tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post8674488932382482990..comments2024-01-22T11:39:29.619-08:00Comments on Okar Research: Ohrmazd : Ahura Mazda & Ancient Persian Asura WorshipOkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-38579800358434243112013-01-18T16:14:03.880-08:002013-01-18T16:14:03.880-08:00The Iranian theonym Mazda can be interpreted also ...The Iranian theonym Mazda can be interpreted also as "Great Wise": from the Old Iranian masa ("great, big" = Skt. mahā) and the root dā ("to know"). According to B. I. Kuznetsov it was this meaning that was translated as the Tibetan "Sangs-po" in the name of the supreme deity of Bon (the other part of his name - "Bumkhri" was an attempt to render the word Ahura/Asura). It is interesting that in a Bon text cited by Kuznetsov Bumkhri Sangs-po (Ahura Mazda) is identified with Amitayus and the Swastika (gyung-drung-tshe-drag-med). His counterpart in Pre-Buddhist Mongolia was Hormuzta Tengri who later was identified by the Buddhist translators with Indra-Shakra (the lord of the Trayastrimsha gods). The same name can be found also in the Altaic mythology like f.e. the Tuvan supreme spirit Kurbustu Khan (the king of Heavens) whose name also derives from the Iranian Hormazd. From the other hand it seems that this name was identified by the Khotanese Sakas with the solar deity and in the later Khotanese Buddhist texts the word "Urmaysda" (the Brahmi ligature -ysa represented a z-sound) has begun to mean simply "Sun", while the original god of wisdom ("the Great Wise Lord") was identified with Manjushri instead.<br /><br />What most scholars have not recognized yet is that the most archaic form of the name Mazda seems to have been preserved in the name of the Royal Scythian deity Thagimasada mentioned by Herodotus. Here *Masada represents the original Old Iranian composite masa-dā ("Great Wise") which we find in a contracted form in the Avestan Mazda (with s becoming voiced before d). The other word thagi is found in a Parsee Pazand text glossed by the Sanskrit śūra ("mighty" = Av. sūra) which could be another Scythian word for "deity" used instead of the traditional "Ahura". The identification of Thagi-Masada with the Greek god Poseidon by Herodotus was probably due to the fact that the Iranian god of wisdom is usually associated with the cosmic ocean ("heavens" regarded as "celestial waters") - thus the the Vedic equivalent of Ahura-Mazda was the god Varuṇa of the Asuras. This archetype can be traced back to the Sumerian god of wisdom Enki who was also the lord of the cosmic waters.<br /><br />The word Asura/Ahura seems to have been derived from the verb root as- (Iranian ah-) - "to be" (most likely onomatopoetic from the sound of breathing thus meaning - "to live" generalized as "to exist"). I think that with the spliting of the original Aryan commnunity in Asura-worshippers (Iranians) and Deva-worshippers (Indians) new folk etymologies were invented to fit the new theologies and then the Asuras came to be considered by the Indian Brahmins as "non-gods" (a-sura instead of the original asu-ra - "living" or "life/breath-givers"), while the Daevas were likened by the Iranian Magi to the Avestan daiwi - "deception, madness" (cf. Persian word divāneh - "mad") instead of the original root div- ("to shine") meaning "luminous". My guess is that in the original Aryan (and maybe even in the Indo-European) religion those two groups of deities were not opposed morally as "good" and "evil", but simply represented the complementary principles of Light and Life (same as the warm and the moist principles in the philosophy of Anaximander, the mental/menog and the vital/getig of the later Zoroastrianism etc.).Ardavarzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15347188895251122223noreply@blogger.com