avesta zoroastriana

[stuart mill]

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.

THE Zend-Avesta is the sacred book of the Parsis, that is to say, of the few remaining followers of that religion which feigned over Persia at the time when the second successor of Mohammed overthrew the Sassanian dynasty[1], and which has been called Dualism, or Mazdeism, or Magism, or Zoroastrianism, or Fire-worship, according as its main tenet, or its supreme God[2], or its priests, or its supposed founder, or its apparent object of worship has been most kept in view. In less than a century after their defeat, nearly all the conquered people were brought over to the faith of their new rulers, either by force, or policy, or the attractive power of a simpler form of creed. But many of those who clung to the faith of their fathers, went and sought abroad for a new home, where they might freely worship their old gods, say their old prayers, and perform their old rites. That home they found at last among the tolerant Hindus, on the western coast of India and in the peninsula of Guzerat[3]. There they throve and there they live still, while the ranks of their co-religionists in Persia are daily thinning and dwindling away[4].



As the Parsis are thc ruins of a people, so are their
[1. At the battle of Nihâvand (642 A.C.)
2. Ahura Mazda.
3. They settled first at Sangân, not far from Damân; thence they spread over Surat, Nowsâri, Broach, and Kambay; and within the last two centuries they have settled at Bombay, which now contains the bulk of the Parsi people, nearly 150,000 souls.
4. A century ago, it is said, they still numbered nearly 100,000 souls; but there now remain no more than 8000 or 9000 souls, scattered in Yezd and the surrounding villages (Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees).]
{p. xii}


sacred books the ruins of a religion. There has been no other great belief in the world that ever left such poor and meagre monuments of its past splendour. Yet great is the value which that small book, the Avesta, and the belief of that scanty people, the Parsis, have in the eyes of the historian and theologist, as they present to us the last reflex of the ideas which prevailed in Iran during the five centuries which preceded and the seven which followed the birth of Christ, a period which gave to the world & Gospels, the Talmud, and the Qur'ân. Persia, it is known, had much influence on each of the movements which produced, or proceeded from, those three books; she lent much to the first heresiarchs, much to the Rabbis, much to Mohammed. By help of the Parsi religion and the Avesta, we are enabled to go back to the very heart of that most momentous period in the history of religious thought, which saw the blending of the Aryan mind with the Semitic, and thus opened the second stage of Aryan thought.



Inquiries into the religion of ancient Persia began long ago, and it was the old foe of Persia, the Greek, who first studied it. Aristotle[1], Hermippus[2]; and many others[3] wrote of it in books of which, unfortunately, nothing more than a few fragments or merely the titles have come down to us. We find much valuable information about it, scattered in the accounts of historians and travellers, extending over ten centuries, from Herodotus down to Agathias and Procopius. It was never more eagerly studied than in the first centuries of the Christian era; but that study had no longer anything of the disinterested and almost scientific character it had in earlier times. Religious and philosophic sects, in search of new dogmas, eagerly received whatever came to them bearing the name of Zoroaster. As Xanthus the Lydian, who is said to have lived before Herodotus, had mentioned Zoroastrian {Greek Lo'gia}[4], there. came to light, in those later times, scores of oracles, styled {Greek Lo'gia tou^ Zwroa'strou},
[1. Diogenes Laertius, Prooemium 8.
2. Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXX, I, 2. CE infra, III, ii.
3 Dinon, Theopompus, Hermodorus, Heraclides; Cumanus.
4. See Nicolaus Damazcenus, Didot, Fragm. Hist. III, 409.]
{p. xiii}
or 'Oracula Chaldaïca sive Magica,' the work of Neo-Platonists who were but very remote disciples of the Median sage. As his name had become the very emblem of wisdom, they would cover with it the latest inventions of their ever-deepening theosophy. Zoroaster and Plato were treated as if they had been philosophers of the same school, and Hierocles expounded their doctrines in the same book. Proclus collected seventy Tetrads of Zoroaster and wrote commentaries on them but we need hardly say that Zoroaster commented on by Proclus was nothing more or less than Proclus commented on by Proclus. Prodicus the Gnostic had secret books of Zoroaster[2]; and upon the whole it may be said that in the first centuries of Christianity, the religion of, Persia was more studied and less understood than it had ever been before. The real object aimed at, in studying the old religion, was to form a new one.

[stuart mill]

da http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe04.htm

qualcuno ne sa qualcosa di più o ha materiale diverso/in italiano?

[Antiokos]

Sullo Zoroastrismo ho dei testi interessanti, quando gli impegni e la calura estiva mi daranno tregua, posterò sull'argomento.

[stuart mill]

Sullo Zoroastrismo ho dei testi interessanti, quando gli impegni e la calura estiva mi daranno tregua, posterò sull'argomento.

ottimo.

[Nicheja]

Per chi ha voglia di conoscere meglio l'Avesta (al maschile, in italiano), il Libro dei mazdaici riformati, esiste (continuamente aggiornato, a discapito della veste grafica che risente dell'età del sito, nato parecchi anni fa) l'ottimo

http://avesta.org/

che è una vera miniera di testi ed informazioni, in inglese (ma con molti scaricabili in avestico, pahlavi, e tedesco).

In italiano le risorse on-line scarseggiano, quindi (salvo disquisire qui sul forum fra quelli che ne sappiamo un pochetto), consiglio un salto in libreria:

(a cura di) Daryush Bakhtiari, "Così parla Zaratustra. Le Gatha, poesie gnostiche di Zarathustra, profeta dell’Iran antico", Settimo Sigillo, Roma 1997 (fuori catalogo ma ancora reperibile, a discapito di molti altri testi, che come al solito risentivano di un'impostazione molto "vaticana")

Arnaldo Alberti, "Zarathustra. La vita e gli insegnamenti del primo grande saggio dell'umanità", Piemme, 1998 (a discapito del titolo "di parte", un testo completo e non ostico, ove peraltro l'autore non manca di chiarire perché il Profeta va chiamato con il nome originale "Zarathustra" o al più con l'appellativo "Zoroastres", ma mai con lo storpiamento dispregiativo "Zoroastro")

(traduzione di) Arnaldo Alberti, "Avesta", UTET, 2004 (questo costa davvero parecchio, ed è un vero peccato, perché preclude ai più di accedere ad un'ottima versione italiana del Libro).

Saluti monoteistici...

[stuart mill]

interessante, grazie

[Lupus]

grazie! :-)
Sarà contento Hardenberg