Weather it is religion or region or anything. Ambitious leaders sometimes wants to set a more correct standard for what is being followed at that time. At this point, a new belief system starts. That is true everywhere. People divided to religions and there by sub category of beliefs in that religion. Rulers divide the land into smaller regions and declare new rules.
Coming to religion, this is clearly seen in every religion. Hindu's are classified to Shaivites, Vishnavites and so on. Muslims are classified to Sunni's, Shia's and so on. Christians as Catholics, Protestants and so on. This is similar in every major religion. But, if we go deeper in each of these. We can easily observe the similarities not just between the sub groups. But, many times between different religions.
A classic example I find very interesting is how Hinduism and Zoroastrianism evolved together(or separated from a parent belief). I should actually use a word like Vedic instead of Hinduism here as the current Hindu religion is very different from what is in Vedas. Both Vedas and Zoroastrianism worship gods like Soma, Varuna, Mitra. Ofcourse with different names. The most astonishing difference (or proof or evolution of both these religions) can be seen by what Gods and Demons called. While in Vedas and later Hinduism "Devas" are associated to refer Gods, this name is associated with Demons in Zoroastrianism. Similarly, while in Vedas "Asuras" are associated with Demons they are considered Gods in Zoroastrianism.
While I am no expert in ancient languages, the similarities people mention about Sanskrit and Avestan is astonishing. A basic tradition like "Sacred Thread" associated with Hinduism is found in Zoroastrianism as well. I find one of the quora post mentioning about this quite interesting. Sharing the link and the text in that link here.
The basic fact is that ancient Indo-Aryans and ancient Iranians descended from two subgroups of originally the same people nicknamed Proto-Indo-Iranians and both inherited numerous originally identical or closely related linguistic, religious, mythological, cultural and other features. More distantly, they also shared some relations with old European traditions via their common more ancient ethnolinguistic ancestors Proto-Indo-Europeans. But the divergence between traditions was commonly increasing during time in certain respects. From such developments we ultimately got the Vedic and the Avestan textual materials which represent the only relatively complexly-surviving oldest Indo-Aryan and Iranic traditions, although not the sole Indo-Aryan nor Iranic traditions (or their interpretations) which existed in that time.
Both terms deva/daeva and asura/ahura had Proto-Indo-Iranic predecessors (generally reconstructed as daywás and hásuras) and even already Proto-Indo-European ancestors (generally reconstructed as deywós and h₂ń̥suros). We therefore can, with a certain level of probability, try to reconstruct what was the usage of these words in pre-Vedic and pre-Avestan times. From the historical purely etymological perspective, the probably intuitive ancient meanings of these words should be roughly “a celestial” in the case of daywás and “a life-giver” in the case of hásuras.
As far as we can say, among Proto-Indo-Iranians, daywás was likely a basic and generic term simply meaning “god/deity”, applicable to all deities. Hásuras was likely in contrast a more specific title for only some of the daywáses (“deities”), it referred particularly to the reigning, high-ranking or powerful ones among the daywáses. To put it simply, hásurases were “the higher ones among daywáses”, also understandable as “lords among the gods”. All hásurases were also daywáses, but not all daywáses were hásurases (only the higher ones were).
The usage exactly like this we have attested among the related ancient Germanic peoples, especially among the Old Norse which left relatively many religio-mythological materials. Among the Old Norse, tívar (a cognate to devas/daevas) was typically used as one of the generic terms for any “deities”. In contrast, æsir (a cognate to asuras/ahuras) referred predominantly to a specific subgroup of tívar, particularly to members of the chief tribe of deities like Odin, Thor or Baldr, the lords of Asgard. (A little different, but related usage of the cognate to asura/ahura existed among Indo-European Hittites where ḫaššu evolved predominantly into the term for “a ruler/a king” in the sense of a sacral monarch who decides over the life and death of his subjects.)
A usage relatively similar to the prehistoric one is still implied also by some earliest Hindu verses of the Rigveda. For example, where one god, Varuna in this case, is identifed as Asura (Lord) who is a sovereign over other gods (devas) and over mortals):
“Thou over all, O Varuṇa, art Sovran,
be they devas, Asura! or be they mortals.
Grant unto us to see a hundred autumns
ours be the blest long lives of our forefathers.”
