The Teachings of Zoroaster
The-Zend-Avesta
The hymns of Zoroaster
YASNA 28
28.1
I pray You all in reverence with outstretched hands for his help –
the Bounteous Will’s in first place, Mindful One, with Right –
through action
by which Thou wouldst satisfy Good Thought’s wisdom and the
cow’s soul:
2
I who will approach You, Mindful Lord, with good thought,
to give me of both existences, the material one and that of
thought,
those blessings in line with Right by which one could keep one’s
supporters in well-being;
3
I who will hymn You, Right and Good Thought, as never before
and the Mindful Lord, You whose unimpaired dominion also
is increased by Piety: come to my calls to give help.
4
I who have taken my soul in mind for praise-song together with
Good Thought,
and knowing the Mindful Lord’s repayments for actions,
so long as I have the ability and strength, will look out in search
of Right.
5
O Right, shall I see Thee, as I acquire good thought
and, as a path1 for the most mighty Lord, the Mindful One,
compliance?
Through this prescript may we convince the predators2 most
fully with our tongue.
6
Come with Good Thought, give with Right Thy enduring gift
in upright utterances, Mindful One, strong support for Zara-
thushtra
and for us (all), Lord, with which we may overcome the foe’s
acts of enmity.
7
Give, O Right, that reward, the blessings of good thought;
give Thou, Piety, enablement to Vishtaaspa and myself;
give Thou, Mindful One, showing Thy authority, the prescript
in which we might hear Your caring.
8
For the best gift, Best One who art of one mind with best Right,
Lord, I pray Thee earnestly on behalf of the upstanding Frashaush-
tra and myself
and those on whom Thou mayest bestow it for ever out of Good
Thought.
1 Or: place, seat.
2 The word properly denotes animal marauders such as wolves. Here (as in 34. 5 and 9)
it stands for the wrongful men who harass the cow.
9
With these prayers may we not anger You, Lord, nor Right
and Best Thought, we who are busy offering Your praises:
Ye are the promptest ones; Your powers and domain are of
strengths.
10
Those then whom Thou knowest to be upright before Right and
Good Thought
and worthy, Mindful Lord, fulfil their desire with attainment;
I know that well-purposed hymns of devotion to You are not in
vain.
11
Thou who with their aid dost protect Thy Right and Good
Thought for ever,
teach me, Mindful Lord, to voice in line with Thy will
through Thy mouth (those teachings) by which the pristine ex-
istence may come about.
29.1
To You the cow’s soul complains: ‘For whom did Ye shape me?
Who made me?
Fury and force, cruelty, violence, and aggression hold me bound.
I have no pastor but You; so show Yourselves in good pasturing.’
2
Then the Maker of the Cow asks Right: ‘How was Thy ruling for
the cow,
when Ye powers put her there? Cattle-tending lies with the
pastor;
(but) whom did Ye want to be her lord, that might repulse fury
by the wrongful?’
3
To him Right, no breacher of unity, no enemy of the cow, will
answer:
‘Of those things there is no knowing. He by whom the upright
invigorate the weak
is the mightiest of beings; to his calls I will respond, my ear reaches
no further:
4
‘the Mindful One, the most heedful of initiatives, both those
taken in the past
by Daevas and mortals, and those that may be taken hereafter.
He is the lord that judges; it will be as He will.’
5
But we two are here with outstretched hands propitiating the
Lord,
my soul and the milch cow’s, as we put the Mindful One to our
questions:
‘Is there no prospect for the righteous-living one, none for the
stock-raiser, among the wrongful?’
6
Then the Lord speaks, the Mindful One, knowing the designs in
his wisdom:
‘Indeed no patron has (yet) been found, nor a ruling in line with
Right;
the Shaper has created thee for the stock-raiser and the herds-
man.’
7
Milk and butter, this is the prescript that the Lord, of one mind
with Right, made
for the cow, He the Mindful One; He is bounteous to the needy
through his teaching.
– Whom hast Thou who by good thought could establish those
things for mortals?
8
‘This man here I have found, the only one who listens to Our
teachings:
Zarathushtra Spit ̄ama. He desires, mindful, on Our behalf and
Right’s,
to broadcast Our praises, as I harness his well-constructed utter-
ance.’
9
Yet the cow’s soul laments, ‘That I am to put up with an ineffec-
tive carer,
the voice of a powerless man, whom I wish enabled with author-
ity!
When will there ever be one who will give him physical assis-
tance?
10
‘Grant Ye them, Lord, strength with right, and that authority
with Good Thought, by which one may establish fair dwelling
and peace:
I for one realize Thee, Mindful One, to be the first procurer of
that.’
