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Articles or Abstracts > AP
The 19 Sep. 2009 at 22:07The Arsacian period 
Around 247 B.C., Aršaka (Arsaces) established a fire temple at his coronation. This regnal fire marked the beginning of the Arsacian era. He was allegedly descendant of the Persian Artaxšaçā (Artaxerxes) or Dārayavahuš (Darius), and « having at once acquainted and established a kingship, he became no less memorable among the Parthians than Cyrus among the Persians … The Parthians paid this honour to his memory, that they called all their kings thenceforward by the name of Arsace. »
The Aršaka-kings felt themselves to be the heirs of the “ancient” Aryan kingdom; they tried to re-conquer all the lands that had once belonged to the Achaemenians (veterus Persarum terminus). The Aršaka-dynasty was in conjunction with the daēnā māzdayasni. The Aršaka not only developed the cult of temple fires but also they took measures to re-open the aθauruna-schools (= hērbedestān) in different lands and reassemble the scattered Avesta texts and other books on the basis of oral traditions and surviving manuscripts.
One Aršaka by name of Valaγš (Vologases) is honoured in the fourth book of the dēnkird thus: « Valaγš descendant of Aršaka, ordered that: Of the Avesta and Zand as assembled in a state of purity, and also of the teaching as derived therefrom, everything that had survived the damage and turmoil of Alexander and the pillage and robbery of the Greeks, in a scattered state all over the Aryan Land; whether written or in oral transmission, as canon, be preserved as it had reached (them), and be made memoranda (books) for the provinces of the kingdom. »
The Avesta texts were transliterated into an unambiguous alphabet, called dēn-diβīrīft.
After a period of disturbance, some priests found it necessary to refresh their memories by looking up manuscripts in the aθauruna-schools or fire temples. The ceremony of re-kindling a (lesser) sacred fire from the ashes through the offerings of wood and frankincense with recital of an Avesta liturgy is recorded by a native of Lydia, Pausanias in his Description of Greece, written in the second century A.D.: « Those of the Lydians who are surnamed Persian (Λυδοῖς ἐπίκλσις Περσικοῖς) have a temple at the city called Hierocaesarea and at Hypaipa. In each of these temples there is an inner chamber, and in this an altar upon which are some ashes of a colour unlike that of ordinary ashes. A magus enters the chamber, bringing dry wood which he places on the altar. After this he first puts a tiara upon his head and next intones an invocation to some god (= yazata) or other. The invocation is in a barbarian tongue, and utterly unintelligible to a Greek. While intoning he peruses a book(ἐπίκλησιν ὅτου δὴ θεῶν ἐπᾴδει βάρβαρα καὶ οὐδαμῶς συνετὰ ῞Ελλησιν ἐπᾴδει δέ ἐπιλεγόμενος ἐκ βιβλίου). This, without the application of a light, inevitably causes the wood to catch fire and break out into a bright flame. »