Author: Shervin Farridnejad

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Articles

Greek and ancient Iranian plague

A female Xenopsylla cheopis flea, known as the “oriental rat flea”. Image © Copyright 2015 Walid Shoebat.

Milizia, Paolo. 2015. Greek λοιμός, Middle Persian rēm, and the Avestan root rai̯-. Indogermanische Forschungen 120(1).

The Greek name of the plague has not received a satisfactory etymological explanation so far. On the other hand, the largely accepted hypothesis that the Middle Persian noun rēm ‘dirt, impurity’ is derived from a verbal base meaning ‘defecate’ is, in fact, problematic. The present paper aims to show that MPers. rēm and Gk. λοιμός can be viewed as reflexes of a PIE stem *loi̯-mó- indicating a ‘polluted (and polluting) substance’ and that the Avestan root rai̯-, probably connected with MPers. rēm, must have had the generic meaning of ‘to dirt, to pollute’.
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Articles

Adam & Eve in Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature

Painting from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), depicting Adam and Eve. From Maragheh in Iran, 1294–99

Kiel, Yishai. 2015. Creation by Emission. Recreating Adam and Eve in the Babylonian Talmud in Light of Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature. Journal of Jewish Studies 66(2). 295–316.

This study attempts to broaden the Judeo-Christian prism through which the rabbinic legends of Adam and Eve are frequently examined in scholarship, by offering a contextual and synoptic reading of Babylonian rabbinic traditions pertaining to the first human couple against the backdrop of the Zoroastrian and Manichaean creation myths. The findings demonstrate that, while some of the themes and motifs found in the Babylonian rabbinic tradition are continuous with the ancient Jewish and Christian heritage, others are absent from, or occupy a peripheral role in, ancient Jewish and Christian traditions and, at the same time, are reminiscent of Iranian mythology. The study posits that the syncretic tendencies that pervaded the Sasanian culture facilitated the incorporation of Zoroastrian and Manichaean themes into the Babylonian legends, which were in turn creatively repackaged and adapted to the rabbinic tradition and world-view.
The article is available for reading here.
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Articles

Repetition Analysis Function and the Avestan Manuscripts

The Avestan Manuscript J2, fol. 5 Y.07c-Y.09a. Yasna with Its Pahlavi Translation (A.D. 1323). © TITUS, Frankfurt 2001-2002

Jügel, Thomas. 2015. Repetition analysis function (ReAF) I. Indogermanische Forschungen 120(1).177–208.

Repetitions are relevant for several aspects of historical philology. With regard to Avestan, they may allow for the identification of ceremonial frames or opening and closing sections revealing the compositional structure of a ceremony. In case of manuscript comparison, the question arises whether a variant appears only once or in all of its repetitive passages. Furthermore, by analysing the compositional structure we may be able to detect ceremonial structures different to the practice of today. A secondary aspect relates to the interpretation of the grammaticality of Young Avestan passages. The repetition analysis provides evidence that passages which are hitherto considered ill-formed actually follow the rules of Avestan grammar. The scope of this study is to investigate computational means for detecting repetitive sequences. It represents a case study of the manuscript J2 by means of tools that were set up in the LOEWE priority programme Digital Humanities at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: a digital lexicon, a letter discrimination matrix for Avestan, and the programme Repetition Analysis Function. The article ReAF I offers some basic observations on repetitive sequences in the manuscript J2 and lays the foundation for ReAF II (Jügel forthc.), where the results of the repetition analyses will be used to discuss the compositional structure of the Yasna.
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Books

The Elamite version of the Behistun inscription

Aliyari Babolghani, Salman. 2015. The Elamite Version of Darius the Great’s Inscription at Bisotun. Introduction, Grammar of Achaemenid Elamite, Transliteration, Persian Translation, Comparison with other Versions, Notes and Index. Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz.
The monumental inscription of Behistun “‘place where the gods dwell”,  engraved on a cliff about 100 meters off the ground, is located along the road that connected the capitals of Babylonia and Media, Babylon and Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). The relief represent the victory of Darius I. the Great, King of Persia over the usurper Gaumāta and the nine rebels. The scene is surround­ed by a great trilingual inscription in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.
This Behistun inscription is the most important document of the entire ancient Near East and a major key to understand­ing its languages. It alone made it possible to decipher cuneiform writing and thus to open the door to previously totally unknown ancient civilizations.
The inscription was first studied in 1835-37, 1844, and 1847 by Henry C. Rawlinson was the first scholar who studied the inscription in 1835-37, 1844, and 1847; he edited the Old Persian and Babylonian versions of the text himself, while the Elamite version to Edwin Norris (Norris, Edwin. 1855. Memoir on the scythic version of the Behistun inscription. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15. 1–213). Up to now, for the Elamite text one still has to rely on Weissbach’s edition and translation of 1911 (Weissbach, Franz Heinrich. 1911. Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden. Leipzig: J.C. Hinriches’sche Buchhandlung), or the German translation of the original Elamite text (Hinz, Walther. 1974. Die Behistan-Inschrift des Darius in ihrer ursprünglichen Fassung. Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran NS. 7. 121–34.), while con­sulting more recent Elamite studies, mostly scattered around in journals. The last edition of the inscription was done by Grillot-Susini/Herrenschmidt/Malbran-Labat  (Grillot-Susini, F., C. Herrenschmidt, & F. Malbran-Labat. 1993. “La version élamite de la trilingue de Behistun: une nouvelle lecture.” Journal Asiatique 281:19-59).
The current book in 268 pages, consists of a transcription of the Elamite version of the inscription together with its Persian translation. It is followed by a chapter on the comparison of the Elamite version with Old Persian,  Babylonian and Aramaic versions of the inscription. A comprehensive chapter on Elamite grammar (Writing System, Phonology, Morphology and Syntax) as well as a Glossary and additional notes and index complete the volume.
About the Author:
Salman Aliyari (PhD) is a Tehran based scholar of Ancient Iranian culture and languages, with special focus on  Achaemenid Elamite language.
In Original:

