8. Cases of priests are known who officiated as family priests at the houses of their patrons, and, at the same time, did some other kind of work, e.g., providing the daily Bazar. 9. The Parsees have also two classes of Clergy, the Regular and the Secular. The latter are those, who, at times, officiate as clergy and generally attend to their other work. 10. The Parsees also have, like some of the Parish priests of mediæval England, a class of priests known as Panthakis, who have some salaried priests under them. The Panthakis are somewhat like middle-men between the laymen, spoken of as their Behdins, and the regular priests who perform the required ceremonies as asked by the Panthakis. If a parishioner has his own household Panthaki and if he wants certain ceremonies to be performed by other priests, either he has to give some extra fees to his own household Panthaki, or the latter receives some percentage from the other priest or priests. The Parsees have nothing like "the letters of Fraternity" of the Medieval Christians. But a practice seems to grow now, which may, one day perhaps come to be something like what was implied in the letters of fraternity. Some Bazams or religious clubs or societies announce, that if one paid Rs.50 or Rs. 100 or so to its funds, the name of the donor after his death, or of his relative as directed, shall be recited in that Society's or Club's Jashan prayers. So, at The Parsees have no institutions like the monasteries. present, there are no religious houses which one can use like the modern Banks, as in the case of the medieval Christian monasteries. But it appears from Firdousi, that the Fire-temples of the ancient Parsees did serve to a great extent the purpose of modern Banks, 2 1 For the reason why they have no monasteries, vide my paper on the Phongys of Burma, before the Anthropological Society of Bombay read in 1922. (Vol. XII No. 4 pp. 458-477). 2 Vide my Gujarati "Iranian Essays " Part I. p. 113. IN OLD IRANIAN LITERATURE. I There are few scientific discoveries or theories of the last century that have created so much stir among the learned world as that of Evolution, which is Introduction. spoken of as having revolutionized our thoughts of God and His creation. But the stir seems to have settled to a great extent. The stir was due to the first, rather hasty, thought, that it unseats the great Architect of the Universe from his throne of Creation. But a calm unprejudiced consideration of the whole question, in its grand broad aspect, has led many a Divine to say, that a belief in the theory of Evolution does no way unseat the great God from his Divine throne. It assures and insures his seat on His throne, not only outside us but in our heart of hearts. Laying aside the above view of God, it was represented, that it hurt the pride of Man as man, as having been the last and the greatest creation of God. The idea of his low origin, of his having risen from the lowest species of animals was believed to be humiliating to his pride as God's last but not the least creation. But, as Sir Edwin Arnold has said in his East and West, if Evolution points on the one hand, to our low origin in the dim past, it also, on the other hand, points to the high pedastal, to which we have risen, and to a still higher to which we may rise in the equally dim distant future. If you have begun from the lowest step of the ladder, know that you have to rise to the highest. Mr. E. Clodd, in his "Pioneers of Evolution," "attempts to tell the story of the origin of the Evolution idea in Ionia, and, 1 Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley, with an intermittent Chapter on the causes of the arrest of the movement, by Edward Clodd (1897). after long arrest, of the revival of that idea in modern times, when its profound and permanent influence on thought in all directions and, therefore, on human relations and conduct, is apparent." In the matter of the "Origin of the Evolution idea, in Ionia," he, in his first chapter, begins his story with Thales and ends with Lucretius. Speaking about Thales, he says:-"The Pioneers of Evolution-the first on record to doubt the truth of the theory of special creation, whether as the work of departmental gods or of one Supreme Deity, matters not-lived in Greece six centuries before Christ, not, in the early stages of the Evolution idea, in the Greece, limited, as now, to a rugged peninsula in the south-eastern corner of Europe and to the surrounding islands; but in the Greece which then included Ionia, on the opposite seaboard of Asia Minor. "From times beyond memory or record, the islands of the Ægean had been the nurseries of culture and adventure. Thence the maritime inhabitants had spread themselves both east and west, feeding the spirit of enquiry, and imbibing influences from older civilisations, notably of Egypt and Chaldæa. But, mix as they might with other peoples, the Greeks never lost their