For the early Parsees,6 worship of God was based on the observation of nature. In praying to the creator, they turned towards the rising sun as the most striking and splendid of his manifestations. There they believed to glimpse God’s throne glitteringly encircled by angels. Everyone, even the lowest, could summon the glory of this uplifting service daily to mind. The poor man emerged from his hut, the warrior came forth from his tent, and the most religious of all functions was consummated. The baptismal fire was imparted to the newborn child in such rays and all day long, over an entire lifetime, the Parsee felt himself to be accompanied in all he did by that primordial star. Stars and moon – though equally unreachable, allied as they are with the unbounded – illumined the night. And yet, fire stood by, brightening and warming everyone in proportion to his means. To address prayers in the presence of this representative, to bow down before this infinitely sensitive being, was a pious and pleasant duty. Nothing is purer than a serene sunrise and with just such purity man should kindle and conserve the fire so that it be, and remain, holy like the sun.
Zoroaster seems at first to have transformed this noble pristine nature religion into a meticulous order of worship. Mental prayer, which encompasses and precludes all religions and penetrates down to the whole way of life of only a few God-favoured people, develops in most people only as the ardent and exhilarating sensation of a moment; and after it vanishes, the dissatisfied, unoccupied human being, thrown back upon himself, plunges at once into the most protracted boredom.
To fill this up meticulously with ceremonies, consecration and absolution, toings and froings, bowings and scrapings, is the duty and the prerogative of the priesthood which then century after century breaks its offices down into unending minutiae. Anyone who takes a rapid overview from the earliest, childishly delighted reverence for a rising sun to the crazed behaviour of the Guebres,7 as still occurs even today in India, may glimpse on the one side a fresh new nation rousing itself from sleep at the first light of dawn, and on the other, a benighted people trying to kill ordinary boredom through the boredom of piety.
Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the ancient Parsees did not revere fire alone. Their religion is based on the worth of the combined elements inasmuch as they proclaim God’s existence and might. From this comes the holy dread of polluting water, air and earth. Such reverence before everything which surrounds man in nature is conducive to civic virtues: attentiveness, cleanliness, industriousness are prompted and sustained. The cultivation of the land depended on this; for just as they polluted no river, so too were the canals constructed and kept clean with careful conservation of water, and from their circulation the fruitfulness of the land sprang forth, so that the kingdom of that period was cultivated tenfold more. Everything upon which the sun smiled was tended with the greatest zeal but above all, the vineyard, the sun’s own closest child.
The unusual manner in which they buried their dead derives from the same extreme interdict against defiling the pure elements. The police force itself acted in accord with these principles; the cleanliness of the streets was a religious matter. Even today, when the Guebres have been driven out, thrust aside, despised and may only dwell in disreputable quarters on the city outskirts, a dying person of this denomination may bequeath a sum so that one or another street of the capitol can be thoroughly cleaned. It was through such a lively, practical worship of God that that incredible spread of population, to which history bears witness, became possible.
Such a gentle religion, based upon the omnipresence of God in His works in the sensory realm, must exert a particular influence on morals. Consider its commandments and prohibitions: not to lie, to incur no debts, not to be ungrateful! Every moralist and ascetic will easily cultivate such teachings fruitfully. For the first commandment really comprises the two others and all the rest which arise solely from untruthfulness and infidelity. For this reason in the East the devil is designated simply as the eternal Liar.
Since this religion is conducive to contemplative tranquillity, however, it can easily lead to softness, just as there is something feminine too in the long white garments. And yet, in their dispositions and manners there was also a powerful counter-effect. They bore arms, even during peacetime and in civic life, and exercised in their use in every conceivable way. The most skilful and boisterous horsemanship was customary among them; even their games – such as that played with ball and club on huge courses8 – kept them fit, strong and nimble, while a remorseless system of conscription turned them all, at the monarch’s slightest nod, into heroes.
Let us take a retrospective glance at their sense of God. Originally the public cult was limited to a few fires and was all the more awe-inspiring; then a priesthood invested with great dignity grew by leaps and bounds and the fires too proliferated. That this profoundly inward spiritual force could occasionally rise up against its more worldly rival lies in the very nature of this perennially incompatible relationship – not to mention that the false Smerdis9 who ruled the realm was himself a Magus10 and elevated and supported by his colleagues for a time; so too we encounter the Magi often inspiring dread in rulers.
