Temptation of Zarathushtra

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Temptations of the prophets of God by the Evil One are recorded in the lives of the great prophets. Buddha, the enlightened one, is thus tempted by Mara and promised universal dominion if he desisted from imparting his illumination to mankind. Satan shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and their glory and offers them all to him if he gave up God and came over to him.

Several centuries before both Buddha and Jesus, the prophet of Iran is tempted by Angra Mainyu. At the command of the arch-fiend, the demon came rushing to cause Zarathushtra’s death. Zarathushtra saw through insight that the wicked, evil-doing demons were taking counsel together for his death. He chanted the Ahuna Vairya and frustrated the foul attempt of the Druj (falsehood) on his life. Foiled in his mission, demon rushed away dismayed and spoke unto Angra Mainyu that so great was the glory of holy Zarathushtra that he could see no way of killing him.

Angra Mainyu tells Zarathushtra that he was a mere man born of human parents, and could not therefore withstand his onslaughts. Moreover, if he renounced the Mazdayasnian religion, he would award him untold riches. Unto him the prophet of Mazda retorted that neither for the love of his body or life, nor if his breath were torn away would he desist from the good Mazda-worshipping religion. With the sacred formulas as his weapons, he adds, he would strike and repel the evil brood of Angra Mainyu.

Up to the end of time, up to the time that the victorious Saviour came, Zarathushtra tells Angra Mainyu that he would smite his evi1. Thus was he first in the material world to proclaim the word for the destruction of the demons. The demons fled headlong, weeping and wailing, at his sight and their malice was extinguished. He chanted the Ahuna Vairya and drove back the demons beneath the earth.

Haoma says that Zarathushtra drove back beneath the earth the daevas that were stalking the earth in the shape of human beings. He was the first among mortals who brought the demons to nought, who first proclaimed the word that worked their destruction, and who first denounced their creation as unworthy of sacrifice and prayer. Angra Mainyu, the wicked and deadly, howled in impotent rage that Zarathushtra alone succeeded in routing and smiting him where all the Yazatas failed to encompass his defeat He bewails that Zarathushtra smote him with the Ahuna Vairya the deadly weapon, which was as a stone as high as a house, that he burnt him with righteousness as if it were molten metal, and that he, the prophet of Mazda, was the only one who made it better for him to leave the earth