The book of Avesta          October 23, 2011

Belongs to all Iranians

Avestan alphabet

The seventh century invasion and subsequent conquest of Iran by the Arabs have created a misconception, among non-Zoroastrian Iranians, that the book of Avesta is the holy book of the Zoroastrian religion. The Zoroastrians do not have any holy book like torah, bible, and Quran that exist in Abrahamic religions.

Prior to the infamous invasion of the barbarians in 7^th century AD Avesta, a very thick book written in chronological order, used to belong to all Iranians regardless of their religious beliefs. Avesta, the oldest known book, is not all about religion but it also contains the recordings of just about everything important concerning the day to day activities of the Aryan people in most areas of Iranzamin.

The original date, when the Book of Avesta began to come to existence is not known. Sometimes in a distant passed the Aryan people had started recording their important day to day events including their migrations, the condition of the weather, where they used to live and seasonally migrated, the performance of an important individual including any new ideas expressed, invention presented, etc. .

Consequently the Book of Avesta could be said; is an Aryan people’s almanac. In it; you can find calendar, weight and measures, date of migrations, occurrence of droughts, floods, etc. as well as religious beliefs of different religions that existed among the Aryans from thousands of years prior to  Zarathustra's birth to thousands of years after his death.

Considering that all humans of the passed were obsessed with the existence of supernatural beings the Aryans were not any exception. They; like their Sumerian cousins, used to believe-in multiple gods.

All their beliefs, along with the method of ceremonies and other activities involved would be recorded in the Book of Avesta which have made the books’ religion sections of the recordings a greater portion of that book.

In a very thick book of thousands of pages, the section that “Gathas” the writings of Zarathushtra was recorded is located somewhere in the middle and is consisted of only a few dozen pages.

It may surprise you that a great majority of today’s average Zoroastrians do not know what Gathas is while Gatha is the only section of the Avesta that has anything to do with Zoroastrianism.

With above in mind the Book of Avesta is more a history book of the Aryan people than anything else that the Arabo/Islamic regimes have made people to believe it is. Consequently the book belongs to all Iranians regardless of their religious belief. Daghighi and subsequently Ferdossy had used that book for writing the great book of Shahnameh  which consists of the history of the Aryan people from the time that they were hunters/gatherers, living in caves and wearing animal skins, to the Pishdadian era, and finally to the majestic periods of the Meds and the Achaemenid.  

It is true that the present day Zoroastrian call Avesta their sacred book. This had started after the Arab invasion. The Arabs used to murder all people who were not "Ahl-e Ketab" (Without sacred book).

When the Arabs were calling the Zoroastrian "Moshrek" and  slaughtering  them Salman Parsi the Iranian dissident who was allied with the Arabs, in order to stop the massacre, talked to Omar and told him that Zoroastrian believe in god. Omar replied; if they do believe in God, they should have "Ketab". Salman improvised and said; Avesta is their "Ketab". It was at this time that Omar made his infamous statement:
"Killing all Iranians is neither possible nor in the interest of the Arabs. From now-on the Iranians must work hard so we eat well and their children must work hard so our children can live in prosperity". Then he ordered not to kill Zoroastrians but set their "Jazzieh" (Extra tax) higher than other non-Muslims.

From that point-on the Zoroastrians had to call Avesta their sacred book to stay alive.