Chapter 12. Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds: Ethics, Law and Ritual Purity

Zoroastrian ethics has two faces in the library’s sources. One is the moral triad of good thoughts, good words and good deeds, set inside a cosmic war between Truth (asha) and the Lie (druj). The other is a detailed law of purity, carried in the Vendidad and in Pahlavi and Parsi casuistry, which governs corpses, menstruation, noxious animals, marriage and punishment. Parsi apologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries read that law as hygiene or as later priestly growth. Western scholars set it in the history of the Magi and the Sasanian church. A modern teacher, Mehran Keshe, claims Zoroastrian ethics as part of his own code. This chapter gives each source’s account as the source presents it.

The triad and the creed

A. V. Williams Jackson, writing in the International Journal of Ethics (the library lists the item under J. H. Muirhead, whose article precedes it in the same issue), calls the triad “the pith and kernel of the ancient Prophet’s teaching” and quotes the confession: “I practise good thoughts, good words, good deeds; I abjure all evil thoughts, evil words, evil deeds.” The three, he adds, are “the three mansions or stages” by which the righteous soul ascends into “the infinite light (anaghra raocao)” [Jackson, “The Moral and Ethical Teachings of the Ancient Zoroastrian Religion”, #371117]. Kapadia’s Parsi handbook also says that Zoroaster “summed up the whole of his moral philosophy in three expressive words, Humata… Hukhta… and Hvarshta” [Kapadia, The Teachings of Zoroaster, #55090]. Modi’s reader for teachers in schools gives the triad in the words of the Mazdayasnian confession: “I praise (humata) good thoughts. I praise (hukhta) good words. I praise (hvarshta) good deeds.” [Modi, Moral Extracts from Zoroastrian Books, #55136].

Boyce ties the triad to the daily ritual. The sacred cord (kusti), tied over the white shirt (sudra) at initiation at fifteen, is passed three times round the waist; “it is likely that from the beginning the three coils were intended to symbolize the threefold ethic,” and the little purse sewn into the throat of the sudra reminds the wearer to fill it “with the merit of good thoughts, words and deeds.” At the five daily prayers the believer unties the cord, prays to Ahura Mazda, “execrates Angra Mainyu (flicking the ends of the cord contemptuously),” and ties it again [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, ch.3 “The Zoroastrian badge”, “The times and manner of praying”].

Truth against the Lie; industry and benevolence

Buch’s 1919 Baroda study, the library’s main systematic account, builds the moral system from the Avesta, the Arda Viraf, the Dinkard, the Sad Dar and the Epistles of Manushchihr [Buch, Zoroastrian Ethics, #55150]. On truth he starts with Herodotus: the Persians held lying “a most disgraceful act, next to that comes the incurring of debt,” because the debtor must lie. He then quotes the Mihr Yasht: “Break not the contract, Spitama… For Mithra stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful” [Buch, #55150, ch.VI, citing Yt. X.2]. The Dinkard rejects any casuistry of expedience: “If at any place holy men find it very injurious… (to speak the truth), still it must be spoken. And, if… untruth very convenient and beneficial, still, it must never, at any time, be spoken” (Dk. I.27). In the Arda Viraf, liars have their tongues gnawed by worms and false judges have their eyes scooped out. In the Sad Dar a thief loses double and a robber fourfold; “a thief may have his ear cut off and may be beaten; while a robber may be killed” [Buch, #55150, ch.VI].

Buch reads Zoroastrian ethics as “essentially positive.” Life is good and death “an abomination” owed to Ahriman. Marriage, children and wealth are commanded: “he who has a wife, is far superior to him who has no wife” (Vd. IV.47). The well-fed man “receives in him Vohu Mano much better” than the faster, and work, above all agriculture, is a form of worship. The first to rise at cockcrow “shall enter paradise” [Buch, #55150, ch.V]. On benevolence he calls the religion “a gospel for the poor as well as the rich” [Buch, #55150, ch.VIII].

The Vendidad’s purity code: Nasu, barashnum and the elements

Buch calls purity “the virtue most praised.” The Dinkard defines its moral side. The Epistles of Manushchihr bind it to the body: the wise seek “purification of the soul by the purification of the body” [Buch, #55150, ch.VI “Purity and Impurity”]. Corpses must be neither buried nor burnt but exposed “where they know there are always corpse-eating dogs, and corpse-eating birds.” The Sad Dar orders that a man who has eaten dead matter have his house demolished, his heart fetched out and his eyes scooped out [Buch, #55150, ch.VI].

