Religions: Zoroastrianism
Avestan Geography: some topographical aspects
By:
Farrokh Jal Vajifdar
Research fellow of the
Royal Asiatic Society
CAIS at SOAS Lecture -
1998
As known to the ancient
Indo-Iranian world, geography was a compilation of myth, legend,
reminiscence and actuality. For the Avestan people, i.e., those who
lay claim to Avestic texts as the basis of their religion, culture
field and value system, their geography resided inviolate amidst
their sacred literature and commentaries. To this heady mix we shall
add a little mythico-history to enliven our narrative. Our purpose
is, of course, entirely serious.
The earliest document from the ancient Iranian world is the group of
sixteen hymns of the Philosopher-Prophet Zarathushtra of the Spitama
clan. This small collection, known as the Gāthās, divulges the
barest view of the world known to him and his venerable tradition.
There he refers to the būmyĺ haptaiθē: the seven climes or
continents of the earth (Yasna 32.3c). He did not feel it necessary
to enlighten us further, for he was concerned not so much with
physical geography but with the mapping of the human psyche. He
does, however, mention a distinguished personage from Indo-Iranian
lore in a less than complimentary manner -- Yimā, the Indic Yamā,
Pahlavi Jam, modern Persian Jamshid, the ruler of the entire world.
(The reason for Zarathushtra's less than flattering reference to
Yimā does not concern us here, but we will retain this
proto-historic figure for a while yet). The text may be dated from
the 7th century BCE at the latest.
Yimā surfaces in all his glory (the term is used here advisedly!) in
the later Avestic text of the Vīaēvo.dāta, commonly known, as the
Vendīdād. What he does there is of interest for the most ancient
period of Avestan geography. He is the central figure, indeed the
causator of the Golden Age of mankind. Under his beneficent rule the
entire world prospered without sickness or death. In these idyllic
conditions both mankind and livestock flourished and proliferated so
much so that he had to provide more living space for these
burgeoning populations. Starting out from what mythico-geography
would have us believe are the north temperate regions of southern
Russia, Yimā struck out southwards, ever towards the noonday sun,
expanding the habitable earth by three thirdly instalments. The
frame story is in the Vendidād's second chapter. As to what
regionally constituted at least part of those three thirds, we move
back to its first chapter where sixteen lands are painstakingly
enumerated by Ahura Mazda to an enthusiastic Zarathushtra. We shall
not attempt a reassessment, of the work of generations of brilliant
scholars who have so bravely tackled this very difficult chapter.
There can be little doubt that most of these lands can be located
onto present-day maps, but some still elude identification.
The search for the Urheimat or original homeland of the Aryan
peoples is thought to be a chimerical exercise. One has to locate
Airyana Vaējō, thought to mean Aryan living-space, in connexion with
the River Veh-dāitya or River of the Good Law/Religion. These sparse
indications lead us to, some vague formulations: south central
Russia, south Siberia, the western steppes and north-eastern Europe.
The Indians would have us look no further than the northern areas of
the subcontinent itself from where, they firmly but unconvincingly
maintain, the original Aryans spread out northwards and westwards.
The climate indications were severe -- ten months of winter with its
attendant discomforts, and two summer months. Was this from some
ancient reminiscence? Did it hark back to an emergence from a
post-glacial era? The Yimā story ends with the construction of a
subterranean shelter designed to protect the best of mankind and
every f it living species from the onslaught of a terrible
hundred-year freeze which, could reflect such a climatic
catastrophe. It will be recalled that the Old Testament account of
the world-consuming Flood (Genesis, 68), common also to other Near
East cultures, is considered to be the aftermath of the last glacial
period when the memory of the harshest climatic conditions were
retained in human recollection. Yimā thereafter disappears from
view.
The exact extent of the habitable lands was unknown to the early
Avestan geographers, and certainly the traditional oral transmission
of the ancient texts left room for emendations, transpositions,
additions and removals of various place names over the generations.
Of the sixteen lands which today may be identified with any
certainty, ten may be assured with reference to satrapal lists of
the Achaemenians, and their equivalents in the works of Greek
geographers. The Zoroastrians are interested in the main with places
and regions which hold religious significance with somewhat tenuous
historical connections to back up universalist claims. The number
seven has a long held magicomystical fascination for all Near
Eastern peoples and the Zoroastrian world-view embraces it in the
number of the (so-called) archangels, the planets (Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Dark Sun and Dark Moon), and the
continents or climes.
