The Gathas, Our Guide: the thought-provoking divine songs of Zarathushtra

The Gathas, Our Guide: the thought-provoking divine songs of Zarathushtra

The Gathas! It is a small book, a booklet of barely 60 pages of 4 .5X7.5 inches (11X18 cms). It has 241 stanzas in all, a total of less than 6,000 words, enough to read them all within an hour. Its seventeen songs, strangely called hâitis, sections instead of songs, were composed by Asho Zarathushtra Spitama The size is perfect, a guide-book size. Its size was calculated by Asho Zarathushtra himself. He wanted to deliver an ever-fresh message. It had to be concise and precise. A bulk of verbosity of “do’s” and “don’ts” would not have worked. He himself says that he has given us his message “in a poetic and not an none-poetic” language, “so that it shall always stay with” us (Song 9.17). A poetic piece is easily and correctly memorized and transmitted. Chances of interpolation, especially if the poetry has a halo of high holiness around it, grow very slim. This was an Aryan devise of preserving their heritage at a time when there were no devices for writing and recording. The Gathas are living only because of living memories, devout human tape-recorders. The unique technique has preserved the very dialect spoken by Asho Zarathushtra and his companions for us. The size, as already stated, is perfect—concise, precise, invoking, thought-provoking. THE MAIN MOTTO Righteousness is the best good. It is radiant happiness. Radiant happiness comes to the person to whom righteousness is for the sake of the best righteousness alone.