The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (8)

As usual, the original texts appear in the downloadable Abstract below.

Examination of the end of Y 31

We had ended by emphasizing the importance of the appellation hudānu and the appearance of the various circles of social belonging in Y 31.16: "I (ask you) also in what way the hudānu who aspires to power over the house, the territory and the country, so that they may prosper, is the same as you, O Ahura Mazdā, when he will be there and by virtue of what act".

The following stanza features a second, highly significant verse, with the call to speak, addressed to the deities. This is the transfer of knowledge from the deity to the sacrificer:

Y 31.17 "Of two things one, is it he who upholds the Arrangement or the deceiver who will obtain the greater (power)? Let the learned tell the learned! Let the ignorant cease luring! Be, O Ahura Mazdā, the slinger of our good Thought!".

After the transmission of knowledge comes the transmission of speech, since the sacrificer must be listened to:

Y 31.19 "(But let each of you) listen, O Ahura(s), (to the formulas and lessons) of the scholar, the healer of the state-of-existence, who has understood the Arrangement and disposes at will of his tongue for the rectilinear utterance of his words thanks to your blazing fire, O Mazdā [during the good, during the vīdāiti of the two rānas]!".

The last two stanzas of Y 31 attest to the end of the igneous operation, since the fire has become the sacrificial fire, fit to receive the sacrifice.

In Y 31.21, the appearance of the term sar-"union", i.e. union with the divine world, shows the realization of the covenant project(vratá-) with the deities:

Y 31.21 "In order that he may attain an abundant and fruitful union with health, immortality, Agency and power, Ahura Mazdā grants the venust of good Thought to the one who is his ally(uruuaθa) by mainiiu and deeds".

In the following stanza, the subsidiary names of fire, such as vāzišta-"very vehicle" and asti-"host" appear:

Y 31.22 "Light-signals are for the generous one who spots them by the effort of his thought [hendiadys: by effort and thought]. This one flatters the Arrangement with power, word and deed: may he be, O Ahura Mazdā, your most vehicular host!".

As a result, the last non-fundamental difference with YH is now extinguished, since the names of fire have been pronounced. There remain, however, two fundamental unexplainable differences:

difference in process: in the YH, everything is immediate, whereas the GA attests to a complex, elaborate and progressive process;
the YH ignores antagonism, whereas the Gāθās attest to a praise-and-blame rhetoric. These are two different ritual techniques.

Abstract of the fire sacralization process

Y 30.3: identification of fire with the mainiiu of Ahura Mazdā and connection with the triad of ritual behavior: thought-speech-action.
Y 30.11: making an alliance(vratá) with the good deities.
Y 31.4: the pantheon: Ahura Mazdā, Aṣ̌a, Vohu Manah, Xšaθra, Ārmaiti and Aṣ̌i, is gathered around the fire by invitation for the purpose of performing a vratá.
Y 31.16: the social body gathers around the fire.
Y 31.16-19: transfer of knowledge and speech to the sacrificers.
Y 31.21-22: vratá is realized in the form of a relationship of hospitality between sacrificers and deities.

Overcoming antagonism

The fire is ready for the sacrifice, but before proceeding with the offerings (Haoma and meat), the situation of antagonism that emerged with Y 30.3 must be overcome. The problem of the daēuuas must therefore be resolved.

The term shows a phenomenon of demonization; indeed, the avestic daēuua corresponds to ved. devá, to lat. deus < ie. *deiu̯ó "god". So how do we explain this phenomenon?

Haug (1862) noticed an inversion, almost symmetrical, that occurs in the Indian domain. Indeed, deva "god" has the equivalent daēuua "demon", on the other hand the word asura-"demon (Indian)" corresponds to ahura. But it's not perfectly symmetrical. Indeed, asura can have a positive usage in the oldest books of the RigVeda. He therefore postulates two stages: 1. the Iranians would have favored the class of ahura gods against the class of deva gods. 2. Zaraθuštra would have magnified an ahura among the others: Ahura Mazdā. Haug sees in the demonization of the daēuuas an indirect origin of Mazdean monotheism.
- objections: it's impossible to see a clear opposition between two classes of deities, and why would Zaraθuštra start rejecting the daēuuas, who have long been so in principle, and say nothing negative against the other ahuras ?

The other explanation is simply to see in the rejection of daēuuas the direct and immediate affirmation of monotheism (Lommel's hypothesis, 1930).
- a particular historical figure rejects the body of traditional gods to assert the existence of a single god, but what then of the Indian inversion?

