The Zend Avesta Is to Zoroastrianism What the Veda Is to Brahmanism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Atlantean Realities Series · 26 pages

The comparative argument of the series in its clearest form. It is only by studying the relics of the old and comparing, free of sectarian bias and personal prejudice, the religious ideals of all nations, Blavatsky writes, that one arrives at the conviction that they are all streams from a single fountain-head — the ever-flowing perennial source of life. The Avesta stands to Zoroastrianism, on this reading, exactly as the Veda stands to Brahmanism, and the two traditions are to be read together rather than apart.

Several of the specific claims are historical and datable, which makes them checkable in a way much of this material is not. Zoroaster is treated as a generic title rather than an individual, as Thoth-Hermes is; the prophet Isaiah is placed two centuries before Cyrus, living from about 760 to 710 BC while the Persian king's reign began in 559; and the Jews are described as a Persian colony imbued with Magianism and Zoroastrianism. A section on the reception of Zoroaster follows — the sage of remote antiquity transformed by Christian polemicists into a slave of Daniel — before the study turns to what it calls the key to understanding the Avesta, concealed at its bottom.

Read the full text (PDF, 2.6 MB, 26 pages)