Author: Shervin Farridnejad

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Zoroastrian Holy Marriage

Pirart, Éric. 2023. Hiérogamie mazdéenne. Présentation, texte, traduction et commentaire des deux dernières Gāϑā et de leurs annexes (uniés 51, 52, 53 et 54 du Yasna) (Supplementa 2). Girona: Sociedad de estudios iranios y turanios (SEIT).

In a radical departure from the method of Jean Kellens, which is both intuitive and reserved, Éric Pirart, with Hiérogamie mazdéenne (Mazdean Hierogamy), revisits the last archaic texts of Zoroastrianism and their appendices (Yasna 51-54), while ensuring that nothing is left untranslated or without grammatical explanation and that the etymology of all the words is examined on the basis of systematic criteria. In these texts, contemporary with the prophet Zaraϑustra, he looks for the features that differentiate them from the rest of Zoroastrian literature.

Table of Contents

  • Abréviations et symboles
  • Avant-propos
  • Chapitre I. La Vohuxšarϑrā Gāϑā
  • Chapitre II. La Vaŋhucā Hāiti
  • Chapitre III. La Vaŋhištōišti Gāϑā
  • Chapitre IV L’Airiiaman Išiia
  • Marginale I. Le Yātu Āxtiia
  • Marginale II. Le zand d’āžuš
  • Marginale III. Le sexe de Vénus
  • Marginale IV. Haōma est là
  • Lexique
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Journal

Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 31

Volume 31 (2022-23) of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute has been published.

Table of Contents

  • Harry Falk: “Faxian and Early Successors on Their Route from Dunhuang to Peshawar: In Search of the “Suspended Crossing”
  • Osmund Bopearachchi and Richard Salomon: “Two Gandharan Seated Buddha Images”
  • Henri-Paul Francfort: A “Blessing” Hand Gesture in Images of Deities and Kings inthe Arts ofBactria and Gandhara (2nd Century B.C.E.-1st Century C.E.): The Sign of the Horns
  • Ryoichi Miyamoto: Letters from Kadagstān
  • Dieter Weber: Studies in Some Documents from the “Pahlavi Archive”
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams and Frantz Grenet: A New Collection of Bactrian Letters on Birchbark
  • Zhang Zhan: Two Judaeo-Persian Letters from Eighth-Century Khotan
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Aspects of Kinship in Ancient Iran

Potts, Daniel T. 2023. Aspects of kinship in ancient Iran (Iran and the Ancient World). Oakland, [California]: University of California Press.

Originally delivered as the Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lectures, Aspects of Kinship in Ancient Iran is an exploration of kinship in the archaeological and historical record of Iran’s most ancient civilizations. D.T. Potts brings together history, archaeology, and social anthropology to provide an overview of what we can know about the kith and kinship ties in Iran, from prehistory to Elamite, Achaemenid, and Sasanian times. In so doing, he sheds light on the rich body of evidence that exists for kin relations in Iran, a topic that has too often been ignored in the study of the ancient world.

A free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

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Khotanese and Tumshuqese Loanwords in Tocharian

Dragoni, Federico. 2023. Watañi lāntaṃ: Khotanese and Tumshuqese loanwords in Tocharian (Beiträge Zur Iranistik 50). Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.

This work contains the first systematic investigation of the linguistic contacts between Tocharian A and B and Khotanese and Tumshuqese, four languages once spoken in the Tarim Basin, in today’s Xīnjiāng Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. The main part of the book is devoted to determining a corpus of reliable Khotanese and Tumshuqese loanwords in Tocharian: new borrowing etymologies are proposed, and some old correspondences are rejected. The discussion of the individual loanwords often involves a fresh examination of the text passages where they occur, and, in some cases, it offers lexical insights regarding a variety of neighbouring languages (Chinese, Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Gāndhārī and Old Uyghur). A detailed phonological, morphological, and semantic analysis of the corpus follows, with a view to determine the phonological correspondences, the relative chronology of the loanwords and possible historical scenarios of cultural exchange. One of the results of this investigation is that the influence of Khotanese and Tumshuqese on Tocharian was much more extensive than previously thought and it spanned over almost two millennia, from the early Iron Age until the extinction of the four languages at the end of the first millennium CE.

Table of Contents (PDF)

Federico Dragoni was born in Milan in 1992. After a BA in clarinet (Conservatory G. Verdi, Milan), he turns to Iranian Studies (BA Sapienza University of Rome, MA Freie Universität Berlin). In 2022 he obtains a PhD in Linguistics from Leiden University as part of the NWO-funded project «Tracking the Tocharians from Europe to China: a linguistic reconstruction» led by Prof. M. Peyrot. He is currently employed at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics as a postdoctoral researcher specializing in Iranian and Central Asian languages and cultures.

