Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Avestan

  • In honour of Prof. Humbach’s 95th birthday

    Issue three of “Estudios Iranios y Turanios”, edited by A. Cantera and J. Ferrer-Losilla and dedicated to Prof. Helmut Humbach’s 95th birthday, is out now.

    Estudios Iranios y Turanios
    fәrā amәṣ̌ā spәṇtā gāθā̊ gә̄uruuāin
    Homenaje a Helmut Humbach
    en su 95o aniversario

    (more…)

  • A New French Translation of the Avesta

    Lecoq, Pierre. 2017. Les livres de l’Avesta. Les textes sacrés des zoroastriens.  Cerf.

    Mazdaism (the religion of Ahura Mazda) or Zoroastrianism (the religion of Zoroaster) is one of the most ancient beliefs in the East. It was professed among the ancient Iranians and is known to us from the books of the Avesta and the later Middle Persian texts. The religion had considerable influence on Greek philosophers and on the neighbouring religious systems. However, the vicissitudes of history have gradually led these excellent texts to oblivion. From this magnificent past, remain only the modest Zoroastrian communities of Iran and the Parsis of India. However, it is indispensable to maintain this theological system from oblivion. Beyond the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, beyond the polytheism of the Greeks, Romans and Hindus, Mazdaism offers an original treatment to the problem of good and evil. Dualism tries to resolve this common problem among theologians and philosophers in an original way. The present translation is preceded by an introduction to Mazdaism. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes and a detailed index. We hope this book will stimulate historical studies of religion, shedding the light on the most brilliant contribution from Iranians to universal civilization.

    Abstract by Yazdan Safaee, based on the French original.

  • Editing Avestan Texts in the 21st Century: Problems and Perspectives

    The Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, invites you to the 5th meeting of the Corpus Avesticum

    Editing Avestan Texts in the 21st Century: Problems and Perspectives

    Participants: M. A. Andrés-Toledo, T. F. Aufderheide, A. Cantera, S. Farridnejad, J. Ferrer, L. Goldman, A. Hintze, J. Kellens, G. König, J. Martínez-Porro, A. Panaino, B. Peschl, É. Pirart, P. Widmer and A. Zeini

    Programme:

    23 March

    • J. Kellens: “Exégèse et grammaire: le destin de l’Ahuna Vairiia”
    • A. Panaino: “Y. 71-72 and the end of the Ritual”
    • É. Pirart : “Pour de nouveaux fragments avestiques”
    • G. König: “Xorde Avesta as an editorial concept? Some considerations.”
    • A. Cantera: “Yašt ī keh /yašt ī meh: Sasanian taxonomies of the rituals in Avestan language”
    • K. Rezania: “When the text and diagram do not accord. On the textual and diagrammatic representations of the ritual surface of Barǝšnum in Avestan manuscripts”
    • B. Peschl: “Simple thematic presents with root vowel ā in Avestan: Textual corruption, genuine Avestan innovation or PIE archaism?”
    • J. Martínez-Porro & A. Cantera: “huuarə.xšaētəm. …. raēm and the aporias of the archetype”
    • J. Ferrer: “Paleographie et édition”
    • T.  F. Aufderheide: “Avestisch <ṇ>: Über den Einfluss der einheimischen Sprachwissenschaft des Alten Indiens zur Verschriftlichung des Avesta”
    • F. Dragoni: “The Pāzand of M51”
    • P. Widmer: “Editing the Atharvaveda in the 21st century: The Zurich Paippalada project”

    24 March

    • A. Hintze/L. Goldman: “Transcribing Avestan manuscripts”
    • M. A. Andrés-Toledo: “Editing the Pahlavi Widewdad”
    • A. Zeini: “Editing the Pahlavi Yasna”
    • S. Gholami: “Editing the colophons of Avestan manuscripts”
    • Round Table: “Editing Avestan texts in the 21th century: Problems and perspectives”

    Time & Place: 23.03.2017 – 24.03.2017, Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

  • Medicine in the Avesta

    Delaini, Paolo. 2017. La medicina nell’Avesta. Widēwdād 7, 20, 21, 22. Studio filologico, traduzione e commento dei testi avestici e medio-persiani. Con un saggio sugli studi sulla medicina zoroastriana dal Settecento ad oggi. I. I Pahlavi Widēwdād 7.1 – 7.44. Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis.

