The Royal Institution in Ancient Iran

Abstract

<p>In the thoughts and beliefs of Iranians, kingdom has had a history of the creation of human beings on the earth. Accordingly, Iranians believe that the first creature and human being on the earth was the first king of Iran. Iranians connects the history of their mythical royal dynasties to the creation of humanity. For Iranians, the mythical kings of Iran are the creators of the royal institution and the functions and duties of the royal institution have been established, developed and transferred to next generations by the measures of these kings. The objective of the present study is to investigate the establishment of the royal institution and the development of royal institution in ancient Iran by a descriptive-analytical method. The findings indicate that Iranians had specific sacredness for their kings and called the first creature of Ahura Mazda as the King. In addition, they believed that kings should perform particular tasks whose formation was attributed to the mythical kings of Iran. Further, they believed that only those persons had the right of being a king who were from the race of kings and were approved by Ahura Mazda. to examine Lessing’s elucidation of authentic knowledge in <em>Shikasta</em>. The methodology appropriated in the paper entails depiction of visible world as an illusion of the Real pointed in Plato’s allegory of Cave and Nagarjuna’s Mundane Truth. We clarify emotion as the main motivator of such illusionary status stressed in both Plato and Nagarjuna’s thoughts. We argue that while the importance of reason and eradicating emotion cannot be ignored, what adjoins people to Truth is mindfulness and intuitive knowledge which is close to Nagarjuna’s non-dual patterns. By examining ordinary life as the illusion of Real, and emotion as the main obstacle to achieve the Truth emphasized in both Nagarjuna and Plato’s trends, we depart from other critics who undermine the eminence of essentialist trace in Lessing’s works and examine her approach towards Truth merely under postmodern lens. This departure is significant since we clarify while essentialism has been abandoned to a large extent and supporters of Plato have become scarce, amalgamation of his thoughts with spiritual trends opens a fresh way to earn authenticity in Lessing’s novel. </p><p> </p>