Dubash’s Zoroastrian Sanitary Code (Bombay, 1906) won a 500-rupee prize from the reformist Rahnumae Mazdayasnan Sabha. His stated aim was to show “how well the laws of the Vendidad enacted for the preservation of health… are in harmony with the laws of hygiene and the principles of the science of medicine” [Dubash, The Zoroastrian Sanitary Code, #55080, Preface]. He worked from Kanga’s Gujarati version and Darmesteter’s SBE translation [Darmesteter (tr.), The Zend-Avesta Part I: The Vendidad, #55096]. He sets out, chapter by chapter, when the Druj-Nasu “rushes upon (the dead)” (Vendidad VII.5). When the corpse-eating dog or bird approaches, the demon flees north “in the shape of a raging fly, with knees and tail sticking out, droning without end” (Vendidad VII). He also treats pollution of water, the ban on burning the nasu, and the punishment for carrying a corpse alone [Dubash, #55080, chs. IV, VII-X]. The bath of purification (barashnum) is given in the nine-pit form of Vd. VIII, with bull’s urine and water, followed by nine nights of seclusion “in the course of which he shall not touch others.” Dubash explains the ban on burning corpses as a precaution against “poisonous gases” and against defiling the fire [Dubash, #55080, ch.VIII, sect. “The bath of purification (Barashnum)”].

Noxious creatures, sorcery and folk belief

Moazami (History of Religions, 2005) explains that the animal world is split between creatures of the Beneficent Spirit and xrafstars, “vectors of pollution, impurity, and calamity.” Killing them “is therefore a duty.” In the Bundahishn, Ohrmazd made his creatures “in the form of fire,” and the Evil Spirit made his “in the form of a frog: black, ashen… like the most sinful-natured xrafstar.” The term covers frogs, scorpions, lizards, snakes, ants, beetles and locusts; a Persian Rivayat she quotes says [Moazami, Evil Animals in the Zoroastrian Religion, #55040]: “Killing noxious creatures is said to be a great merit in the religion” [Moazami, #55040, n.30]. Herodotus, as Boyce cites him, saw the magi kill “every creature, save only dogs and men… ants and snakes, creeping and flying things, and take much pride therein” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “Practices of the faith”].

Frachtenberg’s 1911 survey covers sorcery (yathwa), wizards and witches (yatu, pairika), the Kavis and Karapans, the evil eye, nail-paring and noxious creatures. The Vendidad (I.14) says Angra Mainyu “counter-created the evil work of witchcraft.” The Dinkard compares sorcery to unnatural intercourse, “for which there is no atonement” [Frachtenberg, Allusions to Witchcraft, #54991, §§1-2]. Among the sacred animals, the Vendidad (14.5-6) says that he “who commits the sin of slaying a water dog” must atone by killing ten thousand snakes and ten thousand each of other noxious kinds, frogs and ants among them. The heaviest sanction falls on killing the vanghapara (hedgehog?): he “slays his own soul for nine generations, and cannot find a way over the Chinvat bridge” (Vd. 13.3) [Frachtenberg, #54991, §5 “Noxious Creatures”].

Sex ethics, women and next-of-kin marriage

Buch’s chapter on sex relations makes marriage “a sacred duty.” Keeping a maiden from marriage is “the worst deed which hostile men commit,” and girls married at about fifteen. In the Arda Viraf an adulteress is suspended by her breasts, and seducers are stung by serpents [Buch, #55150, ch.VII]. The Sad Dar commands that a woman who consorts with two strange men be killed “sooner than a biting serpent.” Intercourse with a menstruating woman is “no better deed than if he should burn the corpse of his own son” (Vd. XVI.17). For “unnatural sin” there is “nothing that can atone… for ever and ever” (Vd. VIII.27), and the Sad Dar orders that one “should cut off the heads or rip up the bellies of both parties in the act” [Buch, #55150, ch.VII]. The Pahlavi Shayast la-Shayast (“Proper and Improper”) rules on how menstrual pollution passes through carpet, cushion and bed-chamber. A menstruating woman’s look makes ritually washed hands “quite unclean.” Food within three steps of her is polluted, and her retreat (the dashtanistan) should be fifteen steps from fire, water and sacred twigs and three from righteous men [West (tr.), Pahlavi Texts I, #55045, Shayast la-Shayast III.1-14]. West’s Bundahishn also genders the creations: “the sky, metal, wind, and fire are male… the water, earth, plants, and fish are female” [West, #55045, Bundahishn].

