The book of Avesta Belongs to all Iranians

[maziar]

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 Zoroastrian do not have a holy book like torah, bibles, and Quran that exists in Abrahamic religions.

Prior to the infamous invasion of the barbarians in 7th 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. Sometime in a distant passed the Aryans had started to record 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. would be recorded in that book.

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, droughts, floods, etc. as well as religious beliefs of deferent religions existed among the Aryans from thousands of years prior to the Zoroastrian period to thousands of years after Zoroaster’s death.

Considering that all humans of the passed were obsessed with 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 ceremonies and other activities involved would be recorded in the Book of Avesta which has made the books’ religious sections of 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 and gatherers living in caves wearing animal skins, to the Pishdadian era, and finally to the majestic periods of the Meds and the Achaemenid.

Open for expression of opinion by the scholars.