184 BULLETIN 148, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity. These 

 are the good and the base in thought, word, and deed. Choose one of 

 these two spirits. Be good; not base. When the two spirits came 

 together at the first to malce life and death (not life) and to determine 

 how the world at the last shall be for the wicked the worst life, for the 

 holy the best mental state." In the younger Avesta (especially in the 

 Bundahish) the distinction between the Holy Spkit and God is not 

 preserved, both beiQg identified, so that the opposition thenceforth 

 stands between Ahriman and Ormuzd, and the conflict between them 

 is extended from the moral sphere — the antithesis of good and evil as a 

 fact in human life — to the physical realm. The ethical dualism hard- 

 ened into a theological dualism. Over against Ormuzd stands Ahri- 

 man as an evil being of supernatural power at the head of the host of 

 malevolent spirits, the cause of all that is evil and noxious in the world. 

 Each of the Ameshaspands has for an opponent some archfiend (Akem- 

 mano, Andia, Saurva, Taro-Maiti, Tauru, Zairirica, and Aeshma), 

 ( = Asmodeus, Tobit iii, 8; vi, 15). Below these stand the daevas, 

 drujes, pairikas (peris), j^atus, etc. Unceasing warfare goes on 

 between these opposite powers. Ormuzd makes; Ahriman mars. 

 The one dwells in endless light, the other in eternal darkness. To Ahr- 

 iman are attributed the creation of all evil things. He created the 

 killing cold of winter and the intemperate heat ; serpents, locusts, ants, 

 rapine, and lust; magic and witchcraft; pride, doubt, and unbelief; 

 evU spirits, demons, and men of devilish character, beasts of prey and 

 noxious vermin; floods and droughts; and the nine hundred and 

 ninety-nine diseases the flesh is heir to are Ahriman's inventions. 



The dualism implied in the Zoroastrian doctrine is saved from being 

 a duo-theism in so far as Ahriman is never the equal of Ormuzd. 



Ahriman is neither omniscient nor almighty. He possesses only 

 "backward knowledge"; he can not foresee. Hence, he is always too 

 late in his machinations. Moreover, Ormuzd 's limitation of power is 

 merely temporary. Ahriman is coeval with Ormuzd but not coeter- 

 nal. His doom is fixed. At the last judgment his creatures will perish 

 and he himself will be banished from the regenerated earth .^^ 



The Parsees protest against the imputation of dualism to their 

 theological system. The primeval principles of good and evil (Vo- 



■" The dualism of Zoroastrianism is an attempt to account for the evil of the present world, physical as well 

 as moral, upon the premises of an ethical theism which can not admit that God is the author of any kind of 

 «vil. But because God is almighty as well as perfectly good, it can as little admit that evil, even in hell, is 

 a permanent factor in tho universe. The Zoroastrian theologians were concerned with the solution of the 

 ethical problem rather than with the remoter problem which their solution raised. The evil spirit appears 

 X)n the scene like a diaboius ex machina; whether he was eternal they do not seem to have asked, nor would 

 they probably have been much disturbed if their logic had carried them to that conclusion, for since they did 

 not define God metaphysically as the infinite and eternal but as the good, an eternal devil would not there- 

 by become God. — George Foot Moore, History of Religions, New York, 1913, vol. 1, p. 405. 



Zoroastrianism, though dualistic, was essentially a monotheism, teaching the existence of one supreme 

 moral ruler of the universe.— E Washburn Hopkins, Origin and Evolution of Religion, New Haven, 1924, 

 D. 286. 



