The World of the Dead in Iranian's Thoughts

The conflict between two views namely the ‘existence of death’ and ‘love for eternal life’ has always preoccupied man’s mind. It has eventually ended with the victory of the second belief that is ‘immortality’and ‘a new birth in another world’.The reflection of attaining eternity in different forms of the myth of ‘the world of the dead’is clearly apparent in different time periods.In this article, the author endeavors to study the trend of evolution in the thought of ‘the world of the dead’and its classification into various stages of paradise, purgatory (inter-world) and hell as conceived by people of ancient Iran based on old and new Avestan texts and Middle Persian scripts.