Iranian Mythology and Social System
Unfortunately, the lack of first hand accounts from the Proto-Iranians makes our knowledge of their social system very limited. Most of the time, we can only make conclusions about their social system from later Iranian population of Achaemenid times, from drawing parallels between Proto-Iranians and Indo-Aryans, from Archaeological remains, and also from the study of Saka/Scythian social order. A good source for adding to our knowledge of this important subject is to look into the parts of the Avesta (the Zoroastrian Sacred Book) that can confidently attributed to the Pre-Zoroastrian times. What follows is a summary drawn from almost all of these sources, trying to create a holistic picture of Proto-Iranian society.
It is almost universally agreed that the Iranian tribes, prior to their settlement in the Iranian plateau, were pastoral nomads. Their formation of agricultural system is usually dated to their contacts with the established civilisation of the Iranian plateau. However, their mythology and social system, and their parallels in the Indian tradition, might point us to another direction. Fertility goddesses, deities concerned with climactic changes, and their class based social system could be indications of an earlier familiarity of Proto-Iranians or even Indo-Iranians with agriculture. This early agricultural society might have been abandoned in face of climactic changes in Central Asia, and only retaken after the second settlement in the Iranian plateau. These tribes might have well been early agriculturalists who only resorted to occasional movements in face of sheer demographic pressure, thus making their pastoralism secondary to an agricultural society.
The Proto-Iranian society was based on three early classes. These were the clergy, the warriors, and the common folk. Most likely, the symbolic three fold system was more complicated than this, but its basic formation was repeated throughout the later Iranian history and seems to have survived in a great measure. The society itself was consisted of various tribal confederacies that survived into historic times and provided the basis for the known Iranian tribes such as Persians, Medes, Parthians, and Sakas. Each tribe was formed from several extended families who were also related to each other. Blood relation among different tribes is also conceivable to imagine and might also justify the formation of confederacies. We do not know about the existence of a supreme leader for the confederacies, but their presence in the form of primitive kings is quite probable. Later Iranian mythology and folktales, especially those from eastern Iran which are reflected in the Avesta and also in Shahnameh, provide a glimpse into this early form of kingship when mentioning the Pishdadi and Kayanid royal families, making the inherited nature of kingship clear to us.
From what can be deducted from the older sections of the Avesta and, we see that the early mythology of Iranians included a complex set of deities, divided into two groups, one with celestial and the other with terrestrial concerns. In time, these two groups, Ahuras and Daevas (Sk. Asuras and Devas), seem to have developed good and evil characteristic respectively, and thus form a distinctly "Iranian" ideology (In contrast, Indo-Aryans had considered Asuras as evil and Daevas as the good set of gods). Some of the gods transcended the secondary characteristics and either changed their positions or became incorporated into new roles; among these is Mithra, a Daeva, who assumed the role of the leader of Ahuras in Iran.
Iranians also seem to have adopted local deities of the Pre-Iranian population of the plateau, including Araduu Sura Anahita, the goddess of fertility and water, who is unmatched in the Indian pantheon and shows similar characteristics with the Mesopotamian Inana/Ishtar. Also, some deified mortals such as Yima/Yama seem to have existed in the time before the Indo-Iranian split, and have survived into the historical times for both people, as well as a minor Aryan group called the Kafirs (living in eastern Afghanistan, they are Aryan, but neither Indian nor Iranian). In many cases, deities or superhuman beings such as Azhidhahaka or Thria are anthropomorphized into historical and mortal characters, very evident especially in the Iranian case.
Zarathushtra's Religion and the New Social Order
Unlike the Indian case, the Iranian mythology seems to have undergone a very early, pre-historic change during which the polytheism was abandoned in favour of duality or maybe an early form of monotheism. This revolution, credited to Zarathushtra, the greatest spiritual thinker of the Iranian tradition, set the path of both the Iranian social system and political thought apart from its Indian cousin. Gods and deities were abandoned, and some of the most prominent ones were reduced to the level of mortal, and often sinful, humans. Zarathushtra's spiritual upturn and the opposition presented to it by the adherents to the old religious system set the pace for many socio-political changes up to the advent of Islam.
