Chapter 7
The Battle Against Zarathustra
A sudden violent agitation seized the earth. Everything collapsed at once as pandemonium took the globe by storm. All that had once stood firm and hardy crumbled.
Until that day whenever a kavi had passed by men had either taken to their heels in fear or they had stood aside with eyes cast to the ground not daring to move a limb until he had passed. The karapans had been so highly esteemed for their strength that men thought their shadows to be omnipotent!
At one time Jamshid had been venerated as the lord and creator of the earth, the skies and of the universe. No earthly power could have compared with his heavenly strength.
All social creeds, conventions, beliefs, doctrines, norms and laws had been steel-bound and steadfast. The wheels of society had turned unwaveringly in their primal design. These wheels had spun through many a century revolving without the slightest vacillation around the same axis, singing forth the same time-honored tune, heading toward the same permanent end. This dateless pattern had been thus ordained in the beginning and none thought that its cycle might one day vary in the least.
The sovereignty of the karapans and of the kavis had been built upon granite—that unrelenting stone whose surface was covered in a thick iron coating.
The guardians of the throne of monarchy had surrounded their icon keeping close vigil through the days and nights prepared to pounce upon and destroy any who might attempt to destroy their source of livelihood.
How strange it was that superannuated conventions caved in upon one another the second their roots rotted.
Hardly had Zarathustra’s words escaped him before they were passed from man to man and from horizon to horizon hacking down the mighty fortresses of the evil ones and robbing them of their possessions and creed.
The kavis came to dread the dark. They would toss through innumerable sleepless agonies waiting for the dawn when Zarathustra’s hymns would permeate the early morn and cast these demons into further desperation.
These defiled souls sought to conceal themselves from the eyes of men in terror of what the Prophet’s words had done to them. Never before had such a hurricane come to quake their vile souls and to demolish their palaces—never before had these patriarchs of time been made to quail so.
Zarathustra had brought about a boundless change. That which stood in opposition to wisdom, thought, knowledge, truth, righteousness, and purity was destroyed. That which was tainted by falsehood, ignorance, suppression and cruelty was denounced and extorted by the holy hymns for Zarathustra had cast the radiance of his brilliant songs upon ancient benumbed beliefs and had thus thawed them out of the heart of the chilled frost which enfolded them.
“What are we to go? Are we to stand aside and to allow Zarathustra to go on chanting his hymns and to destroy our power by arousing the masses against us?”
The beguiled kavi followers please not the holy
Zarathustra in their way of life.
For they seek happiness through material gain and
not in heavenly exultation.
(Gathas, chapter 51, verse 12)
Thus, the infamous that have turned away from truth
to destroy their understanding will in the hour of
judgment face their deeds.
Then will they ail of a guilty conscience for they have
turned away from righteousness through their words
and deeds.
(Gathas, chapter 51, verse 13)
Those who beguile the good through their evil wisdom
and words,
Those who strive to cultivate wrath and jealousy,
Those who forsake goodness through their wickedness,
Are monsters come to lead men to falsehoods.
(Gathas, chapter 49, verse 4)
The nefarious ones who are but the slaves of passion
and who forsake truth despise the pure and degrade
the noble,
they struggle within their inner selves.
Where is that righteous leader who will fight these?
wicked ones in body and soul?
O Mazda,
T’is through Thy holy sovereignty that the true will lead
Righteous lives,
That they will reap the best rewards.
(Gathas, chapter 53, verse 9)
The karapans forsake justice, belief and cultivation.
They bring destruction of the cultivators of the world
through their deeds and in their teachings.
Yet, in the end these teachings will lead them to the
domain of falsehood!
(Gathas, chapter 51, verse 14)
The psyche of the tyrannous, wicked, lying, evil rulers
will turn from light to dark for they are the inhabitants
of the domain of falsehoods.
(Gathas, chapter 49, verse 11)
O Mazda, Bendva stands boasting his evil deeds
before me.
O Thou benevolent Forgiver,
Come to me in blessed reward that I might save him
From deception through divine thought.
(Gathas, chapter 49, verse 1)
O Mazda,
Bendva fills me with anxiety!
His creed is prevarication and falsehood.
He forsakes truth!
He denounces righteousness!
He seeks questions, not responses through blessed thoughts!
(Gathas, chapter 49, verse 2)
“There is no room for delay. We must rise! We must take action or be annihilated!”
“We must prepare to do that which we should have done at the time of his birth when he laughed in glee at his arrival into this world.”
“Zarathustra and his disciples must be destroyed!”
“This is the only way left to us and we must no longer hesitate therein.”
“Let us gather in brotherhood to wage war in any manner known to us to destroy him.”
“This very night must Zarathustra be destroyed that he might not see the light of another day!”