Zoroastrian : adherent of the religion founded by Zarathustra, followers of Avesta or Zend-Avesta. Practically wiped out by Mohammedanism in Persia, it survives there in isolated areas but more prosperously in India where followers are known as Parsis.
... Aurobindo that there has to be not only an ascent into the Spirit but also a full descent of the Spirit. You also speak of the double movement in your writings but in the final resort you lean to the Zoroastrian-Christian-Islamic emphasis on the paradisal otherwhere. Even the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which testified to the importance of earth-life by accepting numerous rebirths, put their hope of total... laid out vastly as well as minutely in his works. Everyone is inclined to stick to one past religion or another and discover in it an older formulation of whatever is newly revealed. I am a Parsi Zoroastrian and I could try to pick out from the Avesta and the religious traditions following it a "prescience" of the Aurobindonian spirituality and philosophy. As you must know, much of early Christianity... Roman Catholicism, having had as my educational background St. Xavier's School and College and the association with European Jesuits from early boyhood at the same time that I steeped myself in Zoroastrian lore. It is clear from your book that the wideness and richness of your inner life is due to the fact that you came to Catholic Christianity from the outside. If you had been born to it, you would ...
... community in Bombay; descendants of the Zoroastrian Persians who fled their homeland to India in the 7 th and 8 th centuries to escape Muslim persecution. His father was a prominent doctor in Bombay and the family adhered to the traditional Zoroastrian faith. Young Kekoo passed through a phase of religious fervor in his childhood and prayed daily from the Zoroastrian Book of Prayers called Avesta, in the ...
... I know are the family of General Sethna whose daughter, Shirnaz, is writing her doctorate thesis on Blake and Zoroaster - she has found a surprising number of possible Page 277 Zoroastrian elements in Blake. Your affinity with the 'fire' would in that case be one more link with the Tyger. I much look forward to read the Shakespeare book but am at present in the middle of Sisirkumar... Fire-worshippers attracted several Romantic poets - Byron in Giaour, Moore in a part of L olla Rookh and Landor in Gebir. I shouldn't be surprised if Blake's preoccupation with "fires" had a Zoroastrian touch somewhere. Yes, the word I couldn't quite make out must be "commander". As for seeing a Tyger, why do you have to visit a Nature-Reserve where this great animal will have to be drugged ...
... objected to as being sectarian. But, on the other hand, we should be de-nationalising it if we refused to admit whatever ideas or terms in it distinguished it from the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Jain or even Buddhist culture. It has, for all its catholicity, characteristics of its own, and these characteristics it must retain in one manner or another if it is to be in any valid... not think and pray with a consciousness in direct tune with the typical Indian spirituality; but if anyone takes objection to them because of their non-Islamic, non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Zoroastrian, non-Sikh, non-Jain and even non-Buddhist suggestion, then he fails to understand what ultimate India is and he is trying to rob her of all genuine cultural Page 21 value and ...
... all highly refined people and very developed in the fields of art, music, literature, poetry, the sciences, etc. Do you attribute these special qualities as having come from the practice of the Zoroastrian faith? If so, what is it in the religion that allows for this special development so prevalent among Parsis? Zubin Mehta, the interne itionally famous conductor and musician comes to mind as one... their temples in Persia on their ships that crossed the Arabian Sea. The ruler of Gujarat welcomed them and gave them religious refuge there. They promised to live as his own people. One of the Zoroastrian High Priests asked for a cup of milk that he then mixed with water. He said, “We shall live as one people just as this milk has been mixed with water.” Zoroaster was one of the great prophets who ...
... fact that Asa - 'Truth' and 'Righteousness' are the highest ideals of the Zoroastrian." What is the subject of the verb "are"? It can only be Asa as the sentence stands.I would suggest a slight modification: "...the fact that 'Truth' and 'Righteousness', which are what Asa means, are the highest ideals of the Zoroastrian." Your exposition of the Parsi religion is both simple and systematic ...
