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18. You acquired an unusual interest in Zoroastrianism. Why is this?
CONTENTS KEY
18.1 Mary Boyce and the Yazd Locale
I first began to study the subject seriously in 1979, when I purchased a new book by Professor Mary Boyce entitled Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (1979). Though this volume was intended for general circulation, the author’s familiarity with the subject was evident. I had earlier been informed about the Yazd locale of Irani Zoroastrians as a result of my researches into the background of the “Indian” mystic Meher Baba (1894-1969), whose Zoroastrian parents both came from this territory in Central Iran. However, the contributions of Professor Boyce added new dimensions to Zoroastrianism, and my interest was strongly caught and sustained. Indeed, I have to acknowledge the salient influence of the late Mary Boyce (1920-2006) upon my amateur studies in Zoroastrianism. I did not always agree with her conclusions and method of exegesis, but her importance in this field is not in question for me.
Mary Boyce
Professor Boyce lived in London and was affiliated to the School of Oriental and African Studies. She was described in one learned review as the Cinderella of Iranian Studies. Some male specialist scholars had felt that the subject of Zoroastrianism was languishing and in need of new directions. Her fieldwork at the Yazd locale (in Central Iran) was the pivotal factor for a new interpretation. In 1975 she delivered lectures at Oxford on that fieldwork, and these were later published. Supporting books by her followed. She departed from reliance upon the purely philological method favoured in the Western academic study of Zoroastrianism, and stressed this religion as a continuum over the centuries, emphasising details discovered in her fieldwork. She extended the dateline for origins quite substantially.
There were some criticisms of her work from specialist rivals, but a number of other scholars were amazed at how Mary Boyce transformed the perspective on what was basically a very difficult subject in terms of obscure centuries prior to the Parsis of India. This is a field of learned journals and some very erudite books that tax the resources of any reader outside the Iranist fold. Iranologists include multi-lingual experts of a formidable category.
The 1960s fieldwork of Professor Boyce gained coverage in her book A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (1977), which describes the rural Zoroastrianism of the Yazd locale, and focuses upon the village of Sharifabad. In this book and related articles, she conveys a picture of the adverse conditions imposed upon the oppressed minority in Islamic Iran. The Zoroastrians inhabited the villages surrounding the desert city of Yazd, a remote rural area conducive to an unobtrusive profile. This minority were officially tolerated by Islam, though despised as infidels. Petty harassments and more serious afflictions occurred. The more belligerent Muslims could spark trouble. The legal system was loaded against the minority. The penalty for killing a Muslim was certain death; whereas the penalty for killing a Zoroastrian merely entailed a modest fine that is said to have been habitually waived by the presiding legalists of Shia Islam. The Zoroastrians were forbidden by Islamic law to build their houses to any great height, and the severe pressure of circumstances meant that they were in the habit of living in networks of subterranean rooms for basic purposes of defence. It is no cause for wonder that so many of the oppressed community emigrated to India, both in Mughal and British colonial times.
18.2 Iranis and Parsis
This ethnic exodus was a basic theme of my own monographs appearing in the book From Oppression to Freedom (1988). That work describes a sixteenth century migration of the Zoroastrian ishraqi school associated with Azar Kaivan (see 16.5 above), and also a nineteenth century quasi-Sufi sequel in the person of Sheriar Mundegar Irani (1853-1932). The latter escaped a village existence near Yazd by becoming an atypical dervish, though he remained a Zoroastrian to the end of his life.
The earlier migrations from Zoroastrian centres in Iran had resulted in the Parsi community of Western India, though emigrants from the nineteenth (or eighteenth) century onwards were known as Irani Zoroastrians, not Parsis. They were closer to their ethnic roots than the more admixed Parsi community. The latter had commenced in the ninth century, when a small group of emigrants had left Iran in desperation at deteriorating conditions for their faith. The detested Islamic poll-tax (jizya) was exacted from non-Muslims, and this procedure could involve public humiliations. The general disdain for Zoroastrians in their homeland could easily precipitate mob violence in the cause of conversion.
