Tag: Bactrian

Categories
Articles

Oedipus and Jocasta on a ‘Bactrian’ Silver Bowl

Dan, Anca & Frantz Grenet. 2022. Oedipus and Jocasta on a ‘Bactrian’ silver bowl in the Hermitage, c. 350-500. Journal Asiatique 330(1). 55-79.

Silver bowl from Kustanai, now in Hermitage S–62; 15.5 × 5.2 cm, 4th-5th c., with scenes from Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. After Marshak 2000: no. 31, and Ivanov, Lukonin, and Smesova 1984, fig. 39. Photo courtesy State Hermitage Museum.

Elites of the Hunnish states, including Tokharistan (ancient Bactria) and Northwest India from the 4th century, not only appreciated Greco-Roman art, inherited or imported, but also had a good knowledge of the Hellenic mythological cycles. Among the small silver bowls called ‘Bactrian’, attributed by Boris Marshak to the period after the Sasanian withdrawal from Central Asia, the one discovered at Kustanai (Hermitage, S-62) is decorated with scenes inspired mainly by Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. While following the text sometimes literally (e.g. by portraying Oedipus as a child of Fortune), and using a Hellenistic iconographic repertoire which had become ‘Indianized’ during the Kushan period, the artist who executed the model transposed the Sophoclean plot in five scenes, adapting it to his customers’ interests: the son’s marriage to his mother, highlighted on this vase like nowhere else in ancient art, recommends the couple as a Zoroastrian ethical model. The tragic fault now lies with the servant, who did not expose the newborn Oedipus and did not tell the truth on the parricide: the confrontation between the lying servant and the sincere, generous Jocasta, gives the key to a cathartic reading of this vase.

Categories
Books

Studies of Bactrian Legal Documents

Sheikh, Hossein. 2023. Studies of Bactrian legal documents (Ancient Iran Series 15). Brill.

Studies of Bactrian Legal Documents deals with legal texts written in Bactrian, an eastern Middle Iranian language, between the 4th and 8th centuries CE. The work aims to give insight in the Bactrian legal formulary as well as its historical context. In order to achieve that, the author carefully examines the terms and phrases in the legal documents and clarifies their function. Then he explores the historical background of expressions and wordings. To this end, he uses documents from other regions of the Near East spanning from Egypt to Turkestan.

From the book’s website
Categories
Books

Dictionary of Manichaean Texts

Sims-Williams, Nicholas & Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst. 2022. Dictionary of Manichaean texts (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Subsidia 7). Volume III, 2: Texts from Central Asia and China (Texts in Sogdian and Bactrian). Turnhout: Brepols. Second, revised and enlarged edition.

This revised and substantially enlarged edition of the Dictionary of Manichaean Texts covers the vocabulary of all Manichaean (and anti-Manichaean) texts in Sogdian and Bactrian (material published up to 2020, including short passages and even individual words which have been cited in print). Unlike the first edition, it also contains a substantial amount of material from texts which are still unpublished, especially unusual or otherwise unattested words and expressions. As before, the volume contains a full bibliography, references to discussions in the scholarly literature, and numerous corrections to previously published readings and interpretations. It is completed by an English index. Providing an up-to-date analysis of all published Manichaean material in the Eastern Middle Iranian languages, the new edition of the Dictionary will continue to be an essential tool for everyone interested in Manichaeism, Iranian languages, or Central Asian history.

Categories
Journal

Annales Islamologiques

The latest volume of Annales Islamologiques (vol. 54) is dedicated to the theme “acts of protection in Early Islamicate societies.” It includes a number of papers that fall in the scope of Iranian studies as well.

  • Said Huseini: Acts of Protection Represented in Bactrian Documents
  • Arezou Azad, Pejman Firoozbakhsh: “No One Can Give You Protection”. The Reversal of Protection in a Persian Decree Dated 562/1167
  • Dieter Weber: Living Together in Changing Iran. Pahlavi Documents on Arabs and Christians in Early Islamic Times
  • Etienne de La Vaissière: Sogdian Ḏimmī. Religious and Political Protection in Early 8th Century Central Asia

Papers are open-access and accessible (click here).

Categories
Articles Journal

The Roar of Silence

Benkato, Adam & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2021. The roar of silence: Festschrift for François de Blois. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31(3).

The breadth and variety of François de Blois’s erudition is such that only a long and detailed introduction could possibly do justice to his scholarly career. Anyone who knows François, the “quiet man” of Iranian studies, also knows his penchant for concision. We have therefore decided to limit our remarks here to about the length of his legendary handout of Middle Persian grammar—two pages.

