The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism

Anna Tessmann, Michael Stausberg, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, Michael Stausberg, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781119867562
  9781444331356
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118786277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This is the first ever comprehensive English-language survey of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest living religions

• Evenly divided into five thematic sections beginning with an introduction to Zoroaster/Zarathustra and concluding with the intersections of Zoroastrianism and other religions
• Reflects the global nature of Zoroastrian studies with contributions from 34 international authorities from 10 countries
• Presents Zoroastrianism as a cluster of dynamic historical and contextualized phenomena, reflecting the current trend to move away from textual essentialism in the study of religion

Part I
Zarathustra Revisited

CHAPTER 1
Zarathustra’s Time and Homeland
Geographical Perspectives

Frantz Grenet

Does the Avesta contain any reliable evidence concerning the place where the “real” Zarathustra (i.e., the person repeatedly mentioned in the Gāthās) lived? The answer is no. Was Zarathustra’s legendary biography associated to specific regions? The answer is probably yes, as far as one line of the Zoroastrian tradition is concerned. Can we determine the regional and, to a certain extent, the archaeological context where his followers lived a few centuries later, before they entered recorded history? The answer is definitely yes.

Zarathustra’s Time and Homeland: Approximations and Dead Ends

The only relatively reliable criterion – allowing for a certain degree of latitude – for attributing a date to the historical Zarathustra is a linguistic one based on the evident archaisms of the Gāthās (and other Old Avestan texts in which his name does not appear), in comparison with the Young Avesta. The archaeological evidence is generally assumed to be of a negative character as far as the Old Avesta is concerned. As we will see, the archaeological situation of the regions where Zarathustra is generally supposed to have lived (i.e., southern Central Asia) does not correspond to what can be inferred from the Old Avesta. The Young Avestan corpus, in the form that it has come down to us, can neither be far more ancient nor far more recent than the Old Persian of the Achaemenid inscriptions (i.e., the 6th century BCE). The late Gherardo Gnoli, quite isolated in this contention, argued for Zarathustra’s date being c. 620–c. 550 BCE as given by the Zoroastrian tradition and also reflected in Greek, Hebrew, Manichean, and Islamic sources (“258 years before Alexander,” a figure for which indeed no convincing explanation has been proposed) (Gnoli 2000; response by Kellens 2001b). Almost all the philologists today consider that the evolution between Old and Young Avestan requires a gap of several and perhaps many centuries. Estimations by authoritative specialists vary from 1700–1200 BCE (Skjærvø 1994) to 1200–1000 BCE (Kellens 1998: 512–513).

The vocabulary of the Old Avestan texts also offers some indications. The material realities are entirely pastoral: one finds a mention of “dwelled-in abodes” (šiieitibiiō vižibiiō, Y 53.8) but we find no references to towns, temples, canals, or farming (except one possible mention of yauua- ‘barley’, ‘grain’, or ‘beer’, Y 49.1). Not one recognizable geographical name is mentioned. This picture seems to rule out southern Central Asia, where an urban civilization – the so-called Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex or BMAC – based on man-made irrigation flourished in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE and left a certain cultural heritage in the second half. In particular, this consideration does not leave much room for Sistān, which has been proposed by some (Gnoli 1980: 129–158). Attempts to recognize manifestations of a “proto-Zoroastrianism” – a less than agreed upon concept – in the palatial sanctuaries of the Merv oasis in the early second millennium (e.g., Sarianidi 2008) are rejected by almost all other archaeologists (Francfort 2005: 277–281). On the other hand, older proposals to recognize the Gathic language as the direct ancestor of Chorasmian (Henning 1956: 42–45) have now been abandoned. All things considered, our chronological and cultural parameters tend to suggest locating Zarathustra (or, at least, the “Gathic community”) in the northern steppes in the Bronze Age period, prior to the southward migration of the Iranian tribes (Boyce 1992: 27–51), thus favoring some variant of the Andronovo pastoralist culture of present-day Kazakhstan around c. 1500–1200 BCE (but see Kuz’mina 2007: 349–450 for an original location of the Iranian tribes in the Urals and westwards). The complete absence of any material remains related to that religion in the area and period under discussion does not contradict the hypotheses formulated here, as it is generally held that Zoroastrian ritual practitioners did not feel the need for any permanent architectural structures before the late Achaemenid period.

The Location of the Legendary Zarathustra

Greek authors appear to have been acquainted with traditions according to which Zarathustra originated from Bactria (references gathered in Jackson 1899: 154–157, 186–188; Boyce 1992: 1–26). On the other hand, the traditions preserved in the Pahlavi books mention either Azerbaijan or the place “Rag,” sometimes explicitly identified as Ray in Media, as his birthplace. In order to reconcile these accounts some commentators state flatly that “Ray is in Azerbaijan” (e.g., PVd 1.15; Bd 33.28), which contradicts Sasanian administrative geography. As for Vīštāspa’s “kingdom” where Zarathustra is supposed to have moved subsequently, it is sometimes identified with Sistān (Abdīh ud Sahīgīh ī Sagestān), though other traditions mention Samarkand (ŠĒ1) or Bactria (the version echoed in the Iranian national epic of Ferdowsī).

Only the claim of “Rag” is found in texts which can safely be held as deriving from passages in the Young Avesta, most probably the lost Spand Nask which is the direct or indirect source of all the legendary biographies of Zarathustra (Dk 7.2.9–10, 7.2.51, 7.3.19; WZ 10.14–15). Modern authors have, in general, followed the tradition in identifying this place as Ray in Media. Gnoli (1980: 64–66), then Grenet (2002b; 2005: 36–38), consider it a different place located in the eastern Iranian countries, like all “Aryan countries” mentioned in the list of Vd 1 (see the following section). Indeed the “Rag” of the Pahlavi books stems from raγā θrizantu ‘Raγā of the three tribes’ mentioned as the twelfth country of this list (Vd 1.15). The Ahremanic plague attributed to it is uparō.vimanah-, generally translated as ‘extreme doubts’. In another Avestan passage (Y 19.18) it is stated that Raγā is the only country which has only four “masters” (ratu) instead of the usual five: one for the family / house, one for the clan / village, one for the tribe, and above them Zarathustra himself, but no master for the country as such. Consequently it is called zaraθuštriš ‘belonging to Zarathustra’ or ‘Zoroastrian’. These two sets of characteristics have provided the foundations for an imposing edifice, built step by step by successive scholars. In the last elaboration of this theory (Humbach 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Aims and Scope
• A Note on Transcriptions
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: Zarathustra Revisited
• Part II: Periods, Regions, and Contexts
• Part III: Structures, Discourses, and Dimensions
• Part IV: Practices and Sites
• Part V: Intersections
• Part VI: Primary Sources
• Bibliography
• Index of People, Places, and Topics
• Index Locorum
• End User License Agreement