Tag: Mythology

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Books

Centaurs and Gandharves

Janda, Michael. 2022. Kentauren und Gandharven. Verlag Thomas Kubo UG.

How the idea of half-man, half-horse creatures came into the world has puzzled poets, scholars and writers since antiquity. With the connection of Centaurs and Gandharves by Adalbert Kuhn some 170 years ago, these enigmatic mythical figures became a cross-cultural object of study for the first time. Michael Janda’s latest study is devoted to proving their historical-genetic relationship and analysing both names.

The path of investigation combines philology and linguistics with the history of religion and archaeoastronomy and leads from the earliest evidence from Greek and Indo-Iranian, and finally to the firmament. Along this path, Janda is able to take up numerous problems that would initially remain contradictory when viewed in isolation from specifically Greek, Avestan or Vedic philology, but which become immediately comprehensible within the mythical world conception of the Indo-Europeans.

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Articles

Eating Meat: The Sin of Zoroastrian Primordial Heroes and Villains

Daryaee, Touraj. 2022. Eating meat: The sin of Zoroastrian primordial heroes and villains. In Caseau, Béatrice and Hervé Monchot (eds .), Religion et interdits alimentaires. Archéozoologie et sources littéraires (Orient & Méditerranée 38), 237–242. Leuven: Peeters.

This article dicusses the significance of meat consupmtion in Iranian mythology and the Zoroastrian tradition. The idea of meat consuption appeares in the earliest remains of the Iranian poetic tradition, namely the Gāthās of zarathustra. In these hymns there is a referenc to the premoridal culture hero, Yima /Jamšid who introduced the consumption of eating meat. However, by the time of the Zoroastrian commentators in late antiquity, Yma is absolved of the sin, and the Villain Aži Dahaka / Zohhak, is blamed for turning canibal, tricked by Ahreman, the evil spirit in the Zoroastrain tradition.

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Books

Faster than the Arrow of Ārash: the Long Journey of the Narratives in Iran

Norozi, Nahid (ed.). 2021. Come la freccia di Ārash: il lungo viaggio della narrazione in Iran : forme e motivi dalle origini all’epoca contemporanea (atti del V CoBIran, 22-23 ottobre 2020) (Indo-iranica et orientalia). Milano: Mimesis Edizioni.

The narrative in the multi-millennial Iranian culture has taken many forms in prose and verse and, just as the famous arrow of the Iranian hero-archer Ārash – which according to the myth covered an unusual space flying from the Alborz mountains south of the Caspian Sea to Marv in Central Asia – comes to us miraculously traveling beyond all boundaries in space and time, because the word is “faster in traveling than the arrow of Ārash”. The present volume contains the articles, presented at the “V Convegno Bolognese diIranistica (V CoBIran)” dedicated to “Forms and motives of narration in Iran, from the origins to the contemporary era”.

Table of Contents

1. Aliasghar Mohammadkhani: “Excursus sulla narratologia in Iran”

2. Antonio Clemente Domenico Panaino: “Ǝrəxša’s Death or Self-sacrifice: The Ancient Iranian Saga of the Archer”

3. Ezio Albrile: “Guerre tra Angeli e Demoni. Le origini dello gnosticismo tra Babilonia e Iran”

4. Paolo Ognibene: “L’iscrizione di Dario a Bīsutūn: al di l. dell’interpretazione storico-filologica”

5. Andrea Piras: “La luna di Mani e la luna di al-Moqannaʿ: miracoli carismatici e loro usi politici”

6. Gianfilippo Terribili: “Fabbricazione storiografica e definizione identitaria. La genesi della malvagia religione secondo i teologi zoroastriani (DkIII 227, 229, 288)”

7. Matteo Compareti: “Tipologie eroiche nell’arte narrativa sogdiana e nell’epica persiana: il caso di Rustam e di Isfandyār”

8. Simone Cristoforetti: “La storia del villaggio distrutto e poi riedificato nello Shāhnāma: un brano di polemistica antimazdakita?”

9. Francesco Omar Zamboni: ‘”Avicenna e l’allegoria filosofica – “Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān”’

10. Nahid Norozi: “Il “Vis e Rāmin” di Gorgāni e il “Bahman-nāme” di Irānshāh: aspetti intertestuali anche in relazione con il “Khosrow e Shirin” di Neẓāmi”

11. Carlo Saccone: “Forme della narrazione dell’Altro nelle lettere persiane, da Ferdowsi a Sa‘di e Nasimi”

12. Hasan Zolfagari: “Analisi narratologica del racconto “La Fata Verde e la Fata Gialla”

13. Fabio Tiddia: “Il motivo “qalandar” nella letteratura mistica persiana”

14. Maurizio Silvio Pistoso: “Guerre del Golfo in salsa safavide. I poemetti persiani dell’enigmatico “Qadri”

15. Stefano Pellò: “Atmosfere indo-persiane: cumulonembi, bolle e avatāra monsonici in Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644-1720) e nella sua scuola”

16. Bianca Maria Filippini: “La “spaventosa Tehr.n”: alcune riflessioni sulla rappresentazione della citt. come metafora delle derive della modernit. in Iran”

17. Adone Brandalise: “Sguardo e narrazione nel cinema iraniano”

18. Faezeh Mardani: “Recente letteratura persiana sulla “guerra imposta” con particolare riferimento a tre romanzi tradotti in italiano”

19. Anna Vanzan: “La fortuna di un testo. In margine alle traduzioni de Il Pesciolino Nero di Samad Behrangi”

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Books

Zoroastrian Mythology: Cows and Bulls in Ancient Iran

Pirart, Eric. 2018. Mythologie zoroastrienne: vaches et taureaux en Iran. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan.
Éric Pirart rassemble ici les données de l’eschatologie générale mazdéenne. La rigueur philologique et la mythologie comparée sont les deux outils mis en oeuvre dans l’approche de la tradition zoroastrienne qui est fragmentaire. L’examen des mythes grecs qui mettent en scène un taureau fournit-il ainsi quelques clés dans l’interprétation de textes iraniens singulièrement lapidaires. Vaches et taureaux, chez les peuples conducteurs de troupeaux, étaient au centre de l’imaginaire et de la métaphysique.
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Books

The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations

Miller II, Robert D. 2018. The dragon, the mountain, and the nations: An Old Testament myth, its origins, and its afterlives. Eisenbrauns.