علی‌یاری بابلقانی، سلمان. ۱۳۹۴. تحریر ایلامی کتیبه‌ی داریوش بزرگ در بیستون. پیش‌گفتار، دستور ایلامی هخامنشی، حرف‌نویسی، ترجمه، مقابله با تحریرهای دیگر، یاداشت و واژه‌نامه. تهران. نشر مرکز.

Alīyārī Babolqāni, Salman. 1394š. Taḥrīr-e ʾīlami-ye katibe-ye dāryuš-e bozorg dar bisotūn. Tehrān: našr-e markaz.

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Books

Twelve Zoroastrian Treatises

Folio 4, codex K 29, written in Pahlavi with an interlinear translation in Persian. Photograph after Asmussen, 1968, p. 293. © Encyclopædia Iranica

Gheiby, Bijan. 2015. Twelve ancient treatises. Translation and Commentary. Bielefeld: Nemudar.

 The volume presents in 386 pages a collection of twelve Zoroastrian treatises together with their Persian translations and editorial explanations and commentaries. The edited texts are as follows:
  • Ayādgār ī Zarērān “Memorial of Zarēr”
  • Wizarišn ī čatrang  “Explanation of Chess”
  • Mādayān ī yōšt ī Friyān “The Book of Yōšt of the Friyān”
  • Māh ī Frawardīn rōz ī Hordād “The Sixth (Hōrdad) Day of the Mounth Frawardīn”
  • Abar Madan ī Wahrām ī Warzāwand “On the Coming of the Miraculous Wahrām”
  • Sūr saxwan “Banquet Speech”
  • Xweškārīh ī redagān “The Duty of Children”
  • Čim ī kustīg “Reasons for the Sacred Girdle”
  • Čim ī drōn “Reasons for the Sacred Portion”
  • Āfrīn ī [payγāmbar] Zardušt “A Blessing of Zarathustra”
  • Tohmag ošmārisn ī  Zardušt
  • Farox-nāma
About the Author:
Bijan Gheiby was born in Teheran in 1954. He studied media in Tehran and in Long Beach as well as Iranian Studies in Hamburg and Göttingen, where he received his doctorate. He is an independent researcher of Zoroastrianism and ancient Iranian Studies.

 

In Original:

غیبی، بیژن. ۲۰۱۵. دوازده متن باستانی. انتشارات نمودار: بیلفلد.

Ġeybi, Bižan. 2015. dawāzdah matn-e bāstāni. Nemudar: Bielefeld.

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Reviews

Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran

Zoroastrianism: modern Zoroastrian priest tending a temple fire. Image © Encyclopædia Britannica

Sheffield, Daniel. 2015. Review of Monica Ringer, Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011). International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) 47(4). 833–835.

Pious Citizens trace ideas of “true” and “rational” religion in Western India and Iran between the years 1830 and 1940. Her story begins in the city of Bombay, where in the early 19th century traditional networks of Parsi authority were disrupted by the rise of merchant capital in the metropole and emigration away from older centers of communal hierarchy. This forms the backdrop for the beginning of the Zoroastrian reform movement, in which religious and social reform were linked.
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Books

The life of Serapion in Sogdian

Sims-Williams, Nicholas (ed.). 2015. The life of Serapion and other Christian Sogdian texts from the manuscripts E25 and E26. (Berliner Turfantexte 35). Turnhout: Brepols.
The Sogdian texts published in this volume are of interest and importance in various ways. The Life of Serapion is particularly significant from a linguistic point of view, being a close translation of a known Syriac text, so that its rare words and unusual grammatical forms can be interpreted with confidence. The Life of John of Dailam, on the other hand, differs substantially from the surviving Syriac versions and preserves details unrecorded elsewhere concerning the history of western Iran in the early Islamic period. A text on omens represents an extremely ancient, pre-Christian survival, with clear parallels not only in Syriac but even in Babylonian omen texts, while a refutation of Manichaeism sheds light on the attitude of the Christian community in the Turfan oasis towards their Manichaean neighbours. All these texts are provided with translation and detailed commentary, and the volume concludes with grammatical notes, complete glossary, bibliography, index of words discussed, and eleven plates. This work will be of interest to specialists in Iranian languages, mediaeval Iran and Central Asia, Syriac literature and the history of the “Church of the East”.
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Events