... original French of that haunting line you have quoted is - Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? - Where are the snows of yesteryear? Knowing me to be a Parsi, you have inquired about the Zoroastrian religion. The original sense of it is still a matter of controversy. The ancient Greeks who were nearest to it among foreigners took it as a dualism, the God of Light and Goodness, Ormuzd, pitted... reject the bad. By extension the superhumans may or must be visioned as enjoying freedom of will. Then Ahriman becomes a fallen angel. But his fallenness from angelhood is nowhere made explicit in Zoroastrian metaphysics. (8.3.1984) What a pleasure it will be if you can drop in at my new place as you did at my old one. I very clearly remember you appearing out of the blue. I think the ...
... old Teaching. When this is admitted, one cannot just say: "It has all been said before two thousand years ago and in other ages too." One cannot remain simply a Christian, a Buddhist, a Judaean, a Zoroastrian, a Mohammedan, a Bahai or even an adherent to the Vedantic Hinduism which served as the base and background to Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga — one cannot just be any of these things and still be ...
... do Yoga, and especially a Yoga like Sri Aurobindo's whose ultimate aim is not to pass into a beatific beyond (whether the Vedantic Liberation, the Buddhist Nirvana, the Vaishnava Bliss-world, the Zoroastrian or Christian Heaven, the Muslim Paradise), there has to be an organised collective life with a certain minimum of rules. An extreme tolerance is attempted because human beings are so various. Sri ...
... over a sacred shirt (sudra). Even before I joined the Ashram I had given up wearing the sacred thread no less than the sacred shirt of the Parsis. Both these characteristics are more a sign of the Zoroastrian religion as distinct from the Aurobindonian path than the Hindu sacred thread which Champaklal kept wearing. For the latter is exclusive to the Brahmins among the Hindus and does not have the universal ...
... Perhaps you will say that I am so enthusiastic about the Indian spiritual phenomenon because I am an Indian born to it. Actually I am not such a dyed-in-the-wool Indian: I was born a Parsi Zoroastrian, brought up in a single-truth religion like any Christian or Muslim or Jew. I arrived at the Indian synthesis by a partly natural and partly willed process. And, having been single-truthed for nearly ...
... l traditions including that of the Veda and Upanishads point under different figures to the same thing. In the Upanishads it is the Daityas that smite with evil all that the gods create, in the Zoroastrian tradition it is Ahriman coming across the work of Ahura Mazda, the Chaldean tradition uses a different figure. But the significance is the same; it is the perception of something that has struck ...
... significance & refer to the good and evil powers & mortals influenced by them. If this prove to be the truth, and the close contiguity & probable historical connection between the Vedic Indians & the Zoroastrian Persians gives it a great likelihood, then the whole elaborate edifice built up by the scholars of an Aryan invasion and an Aryan culture begins to totter & seek the ground, there to lie in the dust ...
... it is legitimate for one to counter the scholars by asking: "Was the Rigvedic Soma ever a plant at all?" This question is supported by the reviewer's words: "... the Vedic Indians and the pre-Zoroastrian Iranians worshipped a plant called soma (Avestan haoma) which was at the same time a god." There is also the information to be derived from the reviewer that even in later times Soma was more ...
... Sufi developments of Islam do, but this is so because overtly or covertly the influence of Hinduism has been felt by them. Hence to be a Hindu, as distinguished from a Christian or Muslim or Jew or Zoroastrian or even Buddhist, is to be steeped in the tradition of a spirituality which, while admitting of various kinds of contact and communion with the Infinite Eternal and so granting the validity of various ...
... in which their holy temple was Page 242 shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:" As the different ...
... framework of Islam, the masters of Sufiism speak of their unity and of their common "work", and they believe in the unity of knowledge. This explains why the Muslim Rumi had disciples with Christian, Zoroastrian and various other backgrounds. The v great Sufi "invisible teacher" Khidr is said to be a Jew. The Moghul Prince Dora Shikoh identified Sufi teachings in the Vedas and Upanishads. Even Pythagoras ...