(Rigveda 2:27:10)
Or here where two gods are identified as “Asuras of devas”, i. e. Lords of the gods:
WITH hymns I call you, when the Sun hath risen, Mitra, and Varuṇa whose thoughts are holy, Whose Power Divine, supreme and everlasting, comes with good heed at each man's supplication. For they are Asuras of devas, the friendly make, both of you, our lands exceeding fruitful. May we obtain you, Varuṇa and Mitra, wherever Heaven and Earth and days may bless us.
(Rigveda 7:65:1–2)
For some reason, both Vedic and Avestan peoples deviated in their usage of the terms from the Proto-Indo-Iranic people, but each of them in a different way; the only thing which both their developments had in common was that both differentiated asuras/ahuras and devas/daevas into two separate groups in contrast to the earlier usage where asuras/ahuras were a subgroup of devas/daevas.
The Vedic tradition retained deva as the common term for a deity but asura, the former term for a higher deity, gradually became a term for “a disagreeable dark titan” who is not deva. This shift in usage was, as far as we can say, not associated with a clear demonization of any formerly worshipped Indo-Iranic holy beings, neither Indo-Aryan like Varuna or Mitra, who simply continued as devas, nor Iranic because no distinctly Zoroastrian holy beings like Mazda, Sraosha or any other are named among the later Hindu negative asuras.
The Avestan tradition on the other hand perceived the ahuras as a group of holy powerful life-forces, which so far quite corresponds to the traditional Proto-Indo-Iranic understanding, yet now seen as entirely separate from daevas who came to be understood as dark supernaturals of opposite characteristics. Apart of the demonization of the term daevas, also several Indo-Iranic deities themselves, like Indra or Nasatya, were demonized, so the change was unlike the Vedic one observably more than just semantic.
There was and is a number of theories why this happened and how much it evolved independently or due to mutual interactions. It is not really settled. I will just show an example of two opposite theories how it could happen if the mutual interactions were an important factor:
- Avestan people deviated, Vedic people reacted
If this theory was correct, we could say that there emerged a distinguishment between ahuras and daevas in the Avestan society some time before Zoroaster, with ahuras retaining the position at the top. The Zoroastrian texts themselves do not give answer how it happened because ahuras and daevas are already seen as separate in the texts of Zoroaster, i. e. it was not him who introduced the separation, Zoroaster just encouraged the particularly negative view of daevas as demons in contrast to holy ahuras headed by the supreme ahura named Mazda, one of the given reasons is that they and the priests of theirs were immoral and deceiving people by untruths.
The Indo-Aryans then came to know about this development and, insulted, eventually started to change the usage of the term asura and distinguish it from the term deva, even though they generally did not demonize any particular formerly revered beings.
In this case, Zoroastrianism would stimulate the Hindu change in the usage of asura.
- Vedic people deviated, Avestan people reacted
If this theory was correct, then everything would start due to a gradual change in the usage of the term asura among ancient Hindus. At least one of the reasons would be the error of Brahmin interpreters who were thinking about the verses and tried to interpret them from various perspectives, including the linguistic and etymological ones, who misunderstood the ancient word asura as a negation (i. e. “non-sura”) due to mistaking the initial “a” for a prefix, therefore wrongly concluding that the basic word was sura (“a” as a prefix standardly means a negation in both Sanskrit and Avestan but not when it is not a prefix). They would start to substitute the term asura for holy beings by sura, which would become a synonym for deva, in newer texts while changing the usage of asura to refer to disagreeable beings of opposite nature. But because this change was motivated by the scholastic effort to correct the alleged linguistic illogicality, not by any conflict with some worshippers of different holy beings, it did not result into demonization of any actual deities, all former holy beings continued as devas or suras while the reinterpreted asuras were identified with rakshasa-like beings who were never worshipped by anybody.
However, some ancient Iranians learned that Vedic Indo-Aryans started to say that devas are worshippable but asuras are bad, and they understood it as a claim that their traditional major celestials ahuras are bad. This would initiate anti-Vedic sentiment, accompanied by a newly-introduced distinguishment between ahuras and daevas and increasingly negative understanding of daevas. This would eventually result in the emergence of Zoroastrianism, associated with demonization of daevas not limited only to the term itself but moreover condemning several most Vedic-associted deities like Indra or Nasatya as the counteraction on the assumed attack on their religion.
In this case, it could mean that the Hindu demonization of the term asura ultimately influenced the origin of Zoroastrianism among Iranians.
These were just two possible theories, there can be also other and the question is not settled. The only thing which is quite obvious is that ultimately both Vedic and Avestan peoples deviated from the typical Proto-Indo-Iranic usage, each in their own way.
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