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168 PAHLAVI & PERSIAN WRITERS FOR MORE RELIABLE THAN ENGLISH.
saying that 'in Iran religion and philosophy did not go hand in hand.'
Does he imply that there is no philosophy at all in the religion taught by
Zoroaster; or does he mean to say that the Zoroastrian religion did not
accept Greek or Indian philosophy and make it its own? The whole
paragraph certainly implies that the Zoroastrian teachings were not
affected at all by Greek or Indian philosophies, though philosophical
discussions and exchange of ideas in debate were allowed at the Persian
court. Thus we cannot clearly make out what the writer means to say
about Greek influence on Zoroastrianism, for at one time he is fond of
quoting unreliable authors like Herodotus and others in support of his
own favourite ideas, at another time he speaks against the Greek influence
of mysticism in later Persian books which are in fact derived
from the Pahlavi basis, and again he says that Zoroastrianism was not
explained in the light of Greek or Indian philosophies, that is to say,
that there was no Greek influence on Zoroastrian Avesta Scriptures. If
one believes in the genuine existence of 21 Nasks given by the prophet,
one can in a moment declare that no Greek nor any other influence is to
be found in all the extant Avesta Scriptures. We can say this
emphatically so far as the Avestan scripture-writings are concerned, and
we leave it to the exhaustive student of Zoroastrianism to judge how
much of some of later Pahlavi and Persian writings can be culled out as
purely pristine Zoroastrian teachings, though here also we must not
doubt a Pahlavi writer if he solemnly declares that his source is
Avestan, nor should we in the least doubt the veracity of a Persian
writer, if he professes to write from the authority of some Pahlavi
source. In fact much of Pahlavi and Persian Zoroastrian literature is far
more approximate to the original Zoroastrian teachings than some
English and Gujarati books on Zoroastrianism containing mere
imaginary speculative ideas of the writers e.g. the book of Zoroastrian
Theology under review. For the writer of Zoroastrian Theology himself
says on p. xxxi of introduction-
“Though Pahlavi had replaced Avestan, the early works written in the
ancient language had not yet ceased to influence the Pahlavi
"