Chapter 69 westerly sunset

The word Ahura is often seen when reading inscriptions in the palace of Darius.Darius the Great regarded it as the supreme god and respected it.I am a little sensitive to this term, because I have been paying attention to Zoroastrianism, a religion in ancient Persia, for a long time, and I know that Ahura is Ahura｜Mazda, the god of kindness and light worshiped by Zoroastrianism.The reason I started to pay attention to this religion is the name of its founder: Zarathustra.An Aryan who probably lived in the early sixth century BC.Nietzsche used this name to write the famous "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", which had a great influence on the modern world, including China.

A large part of the Persians are Aryans who migrated to the Iranian plateau thousands of years ago, and Zarathustra's bloodlines illustrate this origin.Later, the Greeks read Zarathustra's Persian reading as Zoroastrianism in their own language, so Zoroastrianism is also called Zoroastrianism. I have also always been interested in the teachings of Zoroastrianism.The gods worshiped by many primitive religions around the world are often both good and evil. People pray to them and fear them. Religious rituals are a way to please them. Some gods are also very barbaric, such as asking how many virgins to worship. .Mature religions are different. Most of them honor only one god, and this god is indeed full of divinity, kind to all things, and enlightens the world.Zoroastrianism is not the same as these two situations. It advocates monotheistic worship and is a dualistic religion. It believes that there are two gods who rule the universe. One is Ahura, who represents goodness and light, and the other represents evil and darkness. Ahriman.

Ahura and Ahriman fought fiercely and were evenly matched from time to time. People prayed, shouted, and cheered for Ahura, and used raging fire to publicize the light it represented, and believed that it would win in the end.Zoroastrianism has a kind of optimism in the sense of fighting, and firmly believes that human nature is created by a kind god, and the power of light will always grow stronger.In the end, everyone will face the great Doomsday Judgment, and even the dead will be resurrected to accept the judgment. How, then, does one take refuge in the light?Zoroastrianism also proposed a series of ethical principles, the most famous of which is almost exactly the same as that of Chinese pre-Qin thinkers: Do not do to others what you do not want yourself to do to yourself.It also clearly stipulates the three major responsibilities of human beings: turning enemies into friends, correcting evil and turning to righteousness, and turning ignorance into wisdom.There are also three virtues: piety, integrity, and decency.

These are all very good, but it is a pity that Zoroastrianism also announced the existence time of the world (12,000 years), announced that there will be no forgiveness for heretics, and that foreigners except Persians are inferior people. The classic of Zoroastrianism is "Avesta" (Avesta), which is said to be given to Zarathustra by Ahura, the god of light, and asked him to come to the world to preach. I know that Darius believed in Zoroastrianism, and because of his belief, Zoroastrianism became the spiritual pillar of the Persian Empire.Since our group entered Iran, we have often mentioned it with our partners.When I was about to walk out of Darius’ palace yesterday, Guo Ying and Xin Lili rushed over to me and said: Good news, we found out that the Zoroastrian site you are interested in is nearby, hurry up!

Of course I will.Walking six kilometers to the northeast from Darius' palace, you will see a mountain with gates carved into the stone wall, which is probably here. In front of the stone wall is a wide flat slope, like a long and narrow square, which can only be reached by climbing.I was the first to climb up and was looking up one by one, and an Iranian cultural expert who came with us also followed.He was old, and he told me out of breath that the gates on the stone walls were the tombs of Darius and three other kings. Since they all believed in Zoroastrianism, they were buried in the same way as Zoroastrianism, and they were with heaven and earth.It is a special treatment for the emperor to chisel the wall as a tomb.

I saw that these tombs were more than 50 meters above the ground, so I asked the expert if he had been there before. He said no, because I heard that there was a Zoroastrian altar in the tomb.At this moment, we can only look up at the outside from a distance, and we can see the pillars and patterns engraved there, but because it is too high, we can't see any patterns clearly. He suddenly asked me: Have you ever been to Petra in Jordan?I said I had been, and he said that he had seen in photos that the rock tombs in Petra were very similar to this one. I said it was, but the tomb carvings there were more Hellenistic, and here a little, but decidedly more oriental and more succinct.

At the bottom of the tomb, slightly higher than our human body, there are several complete reliefs, the largest of which is a Persian general riding a horse, with a person kneeling in front of the horse.Experts say the knight on horseback is a later Sasanian king, while the kneeling man is a captured Eastern Roman emperor. There is an ancient white stone building in the west of Banshan Square, which is very small compared with the thousand-foot stone wall in front of it.One or two narrow rooms, deep underground, connected by steps, this is a real Zoroastrian temple.After the fall of Zoroastrianism, temples all over the country were destroyed, only this one remained relatively intact. I think it was probably taken care of out of respect for Darius.

I walked quickly to the front of the temple. The wind from the west was already very strong. I didn’t wear enough clothes. I looked at it for a while and then turned back. The setting sun stretched my figure very long, almost all over the place. The entire flat slope. The fall of Zoroastrianism is a tragedy.When Zarathustra founded the religion, he hoped that people could get rid of the divination and witchcraft of primitive religions and move towards a more intelligent religious realm.However, when Zoroastrianism passed its heyday, the huge and complex team of believers began to spread the divination and witchcraft content.It is not surprising that the religious fanaticism of ordinary people habitually rejects reason, and sooner or later it will slip into absurd conjecture, so it also undergoes a rapid qualitative change, returning to the ignorant state of primitive religion, losing its internal spiritual power and external communication Strength, dying.In the subsequent foreign invasions, Zoroastrianism was naturally replaced by other religions and basically died out.

The Zoroastrian Temple in the afterglow of the west wind is a bit bleak. November 28, 1999, from Shiraz to Kerman, overnight at Kerman Hotel