... world, the accumulated memories of the human race. Fable, fiction, history, myth, legend - India, Japan, Arabia, Persia, Jerusalem, Italy, Guyana - Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian all agreeably mingle in this humanistic pot pourri; and the result is an utterly wholesome meal for children, young and old alike. The Mother's concern is obvious enough: How are the children ...
... assisted and armed with strength, manhood and energy. Dayananda has brought this idea of the divine right and truth into the Veda; the Veda is as much and more a book of divine Law as Hebrew Bible or Zoroastrian Avesta. The cosmic element is not less conspicuous in the Veda; the Rishis speak always of the worlds, the firm laws that govern them, the divine workings in the cosmos. But Dayananda goes farther; ...
... between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other,—invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light ...
... temple or at home the urn bearing the golden bouquet of flames flying up, sustained by logs of fragrant sandalwood. This fire addressed Page 135 as 'Son of God' in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, symbolised the Divine Presence in the midst of the world, in the midst of each living creature, an 'objective correlative' of the ineffable secrecy in the human heart." The true nature ...
... relevance of this legend to Parsis is not generally known, though the word "magi" is the plural of the old Persian word "magus" which denotes a member of an ancient Persian priestly caste. The magi were Zoroastrian priests and the earliest tradition 1 about the three "wise men", as the English Bible translates the term "magi", is that their names were typically Parsi-sounding: Hormiz-dah, Yazdegerd and Perozadh ...
... is another point. Sri Aurobindo is not only one more teacher with direct spiritual experience: he is also quite evidently a master of the widest spirituality compassed so far on earth. I am a Zoroastrian by birth, a member of the Parsi community. Compared to what Sri Aurobindo discloses, Zoroastrianism is elementary. And, in the light of my study, so too is every other religion of the past. Hinduism ...
... the liberation of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity by the Persian king Cyrus (559-530 B.C.), who helped them rebuild their temple at Jerusalem and whom the Book of Isaiah hails as "Messiah", Zoroastrian doctrines entered Judaism and through Judaism infiltrated Christianity. Zoroastrianism believes in heaven and hell, the soul's survival and the resurrection of bodily life at the end of time when ...
... accustomed to face in temple or at home the urn bearing the golden bouquet of flames flying up, sustained by logs of fragrant sandalwood. This fire, addressed as "Son of God" in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, symbolised the Divine Presence in the midst of the world, in the midst of each living creature, an "objective correlative" of the ineffable secrecy in the human heart. The sandalwood ...
... of the Hindus to resist the Muslim aggression into India was spread over a period of 600 years from 715 AD up to 1328 AD. This contrasts with the swift Muslim victories in Persia (Iran) over the Zoroastrian Sassanians and in Mesopotamia, Egypt and North Africa over the Romans (Byzantines). The Muslims could not subjugate India so easily. And even after subjugating different parts of the country, they ...
... themselves have nobody markedly spiritual. PURANI: Haven't they got Meher Baba? SATYENDRA: Oh yes, one example. SRI AUROBINDO: But this one example is considered the Saviour of the world! Zoroastrians claim to have had seers and magi among them. They ought to have some spiritual figures. NIRODBARAN: Have you read of J. L. Banerji's death during the Congress election? SRI AUROBINDO: I thought ...
... wisdom (b) Materialism, Asceticism and the Middle Path (c) Spirit of tolerance, assimilation and synthesis (d) True understanding of religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. (e) Synthesis of spiritual experience. 2. Indian Literature: (a) Sanskrit and Tamil (b) Birth of modem Indian languages (c) ...
... German Fathers, one of whom influenced me greatly. I am a Parsi by birth, belonging to a community which follows the religion called Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster ranks with the greatest religious figures of the past. But the moment I was touched by Sri Aurobindo both Zoroastrianism and the influence of Roman Catholicism vanished. I could not even rank Sri Aurobindo as just the latest representative of the ...
... should cover not only the Indian history of yogic science but also the study of yogic methods and their results as we find in the esoteric core of a number of religions such as Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and even in Systems like the Chinese Taoism. Our Intention should be to bring to ourselves the treasures that are available in the records of yogic knowledge, so that our efforts result ...