Sanskrit in Persianate India

Sanskrit and Persian—both as languages and cultural systems—overlapped in time and space for several centuries on the precolonial subcontinent. But only more recently have scholars investigated points of intersection and exchange between these two linguistic and intellectual traditions. Scholars of Indo-Persian have recently devoted substantial attention to various sorts of Sanskrit-Persian encounters, such as the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian and multilingual patronage ties. In this conference, we aim to highlight and spur thinking about similar cross-cultural interactions between members of the Sanskrit and Persian traditions from the vantage point of Sanskrit literary culture.

The last few decades have witnessed a surge in scholarly attention to Sanskrit during the medieval and early modern periods. Within this wider area of interest, many scholars have begun to ask questions about how Sanskrit thinkers conceptualized Persian, the only viable rival to Sanskrit as a transregional idiom, and exchanges between the two traditions. Sanskrit-focused scholarship sheds light on intellectual, social and literary aspects of medieval and early modern India and is thus crucial for understanding these complex periods. Sanskrit texts also provide tools for analyzing the larger categories that we use for precolonial Indian literature, including the popular but problematic idea of “Indo-Persian” as a distinct literary and cultural realm. Yet such scholarship is still in its infancy and struggles for attention among a wider audience. This conference will highlight fresh, dynamic research and consider future avenues, both individually and collectively, for emphasizing Sanskrit materials in the exciting, but currently Persian-dominated, study of medieval and early modern India. We aim to give coherence and visibility to an emerging, vibrant subfield of South Asian studies, especially the crucial place of Sanskrit materials and Sanskritists within that subfield.

For more information see Papers and Abstracts.

Continue reading “Sanskrit in Persianate India”
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Books

Biblical and Christian Sogdian texts

Sims-Williams, Nicholas, Martin Schwartz & William J. Pittard (eds.). 2014. Biblical and other Christian Sogdian texts from the Turfan collection. (Berliner Turfantexte 32). Turnhout: Brepols.
This volume in the series Berliner Turfantexte contains the edition, with translation and detailed commentary, of a series of important Christian texts in Sogdian, most of them previously unpublished. The emphasis is on Biblical texts translated into Sogdian from the Syriac Peshitta version: a Psalter in Sogdian script, fragments of Gospel lectionaries, and a double-folio from a lectionary of the Pauline Epistles. Other texts edited in the volume include a retelling of the story of Daniel, a text on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, and the “Wisdom of Ahiqar”, all of them in recensions which differ significantly from any known Syriac version. Two analytical glossaries, one for the Psalter and other texts in Sogdian script and one for the texts in Syriac script, cover not only the works edited in this book but also a number of Christian Sogdian texts published by the author in scattered articles over the last twenty years or so. The volume concludes with a bibliography, an index of words discussed in the commentary, and seventeen plates. This work will be of interest to specialists in Iranian languages, mediaeval Central Asia, Biblical studies, Syriac literature, and the history of the “Church of the East”.
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Books

Central Asia and the Persianate World

Peacock, Andrew C. S. & D. G. Tor (eds.). 2015. Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate world: Iranian tradition and Islamic civilisation. (I.B.Tauris & BIPS Persian Studies Series 7). London: I.B.Tauris.

From the political dissolution of the Abbasid Caliphate in the mid-ninth century to the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Persianate dynasties of Islamic Central Asia constituted the political and military stronghold of Sunni Islam. It was in this region, historically known as Khurasan and Transoxiana, that many of the important religious and cultural developments of Islamic civilisation took place.

The region first gave rise to the Abbasid Revolution, provided the troops for its success, and supplied the military slaves and auxiliaries that led to its political dissolution. From the second part of the ninth century and for the ensuing 400 years, the Sunni Persianate dynasties formed the mainstay of Islamic military might over the Islamic heartland, from India to Egypt.

The period was also characterised by the cultural dominance of the Persian-speaking court, bringing about the acceptance of classical Persian as the second primary Islamic language of high culture. It produced the writing of many of Islamic civilisation’s greatest works of poetry, philosophy, biography, history, belles-lettres and religion, in both Arabic and Persian. This volume explores the origins and nature of this cultural and political authority and sheds light on one of the most formative yet unexplored eras of Islamic history.

About the Editors:

A.C.S. Peacock is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews.

D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame.