This volume presents a collection of 32 articles contributed by historians, numismatists and scholar of Ancient Near East history and historiography in celebration of Josef Wiesehöfer 65th birthday.
Author: Shervin Farridnejad
Sources of the Indo-Iranian Liturgies
To the sources of the Indo-Iranian Liturgies
June 9th and 10th 2016, University of Liege
International conference to be held at the department of “Langues et religions du monde indo-iranien ancien” at the University of Liege. This conference is organized by Philippe Swennen, Céline Redard and Hamid Moein and will take place on June 9th and 10th.
- J. Kellens: “Ahu, mainiiu, ratu“
- A. Cantera: “The threefold structure of the Long Liturgy and its daily times of celebration”
- J. Jurewicz: “Fire and the immortal self. The meaning of Vedic sacrifice”
- N. Nishimura: “On the first mantra section of the Yajurveda-Saṁhitā”
- Ph. Swennen: “Lecture de l’ājyaśastra“
- K. Amano: “What is ‘knowledge’ justifying a ritual action? Uses of yá evám véda / yá ev vidván in the Maitrāyaṇī Samhitā”
- C. Redard: “Les āfrīnagāns”
- A. Panaino: “Mysteries and dangers of the Mazdean Nocturnal Liturgy”
- A. Hintze: “Rejected Ritual Practices”
- M. Hale: “Interpreting the Indo-Iranian Tradition of the Gathas: the evidence of the Pahlavi and Sanskrit translations”
- E. Doyama: “Reflections on YH 40,1 from the Perspective of Indo-Iranian Culture”
- H. Moein: “Ritual Instructions in the Rivayats”
- M.Á. Andrés-Toledo: “The Vedic and the Avestan Investitures with the Sacred Girdle”
- G. König: “daēnā, xratu and the mystical view. Some considerations to Alberto Cantera’s essay ‘Talking with god'”
- J. Ferrer: “La récitation de l’alphabet avestique dans les rituels : innovation ou archaïsme?”
- J. Houben: “The Indo-Iranian tradition and ancient Indian ritual and conceptual innovations”
- T. Goto: “Bergung des gesunkenen Sonnenlichts im Rigveda und Avesta”
- É. Pirart: “L’idée d’hospitalité dans le sacrifice indo-iranien”
- Lo Zoroastrismo nel suo sviluppo storico
- Il pensiero zoroastriano e Ia sua espressione rituale
- Lo Zoroastrismo dalIa caduta dell’Impero Sasanide alla sua condizione contemporanea
- Bibliografia critica e Sitografia
- Apparato iconogrfico
- Luoghi da visitare
- Breve raccolta antologica di fonti
Kushan Histories
Falk, Harry (ed.). 2015. Kushan histories. Literary sources and selected papers from a symposium at Berlin, December 5 to 7, 2013 (Monographien zur indischen Archäologie, Kunst und Philologie 23). Bremen: Hempen Verlag.
Harry Falks “Kushan Histories“ discusses new research concerning the Kushan dynasty and is based on a Symposium held from December 5-7th, 2013 in Berlin.
The first part of the book introduces the literary sources. After naming the primary sources and translations a wide range of texts presented chronologically gives an overview of the Kushan history in its totality.
In the second part of “Kushan Histories” five papers deal with different religious, military and cultural aspects of the Kushan dynasty: How were the expansion of Buddhism and the dynasty linked to each other and which role did Zoroastrianism play among the Kushans? How can new geographical perspectives prove the former existence of a military camp of the Kushans north of the Bactra oasis? Which historical data regarding Kanishka’s conquest of India can be drawn from a Bactrian inscription and what did the female deity Nana mean to the Kushans?
Table of Contents
Corpus Avesticum III: “Phonetics and Phonology in Avestan and Beyond”
Paris, 25-26. April. 2016
The third meeting of the European research network Corpus Avesticum to be held in Paris, 25-26 April. 2016. Researchers from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the UK will meet to discuss various projects in preparation of a new edition of the Avesta and the special topic of this meeting.
This meeting is dedicated to the research questions mainly regarding to the “Phonetics and Phonology in Avestan and Beyond”.
See here the detaild Programm and the Abstracts.
Program:
25. April 2016
- Briefing: Current state of Avestological project of the members of the Network
- Salome Gholami: “Newly found Avestan manuscripts from Yazd”
Martin Kümmel: “Avestan syllable structure: a look from Middle Iranian” - Götz Keydana: “Evidence for foot structure in Early Vedic”
Paul Widmer: “Phonological domains in Avestan” - Chiara Riminucci-Heine: “Av. saoka- und av. hu-xšn aora- : zwei altiranische Wortstudien”
- Almut Hintze: “Proto-Indo-European *h₁u es- ‘to be good’ and Avestan vahma-“
- Michiel de Vaan: “On the orthography and phonology of <h>”
- Alberto Cantera & Jaime Martínez Porro: “On the treatment of n before front vowels”
- Benedikt Peschl: “The transmission of anaptyxis before the endings -biš and -biio in Avestan”
26. April 2016
- Armin Hoenen: “La statistique des déviations du Yasna”
- Tim Aufderheide: “Zoroastrian phoneticians? Reconstructing the phonetic knowledge underlying the transmission of the Avesta”
- Shervin Farridnejad: “Scribal Schools and Dialectal Characteristics in the Transmission of the Avesta”
- Miguel Ángel Andrés Toledo: “Avestan and Pahlavi Paleography
in the oldest Pahlavi Widewdad Manuscripts” - Salome Gholami: “Dialectal phonological variations in the colophons”
The Project of Corpus Avesticum (CoAv) is a pan-European Co-operation that aims at making the Zoroastrian Texts, called the Avesta accessible in a new Edition. The current one stems from 1896 and is erroneous with regard to many crucial aspects, the most important of which is the amalgamation of the liturgical and exegetical text witnesses.
See also the previous posts on the First and Second Meeting of Corpus Avesticum.
Summer school in the Turfanforschung:
“Sogdians and Turks on the Silk Road”
August 22 – September 2, 2016
Duration: two weeks, daily four seminars each 90 min.
Location: Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
A detailed programme is available here: “Sogdians and Turks on the Silk Road” Summer School”
Participation is free.
The Turfanforschung (Turfan Studies) at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities offers in 2016 a summer school providing an introduction to the field of Turfan Studies, which deals with the many languages and scripts used along the Silk Road as well as the histories and cultures of those who used them. The summer school will center around the two main languages of Turfan research. Sogdian, a middle Iranian language, was widely used as a lingua franca in Central Asia since the 1st c. A.C. Old Turkic was the language of Turkic nomads which had a strong influence on the Silk Road since the middle of the 6th c. After the migration of the Uyghurs it was also used as the main language in the Turfan area under Uyghur rule until 14th c.
The courses in this summer school will be given by the staff of the Turfanforschung and the Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (Arbeitsstelle Berlin): A. Benkato, D. Durkin-Meisterernst, Y. Kasai, S.- Ch. Raschmann, C. Reck, A. Yakup. There will also be guest lectures by I. Colditz, M. Peyrot and L. Sander.
Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jägerstraße 22-23,
10117 Berlin
Topics:
1. Scripts
- Sogdian script
- Uyghur script
- Turkic Runic
- Nestorian script
- Manichaean script
- Brāhmī script
2. Language: Old Turkic
- language course with reading
- lecture for linguistics
3. Language: Sogdian
- language course with reading
- lecture for linguistics
4. Language: Tocharian
5. Turfan studies
- history of the Turfan expeditions
- Central Asian book culture
- history
- religions
- research history
Because a minimum number of participants are required for the summer school to take place, we ask for a binding registration by 20th May 2016 at rabuske@bbaw.de or in writing at: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften AV Turfanforschung, Jägerstraße 22-23, D-10117, Berlin.
Ardwahišt Yašt
The third Yašt (“hymn”) in the collection of the 21 (22) YAv Yašts is dedicated to (the deity, prayer and the divine correspondence of the fire) Aša Vahišta “Best Order”. The text formulates an (eschatologically significant) ritual context and a magical (= medical) charm. Due to the ritual and medical importance of Yt 3, various translations into Middle and New Persian can be found. They provide insights into the interpretation of the text by the later Zoroastrians.Ardwahišt Yašt is the third in the series of Avestan hymns addressed to individual divinities. It is devoted to one of the greatest of the Zoroastrian Aməša Spəntas, Aša Vahišta. The Ardwahišt Yašt is itself accordingly recited in rituals to cure the sick.
See the table of contents here.
Pope and Historiography of Persian Art
Iranian Reception of Islam
Crone, Patricia. 2016. The Iranian reception of Islam: The non-traditionalist strands (Islamic History and Civilization 130). Collected Studies in Three Volumes. Vol. 2 edited by Hanna Siurua. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
Patricia Crone’s Collected Studies in Three Volumes brings together a number of her published, unpublished, and revised writings on Near Eastern and Islamic history, arranged around three distinct but interconnected themes. Volume 2, The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands, examines the reception of pre-Islamic legacies in Islam, above all that of the Iranians. Volume 1, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, pursues the reconstruction of the religious environment in which Islam arose and develops an intertextual approach to studying the Qurʾānic religious milieu. Volume 3, Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, places the rise of Islam in the context of the ancient Near East and investigates sceptical and subversive ideas in the Islamic world.
