All Living Beings, Great and Small: From Zoroastrianism’s Bundahishn, Part 2 of 2

Drawing from the excerpts of Zoroastrianism’s Bundahishn, let us continue to learn about Ahura Mazda’s creation of the soul and body, with the sole purpose of living a virtuous life in devotion to God. Additionally, we will discover the many diverse species of plants created for humanity’s benefit and consumption.

“‘Which is created before, the soul or the body? And Ahura Mazda said that the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was created; it is given into the body that it may produce activity, and the body is created only for activity;’ hence the conclusion is this, that the soul is created before and the body after.”

“Ahura Mazda spoke to Mashya and Mashyôî thus: ‘You are man, you are the ancestry of the world, and you are created perfect in devotion by Me; perform devotedly the duty of the law, think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and worship no demons!’ […]”

“On the nature of plants it says in revelation, that, before the coming of the destroyer, vegetation had no thorn and bark about it; and, afterwards, when the destroyer came, it became coated with bark and thorny, for antagonism mingled with every single thing; owing to that cause vegetation is also much mixed with poison, like Bis the height of hemp, that is poisonous, for men when they eat it die.

In like manner even as the creatures, with grain of fifty and five species and twelve species of medicinal plants, have arisen from the primeval ox, ten thousand species among the species of principal plants, and a hundred thousand species among ordinary plants have grown from all these seeds of the tree opposed to harm, the many-seeded, which has grown in the wide-formed ocean. When the seeds of all these plants, with those from the primeval ox, have arisen upon it, every year the bird strips that tree and mingles all the seeds in the water; Tîstar seizes them with the rain-water and rains them on to all regions.

Near to that tree ‘the white Hôm,’ the healing and undefiled, has grown at the source of the water of Arêdvîvsûr; everyone who eats it becomes immortal, and they call it the Gôkard tree, as it is said that Hôm is expelling death; also in the renovation of the universe they prepare its immortality therefrom; and it is the chief of plants. […]”