own strongly-marked individuality and, in imparting what they had acquired or discovered to younger peoples, that is, younger in culture, they stamped it with an impress all their own. "At the later period with which we are dealing, refugees from the Peloponnesus, who would not submit to the Dorian yoke, had been long settled in Ionia. To what extent they had been influenced by contact with their neighbours is a question which, even were it easy to answer, need not occupy us here. Certain it is that trade and travel had widened their intellectual horizon, and although India lay too remote to touch them closely (if that incurious, dreamy East had touched them, it would have taught them nothing), there was Babylonia with her star-watchers, and Egypt with her land-surveyors."2 1 Ibid. Preface p. IX. 2 Ibid. pp. 3-4. Here, Mr. Clodd, referring to the islands of the Ægean, which were then "Nurseries of culture and adventure" and to Ionia on the coast of the Egean Sea, speaks of them as "feeding the spirit of enquiry, and imbibing influences from older civilizations, notably of Egypt and Chaldæa. He also refers to tho people of the Ægean islands and of Ionia as gaining knowledge from Babylonia. He, however, does not refer to ancient Iran, which, though it had an old culture of its own, had sprung into prominence after Chaldæa and Babylonia. However, Irân had come into contact with Babylonia and Chaldæa. The object of this paper is not to draw any definite inference from the fact of the above contacts, but, to present the old Iranian view of Creation, and to show, that there existed also, in the old literature of Iran, as in that of Greece, some germs of the Evolution theory. But, before doing so, I will specially refer to the view of one of the philosophers between Thales and Lucretius viz.,, Empedocles, because, what he says, in connection with Love and Strife in relation to the theory of Evolution, reminds us much of the Iranian view of Spenta Mainyu, the bountiful, beneficent, constructive spirit and Angra-Mainu, the maleficent destructive spirit. Mr. Clodd speaks of Empedocles as proceeding from "the theories of the beginning of life" to "the theories of the origin of its various forms."1 Empedocles was born in 490 B.C. at Agrigenteum in Sicily, where many Greeks had migrated owing to Persia's westward advance towards Greece. He conceived the four roots of all things' to be Fire, Air, Earth and Water, "2 and said, that it was foolish to believe that 66 what before was not, comes into being, or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed."3 Therefore, the abovenamed four roots or elements are "eternal and indestructible." They are acted upon by two forces, which are also material, Love and Strife; the one an uniting agent, the other a disrupting agent. From the four roots, thus operated upon, arise, the colours and forms' of living things; trees, fruit' 8 Ibid. p. 12-13. 1 Ibid. p. 12. 66 2 Ibid. p. 12. both male and female, then fragmentary parts of animals, heads without necks, and 'eyes that strayed up and down in want of a forehead, which, combined together, produced monstruous forms. There, lacking power to propagate, perished, and were replaced by whole natured but sexless forms which arise from the earth, and which as strife gained the upper hand, became male and female. Herein amidst much fantastic speculation, would appear to be the germ of the modern theory that the unadapted become extinct and that only the adapted survive. Nature kills off her failures to make room for her successes." The Iranian View of Creation. At the root of all that is said about Evolution, what we find is, that Creation has advanced step by step from a lower form to a higher form, ending in Man. We trace partly the same view in Old Iranian writings of the Parsees. The Iranian view of Creation begins with Ahura Mazda, the omnipresent, omnipotent, the omniscient God. He is all Light, Boundless Light (anaghra raochâo). There are four natural sources of Light, viz., the Moon, the Sun, the Stars and the Boundless light. Ahura Mazda's mansion is in the Boundless Light, the Eternal Light, the Infinite Light, which has no beginning (aghra, Sans. 3) and no end. We read in the Bundehesh; "The Great Ahura Mazda, out of his all-wisdom and goodness, was matchless in Light in the Light which is called Boundless (or Endless). Light is the place and mansion of Ahura Mazda. What is called Religion is the all-wisdom of God and his matchless goodness." Opposed to the region of Boundless light is the region of Boundless darkBetween the two, the space of Boundless light and the space of Boundless darkness, there is Emptiness (tahigih).” ness. The Order of Creation, according to the ancient Parsee books, is the following: 1. Heavens which is the Light of the Sun, Ethereal Universe The Order of Creation. source of all Light, the 1 Ibid. p. 13. 2 Vide my Translation of the Bundehesh, p. 3 |