Culture
Ancient Persian influence on Hinduism
Ruby Lilaowala | Friday, August 17, 2007 10:28:58 IST
The Aryan settlers who lived in Persia and later, in India, had a lot in common by way of phonetics, language, spirituality and reverence for nature…
Hinduism pertains to Hindus but the word Hindu itself is actually a Persian word coined by Cyrus the great in the 6th century B.C. to describe people who lived beyond the river Indus which was the eastern boundary of the ancient Persian empire. The Persians had a phonetic problem with the letter ‘S’ hence, Sindhu became Hindu just as Rigveda’s Soma came from Zend Avesta’s Hoama. Such fascinating phonetic affinities!
Even the word Shudra in Hinduism’s caste-system came from the Persian word Hatoksha. Originally, there were only three castes but the camp followers collected by Persians on their travels were called Hatokshas. The Romans, who separated from the original Aryanstock at a much earlier date than the Brahmins called fire Athar. In old Sanskrit, lightning is called Atharvan. In ancient Persia Arthvan meant a priest and this word evolved to become Brahmin.
Persian herders of cattle were called Vastrayosh and after they settled down from their nomadic existence to become cultivators and later, traders, the word evolved into Hinduism’s Vaishya caste. In the Vedas, waters are called Apo-Devi and in the Avesta, Apo-Vanghuish. Also, the prominent deities of the Rig Veda like Surya, Varun and Aryaman have come from the Avesta.
In fact, originally, the Rig Veda was written in the Kharoshti script which like Persian is written backwards i.e. from right to left. The Brahmi script came much later and our Devnagri script even later than Brahmi. In Lemuria, Atlantis and Babylon, there was the Akhadian script, found on Babylonian tablets during excavations, from which the Pali script evolved. This is why, since ancient Persia was the melting-pot of civilisations, Sanskrit sounds like old Persian e.g. Veeg the seed became the Sanskritised Beej.
The Aryan settlers who lived in Persia and later, in India, had a lot in common by way of phonetics, language, spirituality and reverence for nature. The five elements of nature called Panchamahabhoot were worshipped, with fire and it’s apex in ancient India. This idea came from Persia and the oldest religion in the world viz. Zorastrianism which as and still is, the most eco-friendly religion in the world. It is a cardinal sin for a Parsi to defile any of nature’s elements which is why, a corpse, a filthy shell after it’s pranic energy has left it, is never to be burnt on fire. That would be a grave sin to the element of agni.
Rather, a Parsi feeds the fire within a fire-temple with sweet-smelling sandalwood and frankincense.
Persian warriors were called ratheshwars, and this word evolved into kshatriyas. Even wars were fought in a noble fashion through there’s nothing noble about a war to my way of thinking. In the ancient world, man lived with nature. He depended on nature for his food, shelter and livelihood. To him, the forces of nature and her five elements appeared to be pulsating with life. The sun, moon, stars, clouds, earth, springs, rivers, oceans, trees, grass, flowers were, he believed, presided over by invisible intelligences which is a cosmic fact. Geofrey Hodsun has proved this through his clairvoyant theosophical books.
In return for nature’s bounties and blessings, man gave homage which took the form of the various hymns and prayers in the Avesta as well as the Rig Veda. Hence, there are so many similarities and spiritual parallels between Ancient Persian theology and that of the pre-vedic and vedic times. The Persian Goddess of water was Ahurani, similar to the vedic Asurani. Feeding the sacred fire was common to the Persians as well as the pre-vedic society. So many similarities, so much in common, because, in the final analysis, it’s the same supreme energy we all worship!
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21 comments for “Ancient Persian influence on Hinduism”
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This looks totally oposite…Persian words comes from hindu…because the sanscriti start from India…
The writer makes incorrect conclusions. The Avestan and Old persian words are derived from Sanskrit and Proto-sanskrit. Not the other way around. Note that the Vedas (circa 2000 BC to 1500 BC) predate Zarathustra.
Please remove this post. It is full of inaccuracies. No historian has ever said that Sanskrit words are derived from Persian, or that the Aryans came from Persia to India. The author tries to make a case that Hinduism is derived from Zoroastrianism, which has no historical backing whatsoever. Please check your references before writing such articles.
I agree, this article is full of inaccuracies. Sanskrit and Avesta belong to P.I.E faily ie. Proto Indo-European languages.The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most of the major languages of Europe, the northern Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and much of Central Asia.
