ORPHIC AND MITHRAITIC TRINITY SIMILAR TO THAT OF THE CHRISTIANS
In contemplating the different, and often contradictory, circumstances of the religion of the ancient Persians, it is impossible not to observe the striking similarity both of its doctrine, and discipline or practices, to those of their Eastern neighbours of India, on one side; and their Western neighbours, the Christians of Europe, on the other. That religion appears to have been a connecting link in the chain, and probably in this point of view it will be regarded by every unprejudiced person, when all the circumstances relating to it are taken into consideration. Like almost all the ancient systems of theology, its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity. Its foundation is generally attributed to a sage of the name of Zoroaster, but in order to reconcile the accountsgiven of him with any thing like consistency, or with one another, several persons of this name must be supposed to have lived.
Treating of the religion of Persia, Sir William Jones says : "
The primeval religion of Iran, if we may rely on the authorities adduced by Mossani Fáni, was that which Newton calls the oldest (and it may justly be called the noblest) of all religions; a firm belief that one Supreme God made the world by his power, and continually governed it by his providence; a pious fear, love, and adoration of him; and due reverence for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection for the whole human species; and a compassionate tenderness even for the brute creation."*
However bigoted my Christian reader may be, he will hardly deny that there is here the picture of a beautiful religion. …
The first dogma of the religion of Zoroaster clearly was, the existence of one Supreme, Omnipotent God. In this it not only coincides with the Hindoo and the Christians, but with all other religions; in this, therefore, there is not any thing particular : but on further inquiry it appears that this great First Cause, called Ormusd or Oromasdes, was a being like the Gods of the Hindoos and of the Christians, consisting of three persons. The triplicate Deity of the Hindoos of three persons and one God, Bramha the Creator,Vishnu or Cristna, of whom I shall soon treat, the Saviour or Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer; and yet this was all one God, in his different capacities. In the same manner the Supreme God of the Persians consisted of three persons, Oromasdes the Creator, Mithra the Saviour, Mediator, or Preserver, and Ahriman the Destroyer. The Christians had also their Gods, consisting of three persons and one God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Psellus informs us, Oromasdes and Mithras were frequently used by the Magi for the tÕ Qeion, or whole Deity in general, and Plethro adds a third, called Arimanius,which is confirmed by Plutarch, who says, "That Zoroaster made a threefold distribution of things, and that he assigned the first and highest rank of them to Oromasdes, who, in the oracles, is called the Father; the lowest is Arimanes; and the middle to Mithras, who, in the same oracles, is called the second mind. Where upon he observes, how great an agreement there was betwixt the Zoroastrian and the Platonic Trinity, they differing in a manner only in words."*
And indeed, from that which Plutarch affirms, that the Persians, from their God Mithras, called any Mediator, or middle betwixt two, Mithras, it may be more reasonably concluded, that Mithras, according to the Persian theology, was properly the middle hypostasis, of that triplasian, or triplicated deity of theirs, than he should bea middle, self-existent God, or Mediator, betwixt two adversary Gods, unmade, one good, and the other evil, as Plutarch would suppose."* If it were now needful, we mightmake it still further evident that Zoroaster, not withstanding the multitude of Godsworshipped by him, was an asserter of one Supreme, from his own description of God, extant in Eusebius : god is the first incorruptible, eternal, indivisible, most unlike to every thing, the head or leader of all good; unbribable, the best of the good, the wisest of the wise; he is also the Father of law and justice, self-taught, perfect, and the only inventor of the natural holy.—Eusebius tells us that the Zoroastrian description of God was contained verbatim
in a book, entitled A Holy Collection of the Persian Monuments: as also, that Ostanes (himself a famous Magician and admirer of Zoroaster) had recorded the very same of him in his Octateuchon."*
Porphyry, in his treatise, de Antro Nympharum, says, "…Wherefore, from the authority of Eubolus, we may well conclude also, that not withstanding the Sun was generally worshipped by the Persians as a God, yet Zoroaster and the ancient Magi, who were best initiated in Mithraick mysteries, asserted another Deity, superior to the Sun, for the true Mithras, such as was the maker and father of all things, or of the whole world, whereof the Sun is a part. However, they also looked upon the Sun as the most lively image of the Deity in which it was worshipped by them, as they likewise worshipped the same Deity symbolically in fire, as Maximus Tyrius informeth us; agreeable to which is that in the Magic Oracles; All things are the offsprings of one fire; that is, of one Supreme Deity. And Julian, the Emperor, was such a devout Sun worshipper as this,who acknowledged, besides the Sun, another incorporeal deity, transcendant to it. The first kind of things (according to Zoroaster) is eternal, the Supreme God. In the first place (saith Eusebius) they conceive that God the Father and King ought to be ranked. This the Delphian Oracle (cited by Porphyrius) confirms :—Chaldees and Jews wise only, worshiping purely a self-begotten God and King."
"This is that principle of which the author of the Chaldaic Summary saith, They conceive there is one principle of all things, and declare that is one and good."
"God (as Pythagoras learnt of the Magi, who termed him Oromasdes) in his body resembles light; in his shoul truth."
