Our earliest sensitivity of good and bad dates back to the childhood tales of the god and the

demon.
There have been as many descriptions of the devil as are for the god. The most righteous description
I find is that god resides in our good deeds while the demon does in our bad.
We by now have been too familiar with the saying,

“An ideal mind is a devil’s workshop.”

The early civilizations maintained a fascinating relationship between the good and the bad. So, this
dual was nature apparent in Hindu scriptures that were composed around 5000 BC and are evident
in the Hindu traditions even today. On a small scale they form the expression of Hinduism as a
whole.
The various situations and emotions that we as humans experience have been valuably represented
through a collection of folk lore depicting this dual nature of good and bad in an interesting mix.

The Mahishasura Statue in Chamundi Hills

The stories we heard, have not always classified good and bad based on the physical stature, rather
focused on their actions. While the greatest of the kings and sometimes gods themselves have been
associated with greed for power and strength that have wronged them, the cruelest of the demons
many a times have also been portrayed as the hero of the story because of their little acts of
kindness.

We have been cautioned that all that shines is not gold, but were left to realize for ourselves that all
that is dark isn’t just coal. It still has the brilliance of a diamond.

The earliest picture of the demon is the Asura. Asuras were perceived as the lesser beings of the
dark or underworld, who were in constant battle with the Devas or gods, yet were closely related to
them.
The Puranas paint the kinship of the Asuras and Devas. According to which Kashyapa, who married
the 13 daughters of Prajapati is the father to all beings on earth including Devas, Asuras, Manavas or
humans and the entire animal world.
Asuras being older are recalled as the primal gods of ancient times and the predecessors of the
Devas.
An engaging story validates the above theory. The early Vedic texts heavily drew from the Aryans,
originally the immigrants from central Asia who were worshippers of fire for its natural valour and
named their god as the Ahura Mazda which later branched out as Asura and naturally found its way
to India through the Persians. Even in our scriptures the god of fire or Agni was originally an Asura
who later switched sides with to the Devas. The word “Assur” also represented the Assyrian nation
and his worshippers, who were cruel with their treatment of the enemy. A hatred is thus known to
have existed between the Indo-Aryans and the Persians. While cruelties were called off by the
Persians later on, the Aryan family that migrated into India brought with them very bitter feelings
towards Assur and thus the term Asura, which at one time was considered an appealing label for the
Supreme Being, became descriptive only of those who were the enemies of the gods.

The word that was originally derived from asu, meaning breath through the means of a spirit, or “the
Great Spirit” now is explained to be simply a contradictory of sura or god, meaning a non-god and
therefore a demon.
The earliest of the Hindu scriptures speaks of the virtues of the Asuras, who were just good and
equally powerful as the Devas, themselves and also mention of their potential to create wonders,
including life itself. In the Rig Veda, the asuras were said to preside over moral and social
phenomena and the Suras presided over natural phenomena. However, by the time the Brahmana
texts were written, the character of the Asuras had become negative.
The Satapatha Brahmana cites that “the gods and asuras, both descendants of Prajapati, obtained
their father’s inheritance, truth and falsehood. The gods, abandoning falsehood, adopted truth; the
asuras, abandoning truth, adopted falsehood. Speaking truth exclusively, the gods became weaker,
but in the end became prosperous; the asuras, speaking falsehood exclusively, became rich, but in
the end succumbed.”

The later Vedic texts cite that the split was caused by the change in nature of the Asuras and hence a
battle was raised to balance the two forces and create a harmonic peace reflective of us humans’
strive. In fact the name Asuras was in fact coined during this epic battle popularly referred to as
churning of the sea, Samudra manthan, when they were rejected the Sura or wine of immortality,
came to be known as the Asuras and for the same reason are in constant battle against the Suras or
the Devas.

Alain Daniel says. “It is significant that it was not for their sins that the anti-gods had to be destroyed
but because of their power, their virtue, their knowledge, which threatened that of the gods—that
is, the gods of the Aryans.

Scriptures were written depicting Asuras as evil – Photo of Asuras waging war
In order to explain the demonization of asuras, mythology was created to show that though the
asuras were originally just, good, and virtuous, their nature had gradually changed. The asuras were
depicted to have become proud, vain, to have stopped performing sacrifices, to violate sacred laws,
not visit holy places, not cleanse themselves from sin, to be envious of Devas, torturous of living
beings, creating confusion in everything and to challenge the Devas.”
He perceives a change in the political alignment and moral conceptions to be the cause of the
division.
“With new political alignments and alliances, as well as with changes in moral conceptions and ritual,
some of the gods changed side the teachings of the wise asuras came to be incorporated into those
of the Vedic sages and often, more or less openly replaced by them.”