Dispersed by Alexander’s invasion, not finding favour among his Parthian successors, again raised up and assembled by the Sasanians, they showed themselves ever steadfast to their precepts and worked in opposition to any ruler who disobeyed them. In just this way they rebelled in disgust in every way they could against both sides of the relationship between Chosroes and the lovely Shirin, a Christian.11
Dislodged at last by the Arabs and driven into India, with what remained of them or their spiritual allies in Persia despised and reviled up to the present day – now tolerated, now persecuted according to the whim of a ruler – this religion still persists here and there in its pristine purity, even in wretched outposts, as the poet attempted to put into words in his ‘The Legacy of Old Persian Belief‘.12
That we are indebted to this religion for a great deal over a long stretch of time, that the possibility of a higher culture lay in it and spread over the western portion of the eastern world, is not in doubt. To be sure, it’s extremely difficult to give some sense of how and where this culture extended. Many cities scattered over several regions were vital centres; however, to me the most amazing fact is that the fatal proximity of Indian idol-worship was unable to affect it. It remains striking that the cities of Balkh and Bamiyan stood so near to one another, here the wildest idols were to be seen, fabricated and worshipped on a colossal scale while there the temples of the Pure Fire were kept, large convents of devotees arose and a swarm of Mobeds13 gathered. Just how magnificent the furnishings of such structures must have been is attested by the extraordinary men who emerged from them: the family of the Barmakids,14 who for so long shone as influential officials, until they were at last (like a somewhat similar race of this kind in our own times)15 exterminated and expelled.
If the philosopher constructs a natural, national or governmental system of law on the basis of principles, the historically minded investigator seeks to determine how these situations and relationships have functioned over time. We discover then that in the most ancient Orient all sovereignty derived from the right to declare war. This right lay, like all else, at first in the will and fervour of the people. When one member of a tribe was injured, the remainder rose unbidden to wreak vengeance on the offender. But because the multitude can of course act and deal but cannot lead itself, it delegates leadership in battle – whether by election, custom or habit – to a single individual, either for one campaign or for several; to a truly capable man it confers that hazardous position for his lifetime and indeed, even for his posterity. Thus it comes about that the one person capable of waging a war acquires the right to declare a war.
From this circumstance flows the authority to compel, muster and summon into battle each and every citizen who can be considered willing and ready for combat. Such conscription, to be just and effective, had to be pitiless. Darius the First16 armed himself against dangerous neighbours and his vast populace responded to the hint. An elderly man delivers his three sons with the plea to release the youngest from the campaign and the king returns the boy to him hacked into pieces. The right over life and death is thus made explicit. In battle itself no questioning can be tolerated: for doesn’t it often come to pass that a whole division is readily and clumsily sacrificed without anyone bringing the leader to account?
Nevertheless, among warlike peoples the same conditions occur during the brief periods of peace. It is always war in the king’s circle and nobody at court can be sure of his life. Just so are taxes raised; war makes them indispensable. For this reason as well Darius Codomannus17 prudently assigned fixed regular remittances in place of voluntary contributions. On this basis and with this disposition, Persian kingship rose to supreme might and felicity, only to founder in the end through the proud nobility of a small, fragmented, neighbouring people.18
After exceptional princes had consolidated their fighting forces and brought the flexibility of the masses to its highest level, the Persians appeared dangerous even to far-flung peoples, let alone to those next door.
All were conquered; only the Greeks, disunited among themselves, banded together against the innumerable, everonrushing foe, and made exemplary sacrifice – the first virtue and the last, in which all others are implicit. In this way they gained respite so that, as Persian might toppled from within, Philip of Macedon could form a united front, gather remaining Greeks around himself and in exchange for the loss of their individual autonomy prepare for a victory over oppressors from without. His son invaded the Persians and won the empire.
