Introduction Zoroastrianism is the major ancient, pre-Islamic religion of Iran. It survives there in isolated areas but also, more prosperously, with the Parsees, or Parsis (hence Parsiism), of India, descendants of immigrants who went there from Iran some time after the Muslim conquest. In modern times, a few adherents have transported the religion into the West. For a discussion of the context in which Zoroastrianism arose, see MIDDLE EASTERN RELIGIONS, ANCIENT: Ancient Iranian religions. NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE The ancient Greeks saw in Zoroastrianism the archetype of the dualistic view of the world and of man's destiny. Zoroaster was supposed to have instructed Pythagoras in Babylon and to have inspired the Chaldean doctrines of astrology and magic. It is likely that Zoroastrianism influenced the development of Judaism and the birth of Christianity. The Christians, following a Jewish tradition, identified Zoroaster with Ezekiel, Nimrod, Seth, Balaam, and Baruch, and even, through the latter, with Christ himself. On the other hand, Zoroaster, as the presumed founder of astrology and magic, could be considered the arch-heretic. In more recent times the study of Zoroastrianism has played a decisive part in reconstructing the religion and social structure of the Indo-European peoples. Though Zoroastrianism was never, even in the thinking of its founder, as aggressively monotheistic as, for instance, Judaism or Islam, it does represent an original attempt at unifying under the worship of one supreme god a polytheistic religion comparable to those of the ancient Greeks, Latins, Indians, and other early peoples. Its other salient feature, namely dualism, was never understood in an absolute, rigorous fashion. Good and Evil fight an unequal battle in which the former is assured of triumph. God's omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited. In this struggle man must enlist because of his capacity of free choice. He does so with his soul and body, not against his body, for the opposition between good and evil is not the same as the one between spirit and matter. Contrary to the Christian or Manichaean (from Manichaeism--a Hellenistic, dualistic religion founded by the Iranian prophet Mani) attitude, fasting and celibacy are proscribed, except as part of the purificatory ritual. Man's fight has a negative aspect, nonetheless: he must keep himself pure; i.e., avoid defilement by the forces of death, contact with dead matter, etc. Thus Zoroastrian ethics, although in itself lofty and rational, has a ritual aspect that is all-pervading. On the whole, Zoroastrianism is optimistic and has remained so even through the hardship and oppression of its believers. HISTORY Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion. The religion of Iran before the time of Zoroaster is not directly accessible, for there are no reliable sources more ancient than the prophet himself. It has to be studied indirectly on the basis of later documents and by a comparative approach. The language of Iran is closely akin to that of northern India, and hence the people of the two lands probably had common ancestors--the Indo-Iranians, or Aryans. The religion of the latter has been reconstructed by means of common elements contained in the sacred books of Iran and India: mainly the Avesta and the Vedas. Both collections exhibit the same kind of polytheism, with many of the same gods, notably the Indian Mitra (the Iranian Mithra), the cult of fire, sacrifice by means of a sacred liquor (soma in India, in Iran haoma), and other parallels. There is, moreover, a list of Aryan gods in a treaty concluded about 1380 BC between the Hittite emperor and the king of Mitanni. The list includes Mitra and Varuna, Indra, and the two Nasatyas. All of these gods also are found in the Vedas, but only the first one in the Avesta, except that Indra and Na�haithya appear in the Avesta as demons; Varuna may have survived under another name. Important changes, then, must have taken place on the Iranian side, not all of which can be attributed to the prophet. The Indo-Iranians appear to have distinguished, from among their gods, the daiva (Indo-Iranian and Old Persian equivalent of Avestan daeva and Sanskrit deva, related to the Latin deus), meaning "heavenly," and the asura, a special class with occult powers. This situation was reflected in Vedic India; later on, asura came to signify, in Sanskrit, a kind of demon, because of the baleful aspect of the asura's invisible power. In Iran the evolution must have been different: the ahuras were extolled, to the exclusion of the daevas, who were reduced to the rank of demons. The reformation of Zoroaster. Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) was a priest of a certain ahura (Avestan equivalent of Sanskrit asura) with the epithet mazda, "wise," whom Zoroaster mentions once in his hymns with "the [other] ahuras." Similarly, Darius I (522-486) and his successors worshipped Auramazda (Ahura Mazda) "and the other gods who exist" or "Ahura Mazda, the greatest god." The two historically related facts are evidently parallel: on both sides the rudiments of monotheism are present, though in a more elaborate form with the prophet Zoroaster. It has not yet been possible to place Zoroaster's hymns, the Gathas, in their historical context. Not a single place or person mentioned in them is known from any other source. Vishtaspa, the prophet's protector, can only be the namesake of the father of Darius, the Achaemenid king. All that may safely be said is that Zoroaster lived somewhere in eastern Iran, far from the civilized world of western Asia, before Iran became unified under Cyrus II the Great. If the Achaemenids ever heard of him, they did not see fit to mention his name in their inscriptions nor did they allude to the beings who surrounded the great god and were later to be called the amesha spentas, or "bounteous immortals"--an essential feature of Zoroaster's doctrine. Religion under the Achaemenids was in the hands of the Magi, whom Herodotus describes as a Median tribe with special customs, such as exposing the dead, fighting evil animals, and interpreting dreams. Again, the historical connection with Zoroaster--whom Herodotus also ignores--is a hazy one. It is not known when Zoroaster's doctrine reached western Iran, but it must have been before the time of Aristotle (384-322), who alludes to its dualism. Darius, when he seized power in 522, had to fight a usurper, Gaumata the Magian, who pretended to be Bardiya, the son of Cyrus the Great and brother of the king Cambyses. This Magian had destroyed cultic shrines, ayadanas, which Darius restored. One possible explanation of these events is that Gaumata had adopted Zoroastrianism, a doctrine that relied on the allegiance of the common people, and therefore destroyed temples or altars to deities of the nobility. Darius, who owed his throne to the support of some noblemen, could not help favouring their cult, although he adopted Auramazda as a means of unifying his empire. Xerxes, successor to Darius, mentioned in one of his inscriptions how at a certain (unnamed) place he substituted the worship of Auramazda for that of the daivas, which does not mean he opposed the daeva cult as such, as a true Zoroastrian would have done, but only that he eradicated somewhere--probably in Babylon--the cult of deities alien to the religion of the ahuras. It points to a change of attitude, compared with Cyrus' tolerance of alien religions, such as the Babylonian or the Jewish religions. From Artaxerxes II (404-359/358) onward, the inscriptions mention, besides Auramazda, Mithra and the goddess Anahita (Anahit), which proves only a change of emphasis, not the appearance of new deities. The Arsacid period. In consequence of Alexander's conquest, the Iranian religion was almost totally submerged by the wave of Hellenism. At Susa, for instance, which had been one of the capital cities of the Achaemenids but where the religion of Auramazda was not indigenous, the coinage of the Seleucid and Arsacid periods does not represent a single Iranian deity. Then the Iranian religion gradually emerged again. In Commagene in the middle of the 1st century BC, gods bear combinations of Greek and Iranian names: Zeus Oromazdes, Apollo Mithra, Helios Hermes, Artagnes Herakles Ares. The first proof of the use of a Zoroastrian calendar, implying the official recognition of Zoroastrianism, is found some 40 years earlier at Nisa (near modern Ashkhabad in Soviet Turkmenistan). By then some form of orthodoxy must have been established in which Auramazda and the entities (powers surrounding him) adjoin other gods such as Mithra, the Sun, and the Moon. In Persis (modern Fars), from the beginning of the Christian Era to the advent of the Sasanians (early 3rd century AD), any allusion to the fire cult disappears. The coins seem to indicate, in not showing the fire altar, that the prince had lost interest in the Iranian religion. The Sasanian period. With Ardashir, the