Vedic influence in Persia

I have many friends from Iran and I was extremely surprised when they told me that they step over fire seven times to celebrate their New Year. I didn’t expect fire worship in Iran as it is an Islamic nation. I was also amazed at the way they arranged fruits, rice, money, gold, flowers and clothes on a table on New Year’s Day as they believe that anything they add to the table will multiply. This custom reminded me of the way in which we celebrate the Vedic New Year. We too put flowers, lentils, rice, clothes, fruits etc. in our prayer room.  I suspected that ancient Iran might have had Vedic roots and the following paragraphs are a result of my research.

Zoroastrianism flourished in ancient Persia. It had retained many of the Vedic roots and traditions of ancient Persian. They believe in dualism; everything that is good in this world is created by Ahura-Mazda and everything that is evil or bad by Ahriman. This concept looks familiar to the concept of Siva & Rudra (please refer to my previous posts). They also believe that the good and the bad are constantly at war. They refer to the bad as Daevos. In the Vedic tradition the good is represented by Devas and the bad by Asura. The Devas and the Asuras of the Vedic tradition are constantly at war as well.