While Parsis spoke the Indian vernacular language known as Gujarati, many Iranis spoke Dari, a Persian dialect. Iranis were generally more heavily-built in physique than Parsis, according to some reports. It is also said that Iranis were fairer in complexion and had sharper facial features. Parsi genetics and customs had assimilated Hindu elements. The tales of harassment which the Iranis brought with them to India were a matter of great concern to the Parsis, who had found freedom and prosperity in their new environment.
Sheriar Mundegar Irani (Poona, 1892)
The Iranis were the direct descendants of the Sassanian population which existed prior to the Arab invasion of Iran in the seventh century A.D. Reconstruction of the Sassanian era is a scholastic feat, with various disputes and uncertainties still in evidence. Some details are firm, though many others are provisional and attended by alternative versions. Regrettably, Professor Boyce died before she could cover the Sassanian era in her magnum opus A History of Zoroastrianism (1975-91). The three published volumes of that work cover the prehistoric period, the Achaemenian era, and the period under Macedonian and Roman rule. She was working on the fourth volume during her last years, and this related to the Parthian era, which preceded the Sassanian rule. She also contributed the anthology Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (1984). Her standpoint is reflected in the title of her last published book Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour (Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies No. 7, Mazda Publishers 1992).
18.3 Zarathushtra and Elusive Context
The Boyce paradigm urged an early date for the Iranian prophet Zarathushtra, who is often referred to by his Greek-associated name of Zoroaster, deriving from Zoroastres. This non-Iranian substitute seems incidental to some appraisers, though it has been heavily supported by convention. The original Avestan name is attended by intricate linguistic considerations, and was much later rendered in Persian as Zartusht. The Avestan texts date to different periods, and include the poetic Gathas that are traditionally attributed to Zarathushtra.
The Greek legends and accounts are an ingredient of the textual complexities. Greek writers like Plutarch ascribed the Iranian prophet to circa 6000 B.C., though other classical sources assess in terms of six hundred years before the Persian monarch Xerxes (i.e., meaning 1080 B.C.). The Greek computations are generally viewed as misunderstandings by modern scholars, though the worst errors in “Greek gossip” occurred when Zarathushtra was conceived as the inventor of magic, a belief gaining currency by the first century A.D. (via Pliny). The Iranian figurehead was also credited by Greeks with astrological compositions, though this was another fiction deriving from hindsight.
Professor Boyce was quite independent from Greek sources in her insistence upon an archaic date of circa 1500 B.C. for the founding prophet. At first she couched this radical assessment in terms of 1700-1500 B.C. (Zoroastrians, 1979, p.18). She was referring to a Stone Age environment. This disclosure shocked partisans of the “traditional date” of circa 600 B.C., and even some of those who favoured an earlier dating at circa 1000 B.C. The lower or “traditional” date was urged by Professor Walter B. Henning in his Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-doctor? (1951).
Boyce subsequently hardened her dateline to c. 1200 B.C., which proved more generally acceptable to those scholars who favoured an earlier dating. She wrote in 1992 that “the spurious dating of Zoroaster to the sixth century B.C. has been generally abandoned by scholars, after having troubled Zoroastrian studies for over a hundred years” (Antiquity and Constant Vigour, p. xi). A few analysts still feel that she might have been correct in her dramatic Stone Age allocation prior to being influenced by the strong opposition she faced.
The obscure prophet is represented by legendary materials in the Pahlavi language. Boyce assigned his elusive homeland to Central Asia, though differing areas are feasible in that sprawling geographical zone. Various theories relating to the dateline and homeland have appeared in the scholastic literature. It is unwise to promote any dogmatic version of this matter, and my own treatment of Zarathushtra accordingly spread between three competing theories, including that of Boyce. See my Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One (1995), Part Two. The other two theories were supplied by Professor Gherardo Gnoli and Professor James Russell, both of these being prominent Iranist scholars in Italy and America respectively.