    The present volume offers a philological study of various passages from the Wīdēwdād pertaining to medicine.

    Abou the Author
    Paul Delaini, is an scholar of Iranian studies at the University of Bologna, Ravenna. His research deals mainly with the history of pre-Islamic medicine in Iran, with particular emphasis on the development and circulation of medical knowledge on the body and the physiology of birth evolved from the ancient world on the late ancient and medieval tradition.

  • Workshop: Avestan manuscripts

    The Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, invites you to a small workshop introducing

    A new collection of Avestan manuscripts from Iran (Pouladi Collection)

     

    • Saloumeh Gholami/Mehraban Pouladi: „Vorstellung der Pouladi-Sammlung“
    • Jaime Martínez Porro: „The ms. 4162 of the Pouladi Collection: Is it the oldest liturgical Vīdēvdād manuscript?“

    Time & Location

    09.02.2017 | 18:00

    Fabeckstr. 23-25
    Seminarraum 2.2058

  • The Zoroastrian Law to Expel the Demons

    Andrés Toledo, Miguel Ángel. 2016. The Zoroastrian law to expel the demons: Wīdēwdād 10-15. Critical edition, translation and glossary of the Avestan and Pahlavi texts (Iranica 23). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
    The text Wīdēwdād – “Law Serving to Keep the Demons Away” – is one of the longest and most important sources for the study of the Zoroastrianism of the ancient Iranian and the Middle Iranian periods. The ancient Iranian text, written in Avestan, was in the Sassanid era (3rd-7th centuries) translated into Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and provided with glosses and extensive commentaries. The Pahlavi version, called zand, is of particular interest for two reasons: firstly, it is the oldest Middle Persian translation of an Avestan text, and thus of major importance for the linguistic reconstruction of Middle Persian; secondly, the annotations approach complex theological, ritual, and legal questions that examine numerous insufficiently studied areas of the Sassanid society. Despite its outstanding importance, this primary source has, due to the high degree of difficulty of the subject matter, until recently attracted hardly any attention.
    Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo’s book, based upon a careful collation of all 44 still existing manuscripts, is the first critical edition of the Avestan and the Pahlavi text of the Wīdēwdād.
    For more details see the table of the contents of this volume.
    Author:
    Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo is an scholar of Ancient and Middle Iranian Lingustics as well as Zoroastrianism. He is currently a research fellow of the Department of Classical Philology and Indo-European Studies at the University of Salamanca.

  • Interpreting Repetitions in Avestan

    Jügel, Thomas. 2016. Repetition Analysis Function (ReAF) II: Interpreting Repetitions in Avestan. Indogermanische Forschungen 121(1). 1–38.
    Up to this point, most editions of Avestan texts have been concerned with interpreting the text. Although repetitions and abbreviations were known, they were often ignored since they did not offer new insight into the understanding of the meanings of words. The present study takes the opposite approach. Ignoring the meaning of the text (at first), it tries to detect the compositional structure of the Yasna ceremony by concentrating on formal matters such as specific closing sections, frames, etc. In a second step, the content is considered in order to offer interpretations for the compositional structure. In ReAF I (Jügel 2015), information on the technical and theoretical background of the tool “Repetition Analysis Function” (ReAF) was given and textual units were identified. In ReAF II, the results of the ReAF for the Yasna ceremony as it appears in the manuscript J2 will be presented in detail. Furthermore, I will offer an interpretation of how to transfer the structural results to an analysis of the compositional structure of the Yasna. This also allows for the formulation of assumptions on the ceremonial structure.
    Thomas Jügel is a Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Mondes iranien et indien (UMR 7528) in Paris.