ToC:
- 1. Kavād’s heresy and Mazdak’s revolt
- 2. Zoroastrian communism
- 3. Khurramīs
- 4. Muqannaʿ
- 5. Abū Tammām on the Mubayyiḍa
- 6. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part I, Introduction, edition and translation
- 7. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part II, Commentary and analysis
- 8. Al-Jāḥiẓ on aṣḥāb al-jahālāt and the Jahmiyya
- 9. Buddhism as ancient Iranian paganism
- 10. A new text on Ismailism at the Samanid court
- 11. What was al-Fārābī’s ‘imamic’ constitution?
- 12. Al-Fārābī’s imperfect constitutions
- 13. Pre-existence in Iran: Zoroastrians, ex-Christian Muʿtazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies
- List of Patricia Crone’s publications
Patricia Crone (1945-2015), Ph.D. (1974), School of Oriental and African Studies, was Professor Emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Her numerous publications include Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); Pre-Industrial Societies (1989); Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2004); and The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012).
Hanna Siurua (BA, School of Oriental and African Studies; MA, University of Sussex) is a professional editor based in Chicago. She specialises in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and has edited numerous books and articles in these as well as other fields.
Zoroastrian Religion, History and Tradition
For many centuries, from the birth of the religion late in the second millennium BC to its influence on the Achaemenids and later adoption in the third century AD as the state religion of the Sasanian Empire, it enjoyed imperial patronage and profoundly shaped the culture of antiquity. The Magi of the New Testament most probably were Zoroastrian priests from the Iranian world, while the enigmatic figure of Zarathushtra (or Zoroaster) himself has exerted continual fascination in the West, influencing creative artists as diverse as Voltaire, Nietzsche, Mozart and Yeats. This authoritative volume brings together internationally recognised scholars to explore Zoroastrianism in all its rich complexity. Examining key themes such as history and modernity, tradition and scripture, art and architecture and minority status and religious identity, it places the modern Zoroastrians of Iran, and the Parsis of India, in their proper contexts. The book extends and complements the coverage of its companion volume, The Everlasting Flame.
- Philip Kreyenbroek: „Looking to the Past in the Gāthās and in later Zoroastrianism“
- Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina: „Knowledge, Power and Positionally across the Insider-Outsider Divide in the Study of Zoroastrianism“
Part II: Antiquity and Tradition
- Alberto Cantera: „The ‚Sacrifice‘ to Mazdā: Its Antiquity and Vareity“
- Almut Hintze: „A Zoroastrian Vision“
- Daster Firouze M. Kotwal: „Continuity, Controversy and Change: A Study of the Ritual Practice of the Bhagaria Parsis of Navsari“
- Antonio Panaino: „Betten Astral Cosmology and Astrology: The Mazdean Cycle of 12,000 Years and the Final Renovation of the World“
- Touraj Daryaee: “Refashioning the Zoroastrian Past: From Alexander to Islam“
Part III: Tradition and Culture
- James R. Russel: „On the Image of Zarathustra“
- Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis: „Ancient Iranian Motifs and Zoroastrian Iconography“
- Franz Grenet: „Extracts from a Calendar of Zoroastrian Feasts: A New Interpretation of the ‚Soltikoff‘ Bactrian Silver Plate in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris“
- Albert de Jong: „The Dēnkard and the Zoroastrians of Baghdad“
- Jamsheed K. Choksy: „Friendship in the Pahlavi Books“
- Ashk Dahlén: „Literary Interest in Zoroastrianism in tenth-Century Iran: The Case of Daqiqi’s Account of Goshtāsp and Zarathustra in the Shāhnāmeh“
Part IV: Modernity and Minorities
- Shernaz Cama: „The Sacred Armour of the Sudreh-Kusti and its Relevance in a Changing World“
- Jenny Rose: „Riding the (Revolutionary) Waves between Two Worlds: Parsi Involvement in the Transition from Old to New“
- Richard Foltz: „Co-opting the Prophet: The Politics of Kurdish and Tajik Claims to Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism“
- Khojaste P. Mistree: „Collision, Conflict and Accommodation: A Question of Survival and the Preservation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Identity“
- Sarah Stewart: „Ideas of Self-Definition among Zoroastrians in Post-Revolutionary Iran“
Sarah Stewart is Lecturer in Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London. She is co-general editor of the series ‘The Idea of Iran’, within which she has co-edited six volumes (all published by I.B.Tauris), and editor of The Zoroastrian Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination (I.B.Tauris, 2014).
Almut Hintze is the Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London. Her publications include A Zoroastrian Liturgy: The Worship in Seven Chapters, Yasna 35-41 (2007).