Pahlavi(Middle Persian Texts)

The article provides a literary analysis of three Middle Persian tales: the Story of Jōišt ī Friyān, the Memorial of Zarēr, and the Explanation of Chess and the Invention of Backgammon. Similar to most works of Zoroastrian narrative literature, composed in the late Sasanian and early Islamic era, they are based on oral traditions and contain numerous references to personalities and events also familiar from other Iranian sources. But, different from comparable stories belonging to the same context and time, they are thematically closely interwoven with the Zoroastrian cosmological myth. The reason for this striking intertextual connection is sought in their authors' intent to provide didactic narratives for religious instruction to an audience hoping for eschatological deliverance from social oppression and spiritual evil.

The paper deals with the etymology and dialectology of Turkic armut, Persian armud 'pear'. The interrelations of these phytonymical families were treated a few years ago by Prof. Uwe Bläsing who considered the Turkic words borrowed from a Middle Iranian language (viz. Pahlavi, because of some isolated attestation in this language), but also the Ira-nian words probably borrowed from a third (unknown) language of the Irano-Caucasian area. On the basis of an extensive areal study (with original materials from the archive of the Balochi Etymological Dictionary Project, L'Orientale University, Naples) the author argues for a back dating of the Iranian attestations, and the preservation in many modern Iranian dialects of a lexical type believed to be isolated in Middle Persian.

BAHA’U’LLAH AS ZOROASTRIAN SAVIOUR (1998)

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33. 

https://www.academia.edu/4332699/_Baha_u_llah_as_Zoroastrian_Saviour_1998_

ABSTRACT

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276).

Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). 

These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

تفسیر در دین زرتشتی، به‌طور اساسی شامل شرح اوستاست. با این حال، زند، نزدیک‌ترین معادل ایرانی آن، به‌طور کلی شامل متون پهلوی است که عقیده بر این است که از شرح و تفسیرهای پیرامون کتاب مقدس اوستا گرفته شده‌است، اما متون قدیمی‌ای که در دسترس‌اند، هیچ عبارت اوستایی‌ای ندارند. تفسیر زرتشتی با تفسیرهای مشابه ادیان دیگر تفاوت دارد چرا که در دین زرتشتی، تفسیر به‌عنوان بخشی از سنت مذهبی است که تا پیش از دورهٔ ساسانی، در نوشتارها از آن استفاده نمی‌شد یا استفاده از آن محدود بود. مسلماً در این دورهٔ طولانی که انتقال به‌صورت شفاهی بود، زند، به زبان فارسی میانه شکل بخشیده و دامنهٔ آن را به نوعی محدود ساخته‌است. اگرچه سنت متأخرتر، بین متون اوستایی «گاهانی»، «حقوقی» و احتمالاً «مذهبی» تمایز رسمی قائل شده‌اند، اما به‌نظر می‌رسد که تفاوت قابل ملاحظه‌ای بین تفسیر و شرح پهلوی از گات‌ها و متون حقوقی، مانند وَندیداد، هیربُدستان و نیرنگستان وجود ندارد. بنابراین، بنا بر هدف این مقاله، همهٔ این متون به‌عنوان بخشی از تفسیر زرتشتی شناخته می‌شوند. از آن‌جایی که در سدهٔ ۱۹ و ۲۰ میلادی، آثار زرتشتیان دارای عنصری از تفسیر است و از سوی دیگر، ادبیات تفسیری به‌معنای دقیق کلمه، وجود نداشته‌است؛ در اینجا، پدیدهٔ تفسیر زرتشتی مدرن، بدون ارجاع دقیق به تک‌تک متون بررسی خواهد شد.