Of the top 20 contemporary languages in terms of speakers according to SIL Ethnologue, 12 are Indo-European: Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi and Urdu, accounting for over 1.6 billion native speakers. The Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European in terms of the number of native speakers as well as in terms of the number of individual languages. There is no Basis on which anyone can claim that Avesta influenced Sanskrit or vice versa.
As for the similarity in rituals, its solely because pre zoroastrian aryans and pre vedic aryans followed the same rituals back home in Central Asia before parting ways.
As for having hindu sounding Gods in Avesta, its again nothing more than pre zoroatrian Mithra influence which our common ancestors religiously followed as Aryans and even retained after they converted to zoroastrianism. Infact it points to the fact that though zoroastrians keep parroting “Purity” and “Monotheism” there isn’t much of that in reality.
Btw, the most popular name amongst the Zoroastrians - Mehr or Meher comes from pre zoroastrian Mithra diety. Mithra and Varun were sons of In Da Ra or Indra [all revered as original Aryan divinities much before Vedic or Zoroastrianism came into existence ]. Incidently, Zoroaster had opposed the worship of Mithra for which he was persecuted in his home town. The same Mithra reappeared in Avesta and in number of our rituals as the holiest deity and latter corruption to “Meher”, just 200 years after Zoroaster was gone. Speaks volumes about pre zoroastrian pre iranic influence over persian’s religion rather than persians influencing others.
And last but not the least Persians factually were aryan warrior tribe called “Parsua” from Central Asia who invaded present day Iran which was originally called Elam.
Im just reconstructing my reply thats posted above, as i felt it needs to have more detail to get the points across.
First, the above replies by Rk and Bharat, that boost of Sanskrit being the source of influence over Avesta and Persians is as frivolous and rediculous as saying Avesta influenced Sanskrit, just because both the languages have words that overlap in meanings and sound.
Common features, especially common words, shared by many of the languages used in Europe, India, and Asia, led scholars to believe that these languages may have developed from the same source.
That source language was never written down and is now extinct, but it has a name: it is called the “Proto Indo-European” language (”PIE”), and the family of languages believed to have developed from it is called “Indo-European” (”IE”). Sanskrit and Avesta both came from the same source[P.I.E. grp of lang], so its very likely they both have similarities. That hardly means Hinduism influenced Persians or vice versa. Besides just as any other religion, Hinduism is concoction of number of diversed ideas and schools of thought. Some of which are foreign.
There is enough evidence to show that Aryan warrior tribes, who were once inhabitant of Central Asian lands, split into two warring camps- Devas and Ahuras, and migrated to indianic plains and Iranian Plains[ called Elam] respectively, to escape harsh climatic conditions back home. These migrating Aryans brought with them their culture, their language and their Gods. Over the period, these new settlers mixed with the natives and adapted their culture, their languages and their Gods to creat an independent cultures but with similarities with their original beliefs and dogmas.
So most of the similarities that you see in the rituals of Hindus and Zoroastrians is because of the aesthetics, ideology and fundamental that they inheritated from their common ancestors-Aryans.
One such doctrine was of Indra as a supreme one God with two sons, Mitra and Varuna. The Mitra worship and animal sacrifies formed the basis of the cult back than as the way to please the chief God Indra.
While the Deva (Vedic) Aryans retained the original names of Gods and rituals, the Ahura aryan tribes, some of which were Zoroastrians, changed the rituals and names to suit their new philosophy of Zoroastrianism.
Today, every scholar agrees that all of the Yashts, except for the Yasna Haptanghaiti, were composed and written centuries after the time of Zarathushtra.
Be that as it may, the names of Indra, Varuna and Mithra are mentioned in the Haptanghaiti, and there is absolutely no question but that these are pre-Zoroastrian divinities, which today continue to hold prominent positions in the Vedas. Indra evolved into Verethragna or Behram Yazata, Mithra evolved into Meher Yazata and Varuna, in the female form of Varunani evolved into Avan Ardvisur Yazad, more commonly known as Anahita. The names of these and other pre-Zoroastrian divinities subsequently evolved into the Yazatas whose names are incorporated as the days of the month in the Zoroastrian calendar. The fact that these pre-Zoroastrian divinities now occupy and hold important positions in our liturgy, points to the fact that these are later additions to the religion introduced after Zarathushtra’s life time. Clearly, these portions of the Avesta conflict with the strict and unambiguous monotheism preached by the Prophet Himself. The point is, the similarities that you see in two religions, is not only because of common ancestors that we both shared, but also because we have over the time reintroduced pre Zoroastian ideas and culture into Zoroastrianism.