An erudite contribution came from Professor Gnoli in his book Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland (1980). Gnoli favoured Sistan as the homeland, and was much less radical than Boyce in regard to dating, favouring a location in time not later than the eighth century B.C., though possibly earlier. More recently, Professor Gnoli has argued for a conservative dateline in relation to the prophet. See Gnoli, “Zoroaster in History,” Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series (2000), here reverting back to the traditional date of “258 years before Alexander” that is associated with Professor Henning, the mentor of Boyce and another very accomplished Iranist. Objections to the representation were lodged in A. Shahpur Shahbazi, “Recent speculations on the ‘traditional date of Zoroaster,’ ” Studia Iranica (2002) 31(1):7-45. Professor Gnoli subsequently contradicted Professor Shahbazi in a related discussion of the Byzantine historian Agathias, who utilised Sassanian and other records in the sixth century A.D. See Gnoli, “Agathias and the date of Zoroaster,” Eran ud Aneran, Festschrift Boris I. Marshak (2006), and also the online version at http://www.transoxiana.org/Eran/Articles/gnoli.html.
Yet Wikipedia declares that the traditional date “can be conclusively ruled out,” and that a dateline of tenth/eleventh century B.C. “is now widely accepted among Iranists” (accessed 20/08/2010). The origin of the traditional date has been traced to Greek attributions which appear to have been assimilated by the Zoroastrian priesthood (Boyce, Antiquity and Constant Vigour, p. 20). The fluent calculation of “258 years before Alexander” is now generally viewed as a limitation of hindsight.
Turning to the authoritative Encyclopaedia Iranica, we find the statement: “Plausible arguments place him (Zarathushtra) anywhere from the 13th century BCE to just before the rise of the Achaemenid empire under Cyrus the Great in the mid-6th century BCE, with the majority of scholars seeming to favour dates around 1000 BCE, which would place him as a contemporary, at least, of the later Vedic poets.” (William W. Malandra, “Zoroastrianism: Historical Review”, 2005, at www.iranica.com).
The elusive homeland of Zarathushtra is named in the Avesta as Airyanem Vaejah. All attempts to trace this geographically are so far considered tentative by the consensus of scholarly opinion. However, the medieval theories about Media (in West Iran) have dropped from favour. These are associated with the tenth century Muslim scholar Al-Shahrastani. Media (Medea) is not mentioned in the Avesta, and nor are the Medes or Persians, these being tribal communities of the Western sector. Current suggestions relate to Eastern Iran and Central Asia (a huge territory including Afghanistan), the list here encompassing Bactria, Khwarezm, and other regions. Many antique place-names cannot be found on modern maps.
Professor Boyce favoured the steppelands of Central Asia, noted for archaic sites exhumed by Soviet archaeologists. The phase she indicated was prior to the migrations onto the Iranian plateau. The Gathas are said to describe a pastoralist society of priests and herdsmen (or farmers). Fixed settlements are implied for the way of life involved in a “pre-nomadic period.”
18.4 Sintashta and Arkaim
The steppeland theory here focussed upon Kazakhstan, an extensive area of steppe, desert, forest, and mountain. More specifically, Boyce gave attention to the Sintashta settlement in northern Kazakhstan, an archaeological site dating to the second millennium B.C. “In general the material remains of the Sintashta people, and the indications which these yield about their social and religious life, accord remarkably well with the relevant facts which can be gleaned from the Gathas” (Boyce, Antiquity and Constant Vigour, p. 37).
Her reconstruction of Old Avestan society posits Zarathushtra in objection to cattle-raiding war bands. The afflicting “non-herdsmen” are implied as renegades from the appropriate code of life that is stressed in the Gathas with much allusion. The new technology of bronze weapons was acquired by steppe dwellers from cultures to the south, and the pastoral way of life was threatened by the emerging class of warriors. The war chariot became a prominent feature of Iranian life, apparently first with two horses and later with four. Social conditions changed greatly with the migrations southward that are stipulated. The nuances of Gathic terminology permit intricate interpretations of various concepts, though disagreements have been marked amongst exegetes.
