Asha and Druj: Truth, Order, and the Ethics of Choice

Asha, an Avestan term cognate with the Vedic Sanskrit rta, denotes truth, cosmic and moral order, and rightness all at once, standing at the very center of Zoroastrian ethical vocabulary; its opposite, druj, denotes the lie, disorder, and deceit, and the two terms together frame virtually the entire moral universe of the Gathas as a binary opposition between "the truthful" (ashavan) and "the followers of the lie" (drugvant). Unlike many ancient Near Eastern moral systems organized primarily around ritual purity, social hierarchy, or the arbitrary favor of the gods, the Gathas repeatedly ground moral worth in a person's free choice between asha and druj, expressed above all through Zoroaster's repeated formula of "good thoughts, good words, and good deeds" (humata, hukhta, hvarshta) as the threefold criterion by which a life is judged, a formula that later Zoroastrian catechetical texts, such as portions of the Denkard, would treat as the essential summary of the entire ethical law.