Quote Originally Posted by The Summoner of Leviathan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Guardian XIII View Post
It was a prayer before it was a sign for victory. The Fayth dreamt up this Zanarkand, so they can make anything whatever they want it to be, i.e. a prayer gesture becomes a sign for victory. Yevon isn't known about in the dream Zanarkand but his teachings were present nevertheless.
We don't know for sure what the real Zanarkand was like, we can't say if it is was always a prayer or not. Plus, Tidus' Zanarkand while fictional was nonetheless based on the real thing, making it likely that it was a sign for victory first. Moreover, Yevon, the religion, is only founded after the creation of Sin and the Fayth thus its teachings could not be present in Dream Zanarkand since the religion was a constructed after Yu Yevon made Sin and the others became Fayths.
It may have been a sign for victory first, but why would a religion adopt a sports gesture as their prayer sign? The Fayth were people who gave up their lives for a way to defeat Sin [I]for their religion[I]. If Yu Yevon and his teachings came after Sin had appeared then there would be no Sin. No creator, no Sin.

Furthermore, if Yevon started his teachings after Sin appeared, no one would have believed what he was saying. For all they knew it could have just been some sort of freak fiend. After a while, not being able to kill it they would have started believing him I'm sure, but it makes more sense (to me) that the teachings have always been around. It's like a boogey-man story, "Stop using Machina or Sin'll get you! Oh look I was right, here comes Sin now!". He's got his priest's and priestess' and when Sin actually shows "himself", then the rest of the world starts believing and repenting and whatnot.

To go all the way back to my first point, I would think that it was a prayer first because (after saying all that above) the Fayth were Yu Yevon's priests and priestess' who sacrificed themselves to fight Sin, so it would make sense to incorporate the prayer to ward off Sin (Just speculation mind you) in the new world they have created.