These seven continents are conceived as a hexad arranged around the
central clime of Xvanīrāθa (Pahlavi Xwaniras). Commencing clockwise
from the Eastern clime of Arzah, there are the South-eastern
Fradadafš , the South-western Wīdadafš, the Western Sāwah, the
North-western Wōrūbaršt, and the North-eastern Wōrūjaršt. The very
important calendrical chapter in the Bundahišn, a 9th/10th century
CE Pahlavi text, has transposed E and W, making Sāvah the eastern
clime and Arzah the western. This illustrates our point about the
switching or transference of vague toponyms.
From the concentric arrangement of continents we proceed to the
shape of the earth as visualized by the Avestan peoples. This
speaker/writer finds it difficult to understand why scholarly
opinions lend themselves to a flat earth theory for the ancient
Iranians. Their schematic arrangement shows a central massif from
which flow the two easterly and westerly rivers, the whole founded
upon a saucer-shaped terrain ringed by impenetrable mountain chains
-- a facile set of notions based upon a quite tendentious reading of
the textual evidence. Our 9th/10th century CE Pahlavi texts contain
some clear references to a spherical earth around which the sky
equidistantly extends all around. The priestly brothers Manuščihr
(modern Persian Manouchehr) and Zādspram, both theologians, had no
difficulty with the Avestic sources on which they had based their
teachings and commentaries, The former (Dādestān-i Dēnīg, 90)
believed the sky to be round and wide and high and its interior,
within which our earth is placed, is equally extended like an egg!
This egg-shape, xāyag-dēs, is utilized also by Zādspram (
Vizīdagīhā, 34.20) who is most explicit: ud dudīgar ka-m zamī-g
vīnārd miyānag ī āsmān ka ō kadār-iz-ē nēmag nē nazdīktar būd
homānāgīh ī zardag ī xāyag miyān ī xāyag -- "and secondly when I
fixed the earth in the middle of the sky such that no side of it was
closer, like the yolk of an egg within its centre". That sky, also
spherical, is outlined with precision in the Bundahišn or Book of
Primal Creation as having its width equal to its length, its length
to its height and its height to its depth, all wholly equal
(ch.I.43).
From the Indo-Iranian, if not Indo-European, period it was
postulated that a stone sky vaulted this saucershaped earth, whereas
the indications point to a diamantine or even ruby (the dawn), or
steely sky over-arching an earth with mountain-ringed (curved)
horizons. The Bundahišn, IX.6. speaks of ausandan kof i ān az
xwan-ahēn kē gohr i asmān... Certainly the idea of a central clime
or inhabitable region would have suggested itself to a populace
whose means of travel and communication were hampered by some very
inhospitable terrain of deserts, marshes and forests with formidable
mountain chains straddling the far horizons all around. These
physical difficulties posed by the natural barriers gave rise to the
myth of the prohibition of travel across to the surrounding
continents whose peoples, if any, were hostile to those of this
central region. Thence came the “saucer".
These people were certainly known to exist, as is evidenced in the
Fravardin Yašt, §§2.1,. 37 and 38; in §§143-144 are listed the
inhabitants of all the known lands as well as from those unnamed
regions. The Vendidād lands-list has been equated with modern-day
locations to the east and north-east of Iran proper. That work has
been convincingly dealt with by the percipient Italian scholar
Gherardo Gnoli in a book which has every sound claim to becoming a
modern classic -- his Zoroaster's Time and Homeland. Some of the
non-Aryan peoples named in the Fravardin Yašt are the Turanians, the
Sairimians, the Sainians and the Dahians. But were these necessarily
those who lived in the continents beyond the bounds of the central,
Aryan, one of Xvanirāθa?
Two geographical entities call for attention here. One is the very
last land, the sixteenth from the Vendīdād's first chapter: Raηha.
Gnoli has tentatively suggested the region south of the confluence
of the Kabul and Indus rivers, and who is to say he cannot be right?
An alternative does, however, suggest itself -- one quite dramatic,
and it is necessary that a story be woven from the disconnected
strands of information which may be teased out from our Avestic
texts -- specifically the Ābān Yašt, the Hymn of Praise to the
goddess of the Waters, and the Vendīdād.