“The possible chronological limits thus appear to be c.1500-c.1200” (ibid., p. 45). Boyce here obliged critics by opting for the lower limit, which misses the time scale for Sintashta. Her initial “shock” chronology of c.1700 nevertheless fits the recognised Sintashta dating of c. 2000-1600 B.C. Sintashta was a large fortified settlement in the southern Urals, and featured chariot burials. It was excavated from 1968 onwards. Sintashta is strongly associated with the sprawling Andronovo culture of Eurasia, as this part of Russia is known. Yet Sintashta and Petrovka have been described as earlier than classical Andronovo culture, and exhibit some differences. There are clusters of sites associated with these names, and Russian archaeologists dubbed the Sintashta complex as the “land of towns.” An argument occurred amongst specialists as to whether these early sites could be identified as Proto-Indo-Iranian, with all the significances of linguistic genesis appended. One trend of interpretation has been to justify the pro-argument by the appearance of the chariot.
The Arkaim settlement
A major discovery occurred in 1987 when the Arkaim site came into focus. This settlement is near Sintashta, but is in a much better state of preservation. It has been dated to the seventeenth century B.C., though earlier dates have also been proposed. Arkaim had two protective circular walls, and the dwellings inside were separated by a circular street around a central square. An archaeological assessment is that the number of inmates at Arkaim was about 1500 to 2500. Those statistics mean a town by the standards of that time. Outside the walls were arable fields irrigated by a system of canals. See further K. Jones-Bley and D. G. Zdanovich, eds., Complex Societies of Central Eurasia from the 3rd to the 1st Millenium BC (2002).
The Arkaim settlement has aroused diverse speculations that it could have been a military site or a religious centre. Artefacts excavated here were not typical of everyday usage. Some analysts have concluded that such sites served a combination of administrative and ceremonial purposes. Arkaim gained a reputation for being the most enigmatic archaeological site in Russia, and various fantasies and exaggerations have followed in train. Claims about a “mandala city” and an astronomical observatory are perhaps typical of the appetite for sensational preoccupations. One may legitimately be open to the idea that Arkaim could represent an early Iranian society of settled pastoralists. Moreover, the Cinderella of the Yazdi plain can be regarded as having an additionally evocative stake in these obscure developments of the archaic “Sintashta-Petrovka” vanguard of Andronovo culture.
18.5 Continuum of Religion Theory
The continuum theory of Professor Mary Boyce was startling for some rivals. She argued that the remote region of Yazd was a more applicable focus for the beginnings of Zoroastrianism than the speculations of Western scholars. She employed a semi-anthropological argument that ancient practices are preserved more closely in non-literate societies than in literate ones. She was implying, amongst other things, that the beliefs of contemporary Irani Zoroastrians were relevant for the interpretation of ancient texts such as the Gathas attributed to Zarathushtra. She urged that Zoroastrianism had been an oral tradition for about fifteen centuries or more until the Sassanian priesthood innovated written scriptures.
The same scholar emphasised the continuity of ritual elements to a marked degree. According to Boyce, the traditional Zoroastrian ritual devotions can be traced back to Zarathushtra himself, and thus back into pre-Zoroastrian times. She resisted the interpretation that the priesthood had reverted to pagan practices and neglected the more purist teaching of the prophet. That interpretation was associated with Protestant Christianity. However, it is possible to question the primacy of ritual elements without the slightest degree of influence from Protestantism, and without necessarily converging directly with any of the exegesis to which Professor Boyce was opposed.