From the Introduction
Table of Contents
Continue reading “The Roar of Silence”
Categories
Books

The Geography of Gandhāran Art

Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2019. The geography of Gandhāran art. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Gandhāran art is usually regarded as a single phenomenon – a unified regional artistic tradition or ‘school’. Indeed it has distinctive visual characteristics, materials, and functions, and is characterized by its extensive borrowings from the Graeco-Roman world. Yet this tradition is also highly varied. Even the superficial homogeneity of Gandhāran sculpture, which constitutes the bulk of documented artistic material from this region in the early centuries AD, belies a considerable range of styles, technical approaches, iconographic choices, and levels of artistic skill.

Proceedings of the Second International Workshop of the Gandhāra Connections Project, University of Oxford, 22nd-23rd March, 2018. This volume is open access and available from the publisher’s website linked above.

Categories
Articles Online resources

Kujula Kadphises and his title Kushan Yavuga

Cribb, Joe. 2018. Kujula Kadphises and his title Kushan Yavuga (Sino-Platonic Papers 280). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

This paper sets out to examine the use of the term in the Chinese chronicles of the period of the Kushan xihou and in coin and stone inscriptions of Kujula Kadphises to illustrate the function of this title for him and interrogate the contextual evidence from these sources for the meaning of this title and its likely origins.

Categories
Books

Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan

Sims-Williams, Nicholas & Francois de Blois. 2018. Studies in the chronology of the Bactrian documents from northern Afghanistan (Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik 83). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. With contributions by Harry Falk and Dieter Weber.

More than 150 documents in Bactrian, the chief administrative language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, have come to light during the last twenty-five years. These documents include letters, legal contracts, economic documents and a few Buddhist texts; many of them bear dates in the so-called “Bactrian era”, which is also known from a few inscriptions, such as the Tochi valley inscriptions in Pakistan, but whose starting-point is controversial. The Bactrian documents have the potential to transform our knowledge of the history of the region during the 4th to 8th centuries CE, a period for which we have few contemporary records, but before they can be fully exploited as historical sources it is necessary to establish their relative and absolute chronology. The present volume aims to fulfil this need. In Part 1 we consider the dated documents, discussing the nature of the Bactrian calendar and the epoch of the Bactrian era, and concluding with a conspectus in which all the attested dates are converted to Julian dates on the basis of the facts and arguments presented. In Part 2 we turn to the equally important undated documents, systematically weighing up all types of evidence, whether historical, prosopographical, palaeographical, linguistic or orthographic, which may have a bearing on their dating. Part 3 provides a handy check-list of our conclusions, while the Appendices provide additional and supporting material including editions of the Tochi valley inscriptions and of a Pahlavi letter which was purchased together with the Bactrian documents.
This book will be required reading for scholars and students of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic history of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. It will also be a useful resource for those interested in the languages, religions and numismatics of the region.

Categories
Articles

Archaeological Discoveries at Tillya–tepe and Parthia’s Relations with Bactria

Olbrycht, Marek Jan. 2016. “Archaeological Discoveries at Tillya–tepe and Parthia’s Relations with Bactria“, Parthica 18.

A number of studies have been published on a variety of aspects of the Tillya-tepe necroplis, its cultural associations and ethnic interpretations. However, the determination both of its date and origin, as well as of the ethnicity of the nomads who established the necroplis has proved an extremely controversial issue. A closer examination is needed of the coins and the attributes of power discovered in the furnishings of the Tillya-tepe graves. The necropolis should be seen in the context of Parthian history in the 40s and 50s A.D., when during the reigns of Vardanes, Gotarzes II and Vologases I the clans of Bactria engaged in the Parthian domestic conflict. Taking the historical developments into account, it seems reasonable to reduce the time interval for the death of the prince of Tillya-tepe to ca. A.D. 41-53, when the Sakas and other peoples of the north-eastern marches of Parthia were taking an active part in the battle of the Parthian giants.

Categories
Events

Multilingualism, Communication and Social Reality in Pre-Modern Eurasia

Multilingualism, Communication and Social Reality in Pre-Modern Eurasia: Linguistic, Ritual, and Socio-Economic Aspects

International Workshop, organized by the Institute of Iranian Studies (IFI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and Vienna Linguistic Society and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press

13.12-15.12.2016, Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Cyrus cylinder © The Trustees of the British Museum

Continue reading “Multilingualism, Communication and Social Reality in Pre-Modern Eurasia”