The sources answer the question of women’s standing in different ways. Sanjana’s 1892 Bombay lecture argues that “in primitive Iranian society the wife held a position, in social as well as spiritual matters, not inferior to that of her spouse.” He adds that “equality of education does not mean identity of education” [Sanjana, Position of Zoroastrian Women in Remote Antiquity, #60416; #55092]. Buch notes the titles nmano-pathni and nmano-paiti (“mistress” and “master of the house”) and women performing priestly functions. He also quotes the ideal wife who asks her husband, “What are thy thoughts, so that I may think them” [Buch, #55150, ch.VII].

On next-of-kin marriage (xwaetvadatha) Boyce is plain. In the Pahlavi books it was “highly meritorious, and never more so than when it took place within the close family circle: father with daughter, brother with sister, even mother with son.” Cambyses is “the first person known to have practised” it, marrying two full sisters. The word appears in the creed (Y 12.9), perhaps by interpolation [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “Cambyses”]. Under the Parthians, Greek dating formulas from Avroman name a king’s “compaternal sister and wife,” and Bardesanes records such marriages among the Persians of Asia Minor [Boyce, #55117, ch.6 “Next-of-kin marriages”]. Buch adds that Arda Viraf “had married his seven sisters,” that the Dinkard’s third book defends the custom, and that dissolving such a marriage ranks fourth among thirty sins. He then gives the modern Parsi view that the term always meant first-cousin marriage. Gray’s summary, which Buch cites, holds that “pure Zoroastrianism never advocated it… it was advocated… by a Magianized priesthood” [Buch, #55150, ch.VII]. Jackson calls the practice incestuous “in our eyes” but holds that it “occurred among the Iranians from the earliest ages” [Jackson, #371117].

Original teaching or priestly accretion?

Dhalla’s Zoroastrian Theology (1914) counts “the stringent laws for bodily cleanliness, the active crusade against noxious creatures” among the practices of the Magi reported by Greek authors. He notes that “the Gathas are silent” on rites such as the Haoma cult [Dhalla, Zoroastrian Theology, #55113, ch. “The Avestan People”]. Masani’s orthodox reply rejects any “split between the Gathas and the other Avesta.” To treat the Later Avesta as not taught by Zoroaster himself “is to say the least, downright heresy,” and a “Neo-Zoroastrian Theology” invented by the reformer [Masani, Zoroastrianism Ancient and Modern, #55152].

The “Ethos of Zoroaster” in Keshe’s teaching

Keshe uses Zoroastrian ethics to describe himself. In KSW 554 (9 September 2024) he says: “My early teenager years were touched by the beauty of Zoroaster. I felt the love, and the sincerity of the love in going to a high school that taught the Ethos of Mitra.” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 554, #378266, “Personal History and Workshop Logistics”]. In KSW 648 the summary reads “Parents taught: all equal, Ethos of Zoroaster, internally; Never harm others,” and he says: “The Ethos of Zoroaster was with me, and it stays with me. Unless you do wrong to me, I don’t do any wrong, I just change my line” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 648, #378360, “Keshe’s Personal Ethics and Plasma Color Theory”]. These are Keshe’s own statements about how he was formed. They do not interpret the texts discussed above.

Key points

• The triad humata, hukhta, hvarshta is the core of the creed; Boyce links it to the three coils of the kusti [#371117, #55117].
• Buch’s ethics stresses truth without exception, contract, industry, marriage and charity, backed by the Arda Viraf’s punishments [#55150].
• The Vendidad’s purity law (Nasu, exposure, barashnum, protecting fire, water and earth) was read by Dubash in 1906 as a sanitary code [#55080].
• Killing xrafstars is a religious duty and a means of atonement; killing a water dog or a vanghapara carries heavy penalties, the second up to nine generations of the soul [#55040, #54991].
• The Pahlavi and Persian codes prescribe death or “no atonement” for sodomy, sorcery and some sexual offences, and detailed rules for menstrual seclusion [#55150, #55045].
• Boyce documents next-of-kin marriage from Cambyses to the tenth century AD. The Parsi view (Buch) is that it meant cousins; Gray calls it a Magian ideal [#55117, #55150].
• Dhalla links the purity laws to the Magi, and Masani defends them as Zoroaster’s own teaching [#55113, #55152].
• Keshe credits the “Ethos of Zoroaster” and “Ethos of Mitra” with forming his non-violent code; these are claims about himself [#378360, #378266].