  • “Five Courses” on Yašts of the Avesta

    Kellens, Jean. 2016. Cinq Cours Sur les Yašts de l’Avesta. (Cahiers de Studia Iranica, 59). Paris: Peeters.

    This volume includes “five courses” devoted to the Yasts, that Jean Kellens held at the College de France. They are divided into two series, each corresponding to a special period. The first three took place between 1997 and 2000: De la naissance des montagnes a la fin du temps: le Yast 19 and the two Promenade dans les Yasts a la lumiere de travaux recents, which appear here under the new titles La maintenance du monde and Le catalogue des sacrifiants. The last two titles, La notion d’ame preexistante and Le pantheon mazdeen, written in the years 2008-2011, represent a more recent reflection. Three other contributions have been added, which complete or explain more in details some reflections of the “five courses”: Caracteres differentiels du Mihr Yast, Les saisons des rivieres and Les Fravasi.

     

  • Studia Iranica 45(1)

    The first issue of Studia Iranica 45 (2016) has been published. For a table of contents and access to individual articles, see below or visit this page.

    7 – 15 –Unité et diversité du rite avestique
    KELLENS, Jean    		abstract details download pdf
    17 – 38 –Zāwulistān, Kāwulistān and the Land Bosi
    On the Question of a Sasanian Court-in-Exile in the Southern Hindukush
    AGOSTINI, Domenico, STARK, Sören    		abstract details download pdf
    39 – 52 –A Unique Pahlavi Papyrus from Vienna (P.Pehl. 562)
    ZEINI, Arash    		abstract details download pdf
    53 – 64 –A Pamir Cereal Name in Medieval Greek Sources
    WITCZAK, Krzysztof Tomasz, NOVÁK, L’ubomír    		abstract details download pdf
    65 – 88 –Institutional Metamorphosis or Clerical status quo?
    New Insights into the Career and Work of Sayyid Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Khātūnābādī
    MOAZZEN, Maryam    		abstract details download pdf
    89 – 126 –The Authentic Layout of the Main Avenue of Fin Garden in Kashan
    JAYHANI, Hamidreza, REZAEIPOUR, Maryam    		abstract details download pdf
    In memoriam
    129 – 132 –Malek Iradj Mochiri (1927-2015)
    GYSELEN, Rika    		abstract details download pdf
    Comptes rendus
    135 – 155 –Comptes rendusabstract details download pdf

  • Iranian Linguistic Studies in memoriam Xavier Tremblay

    Acta Iranica 57Pirart, Eric (ed.). 2016. Études de linguistique iranienne: in memoriam Xavier Tremblay. (Acta Iranica 57). Leuven: Peeters.
    The 57th volume of the Acta Iranica is dedicated to the memory of late Xavier Tremblay (* 26. 6. 1971, Lille—15. 11. 2011), in order to celebrate his contribution to Iranian and Indo-European Studies. Even unfinished, the work of Xavier Tremblay plays a fundamental role to our understanding of the origins of the Zoroastrian liturgy.
    Table of Contents (PDF):
    • Philippe Swennen: “Xavier Tremblay et la liturgie longue proto indo-iranienne. Présentation
    • Alberto Cantera: “On Avestan text criticism (2): the accusative singular of the ū̆- and ṷa- stems in the long liturgy”
    • Juan Jose Ferrer Losilla: “Preconsonantal nasals in the Avestan alphabet”
    • Jost Gippert: “Albano-Jranica II: Avestan +āfše”
    • Jean Kellens: “Deux apologues sur le feu rituel“
    • Jaime Martinez-Porro: “The orthography of the Avestan diphthongs aē and aō in the munuscripts of the long liturgy”
    • Antonio Panaino: “The World’s Conflagration and the Manichaean “Great Fire” of 1468 years”
    • Éric Pirart: Les cvi de l’Avesta”
    • Nicholas Sims-Wiliams: “Bactria—Balkh: variations on a place-name”