Let our story have an anti-hero, one Paurva or Parva, described
(§61) as vifra navāza, or wave-tossed navigator.. This is therefore
a sailor's yarn which may well stretch belief, but one which will
bear close attention if we are to elicit our promised topographical
result:
Paurva was an explorer and navigator, an indefatigable traveller. In
the course of his journeys he encountered the cult hero θraētaona
(the later Persian Freydoun), smiter of demonic forces and the first
physician and healer. Paurva somehow managed to upset this
demon-smiter (in Zoroastrianism all demon-smiters are by definition
heroes) who, through his magical powers, changed the unfortunate
traveller into a vulture, flung him into the upper atmosphere, and
set him speeding towards his house a full three day-and-nights'
flying time journey. The terrified Paurva, unable to control or quit
his enforced trajectory, called out to the goddess of the Waters,
Anāhitā, for help in ending his nightmarish travel and bring him
safely down onto terra firma before his house on the banks of the
river Raηha -- for that was where he resided when not on his
travels. Of course, all invoked divine beings expect compensation
for their intervention by certain set sacrifices, and Paurva, still
hurtling along helplessly, promised her in return a thousand
ritually prepared libations in her honour. She hastened to his
assistance, and seizing him by the arm, arrested his involuntary
headlong flight and brought him safely to earth, alighting just
outside his house, precisely on the bank of the river Raηha. The
grateful and relieved Paurva promptly set about fulfilling his vow,
and the whole nerve-racking episode was thereupon happily concluded.
This Yašt to Ābān, in praise of the goddess Anāhitā, is at some
pains to describe her person adequately and with dignity. Among such
descriptions (§§7, 64, 78 and 126-129) we find one, of crucial
importance to our argument, of her haute couture: "She is clothed
with garments of beaver ... with the skins of thirty beavers which
each have borne four young, for those are the finest kinds of beaver
skins ... which when timely worked present to the eye the glistening
resplendence of silver and gold." Point one to be retained.
Point two: θraētaona was born in Varena, the fourteenth land of
Vendīdād I, §18, which recent scholarship has located in the Upper
Indus valley. His terrified victim Paurva was resident on the banks
of the Raηha, a. full three days', and nights', distance -- as the
vulture flies. If, as Gnoli suggests, Raηha is in the present-day
Kohat and Peshawar region of the North-West Frontier Province
(Pakistan), then this distance would suggest a much more far-away
place than the adjacent Varena to its north. The ancient name of the
Volga River was Rha (Cf. E.H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 1913,
Index I.11 n.l, 30 n.1), known even today as Rau to the Finns. In
Vedic Sanskrit rasa is also "the flowing one" when applied to a
river name, both mythical and historical (Gnoli, o.c., p.52), but
where should this be located?
We are presented with a further hint in the very late Avestic text,
Āfrīn Paiγambar Zartūšt (its Pahlavi title), "Benediction of Prophet
Zartūšt", which includes "Mayest thou be able to reach the Rangha,
whose shores lie afar, as Vafra Navāza was! " and translated from
the Vīštāsp Yašt as " Mayest thou have strength to reach the Rangha,
whose way lies afar, as Vafra Navāza did". Plainly the memories of
the river in question was one with a many channelled wide delta
which hardly conforms to the narrower tributaries debauching into
the Upper Indus of northern Pakistan. The present-day Volga empties
itself into the Caspian through several dozen channels forming its
one hundred mile (150Km) wide delta mouth.
The goddess Anāhita comes to our rescue also. This time it is her
wardrobe. The distinguished French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman has
pointed out that the beaver (Avestic bawra-) never existed on the
Oxus and Yaxartes rivers with which our river goddess was specially
associated, but on the Volga, the ancient Rha. The early Iranian
composers of the Yašt to Anāhita would have encountered this
vegetarian amphibian there and, in turn, our intrepid explorer kept
his part of the solemn bargain on its banks and duly offered up the
thousand stipulated libations. The Oxus and Yaxartes rivers,
respectively the Amu and Syr Daryas, or, also the Jeyhun/Jīhūn and
Seyhun/Sīhūn, empty into the land-locked Ara1 Sea. More about their
physical characteristics shortly.