... truth not properly gauged by Allah's own followers. Though they have rightly felt a great vital force released by their Prophet, their goal is still the life beyond just as in Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Buddhism, except that Buddhism for all its emphasis on a supra-cosmic Nirvana as the summum bonum has the doctrine of reincarnation which implies a sustained interest in earth-life ...
... the Vedic image of the struggle between the divine and the Titanic powers, the sons Page 172 of the Light and the undivided Infinity and the children of the Darkness and Division, in Zoroastrianism by Ahuramazda and Ahriman, and in later religions in the contest between God and his angels and Satan or Iblis and his demons for the possession of human life and the human soul. It is these ...
... Proto-Indo-Aryan, 282 Proto-Indo-European, 266, 282 Proto-Indo-Europeans, 263, 276-7 Proto-Iranian, 282 Proto-South Aryans, 208 Proto-Zoroastrians, 210 Ptolemy (Geography), 206 Pulindas, 296 Punjāb, 163, 182, 186, 212, 216, 238-41, 283 Pundras, 296 pur/pura (= nagara), 192, 196, 197 ... Yamuna, 163, 283, 290, 354, 356, 357, 358 YarimTepe, 311, 312 Yaska, 193-4, 283, 288 Yaz complex, 228 Yenisei, 323 Zarathustra, 270, 271, 402 Zarathustrianism/Zoroastrianism, 210, 271 Zeuner, Frederick, 249 Zimmer, 344 Page 434 ...
... with a one-track mind. I have sincerely studied what the great religions have to offer at their highest. Judaism's fervent energetic self-dedication to its grandiose all-demanding God, Zoroastrianism's call for a purity of prayer like a fire rising up to an overarching Truth-supporting Divinity and for a smiling service to one's fellow Truth-lovers in need, Christianity's ardour for a World-Saviour ...
... apt my glimpse of the religion to which you belong and which was also mine until I joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and found there a widening and deepening and heightening of the central urge of Zoroastrianism as well as an exceeding of it as of all other religions not only by a direct spirituality but also by what struck me as a new vision in even the spiritual realm. Yes, what you say about ...
... desire, and this conception of the Rig Veda and the same opposition of good and evil otherwise expressed, with less psychological subtlety, with more ethical directness in the scriptures of the Zoroastrians, our ancient neighbours and kindred, proceeded probably from a common original discipline of the Aryan culture. Finally, I found that the systematic symbolism of the Veda was extended to the ...
... importance to realize that the evolution, the road back to the glory of the Origin, started from the absolute negation, from the extreme contraries of that Origin. In some traditions and religions (Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and even Christianity) the separation between Positive and Negative, Light and Darkness has been seen as permanent. In the Vedantic view, which is the basis of Sri Aurobindo and the ...
... and therefore a direction and a sense.) In many of those traditions the universe was divided into a good and a bad half, for ever. They were Manichean, a view which may have originated among the Zoroastrians. In such a cosmic constellation individual beings can be saved when lost in the bad world, but never that world itself. What is explained as a plunge of the Godhead into its contrary cannot be corrected ...
... level. It is here that certain features of universal religions could be studied with the methods of comparative studies. Particularly we may emphasise the study of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. Along with these religions, there should be a detailed study of the lives of great personalities associated with these religions, or ...
... perspective. A huge rectangular building complex 130 x 100 m. excavated at Togolok-21 has been identified, undoubtedly correctly, as a temple "used by proto-Zoroastrians whose religious beliefs and rites became (in changed form) part of official Zoroastrianism" [in the words of Sarianidi]. The most spectacular discovery at Togolok-21 is the earliest evidence of Haoma cult. The old problem concerning the original ...
... force and by treaties. He founded fire-temples through his whole empire, from the frontiers of China to those of the Greek empire. The succeeding kings made their religion (i.e., Zoroastrianism) the obligatory state-religion for Persis and Irāk. In consequence, the Buddhists were banished from these countries and had to emigrate to the countries east of Balkh... Then came Islam." ...
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