Sorry for repeating the post.
Zorastrianism is a corruption of Sanatana Dharma not the other way around. The Parsis were racist dissenters amongst the eternal religion who formed the “monotheistic” Parsi faith! Sanatana dharma inducted other people into the faith too though it lost momentum later and never ventured outside of India. To hear a Parsi speak of environmentalism in their faith is laughable! They say Fire is pure and is corrupted by Hindus with the bodies of the dead! Hindus believe the fire is pure because it has the capacity of purifying everything! Why do you boil water, why do you cook food? Bodies are also made up of the elements! Infact the parsis eat meat which is the single largest contributor of methane to the environment. The death of vultures is well documented. They blame the animals having diclofenacs etc! Doesn’t the parsi man’s flesh contain chemicals. Cremation is the best form of disposing bodies! Monotheism stands for inducting people into the faith while parsis use it as an excuse for racism. They have been sycophants who could not fight the islamic invasion, licked the boots of whoever was in power and now have the audacity to comment on Sanatana Dharma to which they owe deeply for their very survival!
They have seen the historical tolerance of hindus and they will see otherwise too if they make irresponsible assumptions like these!
A true hindu will never use sucha a language as bharat, hindu etc.. who appear to be the same person posting on. It is a shame that we have such people in our community. I am sorry on behalf of the entire hindu community.
Yeah, when I read it I was asking to myself what the Author wants to say: Did he read or not, Sanskrit is much older than Persian and it is said that old persian was derived from proto-sanskrit, no sanskrit word is derived from persian, persian just has an influence on urdu and modern day hindi (not pure hindi). Proto-Sanskrit is one of the old stages of sankrit.
But yes, there are 5 classic languages of Indo-European families and they are: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Persian and Pali. I don’t say Persian is derived from Sanskrit, if it was then Linguistics wouldn’t have said that persian is a classic language but yes it might have been derived from proto-sanskrit which many linguistics don’t deny but no one ever said that sanskrit is derived from persian
Farzana, sorry to say but my feeling is either you know nothing just some collected facts from internet and putting them in wrong oder or you know many things, but you are playing with them in a wrong way. (some of your facts, not all), either way you are doing the same thing.
the guy seems mistaken of sorts.to say tat sanskrit is influenced by avestan is totally laughable.
actually wat happned was tat in da harappan period da so called aryan people used to live alongwith other tribes of same origin as theirs..
aryan means “refined”…..so each tribe called themselves as aryan nd their enemies(of same origin ) as “dasyus” as a means of undermining them….one such war b/w indra(an aryan) nd another aryan(vritra) has bin mentioned in rigveda in wich indra slained him.
due to gradual climate changes nd possible dryin up of rivers due to a large no. of dams(note tat wars at tat tym wer mainly based on issues of water usage) d harrrapn urban civilisation broke up and people went away in search of greener pastures.
one of the two hostile tribes migrated to east in india nd other to west in iran.
(next post in some days)
Why don’t you see the similarities between Hinduism and the old Persian faith (Zoroastrism) ?
We descended from the same stock of (Aryan) peoples!!!
We share common ancestry… DNA… cultural heritage…
So don’t argue who’s the best, or who was the first one.
Well, i have seen so many arguments between many religions and languages as to which one is older. The older is somehow grantedly taken to be better, which is not necessarily the case.
The below argument is a totally unrelated one. But, pls tolerate it:
All I know is that parsis were evicted out of persia and that was a good thing to happen to India. Unlike other people who have come to india from different parts of the world, parsis are the only set of people who are highly civilized and who have done so much for India. Note that they never invaded india, but politely asked for the gujarat king to allow them to settle here. Once settled, they have been completely patriotric and have worked for the economic betterment of teeming millions of indians.
Irrespective of which language was born when and which one has influenced others ( It doesn’t matter unless you are just another boring academic), as a hindu, my highest respect of any communities is for parsis. I bow to you.
this massive grey area between persia and India is an emotionally charged one which came first?What derives from what? etc this is esp true because persia militarily has always been more powerful than India.
HOWEVER parsis have proved their loyalty,patriotism for India over and over again and the hindus who are posting threatening comments should be ashamed of themselves parsis are intelligent,honest patriots who have served their adopted land on a per capita basis several orders of magnitudes more than even hindus have.let us debate like two civilized people.god bless u parsees.
Parsis fled the Arab invasion and India welcomed them. They are 100% Indians and I am amazed to see how well they did. regarding who was who and who did this and that first, I would say that it doesn’t really matter. the most important is the final result.