Yasna 32

The beginning puts the daēuuas on trial. The text deals with the condemned characters. As a result, the language of Y 32 contains certain slang aspects. Indeed, words seem to be derived in other ways: š́iiaoθana-"act" and š́iiaoman-"bad act", raēxǝnah-"remainder" and irixta-"remainder (of the daēuuas)" or īš "strength" and īšan-"the bad īš ".

The term daēuua

Attestations of the term: none in the YH whereas it is ten times in the Gāθās: 2x in each polyhātic Gāθā and 4x in Y 32. The demons of Y 32 are not those of the recent Avesta.

The demons of the recent Avesta

demons swarm, are very numerous ;
we kill them by the hundreds;
the great killer of daēuuas is Sraoša ;
they are named either by means of an evil allegory (e.g. Akataš "he who makes evil things by carpentry"), or they bear a name that cannot be directly interpreted (e.g. Indar);
they are unequivocally evil;
they are druuaṇt "deceiver" and duždāh "miser; wicked".

The demons of the Gāθās

There's a question of hierarchy. The daēuuas have a lower hierarchical rank. Y 32.1 tells us that they are not rivals of Ahura Mazdā in the divine world, but sacrificers among others. They want to offer sacrifice to Ahura Mazdā and are gathered around the sacrificial fire:

Y 32.1 "The family, the clan as well as the tribe, and, to my irritation, the daēuuas ask for the pleasure that Ahura Mazdā grants, (saying:) "We want to be your smoke. Don't stop coercing those who harm you!"".

On the other hand, they do have divine rank, for sacrifice is also rendered to them:

Y 32.3 "But you, all the daēuuas, and he who already offers you the sacrifice / the great one who offers you the sacrifice, you are the signal-light from evil Thought, deceit and negligence. Illusory are the acts that make you heard throughout the seventh part of the earth".

No pejorative epithet is directly applied to them. As for their trial, it is by Ahura Mazdā. Sacrifice is refused in the name of evil notions (Y 32.3), antonymous to those of Y 32.2:

Y 32.2 "Ahura Mazdā, united as a friend to Good Thought and Sunny Arrangement, replies to them about power: "We choose your pomp and Fair Thought. Let it be ours!".

What's more, they are never named. It's always an anonymous, collective body in the plural.

The word daēuua is very frequently coordinated with maṣ̌iia, ved. martiya, cf. for example:

Y 29.4 "Mazdā whispers ceaselessly the precepts that have hitherto been applied by gods and men and those that will be applied henceforth. He is the Ahura who knows how to distinguish (these from those). Let it be for us as He wills".

How can we conceive of this expression "gods and men" when daēuua no longer means god but demon? The expression is an old Indo-European locution: lat. dii hominesque, gr. θεοί ἄνθρωποι, ved. deva martiya. There are two ways of looking at it:

there remains something divine in the term daēuua. But how are things to be viewed in recent Avestic times, when this solution is no longer an option?
it's easy to say that this is an aberration, and that the formula has been reused in defiance of its original meaning. However, it's an explanation that just can't cut it..

In the Gāθās, we find three words to designate man as mortal:

marǝta, ved. marta- is mortal, neither good nor bad, never associated with daēuua ;
maṣ̌iia and marǝtan are associated with daēuua. The choice of one or the other depends on metric requirements.

Generally speaking in the Gāθās, it's always daēuuas and men. The whole expression shifted into the pejorative character as early as the Gāθās, which shows that we're inside an already well-established tradition.

Y 32.3 allows us to make yet another remark. It is again a formal feature with the expression daēuuā vīspåŋhō "all daēuuas " to be set against the Vedic víśve devā́h (nom. pl.) "all gods". Louis Renou, in his introduction to Etudes védiques et pāṇinéennes, pointed out that this was either a group subject to enumeration, or a global, anonymous group. He ends his introductory statement with the phrase "it is a group both singular and global, which condenses and sometimes degrades the common level of divine dignity" (page 11). The term "degrade" may be of interest to us in the context of Mazdeism.

Documents and media

Speaker(s)

Jean Kellens

Professor at the Collège de France

The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (8)

Examination of the end of Y 31

Documents and media

Speaker(s)

Jean Kellens

Events

The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (1)

Reading passages from the Gâthâs (1)

The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (2)

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The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (7)

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The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (8)

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The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (9)

Reading passages from the Gâthâs (9)

The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (10)

Reading passages from the Gâthâs (10)

See also