They had made themselves not only dreaded but thoroughly hated by the Greek nation, for they waged war against both the state and the religion at the same time. Devotees of a religion in which the heavenly bodies, fire and the elements were revered as godlike entities in the world at large, they found it utterly reprehensible that others could confine their gods in dwelling-places and pray to them under roofs. So they torched and razed the temples and in so doing erected monuments that inspired everlasting hatred of themselves, for the Greeks in their wisdom decided never to raise the temples again out of their ashes but instead vindictively left them lying, in order to provoke future revenge. This determination to revenge their own sullied religious sites the Greeks brought with them onto Persian soil; much cruelty becomes explicable as a result, such that even the burning of Persepolis could thereby be excused.
The cultic practices of the Magians, which – far removed from their original simplicity – required temples and convents, were also destroyed, the Magians themselves hunted down and dispersed; nevertheless, many of them assembled in hiding to preserve both belief and divine service for a more propitious time. Indeed, their patience was very sorely tested. Upon the death of Alexander, his brief hegemony collapsed and the empire shattered; the Parthians seized control of the part which particularly concerns us at present. The language, customs and religion of the Greeks were native to them. And so five hundred years swept over the ashes of the old temples and altars amid which the sacred fire was kept continually glimmering, so that when the Sasanians, still professing the old beliefs, restored the earlier cult, at the beginning of the third century of our era, a number of Magians and Mobeds, who had secretly preserved themselves and their convictions along and across the border with India, at once appeared. The old Persian language was reintroduced, Greek was proscribed, and the foundation was laid again for a national identity. Now, over a period of four centuries, we discover the mythical prehistory of events in Persia preserved to some extent through echoes in both poetry and prose. This glorious dawn affords unending delight; the multiplicity of characters and happenings awakens enormous interest.
What we understand of the art and architecture of this epoch, however, seems to involve little more than pomp and splendour, magnitude and spaciousness; and how could it be otherwise, since they were obliged to derive their art from the West, itself already so profoundly debased. The poet himself possesses a seal ring of Shapur the First, an onyx, obviously incised by a western artisan of the period, perhaps a prisoner of war.19 And should the seal-carver of the conquering Sasanians have been any more skilful than the seal-carver of conquered Valentinian?20 How the situation looks with the coins of that period is, alas, all too familiar to us. Even the poetic and fabulous elements of those surviving monuments have been degraded little by little into historical prose through the efforts of connoisseurs. From this example we can easily grasp how a people can stand on a high ethical and religious level, surround themselves with pomp and pageantry and yet still be considered barbarians with respect to the arts.
Nevertheless, if we are to value Oriental – and especially Persian – poetry of a later period (without exaggerating its merits to our own eventual distaste and embarrassment), we must also consider where true and estimable poetry really may be found in those times.
If one keeps India pre-eminently in view, not very much seems to have been lost from the West to the Near East; but even though that madly monstrous religion21 could not be acceptable in any way to worshippers of fire and the elements, any more than that abstruse philosophy would be to a person of vitality; even so there were writings of worldly wisdom from there [India] which were accepted as wholly welcome to all humanity; for the Fables of Bidpai22 were held in the highest esteem and thereby wrecked a future poetry in its deepest sense. From that same source we also have chess, a game which (in league with that same worldly wisdom)23 is wholly devoted to the ruination of the poetic spirit. Keeping this presupposition in mind, we shall come to praise and admire the naturalness of the later Persian poets exceedingly (as soon as they may be invoked in a befitting context) and the way in which they struggle to sidestep and perhaps even triumph over such disadvantages.
The proximity of Byzantium, the wars with the emperors of the West, and the fluctuating circumstances which result, end up producing a mixture in which the Christian religion intertwines with that of the old Parsees, though not without remonstrances from the Mobeds and local guardians of the faith. But how many troubles, indeed the great calamity itself which assailed that outstanding prince, Chosroes Parviz, had their origin in this circumstance, all the more so because the charming and adorable Shirin held fast to her Christian faith!
All this, even considered in cursory fashion, impels us to declare that the precepts and the practices of the Sasanians are fully worthy of praise; they were simply not powerful enough to save themselves when they stood ringed about by enemies in a most turbulent time. After a decent resistance they were subjugated by the Arabs whom Muhammad had unified into a terrifying force.