The Age of the Sages

by Mark W Muesse

  The Devil

  The idea of the devil, which came to figure more prominently in Christianity than in Judaism, seems quite clearly to be of Iranian origin. The closest thing to a “devil” in the Hebrew Bible is found in the book of Job. Contrary to common belief, the devil appears nowhere in the story of Adam and Eve, or anywhere else in Genesis. Even in the book of Job, the figure called “the satan” is not really the same character as the one who goes by that name in the New Testament. In the story of Job, “the satan,” which is a title rather than a name, is a member of the heavenly court who tries to keep god honest by challenging him to a wager involving a righteous man. In no sense does the satan appear as a wholly malevolent deity or the embodiment of evil. In Job, it appears that god and the satan are on friendly, if somewhat adversarial, terms.

  But by the time the New Testament was written, some 500 to 600 years after the Babylonian exile, Satan had come to be regarded as a god of evil, living in hell and constantly assaulting godly people, the way the Zoroastrians thought of Ahriman. Jesus speaks a great deal of the devil, and the New Testament portrays the two confronting one another. Jesus’ death and resurrection are even interpreted as breaking the power of the devil over humanity. Some centuries after Jesus, the Christian theologian Augustine argued that Satan was once one of God’s spiritual creatures who chose to be evil out of pride.[4] At this point, it is hard to distinguish the Christian view of Satan from Zoroaster’s concept of the Evil One, and it is equally hard to resist the conclusion that the latter decisively contributed to the conceptualization of the former.

  The Son of Man

  Zoroaster also advanced a belief in a universal savior or apocalyptic judge who appears at the end of time. The anticipation of a messiah has become an important part of the Jewish tradition, and there are indications that this expectation began to emerge before the Jews had contact with Zoroastrians. The early Jewish hopes for the messiah, however, were far from clear or monolithic. Messiah, which simply means “anointed one,” was used to refer to individuals such as King David and even Cyrus, the Persian king who freed the Jews from their Babylonian Captivity. By the time of Jesus, the anticipation of a messiah was rife among the Jews, although there seems to have been no consensus as to whom this figure was supposed be or what he was supposed to do.

  Zoroaster’s idea of a Saoshyant, a universal redeemer who would appear at the end time, may have shaped some of the Jews’ expectations. In the postexilic book of Daniel, we read for the first time in the Bible about an apocalyptic figure called the Son of Man. According to Daniel, the Son of Man will descend from heaven at the end of history and play a decisive role in the annihilation of evil and return the world to the path of righteousness. Daniel writes of his vision:

  I saw one like a [Son of Man]

  coming with the clouds of heaven.

  And he came to the Ancient One

  and was presented before him.

  To him was given dominion

  and glory and kingship,

  that all the peoples, nations, and languages

  should serve him.

  His dominion is an everlasting dominion

  that shall not pass away,

  and his kingship is one

  that shall never be destroyed.[5]

  Jesus frequently referred to himself as the Son of Man, particularly in Mark, the earliest gospel. There is debate, of course, over what he may have meant in using that title, but it is plausible that he believed his role in ushering in the kingdom of god would be his postcrucifixion appearance as the end-time redeemer and judge. Whether or not many Jews believed Jesus was the one, it is clear that many expected a messiah whose role would be like that of the Saoshyant.

  Finally, it is with respect to Jesus that we have at least one biblical reference to the religion of the Zoroastrians. The Gospel of Matthew mentions that a year or two after Jesus’ birth, wise men “from the East,” who had been studying the stars, came to visit and pay their respects. These wise men were called Magi, a Greek word based on magus, a Persian term for priest. Matthew’s story takes on added richness when we consider that these eastern visitors may have been Zoroastrians who were scanning the heavens for signs of their Saoshyant and were led to Judea, where Jesus was born.

  Although there is much more to be said about Zoroaster, his religion, and the impact he had in world religion, we must draw this discussion to a close. In the next chapter, we will return to the Aryans who chose not to stay in Iran but continued their migration into South Asia.

  * * *

  “But Jesus, said unto them, ‘A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house’” (Mark 6:4).↵

  Eccles. 12:14.↵

  Dan. 12:1-3.↵

  Augustine, The City of God.↵

  Dan. 7:13-14.↵

  2

  South Asia

  4

  South Asia before the Axial Age

  We now direct our attention to South Asia and especially the area we know as the Indian subcontinent. In coming chapters, we will discuss the evolution of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in this region. But first, we start with a sketch of this location before the axial ferment to help us understand the transformations that led to the birth of these religions.

  We are already familiar with a major part of the preaxial Indian world from our discussions of the Indo-Iranian peoples who migrated from the Central Asian steppes. We spent a fair amount of time exploring the religious world of the Indo-Iranians prior to their division. With this chapter, we begin to turn our attention to the development of this tradition through the Indo-Aryans who ultimately settled in India. Just as the tradition that developed in Iran assumed new forms and made significant departures from the ancient religion, so too the Indo-Aryan tradition changed in diverse and novel ways when it entered its new homeland.

