The History of Antiquity, Vol. 5 (of 6)Duncker, Max
History
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 5 (of 6)
Duncker, Max
History, Ancient
The personification of ideas--the process of transforming old figures,
and changing them into abstractions--did not come to an end with the
Amesha Çpentas. We are acquainted with Çraosha, the warrior against the
Daevas, his habitation on the divine mountain, his horses, his club, and
how he fights at the side of Mithra, and keeps watch in the dark of the
night against the demons (p. 121). Now it is he who first sang the
sacred four Gathas of Zarathrustra, who first bound the sacred withes,
"three twigs, five twigs, seven twigs;" he not only knows the sacred
word; the sacred word is the body of Çraosha. Instead of the club which
he held raised against the head of the Daevas, the invocations of the
Avesta and the prayer Ahuna vairya are now the weapons with which he,
"the pure lord of the pure," "advances the world." We remember the
process by which the Arians in India came to represent Indra as smiting
Vritra, and shattering his cave, not as formerly with the lightning, but
with Brahman, the power of the prayer and the sacred acts. Obviously we
have some influence of these old Arian conceptions of the mysterious
power of prayer, and the control of the spirits possessed by the correct
invocations and sayings against gods and spectres, when we find Çraosha
fighting with the prayers of the Avesta, and in the Avesta the sacred
word is praised as a Divine power--[253] when Zarathrustra offers
sacrifice to the good law.[254] More liberal creations on the part of
the system of the priests are the elevation of "excellent thought,
knowledge, and conception," of "the long study," "and the thought of the
pure man," which are invoked and praised in the Avesta, into Divine
powers. Of not less abstract nature are other forms, like Rashnu
razista, _i.e._ the most straight-forward justice,[255] which, according
to the Dinkart, tests the souls on the bridge of Chinvat; time, which is
invoked as unlimited, as the ruler of the long periods, and like the
genius of the five portions into which the priests divided the day. Of
older origin, though also modified by the reform, is the invocation of
the heights, which Mithra first illuminated with his light. In the
Avesta this invocation is mainly addressed to the high "navel of the
waters," the Divine mountain, which reaches to the sky, "on which were
asked the holy questions," _i.e._ on which Zarathrustra has received the
revelation; "by reason of the revelation of the sacred word we invoke
the height, which preserved the knowledge."[256] Many of the traditional
forms of ancient times were partly modified by the priests and partly
allowed to fade away. The goddess Drvaçpa, to whom the ancient heroes
had sacrificed, they changed into the soul of the primeval bull, which
Angromainyu had slain.[257] Nairyoçangha, the Naraçansa of the Veda, an
ancient name of the spirit of fire, which we learned to know in the Veda
as the messenger of men to the heavenly beings, as priest and mediator
between heaven and earth (IV.
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