Ravana – One of the Most Powerful Asura King

On the other hand the Asuras slowly acquainted with the aboriginal tribes or the other non Vedic
populations of India, who were out casted by the Aryans as the worshippers of Demons. The
allusions to the disastrous wars between the Asuras and the Suras, found everywhere in the Puranas
and the epics, seem to include merely episodes of the struggle of the Aryan tribes against earlier
inhabitants of India. The Asuras are often grouped with different Hindu tribes such as the Kalinga,
the Magadha and the Nagas. There still exist the Naga tribes in Assam and the Asur are a primitive
tribe of ironsmiths in central India.
The Asuras were never originally the bad guys. Their creation is a result of the loopholes in
transmission of the scriptures. Good and bad exists only in the deeds of man and not their social,
political or physical origin.

by Jayaram V
The ancient Indians and ancient Iranians had many in things in common. They
worshipped many identical gods, spoke languages of common origin, performed rituals
that had many things in common both in the method and manner in which they were
performed and the purpose for which they were performed. Their religious beliefs and
practices drew inspiration from similar sources. The ancient Iranians spoke Avestan which
was a sister language of Sanskrit, spoken by the vedic Indians.

Both groups worshipped several gods and performed elaborate sacrificial rituals (yagnas
or yasnas) at the end of which they feasted and drank an intoxicating drink called Soma
in India or Haoma in Iran. The Iranians recited verses to invoke ancient gods just as the
Indians performed rituals to invoke the deities of the heavenly region. Some of the
deities they worshipped had similar names, such as Airyaman, apam Napat,
Atharvan/Atar/Agni, Sraosa/Brihapsati, Mitra/Mithra, Vauy/Wayu, Tvastar/Thworeshter,
Datar/dadar, Indra/Werethragna, Varuna/Rashnu. Usha/Usa, Yama/Yima, Vayu/Vay, and
so on. Both groups believed in the existence of a three tier cosmos consisting of an
upper heavenly region, a middle atmospheric region and the earth. Some of the
terminology they used in the practice of rituals was also similar such as zaotar and hotar,
athaurwan and atharvan, manthra and mantra, asha and arta and so on.

Incidentally, at some stage in their development, both groups parted their ways and
developed differences. Some of the differences may be attributed to geography and
some to the new political and social developments that took place in the respective
regions. They also came into contact with new religions and new religious ideas of other
traditions that came from across the borders through conquests or through traders,
merchants, and immigrants or grew indigenously.

While the Vedic Indians interacted with the pre-Vedic traditions of India, dating back to
the Indus period and even earlier, the ancient Iranian religion which was rooted in the
Vedic beliefs, faced opposition from Zoroastrianism, which was gradually emerging in
the region as the most organized and appealing religion of ancient Iran, backed by the
support of some rulers and the teachings of Zoroaster who claimed he had direct
communication with God and obtained the seal of approval to spread the new ideas.
Zoroaster elevated Ahura Mazda as the highest God and introduced the element of
monotheism in an otherwise polytheistic religion of ancient Iran. He introduced the
practice of worshipping one God, (Madayasna), in contrast to the Vedic practice of
worshipping multiple divinities (devayagna). He laid more emphasis on ethical living
rather than on ritual purity and sacrificial ceremonies as the dominant theme of religious
practice.

There was no place in his teachings for the old practice of sacrificial rituals involving
animal and human sacrifices, which were deemed agonizing and cruel and antithetical to
the revelations received by him. He brought into focus a dynamic universal God as a
protector of the righteous and opposed to evil, in place of an enigmatic and passive God
who remained in the background while the divinities battled with various dark forces and
claimed divine authority to themselves. However he did not discard old religion entirely.
He retained those ideas, divinities, practices and doctrines that fitted well in his new
teachings and declared the rest to be antithetical to the new dogma. As a result most of
the erstwhile devas, who were found to be in direct opposition to the principles
represented by God, were categorized as demonic spirits and unworthy of honor and
worship.

Zoroaster brought into focus the ethical dualism perceived in the entire creation as an
ongoing conflict between the forces of good and evil, a conflict that was already
perceived in the ancient religion but interpreted rather anecdotally. He shifted the focus
of the religion from ritual purity to ethical purity and from individual divinities to a
central God, who combined within Himself all the qualities represented by them as their
lord, creator and sustainer. His teachings portrayed the conflict between good and evil
beyond the known theological speculation, as an ethical battle of universal proportions
between the creative forces of good led by God and the destructive forces of evil led by
an anti-God principle. This ethical view of religion as the means to maintain the spiritual
purity of not just men but the entire creation, resulted in the polarization of the classical
deities into two groups, the followers of Truth (ashawan) and the followers of falsehood
(drugwant), the former portrayed as benign and beneficial, representing the ideals to be
cultivated by men; and the latter as evil, harmful and destructive forces, representing the
dangers to which humanity might succumb if they were careless. What the ancient
Iranians practiced was a tradition that was grounded in the history of their ancestors and
their beliefs, without being inimical to new ideas. What the new prophet taught was an
uncompromising new dogma that had elements of intolerance and rigidity, which was so
characteristic of the new religions that descended upon earth a few centuries later in the
Mediterranean and engulfed nation after nation obliterating all traces of ancient
religions.