The mighty Volga debauches into the north-west Caspian Sea. To the
ancient Iranians this vast inland lake was known as the zraya
vour.Kaša, understood to mean "Sea of Wide Bays" which indeed the
Caspian encloses. Two of these features are of, immediate interest
to us: imagine the Caspian's configuration like a swollen and
rounded letter F. To the right of the lower part of the vertical
spreads Balkhan Bay which, like the rest of that sea's surface is
today some 26 metres or 85 feet below Mean Sea Level. During former
times a sizeable branch of the Oxus had shunned the Aral Sea and
flowed westwards along the Uzboi and into the Caspian through this
Balkhan Bay, In much earlier times the Caspian's surface stood
higher and the exposed low-lying areas to the north and east were
beneath that level.
Also
on the eastern coastline and to the north of the Balkhan lies a most
curious feature -- the Kara-boghaz Gol or Black Maw Gulf, which is
separated from the Caspian by a narrow sand bar. An inlet of from
100 to 150 metres lets in the waters of the parent sea to fill this
shallow (10m or 35ft maximum depth) gulf. The curiosity lies in the
fact that the level of the water in the Kara-boghaz is maintained at
some 4 metres (13ft. ) below the Caspian, Since this gulf has no
outlet, the level difference can only be explained by the extremely
rapid rate of evaporation which exceeds the- rate of inflow from the
Caspian through the above-mentioned 100-metre wide strait. The
bleakly inhospitable terrain, swept by the desiccating
north-easterly gales which blow from the Kara-kum or Black Sands
desert does not support life; the waters edge within this greedy
gulf is lined in winter with the white incrustation of crystalline
mirabilite (sodium sulphate decahydrate), which contrasts sharply
with the leaden grey of the surface, whose concentrated salinity of
some 35% ensures an absence of marine life. The point of interest to
us is that, in combination with the hydrogen sulphide present, the
dead water emits a steady sulphurous stench. Why this should hold
any interest would now be made clear with reference to the Avestic
Vendīdād and a backward glance at the Abān Yašt where we had earlier
sympathised with the errant Paurva.
Chapters 5-12 of the Vendīdād deal with the disposal of the dead and
the pollution arising from contact with nasu or dead matter. In
Zoroastrianism, the most expeditious, hygienic, and therefore the
safest, method was exposure to the elements and rapacious birds
within purpose-built enclosures which isolated corpses from earth,
water and fire.
This last element was considered most sacred to the followers of
Zarathushtra, and there could be no question of this divinely
endowed element being put to the demonic use of cremation of
physical remains. The enclosures to which these earthly remains are
taken and laid out for exposure and dissolution are called dakhma-s.
In chapter 5, Zarathushtra asks Ahura Mazda, the supreme and unique
deity, all manner of questions relating to the disposal of the dead
§§15-20 deals with Zarathushtra's concern over rainwater which sheds
itself over dead remains, its contamination and how it is purified
before returning to the sea. Ahura Mazda's response is instructive
for our argument that the sea in question is the Caspian (zraya
vouru-kaša) and that the purifying sea is in fact the Kara-boghaz.
The mythologisers had before them the model of this forbidding sea
and its parent when composing this interlocution. Here we offer a
paraphrase:
Z.: Is it true that you send down the rainwaters from the vouru-kaša
sea with the wind and clouds? That you make them rain over the
unclean remains in the dakhma-s? That you thereafter make them flow
back unseen [subterranean flow], back to the sea Pūītika [zrauō
pūitikєm]?
[Pūītika has been consistently translated to mean "the cleansing
one", we here propose the meaning of stench-laden or "the stinking
one", basing ourselves on the √pu-, "to become foul; to stink",
whence the Pahlavi pūtag, "foul; rotten; stinking". and our English
putrid, putrefy, the French puer, puant, from the Latin pūtor,
pūtōris. We shall justify our very divergent reading with reference
to the continuing dialogue].
A. M. : You are very right, Z. , I do so send such waters down! I
make them fall upon the corpses in the dakhma-s; thereafter I cause
them to flow back unseen to the Sea Pūītika where the still waters
in its middle boil up and., when cleansed, they flow back to the
Vouru-kaša Sea ….”.
