It may presently be one of the most God-forsaken places on our planet. The Kokcha River region of Afghanistan is good for little more than opium farming and arms smuggling today, though it was once one of the great corridors between the ancient worlds of India and Iran, long before Darius and the Persian Empire.

As early as five thousand years ago, the Pharaohs of Egypt traded for the precious, bespangled lapis lazuli that is still mined from the mountains that are still being excavated by the River Kokcha.

It is the River Kokcha that defines, more than any other stream, the natural boundary between the Pamir and the Hindu Kush. Because of this strategic significance of the river, it must have competed with Khyber Pass for traffic between ancient India and Bactria. This is corroborated by Franz Grenet, who draws clues from the Avesta that indicate that the River Kokcha may have been the major route between Bactria and India at one time. The Avestan pattern Ragha-Chakhra-Varena-Hapta Hendu appears to draw a course from the Panj (Oxus) to India by way of Chitral, Pakistan.

Grenet also suggests that the prophet Zoroaster may have been born and raised at a bend on this river. Alexander the Great would later found his city Alexandria on the Oxus at the mouth of the Kokcha, after he crossed into Bactria from India, likely by way of Dorah Pass, at the headwaters of the very same river, at the junction of the Hindu Kush and the Pamir massif, the “Roof of the World.”

Long after Zarathustra and Alexander, Marco Polo claimed to have traveled along this same river, seeing the fabled lapis lazuli mines, on his way to China:

From Hormuz to Kerman, passing Herat, Balkh, they arrived Badakhshan, where Marco Polo convalesced from an illness and stayed there for a year. On the move again, they found themselves on “the highest place in the world, the Pamirs”, with its name appeared in the history for the first time.

Marco Polo and His Travels

Even today, the majority of Afghans are Iranians. The Tajiks, who speak Persian, are about as Iranian as anybody—”Tajik” is just another word for “Iranian”. Though Uzbeks have ruled and settled the area from time to time, the Kokcha River region is primarily Tajik country. The land immediately across the passes at that boundary between the Pamir and Hindu Kush is called Kafiristan, which may translate, curiously enough, to “Land of the Infidels”. This is a subject of some dispute. It would seem to be apropos, given the great religious divides that must have existed between East and West back into the depths of human prehistory, but perhaps more important than the divisive aspect of these geo-religious differences might be the enlightening aspect of cultural cross-pollination between early Hindus, Zoroastrians, Greeks, and Buddhists over so many centuries.

It’s easy to see the prominent role of moral dualism in Zoroastrianism. It is not always quite so obvious what the characteristics of Good and Evil are considered to be. Ultimately, I think the best answer is that Good and Evil have no characteristics. To associate characteristics with these principles is equivalent to giving names to them, and to name Good and Evil is the essence of idolatry. Of course, Zoroastrianism does offer names for Good and Evil. The question is, how can Good and Evil be associated with actual phenomena? Though we ought to take care in making such a judgment, I think it safe to say that drawing a moral demarcation between general principles is not quite so hazardous as drawing such demarcations between men.

There are two readily recognizable boundaries between Good and Evil in traditional Zoroastrianism:

• between the Truth and the Lie (Asha and Druj)
• between life and death

That is to say, as far as particular values are concerned, Zoroastrianism values truth and life above all else.

I’ve been thinking about the Zoroastrian idea of truth, which is called “Asha”, the cousin of the Hindu principle Rta. Asha and Rta both represent universal order, but Asha carries a strong moral connotation. It connotes societal order that results from honesty in human relations. It is such honesty that is the fabric of human commerce, and I am using the broadest definition of “commerce,” including not only the exchange of goods and services, but also intellectual commerce, social commerce, cultural commerce, and even spiritual commerce. Without honesty and trustworthiness, commerce cannot thrive and society loses its very fabric. Hence it can be seen that the two named characteristics of Good and Evil in Zoroastrianism—Asha and Druj—exhibit the emphasis that Zoroastrianism places on human relations, i.e., commerce.

In a nutshell, to value Asha is to value human society. In recent years, we have repeatedly witnessed the damage that a lack of honesty and trust can do to an economy, but that is only a particular instance of a general principle of human commerce, to say nothing of the internal, psychological society of the individual.

I am not as interested in Zarathustra the actual prehistoric man, if he ever existed, as much as I am interested in the name Zarathustra as a label for—or a personification of—the core ideas of Zoroastrianism.

For me, the essence of Zoroastrianism is the existentialist basis of cosmic dualism: the value-laden character of phenomena, or perception. As we’ve discussed here before, Plutarch considered this aspect of Zoroastrianism to be the essence of Zoroastrianism, though of course he did not discuss the idea in existentialist terms. Plutarch identified an essential correspondence between Zoroastrian cosmic dualism and the dialectic of Heraclitus. For Plutarch, all things contain a mixture of good and evil, hence existence is characteristically value-laden.

How might we imagine such an idea might be personified?

We have inherited a fairly rich body of Zoroastrian legend, archaeology, and philology from which we might assemble a myth that is both plausible and true to the meaning of Zoroastrianism.

We can certainly imagine Zoroaster as the legendary prophet who retreated to the mountains, but it seems untrue to the myth to see Zoroaster as a man who began as a prophet. What brought the man to the mountains before his epiphany—his revelation?

I’m inclined to envision the young Zoroaster as a man of some status. I do not dare suggest that a barefoot bronze age serf somehow pulled himself up by his bootlaces. Was he a priest? I think he would have had to have been, given the apparent stratification of ancient Iranian society, but the key is that we don’t necessarily need to envision him as a fully-employed priest. Perhaps he was a disillusioned son of a priest who found work as a herdsman. Perhaps seeing him as a merchant would work even better.

The marketplace is intimately tied to common views of morality that consider actions (AKA sacrifices) to be payments made toward some form of compensation, however postponed. The compensation might be delivered by a government, a god, or a force such as karma. There is a single rule at work, and Zarathushtra is no exception to it. The difference with Zarathushtra is that this celestial justice can be seen as serving a higher principle that is intrinsic and fundamental to our personal experience: the Good. The fact that Zoroastrianism makes the salvation of existence itself the priority reinforces this point. Other principles such as karma may imply the existence of a higher Good, but only Zoroastrianism can be seen as making the relationship explicit. When the Good is only implicit, it can be casually merged with notions of celestial power, which has the effect of reducing the Good to a partner—or worse, a servant—of Power.

The idea, where Zoroastrianism is concerned, is that an economy of moral commerce could be conceived. It would be imagined that this economy might trigger a “renewal of existence”. The challenge would be to motivate people to engage in this exchange of “goods.”

Perhaps this mythical moral capitalist—our prehistoric Adam Smith—might have first found work as a herdsman, and then found something to trade. That commodity could lead him to think about value and exchange. One commonly accepted translation of his name “yellow camel” may even hint that he may have been a traveling merchant. Alternatively, he could have partnered with a merchant. A partnership between a merchant and a priest could be the ideal birth of Zoroastrianism.