Ancient icon associated with Zarathushtra
The quest for context is crucial. Just what was the environment of Zarathushtra (alias Zoroaster)? That is not actually known. The chronological gap in scholarly interpretation amounts to six centuries or more. Boyce notably dismissed the computations of the ancient Zoroastrian priesthood who contributed the “traditional date” in their receptivity to Greek speculation. She inferred that the priests adopted Greek fiction to fill a vacuum in their own exegetical tradition. Did the priests get anything else wrong? They were dependent upon legends of the prophet just as contemporary scholars are. Those legends are not comprehensive biography any more than are many of the Sufi hagiographies of later Iranian centuries. The legends cannot be dismissed, but nor can they be relied upon as an index to basic events, although Professor Boyce frequently tended to do this. However, her version of the prophet’s life in the first volume of her magnum opus is very sophisticated by comparison with some earlier efforts in the literature.
Many of the later priests no longer knew the meaning of the texts they recited, and that form of illiteracy is perhaps not the best guide to archaic events. Professor Boyce was anxious to uphold the beliefs of the Parsi priests in her sympathy for this religion, and though a perfectly legitimate undertaking, this does not guarantee any direct convergence with the beliefs of the earliest Zoroastrian priests or the prophet Zarathushtra. The context and meaning of the antique Avestan texts known as Gathas is still subject to strong arguments on a number of points. Professor Boyce opposed the “entirely novel” ritual interpretation of a learned French duo (Antiquity and Constant Vigour, p. 64).
There were three major versions of the Gathas published in translation during the years 1959-91, all by erudite scholars, and each one very different to the others. Boyce accused all of these interpreters with the reflection that their “main concerns have been linguistic, and whose interest in Zoroastrianism has been accordingly incidental and limited” (ibid., p. 63). The industrious Humbach translation tended to be approved by a fair number of other Iranists, though Professor Boyce lamented that “he (Humbach) interpreted most of the hymns as being themselves ritual texts, even though they are arranged by metre and have no discernible liturgical pattern” (ibid., p. 64). Cf. H. Humbach, The Gathas of Zarathushtra (2 vols, 1991), which was a new English version of the earlier German translation published in 1959. See further my web article Zarathushtra and Zoroastrianism (2009).
Professor Boyce briefly suggested a mystical orientation in the prophet, though without being too definitive, and this also was at odds with a prevailing Western conception of the “non-mystical” this-worldly Zarathushtra. That conception was also preferred by twentieth century Parsi high priests like Dastur Maneckji Dhalla, an ecclesiastic who obtained a Western academic education in America. His History of Zoroastrianism (1938) has been viewed in the light of a Parsi Protestantism. He condemned ritual in the reformist manner disliked by Boyce, though he was not venturesome in other aspects of his exegesis.
There was no continuation of Zoroastrianism in Friedrich Nietzsche, despite his curiosity entitled Thus Spake Zarathustra. See further my web item Independent Philosophy (2010).
18.6 Achaemenian Liberalism and the Kirder-Mani Rivalry
To return to the basic question of why I took such an interest in Zoroastrianism. The basic answer is because of the challenge posed by the investigation and charting of complexities, as indicated above. I had always wanted to probe deeper into that religion. The theme of religious continuation/transition is furthermore only one aspect of the data. There are many purely cultural dimensions of the type often fascinating spectators of sites like Persepolis, the royal city and palace complex in Fars that was created by Achaemenian monarchs from the late sixth century B.C. The craftsmanship in stone is of a high standard, the result of artisan labour recruited from all over West Asia and the Mediterranean, including Greeks. The Achaemenians are noted for their tolerance of religious beliefs amongst subject peoples, contrasting with the more insular situation later arising in Sassanian Iran that is associated with the high priest Kirder (Kartir). Persepolis was destroyed in 330 B.C. by the greedy Macedonian army of Alexander the Great. Several generations earlier, the Persian king Xerxes had attacked Athens and burned Greek temples. Zoroastrianism survived the killing and looting which ended Persepolis.