The dialogue on this topic ends here. In the 9th/10th century
Pahlavi geographical sections of the Bundahišn is a description of
the Sea Pūītika (ch. 10) among the three main salty seas which later
without further explanation was confidently equated with the Persian
Gulf. Our encyclopaedic text, however, suggests a very different
location, and does so with some precision: it has a flow and ebb
(tidal? seasonal?); it is on the same side as the wide-formed
ocean/large sea to which it is joined! (The Bundahišn compilers
would have relied on the memory, of an early Caspian geography
viewed from the east or southeast)
It further elaborates: on the Pūdīg (Pūītika) side lies the Satavēs
enclosure (var i sadwēs) , the earlier mentioned Balkhan. Now we see
the character of the Pūītika derived from observation -- the
stench-laden wind from its intense saltiness [35% measured in the
summer!] is driven by an easterly wind [from the Kara Kum desert]
towards the expanse of the wide-formed (parent) sea over which,
purified and cleansed, it falls back, From there [i.e., from the
Caspian] it flows back a second time to the Pūdīg! The process of
vapour circulation becomes quite clear, and the wind and weather
patterns even today would repeat this cycle. The Zoroastrian
priestly authors, faithfully adhering to this ancient physical
geography would, over the millennium and a half, have transposed it
to the level of a mythico-geography which was made to corroborate
their religious perspectives. (Well after this speaker/writer had
formulated his theory, he was most gratified to discover that the
learned annotators of a century ago had themselves, in the course of
time, shifted their earlier suggested location from the southern
Persian Gulf regions to the Caspian in the north without fully
realizing the justice and accuracy of their later modifications.).
And what of Paurva? We enlist his aid in assembling an essential
tailpiece to our Pūītika story. It used to be thought that the Oxus
flowed into the Caspian along the Sarykamish depression which until
very recently still carried the surplus water of the Uzboi. This was
when the level of the Caspian stood much higher than it is today.
Palaeo-geography has indicated this as. the break-up of the surface
mass of the vast Sarmatic "ocean" which had once submerged the
extensive terrain of what is modern-day Kazakhstan and the south
Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The rate of flow
of the Oxus/Amu Darya too was greater; the combination of decreased
flow and increased demands for irrigation of the oases settlements
with fertile sedimented soil along its banks, had resulted in the
diverting of the main courses towards the Aral Sea. (Today the much
depleted volume of Oxus water caused by the general dessication of
Central Asia coupled with irrigational demands made upon it, ensures
that the weakened flow along the water courses barely reaches the
greatly shrunken Aral Sea) . Additionally it is noted that the lower
Oxus water-course has steadily shifted its direction towards the
north-east, just as the other great river, the Yaxartes/Syr Darya,
swings towards the south-west. Both still struggle to enter the
depleted Aral basin.
It used to be thought that the Oxus last flowed into the Caspian in
the late Holocene period. It has been proven that in fact it last
followed that westerly route between the 13th and 16th centuries of
our Common Era. Similar earlier switches of outflow probably
occurred in the mythical times of our ancient traveller Paurva who,.
when traversing the Uzboi water-course, following the line of
infrequent wells and rain-water pools in the, Sarykamish, may have
uncharacteristically lost his way and stumbled upon the south-west
shore-line of the Pūītika/Kara-boghaz. The utter desolation of its
jagged escarpments and abrupt declivities, coupled with the eerie
nature of the stenchladen lifeless water expanse could have
generated yet another explorer's tale of terror and fortitude. Just
the sort of adventure story with which to regale his anxiously
awaiting fellows by the banks of the mighty Raηha/Volga. We have
worked Paurva perhaps a little too hard in the course of this paper,
and it is only too right that we release the tired old wanderer into
the pious memories of the priestly composers of the Ābān Yašt -- the
Hymn of Praise to the mighty goddess of the Waters, the revered
Ardvī Sūra Anāhīta.
It is time to speak of Fire-temples. The three great Fire-temples of
antiquity were each dedicated to one of the three divisions of
ancient Iranian tripartite society. Thus for the priests there
existed the Ādar-xwarrah/Farrbay, for the warriors the Ādar-gušnasp,
and for the commonly occupied the Ādar-burzēnmihr. We shall here
concentrate upon the chief Fire of the social class of the royalty
and the warriors -- for that is the only one of the three whose
location is assured. The sacrality of the site identified for it was
suggested from old by its unusual environment. The Sasanians had
certainly built grandly there, but it had been a sacred precinct for
the Parthian and Achaemenid kings before them. In this paper one can
only summarise some salient points from the short but
well-illustrated chapter by Georgina Herrmann in her excellent
survey, The Iranian Revival (1977), dealing with the Parthian and
Sasanian periods whose careful study is much recommended.
