MAZDA, DEVTA AND ASUR WORSHIP

2. Mazda, Devta and Asur Worship :

1. Mazda worshippers is known as post Zarathushtra,

2. Dev worshippers are Hindu Aryans and,

3. Asurs are worshipped by Zoroastrians.

Due to the conflict between Dev and Asur Worshippers, the Dev worshippers had to leave Iran or Dev worshippers were being pushed south through the Hindu Kush mountain passes into the upper Indus valley (today's Pakistan).

It is possible that the Indus valley had previously been populated by dev worshippers and that those from Central Asia migrated to join their co-religionists. The Hindu Kush (meaning Hindu Killer) would from that point, have formed a border between the Zoroastrian Mazda worshippers and the deva worshippers.

The Indus Valley was called Hindu (later Hind or Ind) in the Avesta. The locals called the region Sindhu and then Sind. Replacing 'h' with 's' is a common way of transforming many Avestan words to Sanskrit. The Persians eventually called the people of the region Hindi, a name that would in western parlance become Indie (India). Indians, however, refer to their country as Bharat. In addition, the name for the religion of the Dev worshippers, Hindu, is also derived from the Avestan / Iranian / Persian names for the Indus region. Hindu is not a name for their religion used by the ancient Hindus. Hindus refer to their religion by various names such as Sanatana Dharma, meaning eternal law in Sanskrit, or the Vaideehe Dharma.

Once the two groups of Aryans had separated, the Dev worshippers migrating south across the Hindu Kush mountains into the upper Indus valley, the relationship between the Dev and Mazda worshippers appears to have oscillated between peaceful neighbourliness and conflict.

However, when conflict did arise, it was more in the nature of kings and ruling groups seeking power (sometimes perhaps at the behest of religious advisors) than animosity between between two peoples.

To this day, the two peoples, the Zoroastrians and Hindus, intuitively feel a certain historic kinship. When the Zoroastrians were driven out of their Iranian homeland by the Arabs, it is the Hindus of India who gave the Zoroastrians a home, and the two groups have coexisted peacefully in India for over a thousand years, each honouring the other's freedom to maintain their religious beliefs.

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