Zoroaster Zoroaster Zoroaster (, ; "Zōroastrēs"), (Persian: زرتشت pronounced as Zartusht) also known as Zarathustra (, ; "Zaraθuštra"), Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra, was an ancient Persian prophet, spiritual leader and ethical philosopher who taught a spiritual philosophy of self-realization and realization of the Divine. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and later developed into the religion of Mazdayasna or Zoroastrianism. He inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and lived in the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but his exact birthplace is
Zoroaster eastern Iran, including Central Asia, remain tentative". Zoroaster is recorded as the son of Pourušaspa of the Spitaman or Spitamids (Avestan "spit" mean "brilliant" or "white"; some argue that Spitama was a remote progenitor) family, and Dugdōw, while his great-grandfather was Haēčataspa. All the names appear appropriate of the nomadic tradition, as his father's means "possessing gray horses" (with the word "aspa" meaning horse), while his mother's is "milkmaid". According to the tradition, he had four brothers, two older and two younger, whose names are given in much later Pahlavi work. His training for the priesthood probably started very early,