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Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd

Tašakorī, ʿAlī-ʾAkbar. 2020. tārīḫ-e ejtemāʿī-ye zartoštīyān-e yazd [Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd]. 3 vols. Irvine: Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California.

Ali Akbar Tashakori’s three-volume Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd (in Persian) deals with the social history of the Yazdi Zoroastrians from the medieval to modern times. While the focus is primarily on the Yazdi community, the work also covers the wider history of Iranian Zoroastrians. The book examines the challenges faced by Zoroastrians in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the beginning of the nineteenth century social and intellectual empowerment among Iranian Zoroastrians supported by the Parsis of India. It also highlights the growing political and economic influence of the community in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi era, as well as the remarkable role of the Pahlavis in elevating the status of Zoroastrians within Iranian society as a whole.

The first volume covers the lives of Zoroastrians of Yazd starting with the arrival of Islam in Iran, in 641 AD, until the formation of the Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī of Yazd in 1892 AD. This book discusses the treatment of Zoroastrians under the new Muslim rulers who regarded them as monotheists and “people-of-the-book”. It highlights two massive internal migrations to the Yazd region elevating its status as the center of Zoroastrianism. It also focuses on the formation of Anǧoman-e Akāber-Ṣāheb by Parsis and their efforts to abolish the Jazzieh tax and improve Zoroastrians’ lives. 

The second volume covers the formation of Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī by Keykhosro Khān-Ṣāheb in 1892 AD until the beginning of Pahlavi dynasty in 1924 AD.

This third volume covers the period that starts with the rise of Reza Shah and the formation of a secular government, which relied heavily on the pre-Islamic image of Iran, something which had a direct influence on promoting the social status of Zoroastrians. This volume focuses on the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah and the modernization of Iran, two elements with a profound influence on the lives of Zoroastrians of the Yazd region.

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Journal

A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future

A special issue of the Journal of Art Historiography: A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future, No. 28, June 2023, guest edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati.

Table of Contents

  • Yuka Kadoi: ‘A Twenty-Year Retrospect on ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’: Polarising Islamic art, consolidating Persian art’
  • Nile Green: ‘The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950’
  • Ebba Koch: ‘Discovering Mughal painting in Vienna by Josef Strzygowski and his circle: the historiography of the Millionenzimmer’
  • Henry P. Colburn: ‘A brief historiography of Parthian art, from Winckelmann to Rostovtzeff’
  • Iván Szántó: ‘West-östlich diplomacy and connoisseurship in the late Habsburg Empire: Baron Albert Eperjesy and his dispersed collection of Persian art’ 
  • Kassiani Kagouridi: ‘Musealisation and ethno-cultural stereotypes in Persian art: the case of Baluch carpets ca. 1870s – 1930s’ 
  • Tomasz Grusiecki (Boise State University), ‘Rethinking the so-called Polish carpets’
  • Dorothy Armstrong: ‘Persophilia and technocracy: carpets in the World of Islam Festival, 1976’
  • Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp: ‘The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) arts of the book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War’
  • Robert Hillenbrand: ‘Eric Schroeder: maverick polymath’
  • Andrea Luigi Corsi: ‘A matter of timing: the modern history of a ‘Sasanian’ silver plate from Rashy’
  • Johannes L. Kurz: ‘Dashi 大食 reconsidered’ 
  • Jens Kröger: ‘Kurt Erdmann (1901-1964)’
  • Jens Kröger: ‘Carl Johan Lamm (1902-1981)’
  • Joachim Gierlichs: ‘Ernst Cohn-Wiener (1882-1941) and his contribution on Islamic Art and Architecture in Central Asia’ 
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The Book of Zambasta

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2022. The Book of Zambasta. Metre and stress in Old Khotanese (Beiträge Zur Iranistik Band 49). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahāyāna Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859–1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

Table of Contents (ToC)

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The First Three Hymns of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā

Peschl, Benedikt. 2022. The First Three Hymns of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā. The Avestan Text of Yasna 28–30 and Its Tradition (Corpus Avesticum 4). Leiden: Brill.

