prior to the date of composition of the other books. It may be described as a
treasury of songs, hymns, and metrical prayers, which embody a variety of
abstruse reflections upon subjects of metaphysical inquiry, and are much better
adapted to stimulate the intellect of the student than to foster the devotion of the
worshipper. They are rhymeless, like the poetical effusions of Cædmon, and in
their metrical structure bear a curious resemblance to the Vedic hymns. Of these
collections, or Gâthas, there are five, and their leading title seems to be: “The
Revealed Thought, the Revealed Word, and the Revealed Deed of Zarathustra
the Holy.” It is added that the Archangels first sang the Gâthas. Their general
purport is an exposition of the work and teaching of the great founder of
Magianism, who is represented as inveighing against a belief in the devas, or
gods, and exhorting his disciples to lift up their hearts only to Ahura-Mazda, the
Supreme Goodness.
Now it seems necessary to correct a popular error, that the Zendavesta is largely
liturgical: an error confirmed by the assertion of Gibbon, who says: “Every
mode of religion, to make a deep and lasting impression on the human mind,
must exercise our obedience, by enjoining practices of devotion for which we
can assign no reason; and must acquire our esteem by inculcating moral duties
analogous to the dictates of our own hearts. The religion of Zoroaster was
abundantly provided with the former, and possessed a sufficient portion of the
latter.” But Zarathustra himself, in one of his best-known precepts, warns his
followers that “he who sows the ground with care and diligence, acquires a
greater stock of religious merit than he would gain by the repetition of ten
thousand prayers.” It is the tendency of all ethico-religious systems, at least in
their earliest stage of development, to discourage purely liturgical observances,
and to enjoin on the disciple a state of self-concentration and self-absorption
varied only by physical activity. Unaided by a divine Revelation, their founders
never rise higher than the passive virtues of endurance and patience. As time
passes away, and the new creed falls into the hands of a special school of
expounders, minute rites and rigid practices are accumulated in order to impose
upon the neophyte, and deepen the influence of those who alone possess a clue
to their meaning. The formalities which encumber the Zarathustrian worship
were invented long after the death of the master, and no indication of them
appears in the oldest section of the Zendavesta. They are to be found chiefly in
the much later pages of the Sadder, where fifteen different genuflexions and
prayers are required of the devout Persian every time he cuts his finger-nails!
To return to the Yasna. The Gâthas, of which we have been speaking, were not