ten thousand stripes unless we suppose that human endurance was different in ancient Persia from what it is elsewhere; in the time of Chardin the number of stripes inflicted on the guilty never exceeded three hundred; in the old German law, two hundred; in the Mosaic law, forty.”—Sa. Bks. E., Vol. IV, p. 99, Int.

198. The penalties for uncleanness in men were far more severe upon woman; after giving birth to a child she was forbidden to taste of water, as her touch would defile the element, and at times her food was handed to her upon a long-handled spoon. Woman was made a creature of contract, and disposed of by a bill of sale; like land or cattle, she was classed under “the fifth contract,” being considered more valuable than cattle, but far cheaper than real estate. They were sometimes sold in the cradle and often when only two or three years of age.—See Dosabhoy Framjee’s work on The Parsis, p. 77.

199. Every one has a noose cast around his neck; when a man dies, if he is righteous, the noose falls from his neck; but if wicked, they drag him with that noose down to hell.—(Farg., V, 8.)

200. Fargard, xix, 27-32.

201. Visparad, II, V, XVI, XXII.

203. Sir M. Monier-Williams, Trans. Vic. Ins., Vol. XXV, p. 10.

204. The word Qur’an, a reading, comes from the verb qara’a, “to read.” It is also called El Forqān, “the discrimination,” a word borrowed from the Hebrew. It is also designated by the words El Mus-haf, volume, or El Kitāb, the book.

205. The chronology of this conquest is in many points uncertain, as the accounts differ. The most important event, however, in the long war was the battle of Nehāwend, which took place probably about A.D. 641.

206. Chap. II, v. 100.

207. It was probably about A.D. 571.

208. Chap. liii, v. 19-20.

209. It took place on June 16, A.D. 622.

211. About A.D. 629.

213. June 8, A.D. 632.

215. Koran, Chaps. 56, 67, 76, Palmer’s Trans. The more sensuous portions of these descriptions are necessarily omitted.

216. Chap. vii, v. 88, 56, 67.

217. Chap. xiv, v. 95.

218. Chap. viii, v. 15.

220. Chap. iv, v. 1.

221. Chap. iv, v. 24.

222. Koran, iv, v. 15-20.

223. Koran, iv, v. 38.

224. Chap. iv, v. 59.

225. About A.D. 570.

226. Canopus was a star which stood at the right in the heavens when the observer was looking from Hirat, and consequently it lay in the direction of Arabia, which the prophet claimed as the home of wisdom, and therefore wisdom was represented by Canopus.

227. Translated by Almokaffa about A.D. 770.

228. See preface, Eastwick’s version, p. 10.

229. The planet Mars.

230. From Sir Wm. Jones’ revision of the Hitopadesa.

231. Sometimes called Pilpay.

232. That there were historic materials of great antiquity, we have the testimony of Herodotus and Ctesius, and also of the book of Esther—“On that night the king could not sleep and he commanded to bring the books of records of the chronicles, and they were read before the king.”—Esther vi, 1. Also it is written. “And all the acts of his power and his might and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?”—Esther x, 2.

235. The name of Firdusi is said to have been given him by the Governor of Tus, because his garden, which was called Ferdus (Paradise), was looked after by the father and brother of the poet, and it was in this delightful spot that he began the versification of the great national epic, the Shah Namah.

236. The sacred well at Mecca, the waters of which are claimed to have wondrous healing power.

237. In addition to the Shah Namah, Firdusi composed a poem of nine thousand couplets on the loves of Yusuf and Zulaikha, that abounds in elegant and spirited diction, but it is inferior to the greater epic, partly in consequence of his adoption of the same metre which he used in the Shah Namah, and which was well adapted to that martial poem, but not at all appropriate for the expression of the gentle strains of a love song.

238. Kaiumers is represented as the grandson of Noah.

239. About A.D. 636.

240. See Hindu Literature, Chapters II and III.

241. Unless otherwise indicated, the poetical quotations in this legend will be from Atkinson’s Translation.

242. The Anka of the Arabians.

244. The Narcissus, to which the beautiful eyes of Eastern women are often compared.

245. Called the “Serpent King” because he at one time allowed an evil creature to kiss his shoulder, and from the spot two fearful serpents sprang that required human brains for their food. The king used to select the victims by lot, and when the blacksmith Kaveh found his name upon the fatal register he tore the document in pieces, and

“On his javelin’s point
He fixed his leathern apron for a banner,
And lifting it high he went abroad
To call the people to a task of vengeance.”

The multitude of rebels joined a foreign foe, and the hated Zohak was destroyed, and then the leathern banner was splendidly adorned with gold and jewels, and it is said that this legend gave rise to the blacksmith’s apron as the royal ensign of Persia.

246. It appears to have been not unusual amongst the secluded women of the East to fall deeply in love with men of whom they knew very little. Josephus claims that the king’s daughter betrayed the city of Sava in Ethiopia into the hands of Moses, having fallen in love with his valor and bravery as she saw him from the walls of the city gallantly leading the Egyptian host. Dido was won merely by the fame of Æneas, and Kotzebue has pictured Elvira as enamored of the glory of Pizarro; but when at last she discovered the savage and merciless disposition of the conqueror, she taunted him with being a fraud. The lovely Desdemona affords another instance:

Oth.—“Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still questioned me the story of my life.
*     *     *     *     *     *
“I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances.
*     *     *     *     *     *
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.”
(Othello, Act. 1, Sc. 3)

247. This picture is highly suggestive of the Demon King of Ceylon, who is so prominent in Hindu mythology, especially in the Ramayana.

248. Firdusi thought proper to bestow upon his hero a gigantic stature and marvelous physical powers, but other classic writers have done the same. It will be remembered that Hercules had but completed his eighth month before he strangled the serpents that Juno sent to devour him, and Homer says of Otus and Ephialtes:

“The wondrous youths had scarce nine winters told,
When high in air, tremendous to behold,
Nine ells aloft they reared their towering heads,
And full nine cubits broad their shoulders spread.
Proud of their strength and more than mortal size,
The gods they challenge and affect the skies.”
Odyssey XI, 310.

249. The blacksmith’s apron.

250. Herodotus speaks of a people confederated with the army of Xerxes who employed the noose.

251. Kai-kaus, the second Persian king belonging to the dynasty of Kainanides.

252. In the Shah Namah, where so much fiction is founded upon so little historic fact, we find, as in Hindu literature, an active race of demons. These are generally defined as being in human shape, with horns, long ears, and sometimes with tails, like the monkeys in the Ramayana. Again, they assume the characteristics of the Rakshasas in Hindu mythology, and appear as enchanters, sorcerers, etc.—(Compare Hindu Literature, pp. 189-232.)