A literary history of Persia

'THE CRIME OF " MA GICIDE " }tSasinian times. And itmaybe remarked that since it isnot the habit of writers of this class to understate facts, itappears unlikely that they should concur in assign-Reasonableness rm i i A tof theseing to Zoroaster too modern a date. As regardsthe Medic origin of Zoroastrianism, Geiger, whois in full accord with both Darmesteter and Jackson on thispoint, remarks that though the language of the Avesta belongs,in his opinion, to the north-east of Persia (Bactria), the doctrineswere, as all Parsi tradition indicates, introduced there by Medicdthravans, or fire-priests, these fithravans being uniformly representedas wanderers and missionaries in the north-east, whosehome was in Ragha (Ray) and Media. Darmesteter, 1 in thisconnection, has called attention to the interestingfact that theword Moghu (from which we get "Magian")uMoMhe^enn on ty occurs m one passage in the Avesta (YasnaMa in the!verta xliv >2 5)>in the compound Moghutbish, "a hater"or " injurer of the Magi " ;for it was as Magi ofMedic race, not as dthravans of Zoroastrian faith, that theywere exposed to the hatred and jealousy of the Persians proper,whose power succeeded that of the Medes, and whose supremacywas threatened from time to time in early Achaemeniandays by Medic insurrections, notably by that ofTsmerdes~Gaumata the Magian (Magush}^ the impersonatorof Bardiya (Smerdes) the son of CyTus^wKomDarius slew, as he himself relates in his inscription at Behistunin the following words :" Says Darius the :King Thereafter was a man, a Magian, Gaumataby name ;from Pisiyauvada did he arise, from a mountain therenamed Arakadris. In the month of Viyakhna, on the fourteenth day,then was it that he rose. Thus did he deceive the people [saying],' I am Bardiya, son of Cyrus (Kuru\ brother of Cambyses (Kambujiya}.'Thereupon all the people revolted against Cambyses, thejwent over to him, both Persia and Media, and likewise the other1Translation of the Avcsta (vol. i, pp. li-lii) in the Sacred Books of theEast (Oxford, 1880),-