In the process of this social and religious churning in the ancient Iran, some well known
popular divinities of the ancient world, like Indra, Natasya (Naonhaitya) and Rudra
(Saurva) lost their status as recipients of ritual honors. The reasons are not difficult to
find. All the gods, who lost their status as divinities in the new religion, possessed
qualities and indulged in actions that could not be categorized strictly as pure and
virtuous according to Zoroastrian values. From a purely ethical point of view, they had
qualities with shades of gray, suggestive of contamination, which would disqualify them,
in the new religion, as beings of pure light or forces of a just and righteous God. In a
religion that rested on the foundation of uncompromising purity and an unambiguous
approach towards good and evil, it was not possible to continue their worship and still
convince the new converts about the importance of purity and righteousness. So all the
popular divinities of the old tradition that seemingly possessed questionable qualities
were pushed into the dark side and disqualified from receiving sacrificial offerings. Those
who fitted into the new pantheon with their exemplary qualities, such as Mithra and
Yama (Yima), continued to receive the honors as forces of light. In a move that smacked
of religious intolerance, but for reasons understandable from a Zoroastrian perspective,
Zoroaster declared that impure gods should not be worshipped and no sacrifices should
be offered to them. He introduced new rules for the sacrificial rituals, prohibiting certain
old methods and practices which were used to invoke them, such as the haoma rituals
involving intoxicating drinks, which were pleasing to the daevas.
The Indo Iranian connection in a different
perspective
Subhash K. Kak, a noted Indologist, draws some parallels between the Indian and Iranian
religions and presents the developments in Zoroastrianism in a new perspective. In his
research paper entitled, "Vedic Elements in Ancient Iranian Religion," he provides a
comprehensive list of deities present in both traditions who had identical names with
some phonetic variations to present the view that both religions had many things in
common. He then goes on to argue that the Vedic and the Zarathushtrian systems were
much less different than was generally supposed and that the three way division of
devas, asuras and daevas was not an entirely unknown classification to the Indian
tradition as it was familiar to the inhabitants of Kashmir who had contacts with both. He
believes that subsequently the Indian writers brought into focus the same dichotomy
between the divine and evil forces in the Puranas, with Vishnu or Siva as a Supreme
Being, acting as an adjudicator between the two, in a terminology that was familiar to
the Indians. Before concluding that the even after the Zoroastrian reform, the basic
system in ancient Iran remained unchanged, he makes the following observations.

"The list of common deities and concepts will make it clear that the Zoroastrian system is essentially the
same as the Vedic one. The presence of Indra in the list of the daevas seems to mirror the relegation of
Indra that started in the Puranic times where instead of connecting to Svar through the intermediate
region of which Indra is lord, a direct worship of the Great Lord (Vishnu or Siva) was stressed. This
innovation is not counter to the Vedic system since the triple division is a recursive order. The devas are
a part of the good forces in the Zoroastrian system under the label of yazata (yajatra, the adored- ones).
"The Zoroasatrian mythology remembers the Vedic sages and heroes such as Kavi Susravah (Kay
Khosrau), Kavi Usanas (Kay Us). The names Ksatra Virya (Shahriyar) and Suvarn ah (Khwarrah, Farrah)
helped the logic of late Persian names. The daeva in modern Persian are known as deev.
"The commonality of the fire ritual is well known. Less known is the ritual of the nine-nights (barashnom
i noshab) which is like the Indian ritual of the same name (navaratri). The No Roz occurs on the day of
the spring equinox just as the festival of Indra."
Click to expand...

Conclusion
Due to the geographical proximity, there was a regular exchange of ideas and practices
between India and Iran from the early vedic period till the Mughal period. As early as
1400 BC, the Hittites and the Mittanis were familiar with the Sanskrit names of many
Indian gods. Their kings bore Sanskrit names. Like the ancient Iranians, they probably
followed a religion that bore many resemblances with the vedic religion of ancient
Indians. Afghanisthan and Baluchistan acted as the connecting link between the two
regions. India was known to the Persians, in the Avestan, as Hapta Hindu (Sapta Sindhu),
a land that existed beyond Kubha (Kabul), Kurmu (Kurrum) and Gomti (Gomal. King
Darius ruled an empire which included parts of India. He employed an Indian army that
was well equipped and fit to fight, with infantry, archers, cavalry and chariots. The
Persians continued to hold their sway on parts of India till Darius III (300 BC). The
invasion of Alexander contributed further to the cultural exchanges. The continued
presence of Persians on the Indian soil led to the intermingling of ideas and practices.
Indian goods were popular in Persia. So was the knowledge of metallurgy and other
sciences, while elements of Persian architecture found their way into many monuments
constructed curing the Mauryan rule. The Mauryan emperor Chandragupta employed
women bodyguards of probably Persian origin and adapted the hair washing ceremony
of the Persian kings. In the religious sphere a number of new developments took place in
the Indian subcontinent. The vedic religion transformed itself into a complex religion
incorporating the best of all the prevailing ideas of the time, challenged by Buddhism
and Jainism and other rival traditions. In Persia the opposite happened. Zoroastrianism
developed into an organized religion. Its strict adherence to the teachings of Zoroaster,
intolerance of other religions and puritanical approach to religious practice, made any
changes in its basic fabric impossible, till it met its own match in Islam several centuries
later and was completely wiped out from Iran.

https://www.hinduwebsite.com/zoroastrianism/indoiranian.asp