The Fire-temple complex was located on the north side of an unusual
water feature -- a lake, thought to be bottomless, formed by
upwelling mineral waters in an area long known for geothermic and
seismic activity. Known popularly today as the Takht-i Sulaiman
(Solomon's Throne), and in Sasanian times as Shiz/Ganzak, it is an
area of great archaeological interest and an austere beauty. For the
Zoroastrians the interest is again religious, for Fire and its
physical House -- wherever located, form the focus of worship. The
Takht long ceased to be of religious importance since the advent of
Islam, but the ancient sacred texts and their commentaries require a
revisitation.
The peculiarity of the lake lies in the deposit of its mineral
content along its sides which are like some stony basin with
40-metre (1 30 ft. ) sheer drops. Its over flow has in turn carved
out stony runnels down the sides of the hill upon which the vast
site is impressively built. Whilst the ground-plan may be faithfully
reconstructed, the destruction of the stone buildings and re-use of
its materials for on-the-spot or nearby squatter housing leaves many
an architectural puzzle still to be satisfactorily solved.
Systematic work on the site stopped over twenty years ago and the
present state of research, if any, is not known to this writer. What
does bear comment, however, is that whilst the locations of the
Fires of the Priests and of the Peasants have been lost to us, this
Ādar-gušnasp site has been authenticated by the discovery of clay
labels impressed with seals confirming it was truly the Royal Fire
of the Sasanians. The nearby shrine at the Zendan-i Sulaiman
(Solomon's Prison) located beside a volcanic cone had also contained
a lake of mineral-rich waters which long since had burst through its
stony container and emptied itself over its sides. Natural phenomena
when thus displayed always attracted a mystery around them.. and for
the resurfaced nature worship of the Zoroastrians these would have
become the centres for worshipful pilgrimages. Here Spandarmad and
Anahita may have been the foci for common veneration.
From the rediscovery in modern times of a major Fire-temple, we move
to a site far removed from Median Adharbaijan -- where a Fire-temple
had once existed and whose memory is perpetuated through legend and
epic narrative. In Khorasan, the region of the East, claim was made
that Zarathushtra/Zardūšt had converted his first royal patron
Vištāspa there, at Kashmar or Kishmar in the district of Turshīz.
The story is best told by the immortal Ferdowsi who had learned of
it from earlier Persian and Arabic authors and repeated by later
ones (e.g. Mustauf i, Kazvini, as-Sami , in the Burhān-i Qāt’, the
Farhang-i Jahangiri and the Dabistan). To commemorate this glorious
event, the zealous disseminator of the new faith had a Fire-temple
consecrated and, further, planted a cypress tree near it. The
location of this richly endowed Fire-temple with its marvellous tree
became the focus of great reverence: indeed it obtained grand status
as the site of the Burzīn-Mihr Fire of the commoners. At Kashmar,
then, this tree gained height and girth to legendary proportions,
and a pairi-daeza or enclosed park was created around it. This
hugely impressive cypress or sarv-e Kašmar was ordered to be cut
down by the Abbasid Khalifa al-Mutawakkil so as to destroy the
especial sanctity it lent to the religion of the Gabars, as the
conquering Muslims chose to insultingly refer to it. Others say that
the Khalifa was anxious to see it for himself , but, unwilling to
make the journey, ordered it to be cut down, sawn into transportable
lengths and taken to Baghdad where he could inspect it in person.
