So in our ancient Iranian history, I’ve always maintained that to understand Zoroastrianism religion, you have to know the history, because ancient history and ancient religion are always conjoined. So you have to go together.
So our ancient Iranian history, for convenience’s sake, has been divided into five groups or five dynasties. And we are going to the first dynasty, which is called Pishdad.
Origins of Zoroastrianism
Now, the very word Pishdad means the first law givers. Pesh means first and dad means law.
Here we are starting with the beginning of civilization. When there was nothing, agriculture was not there, How to wear clothes was not there, Skills and trades were not there. We are going right at the beginning when people were in a nomadic stage, hunting, hunters-gatherers.
So at that time we are told in our epic. Let me tell you about this. Zoroastrians have their own epic, like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
They have it, they call it the Shahnameh. And the Shahnameh has a complete history
and some part of religion also in it. So Shahnameh has preserved this. Some people call it mythology, I call it ancient history, which is unrecorded.
So the very first king in, you can say the whole world, was a person called Gayomard.
Gayomard means mortal man. Every word has beautiful meanings. Gayomard means a mortal man.
And so he told the people, you settle down, there’s no need to be nomadic. You settle down and start agriculture and farming. And that gave them time to sit and think about what we call reflect. Up till now, survival instinct was supreme.
But later, as things progressed, and as they got a chance to settle down, they started thinking. And one of the first thoughts that King Gayomard had was we are told that he got a divine message from a divine being, saying to tell your people that there is only one God in the world and the name of that god is Mazda.
All others work under him, nature works under him, other divine beings work under him. Zoroastrianism There’s just one God, Mazda. And the meaning of Mazda means all knowing, omniscient. So tell people to connect to him and then everything will follow.
So that We are talking of thousands of years before Zarathustra came along.
We are still a lot behind. I also just want to add one nugget here. You said something about how you considered history.
Zoroastrianism – archeologists historians
Some people might consider it stories. The truth about history is that in the modern day, many archaeologists only considered history when there’s evidence. But the truth about evidence is that evidence gets destroyed over time. Only stones survive, which is why the pyramids have survived. And then if those stones are destroyed by invasions or by war, you can’t help.
But that doesn’t discount the fact that human history is possibly way older than we are told. Zoroastrianism Lots of traditional archeologists historians would like to believe that human history began with the four great civilizations, Egyptian, Indus Valley, Mesopotamian and Chinese, I think is the fourth one which people talk about.
I strongly believe that it began way back lakhs of years ago. You know, the amusing thing is, archaeologists are always honest. They keep pushing back the dates as and when they get more and more archaeological evidence.
I think because the way archaeology works is, you’re digging into the Earth. And the deeper you dig. The more you get. History gets.
So that’s if this was not history, if this was not true, then it would not be consistent at several places like the Great Deluge. It has been mentioned by almost all the civilizations and the great religions. So how can it be so consistent if it never happened? -100%. -If it was just a story? I also believe now there’s scientific evidence found about the Great Deluge.
And you all should look into the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, look into the work of someone called Randall Carlson and see the degree to which he’s gone to find scientific evidence that this actually happened about 12,000 years ago.
What happened? The context is that the Earth was hit by either one or multiple comets, Zoroastrianism which destroyed civilization. Comets work in the same way as a bullet would work on a human being. Something huge of cosmic scale, many kilometers spread across, hitting the Earth with the speed of a bullet.
It’ll actually create the impact that atom bombs would create, destroy civilizations.
Man, whoever survived, human beings would have to begin from a very rudimentary place. That’s where I believe human beings started building out again. They started creating art again.
But possibly prior to 12,000 BC, the human story had come very far. Zoroastrianism We had possibly discovered a science of that time, we discovered technologies of that time. And there is evidence to back this. We had an archaeologist on the show who studies pyramids.
who says that a battery was found in the pyramids, an ancient battery. Now, what could it have been powering?
So this is one of the technological mysteries. Zoroastrianism I have to give context here, Zoroastrianism because this is how the questions are going to be, even about those Zoroastrian stories.
Because these stories are so much connected and about this comet hitting,
Now it’s almost an established thing, like almost scientifically established, even carbon dating has shown that,
“yeah, it did happen.”
So once again, going back to that first king, who was also regarded as the first Sociant. Zoroastrianism In Zoroastrian religion, a Sociant is a mini prophet sort of a thing, who is inspired by God.
And that God was Mazda. So Gayomard started the belief of believing in one God.
But at that point of time, there were people who did not follow him. And they, in our tradition, have been called Daevayasnis, perhaps because they worshipped several gods. And the Hindu part of the Aryan, they called their gods Dev.
So that’s why we call them Daevayasnis. So it was just the two belief systems that existed in those times, Mazdayasni and Daevayasni.
This has come up a lot when we’re talking about ancient Hindu history,Zoroastrianism.
where Zoroastrianism has come up a lot on the show. It’s come up that it’s a sister religion. And what’s also come up is, in Hindu stories, there is Dev and Asura, and in Parsi stories, there’s Ahura and Daeva.
When Prophet Zarathustra came about, because that schism took part later on. What do i mean by schism? -Sort of a rift.
Rift between the two groups. So the first group, which we today call Europeans, they separated first while the southward migrations were taking place. Now, how do they know that they were together? By their languages.
So several European languages, ancient European languages like Germanic, Saxonic, etc. and Sanskrit and Avesta have similar roots.
So that was why these languages were studied and taught in Europe, even Latin, because they have so common roots and bases and etymology, etc. So, languages are one of the biggest proofs to show this theory that they were living together. And they had one common language at that time, which philologists called the mother language.
Mother to Avesta, Sanskrit, and European languages, ancient European languages, which unfortunately no longer exist. But because of the similarity of these three languages, Zoroastrianism they say that it did exist.
Otherwise, how come these three languages of people who are so scattered are the same?
I strongly feel that the Indian Internet, and it’s also thanks to people like myself, it’s too saturated with only Indian cultural history. And it’s very important to understand the world’s cultural history as well, to probably understand Indian cultural history even deeper. So let’s call it a day. We will continue this in our next article so please stay Connected.!
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