RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESwas translated into Middle Persian in the third century. This tradition
was revised in the mid-sixth century when a set of royal astronomical
tables called the Ztj-i ShiiM was produced for Khusraw Amlshirvan.
Sasanian astrologers developed Dorotheus' methods for casting con-
tinual horoscopes throughout the lifetime of a client into elaborate
systems and applied them to historical astrology.66 Judging by the
astral symbols on private seals and on late Sasanian coins, astrology
was very popular among the late Sasanian upper classes.
Belief in fate raised the question of how much of human life was
controlled by destiny. The Menok-i Khrat goes so far as to say that
destiny can make a wise person foolish, a timid person brave, an
industrious person lazy, and vice versa. Total fatalism was avoided
by the concept of a divinely alloted fate (M.P. bagobakht), which one
could pray to the yazdiin to change.^67 In later Mazdaean literature,
this developed into the idea that fate could be averted by the Creator
and the yazdiin.^68 However, the Mazdaean assertion in the commen-
tary to the Videvdiit that fortune determined material existence while
action decided one's spiritual condition is more significant. Spiritual
well-being was the result of good deeds and could be undone by evil
deeds. Even though a person could die only when he was fated to do
so, anyone who killed him was still guilty of murder.69 In later Maz-
daean literature, it becomes increasingly explicit that human action is
responsible for both good deeds and sins, for which people are re-
warded or punished, that otherwise reward and punishment would be
unjust, and that a person to whom material wealth or happiness has
been allotted will hasten its arrival by good deeds and postpone it by
sin.^70 Although the choice between good and evil is originally a Zo-
roastrian idea that occurs in the Giithiis, it is possible to regard Maz-
daean assertions of human freedom (M.P. iiziitth) to choose and to
act as well as the Mazdaean treatment of the triangle of divine power,
divine justice, and human responsibility as reactions to the ethical
problems raised by astral fatalism on one side and by the challenge
of monotheism on the other.71
66 S. H. Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, Mass. 1968), p. 168;
E. S. Kennedy and D. Pingree, The Astrological History of Miishii'alliih (Cambridge,
Mass., 1971), pp. 5-9.
67 CasarteIli, Philosophy, p. 32; Duchesne-Guillemin, "Religion of Ancient Iran," p.
362..
68 Jamasp-Asa, "Emet: I Asavahistan," pp. 174, 176.
69 Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems, pp. 34-35.
70 Jamasp-Asa, "Emet I Aiiavahistan," pp. 173-75; de Menasce, Denkart, p. 235.
71 De Menasce, Dinkart, pp. 183, 253; idem, "Zoroastrian Literature," p. 558.