Whatever the reason, the Zoroastrian populace was horrified at this
ill news, and recalled to the Khaiifa that there was an ancient
prophecy that whoever would destroy that sanctified tree would
himself be hewn down. Despite their collective pleas that this noble
tree should not be so injured, the ruler's agents cut it down amidst
great lamentation and grief of the Zoroastrians. The giant trunk and
huge boughs were sawn up and transported by an enormous camel train
to Baghdad in the year 861 CE. A further omen occurred at that time
of destruction -- the very earth shook and the surrounding buildings
were wrecked. One thousand.three hundred camels were said to have
transported its remains to Baghdad; but just before it reached the
Khalifa's palace, he himself was hacked to death by his own trusted
servants on the instructions of his eldest son. The sacred tree was
reckoned to be 1450 years of age; the miserable wretch who had
ordered its dismemberment was but 50. A note should be registered to
the effect that the village of Kashmar, south-west of Mashhad,
though situated in a region where earthquakes are common, yet itself
never suffered one until the felling of the great cypress. Of the
Fire-temple itself, there is no note in the Pahlavi texts which were
composed shortly after that inauspicious time, although a very
striking 100ft. (30m) high 10th century minaret was still to be seen
amongst the historic buildings at Kashmar in the early 1900's. Giant
cypresses have been associated with the sacred sites of other
Zoroastrian Fire-temples in Balkh and Abarkuh.
It is Sistan which has deep religious significance for early
Zoroastrianism. There are to be found the holy lakes of Kāsaoya
(Hamun-i Hilmand) and Frazdanu (Gaud-i Zirra). The Sistani
traditions hold that Vištāspa was converted by Zarathushtra on the
Frazdanu's shores and that the Kāsaoya keeps hidden the miraculously
preserved seed of the Prophet from which the three future millennial
saviours are to be born.
Reading List
H.W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-century Books (Oxford
1943, repr. 1971),,
M. Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Vols. I and II (Brill ,
Leiden, 1975, 1982)
The Cambridge History of Iran -- Vol.2: The Median and Achaemenian
Periods (ed, Ilya Gershevitch) (C.U.P. 1985)
Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (ed. Denis Sinor, C,U.P..
Cambridge, 1990)
J. Duchesne-Guillemin, The Western Response to Zoroaster (Oxford
1958, repr. 1973)
G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's Time and Homeland (AION, Naples 1980)
W.B. Henning, Zoroaster: Politician or Witch~doctor? (Oxford 1951)
G. Herrmann, The Iranian Revival (Elsevier-Phaidon, 1977)
History of Civilizations of Central Asia -- Vol.II: The Development
of sedentary and nomadic civilizations: 700 B.C. to A.D.250 (edd. J.
Harmatta, B.N. Puri and G.F. Etemadi). (UNESCO Publishing, Paris,
1994)
A.V.W. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies -- Iranian Religion and
Various Monographs (Columbia University, New York, 1928; AMS repr.
1965)
R. Kent, Old Persian: Grarnmar, Texts, Lexicon (Second Edition,
American Oriental Society, New Haven, 1953)
A.T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago University
Press, Chicago 1948. repr.1960 and later)
Sacred Books of the East: Vol. IV (1 887): VendTdad; Vol. XXI I I
(1882): Yashts, etc. Both translated.by J. Darmesteter and both
still useful. Vol.V (1880): Pahlavi Texts, incl. the shorter
Bundahign. Translated by E,.W. West (with several very useful notes
-- but to be used with caution!)
P. Sykes, A History of Persia -- Vol. I (3rd edition, London 1930.
repr. RKP London 1969)
R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (Weidenfeld,
London, 1961.
Farrokh
Jal Vajifdar was born in Bombay, India, into a high priestly
family. Navjoted at nine, he has settled in London since sixteen. Took
no interest whatever in Zoroastrianism initially, but instead studied
and taught modern languages. Converted from Parsiism to Zoroastrianism
at age 19, and has not ceased studying Indo-Iranian civilizations since.
Specializes in the history, languages, literatures, and religions of
Ancient Iran. Writes, translates, lectures, and occasionally broadcasts
on foreign and national radio and television.
Reluctant midwife to some aspiring Parsi authors, and collaborator with
noted non-Zoroastrian scholars on translations, articles and books.
Recent co-editor for the commemoration volume 'Mash-a dorun" ("The Fire
Within') for the Iranian scholar Jamshid Soroushian, and "Orientalia
Romana - 7", being essays from the World Zoroastrian Organisation's 1996
London Conference on Zoroastrian Literature. Occasional contributor to
the Vohuman.org and CAIS-SOAS websites. Categorizes himself as
independent researcher.
He is a Fellow (and former Vice-President and Fellow-in-Council) of the
Royal Asiatic Society, and a review contributor to its Journal. Farrokh
is happily out-married to the same wife for some 39 years, having the
same son for some 36 years, the cutest grand-daughter of some 16 months,
and a wildly affectionate dog of some 5 years.
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