Saturday 25 February 2023

Daevas vs Devas

Zoroaster said that "daevas" were "wrong" or "false" gods that should be rejected...Were Iranian "daevas" actually Indian "devas"? And if so, what could have turned devas (good guys) into daevas (bad guys)??? Well, the opposite climate of course...

In both Indian subcontinent and Iraq/Iran the climatic year is divided into two halves, a dry and wet half. 

India


Iran


If we look at the climate in India, we can see that the year is divided into wet part (Jun-Sep) and dry part (Oct-May). 

It is the opposite in Iran and Iraq...There, the year is divided into wet part (Oct-May) and dry part (Jun-Sep)... 

Now to understand how this affected the religion in these two parts of the world, we have to look at the animal calendar markers, the base layer of all the religions in the world. Animal calendar markers were used to create first calendars, by marking the time of the year when some prominent local animal mated or gave birth or migrated with the image of that animals. 

For instance:

Asiatic lions mating season starts in Jul/Aug. 

Asiatic water buffalo mating season starts in Oct/Nov.

In India, the beginning of the mating season of lions marks the peak monsoon season, the wettest time of the year. At the same time, the beginning of the mating season of water buffaloes marks the beginning of the dry part of the year. 

Considering that it is rain season that brings life, and that it is dry season that brings death to western India and Pakistan, lion = rain, fertility, good symbol, buffalo = drought, barrenness, bad symbol...

Climate played a huge role in forming of early agricultural religions. The forces that brought fertility of the land were deified, while the forces that took that fertility away were demonised...

This is exactly which happened to the animal calendar markers lion and buffalo. 

And so, in Indian mythology, Deva Durga, riding on a lion (peak of monsoon season), kills buffalo (beginning of the dry season) Asura Mahisha...I talked about this in my post "Mahishasuramardini"... 

In Iran/Iraq, because of the opposite climate, the rain season starts with mating of buffalos and the mating of lions falls in the middle of the driest part of the year...So in Iran and Iraq, lion, deva = bad, buffalo, asura = good...

Is this the reason behind Zoroaster's claim that the "daevas" are "wrong" or "false" gods that are to be rejected? Cause they were all wrong in Iran/Iraq...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

3 comments:

  1. Como posso saber a veracidade do que foi apresentado neste texto? Em quais fontes posso me basear?

    ReplyDelete