future founder of the Sasanian dynasty, the situation was different; and this may suggest that his religious zeal--as a hereditary priest of Staxr (Istaxr)--may have helped him seize power in his native province, even before he started attacking his Arsacid suzerain, Artabanus V. Two persons are recorded, in different sources, as helping to establish Zoroastrianism under the first Sasanians: Karter and Tansar. Whereas Karter is known through contemporary inscriptions, most of which were written by himself, Tansar (or Tosar) is only remembered in later books. The latter tell us that Tansar, an ehrpat, or theologian, undertook the task, under Ardashir's command, of collecting the sacred texts and fixing the canon. Karter, who was already active under Ardashir I but more so under Shapur and his successors, recounted his brilliant career, which reflects the birth of a hierarchy. He was still an ehrpat under Shapur, as he restored the "Mazdean religion . . . in the land of non-Iran reached by the horses and men of the king of kings." Under Hormizd he was made "magupat of Ormazd," a term apparently created for him and meaning "chief of the Magians of Auramazda." Under Bahram I (AD 273-276), Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who had enjoyed a degree of tolerance under the two preceding kings, was sacrificed to the interests of Zoroastrianism and died in prison. Bahram II named Karter "Saviour of the Soul of Bahram," elevated him to the rank of the "grandees of the realm," and gave him the additional titles of "judge of the empire," "master of rites," and "ruler of the fire of Anahit-Ardashir at Staxr and of Anahit the Dame." Promoted to the apex of his career, Karter persecuted "Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, Nasoreans [Judeo-Christians?], Christians, Maktaks [Mandeans, Manichaeans?], and Zandiks [Mazdean heretics]." Narses (293-302), who began his struggle for power when Bahram II was still on the throne, seems to have recovered the title of chief of the Staxr temple that his predecessor and adversary had surrendered to Karter. Under Shapur II, the high priest Aturpat, at a council summoned to fix the text of the Avesta, proved the truth of his doctrine by submitting to the ordeal of molten metal poured on his breast and was victorious over all kinds of sectarians and heretics. Under Bahram V (420-438), presumably, the title magupatan magupat (chief magus of the chief magi) was created. Under Qobad (or Kavadh; 488-496 and 498/499-531), Iran traversed its gravest social and religious crisis under the impact of Mazdak. This reformer, whose doctrines were partly inspired by those of Mani, was granted an interview by Qobad--as Shapur I had received Mani a long time before, but with a more decisive success. Perhaps the King hoped that by abolishing property and the family he would reign over a docile mass. The Mazdakites favoured the abolition of all social inequalities, chiefly of private property, the main cause of all hatred. Everything was to be held in common, including women. These views directly threatened the rich as well as the Mazdean clergy, who soon understood this. Qobad was dethroned and replaced by his brother Jamasp. After two years in exile, Qobad recovered his throne, but he had been cured of his egalitarian views and decided to liquidate the Mazdakites. Khosrow I continued the work of his father, Qobad, and thus the Mazdakite upheaval made way for a strong state and an established Mazdean Church. The religious books give Khosrow the unique title of Anosharvan, "with the immortal soul," probably for having crushed Mazdakism and for enabling the "good religion" to triumph. Khosrow II (590/591-628) married a Christian woman and may have been a Christian himself. He was superstitious and dabbled in astrology. Post-Islamic Iranian Zoroastrianism. Islam won a decisive victory at al-Qadisiyah in 635 over the armies of Yazdegerd III, the last Sasanid. Islam, in principle, tolerated the ancient religion, but conversions by persuasion or force were massive in many provinces. Zoroastrianism fomented rebellion and brought persecutions upon itself. There were pockets of survival, notably in Persis, the ancient centre of the Achaemenian and Sasanian empires. Books were produced to save the essentials of the religion from a threatened disaster. The disaster did occur but exactly why and how is not known. Zoroastrians, called Gabars by the Muslims, survived in Iran as a persecuted minority in small enclaves at Yazd and Kerman.