We have no evidence of the time and origin of Zarathushtra. He has been dated as far back as 2000 BCE, living among the nomadic proto-Iranians, and as late as 500 BCE, living in the court of the Achaemenid kings. We can only trace him based on the influence of his ideas on early Iranian tribes and their ideology, and also based on the age of his compositions, the Gathas. These compositions, in the form of 16 poems, are universally accepted to be the oldest parts of the Zoroastrian cannon, the Avsta, and almost all scholars attribute them to Zarathushtra himself. The language is a very archaic form of a north-eastern Old Iranian language, pointing us to a date of roughly 1300-1000 BCE. The ideas of the poems are clearly against the worship of several gods and the belief in natural forces, and they include a very deep philosophical thought, emphasizing the originality of mind, the role of the individual decision and thought, and a common movement towards righteousness.
Zarathushtra's social reform was met with resistance even during his life time by the adherents to the traditional pantheon and social structure. They are referred to in later parts of the Avesta as Daeva-Yasna, "Adherents to the Daevs"; a clear indication of Zarathushtra's declaration of war against the forces of evil. Apparently, one of these opposition members is even responsible for the death of Zarathushtra. However, it seems that at least one political patron, called Kawiya Wishtaspa in the Gathas, found Zarathushtra’s ideas better suited to power than dispersed social structure of polytheism. Zarathushtra’s poems show his assured position in the court of this king, and it is in there that he first creates the social principles for a Zoroastrian society, before being abruptly killed while praying in a Bactrian temple, according to tradition.
The importance of Zarathushtra’s reforms lied mainly in their uniting principles. The presence of a central figure in Zarathushtra’s religion resembled the presence of a king, and that proved most useful in a society that felt the need for unity everyday in the face of foreign threats and a need for leadership in the times of migration. Furthermore, the constant search of Zarathushtra for the principle of “Asha/Arta” (rightness) provided a boundary to the age old Iranian quest to find a meaning to life, so evident in the pre-Zoroastrian mythology of these people. This constant search, in the context presented by Zarathushtra, was a basis of a philosophical code that probably influenced Cyrus’ humanistic actions, Darius’ law giving, and eventually Greek philosophy.
After Zarathushtra’s death, the religious elite that originally opposed him and was now retrained to become the guardian’s of Zarathushtra’s religion, re-introduced some elements of the pre-Zoroastrian religion in the Zarathushtra’s teachings, thus creating a mixed religion. Many old gods, including Mithra, Vrathraghna, and Wahumana, entered the scene as angles. This mixed religion, further advanced by philosophical teachings of the Parthian and Sasanian times, became what is historically known as Zoroastrianism, the religion that was accepted as the official religion of Sasanian Iran and survives today, with further additions from Islam and other religions, as modern Zoroastrianism of Iran and India.
For Further Reading
Boyce, Mary. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984
Duchense-Gillemin, J. Ormazd et Ahriman, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1953
Gnoli, Gherardo. Zoroaster in history, New York 2000
Henning, Walter B. Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-Doctor?, OUP, Oxford, 1951
Humbach, Helmut. The Gathas of Zarathushtra, Heidelburg, 1991
Shahbazi, A. Sh. “Recent speculations on the "traditional date of Zoroaster", Studia Iranica, XXXI, 2002, pp. 7-45.
Schwartz, Martin “The old eastern Iranian world view according to the Avesta”, in Ilia Gershvitch Ed. Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 2, CUP, Cambridge, 1985
Taffazoli, Ahmad. Tarikh-e Adabiyat-e Iran Pish az Eslam (History of Iranian Literature Before Islam). Sokhan, Tehran, 1376 (1998)
On-Line
Gnoli, Gherardo “Agathias and the Date of Zoroaster” (http://www.transoxiana.com.ar/Eran/Articles/gnoli.html)
Eran ud Aneran, Webfestschrift for Boris Ilich Marshak, October 2003. (http://www.transoxiana.com.ar/Eran/index_eran_ud_aneran.html)
Avesta Webserver (http://www.avesta.org)
Titus Project (http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de)
Iranology | What follows is a summary drawn from almost all available sources, trying to create a holistic picture of Proto-Iranian society.
