The Gathas of Zarathustra
Seventeen hymns in an archaic Iranian verse, addressed straight to Ahura Mazdā and largely framed as questions: who fixed the course of the sun and stars, who holds the earth from falling, what is owed to the herdsman whose cattle the raiders drive off. They posit two primal spirits, truth and the lie, and make each person's choice between them the axis on which the world's history turns. The oldest layer of the Avesta and the earliest surviving statement of ethical dualism, a final judgment, and a world that ends by being made new, ideas that reached Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by way of the Persian empires.
Open The Gathas of Zarathustra in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Attributes
Genre
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 62% · 11 shared
- 48% · 9 shared
- 48% · 9 shared
- 46% · 11 shared
- 45% · 7 shared
- 44% · 9 shared