  The Indus Valley Civilization

  Before we take up the Indo-Aryans’ migration into India, however, we must first consider another culture that occupied this territory long before their arrival. The Indus Valley Civilization, as it is now called, was situated along the Indus and Saraswati River systems in present-day Pakistan and the northwestern portion of the Republic of India. This extensive culture existed at least 1,500 years before the Indo-Aryans appeared. By the time the Aryans began to settle in this area, around 1600 bce, the Indus Valley Civilization was in decline. Yet its vestiges were still potent enough to profoundly influence the evolution of Hinduism. Today, scholars generally believe that Hindu traditions emerged out of the confluence of the ancient Indo-Aryan and Indus religions.

  Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the Indus Valley Civilization had been completely forgotten by humanity. Not until 1856, when British engineers accidentally uncovered some of the ruins of this culture, did modern humanity have any idea that there had ever been an Indus Valley Civilization. Today, we know this civilization was the largest of the ancient world. So far, archaeologists have discovered more than seventy cities in an area about the size of Texas. These urban centers were remarkably well planned and organized. The largest may have contained as many as fifty thousand inhabitants at one time. We know very little about the way that Indus dwellers governed themselves or structured their society, but the uniformity of their cities suggests some sort of centralized authority and law enforcement. We can infer from the absence of any significant weapons among the archaeological artifacts that the Indus Valley Civilization was relatively peaceful. We also know that agriculture was the basis of their economy, along with trade with other cultures, most notably the Mesopotamians living along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

  What we do not know is their language. There are numerous examples of what most scholars think is Indus writing, but as yet, linguists have been unable to decipher it. Thus, we have no idea what the citizens of this great society called themselves, and we have no literary sources for understanding Indus religion. Our present knowledge is essenti
ally informed speculation based the material artifacts of the ruins. There is simply no textual evidence to help corroborate or refute scholarly inferences.

  We can say with some confidence that Indus dwellers were deeply concerned with the functions of sexuality and procreation, and that this preoccupation was reflected in their religious practices. Throughout the region, archaeologists have discovered a large number of terra-cotta figurines of women with exaggerated hips and large breasts. Interestingly, no corresponding portrayals of men as icons of sexuality have been unearthed. Rather, to depict male sexuality, Indus artisans created images of horned animals—such as bulls and buffalo—with very powerful flanks and rather obvious male genitalia. In addition to these representations, excavations have turned up an array of stone and clay phalluses and vulvas whose precise function is not certain but which may symbolize divine powers of reproduction and creativity.

  Without written literature, we can only make educated guesses about these artifacts based on similar findings in other societies and in later Hinduism. Female figurines, similar to those of the Indus Valley, have been unearthed in various parts of the world and are thought to symbolize a divine woman or goddess. Some researchers have argued that these images indicate that the earliest humans worshipped a mother goddess long before male gods. If so, perhaps the Indus dwellers were part of this vast goddess religion. But the idea of a pervasive goddess religion is still a controversial one, and not all scholars agree on it. Nevertheless, it does seem evident that—at least in the ancient culture of the Indus Valley—the reproductive powers of women were revered and celebrated, and perhaps women themselves were regarded as sacred. It is certain that worship of the goddess is a prominent part of contemporary Hinduism and has a long, deep-rooted history. It seems entirely reasonable, therefore, to believe that this Hindu tradition may have derived from these Indus practices.

  The depiction of horned male animals and stone phalluses also implies a fascination with—and perhaps an anxiety about—sexuality and reproductive functions. But what precisely was the function of these objects? Here, historical and current religious practices may give us clues. Throughout their recorded history, Hindus have revered a god known as Shiva, who has been represented symbolically as the male and female sex organs in an icon called the lingam. The meaning of this representation is very rich, as it alludes to the generative powers of creation and procreation as well as to the importance of balance between male and female. The stone and clay images found in the Indus culture may have functioned in much the same way as the later representations of Shiva, providing a focus for revering these principles of creative power and balance. It is also possible that these sexual images served a magical function. In some cultures, carved phalluses are used as good-luck charms to enhance fertility and conception. It is plausible that dwellers of the Indus Valley may have used such carvings in similar ways to magically facilitate the reproductive process. We moderns often forget that for most of human history, reproduction was an extremely mysterious process.

