Traditions: Zoroastrian Gathas; Bahá’í Hidden Words Motif: Wrongdoing, pardon, and moral attention Connection verdict: Partial thematic resonance with different questions Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-11-01
Summary
Both put wrongdoing under a searching moral gaze rather than treating it casually.
Read the two scenes
Yasna 51.4 is interrogative. The speaker asks where the moral order’s response to wrong and the possibility of pardon will appear, alongside questions about Right and Piety. Hidden Words 26–27 instead issues a direct command: attend to your own faults before broadcasting someone else’s sins. A reader might assimilate both to a generic “forgiveness” teaching, but the Gatha seeks an answer about judgment while the Bahá’í counsel restrains the act of judging a neighbor. Their closeness lies in the demand for moral seriousness.
What connects—and what does not
Yasna 51.4 asks where recompense for wrong and pardon can be found; Hidden Words Arabic 26–27 commands the hearer not to dwell on another’s faults while guilty oneself.
The Gatha addresses Mazda about cosmic justice and pardon; the Bahá’í words target interpersonal judgment and self-examination.
Why read them side by side?
The contrast separates a theological question about pardon from a practical warning against self-exempting accusation.
Sources and reading notes
- Yasna 51.4 — The speaker explicitly asks where recompense for wrong and pardon are found. Gathic Avestan hymn, likely pre-Achaemenid but scholarly dating varies; medieval manuscripts are much later. This chapter uses Bartholomae via Taraporewala English translation, as marked by Avesta.org.
- Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Arabic 26–27 — Two adjacent sayings warn against occupying oneself with other people’s sins while ignoring one’s own. Bahá’u’lláh’s 1858 text in Shoghi Effendi’s English translation; numbered aphorism in the official Bahá’í Reference Library.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.