Sir W. Jones informs us that the letters Mihr in the Persian language denote the sun, and he also informs us, that the letters Mihira denote the sun in the Hindoo language. Now it is pretty clear that these two words are precisely the same : and are in fact nothing but the word Mithra the sun.…No one can doubt that the doctrines of Pythagoras and those of Zoroaster, as maintained when the former was at Babylon after its conquest by Cyrus, were, as it has been already remarked, the same or nearly so; nor can any one doubt that Pythagoras was either the fellow-labourer and assistant of Zoroaster, or a pupil of his school.
Manes lived long after both of them; and if it should be contended that he differed from them in any very abstruse speculative point, this will not be admitted as a proof that he did not draw his doctrine from their fountain, when it is known that it came from the East of the Euphrates, and when it is evidently the same in almost every other particular.… The Persian Magi have always denied that they worshipped fire in any other sense than as an emblem of the Supreme Being, but it is extremely difficult to ascertain the exact truth; and the difficulty is increased by the circumstances that most ancient philosophers, and, in fact, almost all the early Christian fathers, held the opinion that God consisted of a subtile, ethereal, igneous fluid, which pervades all nature—that God was fire. …All the Oriental and Grecian writers agree in ascribing to the Persians the worship of one Supreme God : they only differ as to the time when this first began to take place. … Mr. Maurice says, "But it is now necessary that we should once more direct our attention towards Persia. The profound reverence, before noticed, to have been equally entertained by the Magi of Persia and the Brachmans of India, for the solar orb and for fire, forms a most striking and prominent feature of resemblance between the religion of Zoroaster and that of Brahma"
The vedas are four very voluminous books, which contain the code of laws of Brahma. Mr. Dow supposes them to have been written 4887 years before the year 1769 [3118B.C.]. Sir W. Jones informs us that the principal worship inculcated in them, is that of the solar fire; and, in the discourse on the Literature of the Hindoos, he acquaints us,that "The author of the Dabistan describes a race of old Persian sages, who appear, from the whole of this account, to have been Hindoos; that the book of Menu, said to bewritten in a celestial dialect, and alluded to by the author, means the Vedas, written in the Devanagari character, and that as Zeratusht was only a reformer, in India may be discovered the true source of the Persian religion.* This is rendered extremely probable by the wonderful similarity of the caves,as well as the doctrines, of the two countries. The principle temple of the Magi in the time of Darius Hystaspes was at Balch, the capital of Bactria, the most Eastern province of Persia, situated on the North-west frontiers of India and very near to where the religion of Bramha is yet in its greatest purity,and where the most ancient and famous temples and caverns of the Hindoos were situated."
Mr. Maurice says, "Of exquisite workmanship, and of stupendous antiquity—antiquity to which neither the page of history nor human traditions can ascend—that magnificent piece of sculpture so often alluded to in the cavern of Elephanta decidedly establishes the solemn fact, that, from the remotest æras, the Indian nations have adored a Triune Deity. There the traveller with awe and astonishment beholds, carved out of the solid rock, in the most conspicuous part of the most ancient and venerable temple of the world, a bust, expanding in breadth near twenty feet, and no less than eighteen feet inaltitude, by which amazing proportion, as well as its gorgeous decorations, it is known to be the image of the grand presiding Deity of that hallowed retreat : he beholds, I say,a bust composed of three heads united to one body, adorned with the oldest symbols of the Indian theology, and thus expressly fabricated, according to the unanimous confession of the sacred sacerdotal tribe of India, to indicate the Creator, the Preserver, and the Regenerator of mankind."*
To destroy, according to the Vedantas of India and Sufis of Persia, that is, the soFoi or wise men of Persia, is only to regenerate or reproduce in another form; and in this doctrine they are supported by many philosophers of our European schools. We may safely affirm, that we have no experience of the actual destruction,—the annihilation of any substance whatever. On this account it is that Mahadeva of India, the destroyer, is always said to preside over generation, is represented riding upon a bull, the emblem of the sun, when the vernal equinox took place in that sign, and when he triumphed in his youthful strength over the powers of hell and darkness : and near him generally stands the gigantic Lingham or Phallus, the emblem of the creative power. From this Indian deity came, through the medium of Egypt and Persia, the Grecian mythos of Jupiter Genitor, with the Bull of Europa, and his extraordinary title of Lapis—a title probably given to him on account of the stone pillar with which his statue is mostly accompanied, and the object of which is generally rendered unquestionable by the peculiar form of its summit or upper part. In India and Europe this God is represented as holding his courton the top of lofty mountains, In India they are called mountains of the Moon or Chandrasichara; in the Western countries Olympuses. He is called Trilochan and has three eyes. Pausanias tells us that Zeus was called Triophthalmos, and that, previous to the taking of Troy, he was represented with three eyes. As Mr. Forbes* says, the identity of the two Gods falls little short of being demonstrated.
In the Museum of the Asiatic Society is an Indian painting of a Cristna seated on a lotus with three eyes—emblems of the Trinity.