  Throughout the cities of the Indus Valley, in public places and private homes, there were sophisticated bathing facilities, plumbed and lined with ceramic tiles in a relatively modern way. The ubiquity of the baths, their central locations, and the care with which they were constructed all suggest an intense concern with purity and cleanness. Almost certainly, this interest was with more than simple hygiene. Like many premodern cultures, and like Hindus today, the Indus dwellers were probably preoccupied with ritual purity. Ritual purity, as compared with hygienic purity, involves more than removing the sweat and grime that accumulate on the body and avoiding germs that cause disease. In its most basic sense, ritual purity is the state of cleanliness that is necessary for approaching the sacred. It often entails what and how one eats, the kinds of clothes one wears, the persons one may touch or associate with, and a host of similar regulations and restrictions. Such rules, of course, vary from culture to culture, but essentially they all involve maintaining a society’s sense of order. Whenever that order is violated—whether intentionally or unintentionally—it must be restored. We do not know specifically what kinds of things the Indus dwellers regarded as ritually impure. Whatever these things may have been, the bathing ritual most likely served to remove those impurities and reinstate the order of things, just as it does in contemporary Hinduism. In modern India, the first religious act of the day for most Hindus is bathing, a ritual practice that brings the individual into the appropriate bodily and mental state for relating to the gods and other persons.

  Perhaps as important as what archaeologists have uncovered in the Indus Valley is what they have failed to find. As yet, no one has discovered a temple or house of worship that can be positively identified as a sacred precinct. It may be that the central location of religion for this culture was the home, as it is in present-day Hinduism. In any event, the absence of clearly recognizable temples underscores an important fact of preaxial existence throughout the world: that sacred and secular, or the holy and the profane, are not sharply distinguished. There was no separate domain of life that could be identified as “religious.”

  Thus, the Indus culture adds several strokes to our emerging portrait of life in preaxial India. As best we can discern with our current knowledge, many Indians were, before the Axial Age, especially concerned with sexuality and reproduction, and that attentiveness probably encompassed the human, the animal, and the plant realms, as would be customary for an agricultural society. In all likelihood, this fascination and anxiety implicated the divine realm. Perhaps a mother goddess and animals themselves were worshipped to help ensure fertility and fecundity on all levels of life. Finally, the design of cities and the practices of ritual purity indicate a high value on order and restraint.

  To the extent that this is an accurate sketch of Indus religion, it suggests that beliefs and practices were oriented toward the present life here on earth and not toward a life hereafter. There is nothing in the ruins to indicate that Indus dwellers thought much about an afterlife or even wondered about what might be in store for the individual on the other side of death. Ritual practices and sacrifices seemed to be chiefly—if not exclusively—for the purpose of maintaining order in the present. Religion served a conservative function in this culture: to keep things as they were, to maintain the world itself by honoring and harnessing its powers and respecting its boundaries. And for a millennium and a half, the Indus religion was quite successful at doing that. Little seems to have changed in this civilization during its 1,500-year life span.

  “Religion served a conservative function in this culture: to keep things as they were, to maintain the world itself by honoring and harnessing its powers and respecting its boundaries.”

  The Aryans

  Possibly due to gradual environmental changes, the Indus Valley Civilization eventually came to an end. The details are still unclear, but by 1900 bce, the culture was in serious decline. Within a few centuries, around 1600 bce, members of the “Indo” branch of the Indo-Iranian people began to drift into the Indus Valley and probably coexisted for some time with the remaining inhabitants of the indigenous culture.

  For many years, historians believed that the Indo-Aryans invaded the Indus Valley Civilization and conquered its inhabitants. This was not an unreasonable conclusion, given the Aryans’ professed love for war and conquest, as disclosed in parts of the Rig Veda. This scholarly belief, in fact, informed Adolf Hitler’s appropriation of the myth of Aryan superiority and his adoption of the swastika, an ancient Aryan symbol. Today, however, most students of ancient India think the Aryans’ arrival in India was well short of an invasion. The Indo-Aryans probably migrated slowly and relatively peacefully into the Indus region, living alongside the last citizens of Indus culture.

  It should be pointed out, however, that the “Aryan question” is the subject of current debate. An important minority of scholars and some traditional Hindus contend that the Aryans were actually indigenous to India, not Cen
tral Asia, and migrated from the subcontinent to other locations. According to this perspective, known as the Out-of-India theory, the dwellers of the Indus Valley Civilization and the Indo-Aryans were the same people. Clearly, I have presented a different view of the migration. To pick apart that argument is beyond the scope of this book, though it certainly merits the attention of interested readers.[1] But regardless of where the Aryans originated, there can be little doubt about the ancient connections between the “Indo-Aryans” and the Iranians.

  As we noted earlier, the Indo-Aryans were initially pastoral nomads rather than settled agriculturalists. By the time they entered India, they were skilled in horsemanship, the use of chariots, and the manufacturing of bronze. They organized themselves into tribes led by chieftains, often calling themselves the “Five Tribes.” Their favorite self-designation, however, was the “Noble Ones,” the literal meaning of Aryan. To simplify our discussion, we will now refer to them as just Aryans, rather than Indo-Aryans, unless we need to distinguish them from their Irano-Aryan cousins.