Zoroaster. Ζωροάστης, or Ζαθραύστης (so the Greeks pronounced the name of Zarathnshtra), the founder or reformer of the ancient religion of the Parsees, appears as a historical person only in the earliest portion of the Avesta, the Gâthic hymns, where the aspirations, hopes, and fears of an actual human agent are unmistakably present. His name means 'Bay-camels' (hardly 'Old-camels'), ushtra being a frequent termination, as in 'Fleet-camels,' Frashaoshtra. His father was Pournsaspa, 'Many-horses;' his wife was Hvogyi (i.e. of the Hvogvas); his daughter was Pouru-chista, the Discreet. His family name was Spitama. This much we may accept from the statement of documents, but as soon as we leave the last Gâtha, which was the wedding-song of his daughter, we have no reliable data. Whether he was born in Ragha, the 'Zarathnshtrian' province (possibly later so called from its having become a political and ecclesiastical centre), or nearer the scene represented in the Vendidad (chap. i.), where countries to the east are mentioned (so more probably), or, again, whether Atropatene was his home, one thing seems certain, which is that all the persons named in the Gâthas belong beside him. Notwithstanding Yasna, xlv. 1, with its 'to what land (district) shall I turn?' which probably gave rise to the erroneous opinion, he was no immigrant or emigrant going prophetically from country to country; for such a career at such an age would have been soon cut short by his execution. He is thoroughly at home and among his relatives in the Gâthas. As the centre of a group of chieftains, one of whom was the king Vishtâspa ('Horse-owner'?), he was carrying on with varying success a political, military, and theological struggle for the defence or wider establishment of a holy agricultural state, whose laws and principles encouraged pastoral labour, tillage, and thrift, as against the freebooting tendencies of Turanian and Vedic aggressors. In the course of his career he composed religious-political hymns, the Gâthas, of which we have now only fragments surviving in metres which appear (or reappear) in the Rik and in other parts of the Veda. (See under ZEND also for the period in which he lived, which is even more uncertain than that of Homer, but which cannot be placed later than 800 B.C., and may be greatly earlier.)
See PARSEES; Marion Crawford's novel, Zoroaster; and Prof. A. V. W. Jackson's Zoroaster the Prophet of Iran (1899).