According to Bengali Polymath and Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore:

The first major change in human perception about religion and worship was the teachings of the ancient Iranian reformist and philosopher Zoroaster… [experts in the field date Zoroaster to 1700-1400 BCE]…

Tagore claimed in his book “The Religion of Man” (1931) that there is hardly any doubt that Zoroaster was the first person we know who gave moral character and direction to religion while teaching monotheism… Zoroaster broke the tradition of keeping people bound with external observances by preaching the path of Free Will…

Tagore viewed Zoroaster as the first to address all humanity with his teachings… “the Ideal of Zoroastrian Persia is distinctly ethical”…the heroic element of Zoroastrianism is based on the character of Iranians as a people… their heroism led to the creation of great empires…Iranians influenced others such as Judaea and Europe… “Their ideal was the ideal of the fighter”… that is, “by force of will and deeds of sacrifice they were to conquer … welfare in this world, and … immortality in the other. This is the best ideal in the West, the great truth of fight. For paradise has to be gained through conquest”… Tagore believed this ideal of a moral fight took a stronger hold on those in the West than in India…

[pic LACMA:  Iranian hero Rustam slays the white monster; folio from The Shahnameh or The Book of Kings… Mughal India (1608)… symbolically, the white monster is also the beast within oneself…for educational purposes only]

In CANDIDE (1759), the French philosopher and historian Voltaire made some references to Persia but 21^st c. translator (Theo Cuffe) OMITTED the relationship of these concepts to Iran/Persia…

For ex:

* Persian fabric workshops are common in Holland… (there is no discussion by translator about popularity of Persian goods in the West)...

* A town near Sierra Morena in Spain is called Avacena (the translator, however, does not tell the reader the identification and significance of Avacena but remarks that this is a fictional town…so the 21^st c. translator omits Persia… Voltaire could have named a fictional town anything so why did he name it Avacena… the readers will never know thanks to the translator)…

* A character in the book claim to be a Manichean when discussing physical evil vs. moral evil … (don’t believe the translator discussed origins of Manichean)…

* King of Poland claims he is the best Sarmatian king ever…(the translator does not identify Sarmatians as Iranian people but states that it refers to Poland and its inhabitants… so 21^st c. translator omitted Iranians)…

* Philosophers in Ottoman Empire are called dervish… (the 21^st c. translator again does not identify the Persian root of this word and concept…only refers to it as a religious brotherhood… once again Persia is omitted by current scholars/authors/translators)…

* The government in the Ottoman Empire is called divan… (the 21^st c. translator again does not identify the Persian root of this word and concept…and only refers to it as Turkish council of state… once again Persia is omitted by current scholars/authors/translators)…

* In a list of ancient kings Astyages and Darius are named…(don’t believe the translator identified these kings as Iranian)…

[pic ericrobertmorse: for educational purposes only]

In my recently-published study surveying selected 21^st c. history textbooks, Iran and Iranians (Persia/Persians) are virtually OMITTED… 

However…this wasn’t always the case in Western education or among Western notables…

One of America’s Founders Thomas Jefferson secretly translated Count Volney’s “Ruins of Empires” (1793) from French to English… Volney even visited Jefferson at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia… 

Volney was a historian specializing in the East… In “Ruins of Empires,” Volney discussed the numerous religions and made some interesting remarks:

Muslims believe there is a God without knowing what he is and believe the words of a man without understanding his language and go into the desert to pray to God when he is supposed to be everywhere and give alms of their own goods but plunder those of others…

Christianity is the allegorical worship of the sun…

Moses tried to keep foreign ideas away from the Hebrews but the Hebrews adopted ideas from the Chaldeans and the Persians…

Zoroastrians constantly renew their debate of good vs evil and keep dividing into sects because of it…

Indians find their gods in various animals etc. and have divided into hostile bands…

The Chinese and the Japanese worship the same god that other Eastern nations worship--Persian Bodd or Boudd… the grand lama is the Persian corruption of the same Prester-John…

Persians introduced “an invisible and imaginary world…into the real and visible one; this is the origin of those regions of pleasure and pain” – that is, heaven and hell – and “Of these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you formed your Jerusalem” and other beliefs, and “ye Mussulmans! your bottomless pit” and other beliefs…

Volney claimed in order to stop all these wars generated by varying religious views, there needs to be “a uniformity of opinion” by tracing “a line of distinction between those [concepts] that are capable of verification, and those that are not…[so] all civil effect must be taken away from theological and religious opinions”…

Volney concluded “that all the social virtues are only the habitude of actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them; That they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That nature having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made a law to us of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that deviates from it; That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of every perfection; That it only requires to be developed; That we are only happy inasmuch as we observe the rules established by nature for the end of our preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms founded on our own organization:

Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.”

[pic Wikipedia: Tomb of Volney, Père Lachaise Cemetery (division 41), Paris…for educational purposes only]

Dr. Kaveh Farrokh's May 7, 2017, blog about my recent study may be of interest... http://kavehfarrokh.com/blog/