The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations investigates the origins, manifestations, and meanings of a myth that plays a major role in the Hebrew Bible and a substantial role in the New Testament: the dragon-slaying myth.

Robert D. Miller II is Associate Professor of Old Testament at The Catholic University of America and Research Associate, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

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Articles

The wolf in ancient Iran

Azarnouche, Samra. 2016. “Le loup dans l’Iran ancien. Entre mythe, réalité et exégèse zoroastrienne”, Anthropology of the Middle East 11(1): 1–19.

How did ancient Iranian religion represent the wolf? Between the mythological data, the realities of the agro-pastoral world, and the symbolism of exegetical tradition, Late Antique Zoroastrianism considered the wolf as primarily a species to kill. In reality, much more than the Canis lupus hides behind the word ‘wolf ’ (Middle Persian gurg), including most nocturnal predators but also devastating illnesses, a monster whom the Savior will destroy at the end of time, and finally heretics who renounce or deform the Good Religion. However, this negative image is nuanced by the recognition of the strong ties between the she-wolf and wolf cubs, both in texts where the protective qualities of this large predator are evoked, and in iconography, namely magic seals, where one finds the image of the nourishing she-wolf, perhaps connected to perinatal magic.

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Events

Myths on the Origin of Language or on the Plurality of Languages

Thinking in Many Tongues Reading Seminar

Myths on the Origin of Language or on the Plurality of Languages

08.02-09.02.2017, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Tower of Babel, 1563 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

Programm:

Session 1: The Tower of Babel

  • Hindy Najman: “The origin of language and the Tower of Babel”
  • Florentina Geller: “The Tower of Babel from parabiblical sources”

 Session 2: Ancient Greece and Rome

  • Filippomaria Pontani: “Greek and Roman materials”
  • Comments by Glenn Most.

Session 3: Iran and India

  • Shervin Farridnejad: “The Language of the Gods: Some Reflections on the Origin of the Language in Zoroastrianism”
  • Roy Tzohar: “Language originated in dreams: Why Indian Buddhists do not have (almost) any myths about the creation of Languages”
  • Comments by Sonja Brentjes

Session 4: China and Inner Asia

  •  Wolfgang Behr: “Some Ideas on the Origin of Language in Late Imperial China,” with a few words on early China”
  •  Mårten Söderblom Saarela: “Accounts of the invention of scripts in Inner Asia”
  • Comments by Dagmar Schäfer

About the working group:

This working group brings together around a dozen historians and philologists with diverse kinds of linguistic expertise to discuss the relation between plurilingualism and the creation and reception of monolingual and plurilingual texts in various Eurasian societies. Through joint readings and translation the group explores how the text is affected by its origin in a plurilingual society and, conversely, the effect plurilingualism has on reading practices and on a “polyglot’s” understanding of the text (its concepts and ideals). In the past – as much as in the present – the majority of people in the world, and most probably most elite communities, were enmeshed in plurilingual practices. Elites from India to the Central Asia plains, Bengali Zamindars, Parsi businessmen, and scholarly travellers and the politically privileged inhabitants around the Mediterranean or the East Asian seas used two or more languages on a daily basis. Plurilingualism was widespread and a common response to the phenomenon of great linguistic diversity, not necessarily in the sense of language mastery, but rather in the form of effective negotiation of the immediate exigencies of communication. Seeking to better understand this dynamic, the seminar investigates topics such as the impact of filtering information through varied languages; the interplay between declarative and procedural knowledge; methods and means of classification; covert translations and covert multilingualism in monolingual texts; and scholarly ideals regarding reading, writing, and linguistic media, be they purportedly perfect or original languages or newly minted would-be rational or universal languages.

The working group is conducted and organized by Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer and Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

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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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Books

Magic, Myth and Folklore in Iran

Donaldson, Bess. 2015. The wild rue of Persia: Magic, myth and folklore in Iran. London: I. B. Tauris.

The Wild Rue is a unique study of myth and magic in Iran. Bess Donaldson spent thirty years in Iran as both missionary and teacher and in this classic work she records the beliefs and superstitions of country at a time when they were increasingly under threat from the tremendous changes brought about by the Shah’s program of modernization. This earlier way of life, with its belief in angels and the evil eye, and with its age-old rituals surrounding childbirth and burial, is recounted in an informed yet highly readable text. A unique study of magic, myth and folklore with chapters on cosmology, names and numbers, snakes, dreams, talismans and signs, childbirth, angels, the evil eye, and the calendar. A classic work, long unavailable but now back in print.

A preview of the book is available here.

About the author:

Bess Allen Donaldson was an American Presbyterian missionary and teacher. She began teaching at the Iran Bethel Girl’s School in 1910,  eventually becoming its principal. Bess Donaldson spent thirty years in Iran, during which time she gathered the material for The Wild Rue.