11
Where are Right and Good Thought and Dominion? It is me,
with Right,
that Ye in Your providence must acknowledge, Mindful One,
for the great rite.
Lord, (come) down to us now, in return for our liberality, Your
followers’.
30.1
Now I will speak, O proselytes, of what ye may bring to the
attention even of one who knows,
praises for the Lord and Good Thought’s acts of worship
well considered, and for Right; the gladness beheld by the day-
light.
2
Hear with your ears the best message, behold with lucid mind
the two choices in the decision each man makes for his own
person
before the great Supplication, as ye look ahead to the declaration
to Him.
3
They are the two Wills, the twins who in the beginning made
themselves heard through dreaming,
those two kinds of thought, of speech, of deed, the better and
the evil;
and between them well-doers discriminate rightly, but ill-doers
do not.
4
Once those two Wills join battle, a man adopts
life or non-life, the way of existence that will be his at the last:
that of the wrongful the worst kind, but for the righteous one,
best thought.
5
Of those two Wills, the Wrongful one chooses to do the worst
things,
but the most Bounteous Will (chooses) Right, he who clothes
himself in adamant;
as do those also who committedly please the Lord with genuine
actions, the Mindful One.
6
Between those two the very Daevas fail to discriminate rightly,
because delusion
comes over them as they deliberate, when they choose worst
thought;
they scurry together to the violence with which mortals blight
the world.
7
But suppose one comes with dominion for Him, with good
thought and right,
then vitality informs the body, piety the soul:
their ringleader Thou wilt have as if in irons:
8
and when the requital comes for their misdeeds,
for Thee, Mindful One, together with Good Thought, will be
found dominion
to proclaim to those, Lord, who deliver Wrong into the hands
of Right.
9
May we be the ones who will make this world splendid,
Mindful One and Ye Lords, bringers of change, and Right,
as our minds come together where insight is fluctuating.
10
For then destruction will come down upon Wrong’s prosperity,
and the swiftest (steeds) will be yoked from the fair dwelling of
Good Thought,
of the Mindful One, and of Right, and they will be the winners
in good repute.
11
When ye grasp those rules that the Mindful One lays down,
O mortals,
through success and failure, and the lasting harm that is for the
wrongful
as furtherance is for the righteous, then thereafter desire will be
fulfilled.
31.1
Minding these rules of Yours, we proclaim words unheeded
by those who with the rules of Wrong are disrupting Right’s
flock,
but the best for those who will trust in the Mindful One.
2
If hereby the better way is not in plain view to the soul,
then I appeal to You all according to the ruling known to the
Lord, the Mindful One,
(the ruling) on those two lots, so that we may live in accord with
Right.
3
The atonement that Thou didst establish with Thy will and with
fire and with Right assign to the two parties,
the rule that is for the prudent – tell us that, Mindful One, for
our knowledge
with the tongue of Thy mouth, and with it may I convince
everyone alive.
4
When the time comes to invoke Right and the Mindful One and
the Lords
with Reward and Piety, I shall petition with best thought
for a strong authority for myself, by whose increase we might
vanquish Wrong.
5
Tell me, so I may distinguish it, that better lot Ye appointed for
me with Right,
so I may know and take to heart with Good Thought, whose
prophet (I am),
those things, Mindful Lord, that will not be, or will be.
6
– ‘It will go best for him who knows and speaks my truth,
the prescript of health, right, and continuing life.
What he increases for Him through good thought, that is domin-
ion for the Mindful One.’
7
He who first conceived these amenities permeating the world of
light,
He by his sapience is the creator of Right, with which He upholds
Best Thought.
Through that will, Mindful One, Thou dost increase, which even
unto now, Lord, is the same.4
8
I think of Thee first, Mindful One, as being young in my thought,
the father of Good Thought, when I catch Thee in my eye,
the true creator of Right,5 lord over the world’s doings.
4 Or ‘who . . . art the same.’
5 Or, with an emended reading, ‘the companion of Right (and) creator’.
9
Thine was piety, Thine too was the cow-fashioner sapience
of will, Mindful Lord, when Thou gavest her a path
to come either on the herdsman’s side or (on his) who is not a
herdsman.
10
But she of these two chose the herdsman, the stock-raiser
as her lord, the righteous one, the cultivator of good thought:
the non-herdsman, Mindful One, drive her as he might, did not
get her goodwill.
11
Since first, Mindful One, Thou didst fashion our living bodies
and moral selves
with Thy thought, and our intellects, since Thou gavest bodily
vitality
and actions and pronouncements, (it has been the case that)
where the free agent makes his choices,
12
there it may be one of false words who speaks forth, or one of
straight words,
one with knowledge or one without it, through that man’s heart
and thought:
point for point Piety debates with the will where there is hesita-
tion.