Great hello from a Persian Parsy
To put to to rest any unease felt by the topic.
Theologically the birth of zarathushtra shouldnt be linked to start of the faith.
The religion itself is Mazdayasnism. The sudreh and Kusti predated Zarathushtra and so did mazdayasni festivals like Navrooz,ghambars etc.
All zarathushtra did was rekindle the faith.The birth of Zarathushtra in itself is not known, some place it 6000 BC and some much closer…area ranging from Azerbaizan to Afghanistan
Here comes the core….the reason for zarathushtra having to rekindle the faith was due to the split of the Aryans..into deavyasni and Mazdayasni…showing links…
There are thus many similarities and Sanskrit and Avesta are sister languages…the kusti of the mazdayasnisn and the janois of the hindus..etc
The differences are like Mazdayasnism talks of one god( concept borrowed by christian, islam etc) whilst hinduism talks of multiple Gods…theosphically difference like in hindusim one prays bare foot whilst mazdayasnism talks against paying or being barefoot as the yazad(angel) presiding over earthi.e spandamard is negatively affected…mazdayasnism talks against animal gods etc….
The magnificient aspect is ..like tilak did or most scholars have to ..is to link avesta with sanskrit and vice versa to really understand the 2…
Also Zoroastrianism/Mazdayasnism and Hinduism had links such as coinage in the Maurian era in India arriving from Sasanian silver and Mint…and other trade relations since time..
Persian/zoroastrian empire stretched all the way to Indus and thus we have Punjab a persian word whilst hinduisitic scholarshp like medicine etc were higly regarded by scholarisitc studies ..by all. including the greeks, zoroastrianis and vice versa…
The reason for the king confirming that the refuge takers were indeed of the mazda yasni faith inspite of diference in philosophies a times was because ike the Hindus or any ancient faith, zoroatrianism also never threathen to wipe out the other culture due to thirst of conversion…like the moguls and those who wanted to chrisianise Persia thus weakening it…
mutual respect for each other..
By then the term Persians included those faiths that actualy aided in destroying the original Persian faith..i.e Mazdayasnismm..
Hinduism and Zoroastrianism in a way showcase TRUE SECULARISM…at times linked , at times opposing philosophies ..yet mutual respect for both from within….and thus has seen us thru time…
It definately stands above..who came first and who was greater as both our forfathers acknowledged each others greatness, weakness and strengths without being embarassed..
If avesta aided sanskrit or vice versa, it is indeed a pleasure for both and thus though oposing philosophies -at times..it has tood the test of time..
One only hopes that the majority never link the zoroastrians with the threath percieved from those who want to change the demograpghy of India thru conversions, be it a madressa or a missonery
Thank you all so much… Faz & rustom. It was amazing to know all this facts, hope have some input
thanks
Even as an Indian, i know Indian laguage and culture…also Hinduism hab been influenced by rich Persian qualities.
Perisans have influenced their brilliant culture and civilization through the whole region. Who can deny that!
A
Even as an Indian, i know Indian laguage and culture…also Hinduism hab been influenced by rich Persian qualities.
Perisans have influenced their brilliant culture and civilization through the whole region. Who can deny that!
As an History expert i admit that the whole region would have seemed totaly different without the Persian influence.
Thanks god they have ever existed(also a persian word like in Dutch God(Khod) originaly comes from Perisan( khoda/Goda)
Dear friends. As far as I know originally there were the Indo European aryans in Sogdiana ( now Uzbekistan).The european group of aryans went to Europe and the subfamily of Indo Iranian aryans came to Iran ( Elam).From there the Indo Aryans went to northern India while the Iranian Aryans stayed put in Iran.And yes, Sanskrit and athic Persian were not derived from each other;they were evolved from the proto ( first) Indo European language which was the parent of the 5 classical languages mentioned by Pearl.
Farhana is obviously being overzealous in her eulogy of Zoarastrianism. This says all from my point of view.
Personally I think that fire is polluted by cremation is not a very sound idea as fire is meant to purify things and it is also used in hawan to carry offerings like ghee to the heavens.
The patriotism,secularism and caliber of Parsis is well known and I as an Indian acknowledge their contribution to the nation in numerous fields. Long live Indo Parsi unity. Amen.
I AM IN IRAN AND WANT TO MAKE A DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT THE PARSIS IN INDIA, CAN YOU HELP ME TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THEM AND MAKE RELATION WITH THEM PLEASE?