Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/537

Rh phists chose to lean upon the miraculous and mysterious, rather than to follow the recognized canons of the method of reasoning. Consequently, the sense of proportion, critical acumen, the historical sense, accurate thinking, and such preliminary requisites of modern scholarship became conspicuous by their absence in most of their interpretations. Flashes of vague thought came to be regarded as inspiration, and visions as verities.

Passage after passage in the Zoroastrian scriptures was explained to signify what it did not mean in the original. The following may be adduced as a specimen: The pastoral people in Ancient Iran had found a faithful sentinel in the dog, and that animal, as shown by the Avesta, occupied an exalted place among the Iranians from the earliest ages; three chapters of the Vendidad in fact were devoted to this indispensable companion of the household. All scholars in accord with the traditional interpretation have naturally taken these passages as the fragments of an old Iranian canine literature. But the theosophists branded this explanation as absurd, and discerned in the chapters an allegorical description of conscience and its workings. Space here precludes the citation of other examples of this kind.

When the linguists challenged such interpretation of the ancient texts, they were informed that their inability to reconcile themselves to the new esoteric explanations was due to the fact of not having yet sufficiently developed their spiritual faculties. They were dubbed 'mere philologists,' 'dry-as-dust' grammarians. Highly pungent bitterness was marked in the controversy carried on between the two parties. The theosophists in this controversy denounced the philologists, and the philologists denounced the theosophists.

Parsi theosophists as champions of the cause of orthodoxy. The advocacy on the part of the theosophists of the revival of the past, and their seeing in such a revival the sole panacea of communal ills, whether real or imaginary, their readiness to allege religious sanction for the time-hallowed customs, matched with their zeal for ritual, and their eagerness to vindicate the sacred ceremonies by giving strained allegorical interpretations to explain them, won for them the applause of the orthodox party, who cast in their lot with them. Inasmuch as the Parsi theosophists declared .that they were working to bring out the youth of the community from the trough of materialism, and