At the center of this book stands a text-critical edition of three chapters of the Gāthās, exemplifying the editorial methodology developed by the “Multimedia Yasna” (MUYA) project and its application to the Old Avestan parts of the Yasna liturgy.
Proceeding from this edition, the book explores aspects of the transmission and ritual embedding of the text, and of its late antique exegetical reception in the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) tradition. Drawing also on a contemporary performance of the Yasna that was filmed by MUYA in Mumbai in 2017, the book aims to convey a sense of the Avestan language in its role as a central element of continuity around which the Zoroastrian tradition has evolved from its prehistoric roots up to the modern era.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Editing Old Avestan in the Context of the MUYA Project

  • Manuscripts Collated
  • Methodology of the Collation Process (1): Transcription of the Manuscripts
  • Methodology of the Collation Process (2): Regularisation of Variant Readings
  • Scope of the Constituted
  • Editorial Decisions Regarding Non-Trivial Phonetic and Orthographic Alternations

Part 2 Yasna 28–30: Text, Translation, Selected Commentaries and Glossary

  • Preliminaries to the Edition of the Avestan Text
  • Yasna 28: Edition of the Avestan Text
  • Yasna 29: Edition of the Avestan Text
  • Yasna 30: Edition of the Avestan Text
  • Yasna 28: Constituted Text and Translation
  • Yasna 29: Constituted Text and Translation
  • Yasna 30: Constituted Text and Translation
  • Notes on the Translation of the Avestan Text
  • Selected Commentary Essays Proceeding from the Avestan Text
  • Glossary of the Avestan text of Yasna 28–30

Part 3 Studies on the Ritual Setting of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā (Yasna 28–34)

  • Ritual Actions During the Recitation of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā
  • Considerations on the Rationale Behind Specific Ritual Actions
  • Ritual Directions Accompanying Yasna 28–30 in the Manuscript Tradition
  • Studies on the Exegetical Reception of Yasna 28
  • Re-approaching the Pahlavi Gāθās
  • Edition and Translation of Pahlavi Yasna 28
  • Pahlavi Yasna 28: Commentary
  • On the Marginal Headings Accompanying the Old Avesta in the Exegetical Manuscripts of the Yasna
  • Yasna 28.11, Yašt 1.26 and the Warštamānsar Nask: Untangling an Intertextual Network
  • Appendix to Part 4: Edition and Translation of the Commentary on Yasna 28 in the Dēnkard Epitome of the Warštamānsar Nask (Dk 9.28)
  • Concluding Thoughts: Advancing a Holistic Approach to the Zoroastrian Textual Tradition

Benedikt Peschl holds a BA in General and Indo-European Linguistics from the University of Munich, an MA in Religions of Asia and Africa from SOAS University of London, and a PhD in Study of Religions from SOAS (2021). He now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies of Freie Universität Berlin.

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Iranian Studies from Ravenna, vol. 4

Ognibene, Paolo, Antonio Panaino & Andrea Piras. 2023. Studi Iranici Ravennati IV. Milano; Udine: Mimesis.

The forth volume of the Studi Iranici Ravennati, a collection of research papers on Iranian studies edited by the scholars of Iranian Studies at the University of Bologna in Ravenna.

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The Avestan Priestly College and its Gods: The Indo-Iranian Origins of a Mimetic Tradition

Panaino, Antonio. 2022. Le collège sacerdotal avestique et ses dieux: Aux origines indo-iraniennes d’une tradition mimétique (Mythologica Indo-Iranica II) (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses 195). Turnhout: Brepols.

In this monograph, the author proposes a general reflection on the metaphysics of the Zoroastrian priestly organization in the light of the Indo-Iranian context and starting from the preparation of the sacrifice and the installation of the seven assistant priests in the solemn Zoroastrian liturgy under the direction of their chief-priest, the zaōtar-. The relationship between priests and gods is analysed in the light of the symbolism endorsed by the priestly college, which is “activated” as a mimetic double of the divine world. Thus, names, functions and liturgical correspondences between the eight priests (seven plus the zaōtar-) and the college of Aməṣ̌a Spəṇtas headed by Ahura Mazdā himself (as zaōtar-) are discussed. On the other hand, the book analyses the functional correspondences of the activated priestly team in the Vedic field. The author also develops a discussion concerning the unbroken chain of sacrificial rituality as a structure of the cosmic and temporal order. Within this framework, he highlights the importance of the deinstallation or deactivation of the sacrificial college before the end of the Yasna in the long liturgy, a theme that is linked to the question of the reinstallation of another college in the unbroken chain of cosmic liturgy. This study also sheds light on the question of the purpose of the sacrifice and that of the bloody sacrifice. Finally, it proposes a return to Kerdīr through an analysis of the “vision” of the High Priest, this time explained as an esoteric liturgy of the encounter with the feminine double.

Continue reading “The Avestan Priestly College and its Gods: The Indo-Iranian Origins of a Mimetic Tradition”