ZOROASTRIANISM zō’ rō ăs’ trĭ ən īzm. The religious concept taught by the Iranian sage, Zarathustra, and more properly known as Mazdaism. The early history of the movement is obscure and no firm historical or chronological information is extant. It is likely that Zarathustra lived in the 6th cent. b.c., and may have been born and raised in NW Iran, migrating to the more southerly center of the country about 300 years before the Alexandrian invasion. He preached the worship of the high god, Ahura Mazda as the true and unique deity and bade his followers seek goodness through ethical actions and good works. Undoubtedly there were political and economic factors involved with the feudalistic organization of the ancient pantheistic religion. The concept of Zarathustra never totally escaped the older ideas but was much more mystical and theoretical. Most of what is known of his teaching is derived from much later sources and traditions. His teachings were embodied in the elaborate versified songs of the Avestan Gāthās which were set down in written form sometime in the Sassanid era c. 4th cent., a.d. These songs contain personal reflections upon the joys and frustrations of Zarathustra’s career which finally triumphed when his daughter Pouruchistā married the vizier of the ruler Vishtaspā. The basic motive of Mazdaism is an unrelieved dualism in which Virtue, Love, Life and Light are represented by Ahura Mazda who is eternally opposed by Wickedness, Hate, Death and Darkness represented by the arch demon Angra Mainyav. The whole of the universe and its innumerable aspects is divided between these two cosmic forces. A vast hierarchy of spirits and demiurges were proposed by the later Zoroastrian philosophers who sought to a large degree to unite the conceptions of Zarathustra with the ancient religion. The eclectic result with incrustations of myth, legend and ritual is in effect the Zoroastrian religion. It is still practiced in its Parsee form in India and includes all the ancient customs, the sacred and unquenchable fire, the elaborate mystical temple rituals and the exposure of dead bodies on the dakhma “towers of silence.” The lit. of Zoroastrianism is extensive and includes primarily the Avesta and many subsidiary texts in Pahlavi. Much of the thrust of Zoroastrianism passed into Gnosticism, Mithraism and Pers. Islam.

Bibliography C. Bartholomae, Die Gathas des Avesta (1905); H. S. Nyberg, Die Religionen des alten Iran (1938); E. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World (1947); J. Duchesne-Guillemin, La religion de l’Iran ancien (1962); Ed. J. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (1968).