In Search of Zarathustra by Paul Kriwaczek

Kriwaczek speculates as to the Zoroastrian origins for some of their beliefs and their source – the peoples of the Asian Steppe who repeatedly invaded Europe in late antiquity. Going back a few centuries, Kriwaczek examines the heresies of the Cathars in Western Europe and the Bulgars/Bogomils in Eastern Europe.

In particular he describes the festival of Noruz in Iran which has been celebrated there since the time of Cyrus and whose origins are possibly older. He discusses the reverence Iranians pay to Daniel – a Jewish sage never mentioned in the Qu’ran or the Hadith – at his tomb. He points to the façade of the Sher-dar madraseh in Samarkand which features an anthropomorphised sun and a tiger chasing a deer. Kriwaczek also shares his observation that the Islamic practices of Iranians and Central Asians are distinct from their Arabian origins and includes many pagan Zoroastrian aspects. Time, though, has vindicated Duperron his translation was found to be accurate, his sources authentic and Western interest in Zoroastrianism has been around ever since. However, his work was completely discredited by contemporaries. To do so he endured an extraordinary adventure braving plague-ravaged ships, colonial wars, disease, jungles, tigers, time in prison and even a duel before succeeding in his aim. It is the story of Duperron an amateur French historian who made it his life’s mission to obtain Zoroastrian texts and translate them.

The story of the acquisition and translation of these texts is one of the most interesting parts of the book. Kriwaczek traces this modern interest back to Wagner and Nietzsche, whose interest was in turn influenced by the work of philologists for whom the translation of Zoroastrian texts played a key role in the formation of the theory of an Indo-European family tree of languages stretching back to ancient Sanskrit. In the modern world we mainly encounter Zoroaster (the Greek version of Zarathustra) through Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It is a fascinating journey of eccentric characters, strange heresies, prophets and reformers and the origins of pivotal religious ideas.

In In Search for Zarathustra, author Paul Kriwaczek traces the influence of this ancient religion and its revolutionary prophet from modern times to the European Enlightenment, to the Middle and Dark Ages, to Late Antiquity and Early Christian eras, into ancient Persian and Babylonian Empires and finally to a time before written language and settled society.

In Search of Zarathustra by Paul Kriwaczek