Persepolis
The name of Kirder has strong associations with the Sassanian empire, which commenced in the third century A.D. and lasted until the Arab invasion. The high priest Kirder figured in what is surely one of the most evocative confrontations in the history of religion. Kirder’s opposition to rival religions included his antipathy for Mani, likewise a third century figure and still very imperfectly known. The subsequent Manichaean religion has presented many difficulties for scholarship, and the learned literature on this subject is formidable. Professor Boyce tended to side with Kirder against Mani in certain of her expressions, and this seemed rather extreme to me, evoking a contrasting approach from my pen (Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One, pp. 350ff.). Mani lost in this conflict, forfeiting his life by his independent Gnostic career.
18.7 Anthropography and Diverse Studies
One of the anthropographic points of fascination for me was the close relation in these studies of territories adjacent to Iran. Central Asia, Mesopotamia, and Armenia all figure in this wider sweep. There are also linguistic factors of linkage to the Indian subcontinent via the Avestan and Sanskrit scriptures which have some elements in common; these two languages have been described as dialects of the same tongue, though we are here discussing the Vedic texts in the oldest layer of Sanskrit. Yet archaeological theories have also been urged, and the presence of the Indoaryans in North India has been given different interpretations.
The archaeological excavations in Central Asia and pre-Zoroastrian Iran have added to the emerging picture of the geographical distribution of mankind. It was never easy for synthesists to keep up with all the specialist projects in archaeology, though I did attempt part of that task in my early unpublished manuscript Ancient Cultures in Flux. This endeavour (dating to the early 1980s) primarily engaged with the civilisations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, though I added a review of events and theories relating to zones as far-flung as the British Isles and China. Updates and revisions would now be needed if I ever felt the urge to complete the project. The manuscript was kept on the shelf as a personal memo. The reason for such endeavours is probably the firing of neurons in the brain that can occur in research pursuits, library conditions, and related reflections. In my case, there was never any salary stimulus, and some of my manuscripts were not written with any direct view to publication.
I refer to my version of anthropography in terms of interdisciplinary anthropography, distinguishing this from the specialist pursuit of ethnography. A manuscript that did get published was Meaning in Anthropos (1991), advocating an interdisciplinary approach in terms of science of culture, though subsequently I have preferred the phrase philosophy of culture. See my web article Aspects of Citizen Philosophy (2009). Sociocultural, biographical, and philosophical dimensions are included in the format. See further Philosophy of Culture (2010).
Because of the cumulative nature of my anthropographic project, I resigned myself to long-term prospects. I do not have the temperament of a specialist, and was continually adding subjects to my agenda not formerly envisaged. When I grasped that it was impossible to steer past certain publishing problems for lengthy books, I adopted the recourse of publishing at Cambridge a few shorter works of interest to an academic and more general audience. The longest of these was Meher Baba, an Iranian Liberal (1988), which treats complexities attaching to a descendant of Zoroastrian Iran who had strong ancestral links with the grim Yazdi plain occupied by the oppressed minority. His father was Sheriar Mundegar Irani, mentioned above. See also Shepherd, Investigating the Sai Baba Movement (2005), Part 3.
l to r: Meher Baba, Aurobindo Ghose
Meher Baba (1894-1969) was an Irani, not a Parsi, and definitely not a Hindu despite his use of the avatar terminology that can so easily arouse criticism. The word Irani can be extended to mean Iranian, as I did in my book title, one reason being that the subject’s forbears were in the designated country long before Islam. Some critics have regarded him as an opportunist, though other assessors (including Muslims) credit him as an unusual ascetic and mystic. The exposition in his major work has been said to seriously rival the more well known doctrine of his contemporary Aurobindo Ghose (Shri Aurobindo), a doctrine that was influentially assimilated by Esalen in California during the 1960s. The respective teachings differ quite substantially.
The Aurobindo presentation is associated with Hindu Yoga, whereas the Meher Baba format employs much Sufi and Vedantic terminology. Meher Baba is said to have worn the Zoroastrian kusti girdle throughout his life, though not in any obvious manner, and with no doctrinal overtones. By comparison, Aurobindo is a relatively easy to classify Hindu exemplar of the avant garde “integral Yoga." Yet there are certain similarities in that both of these figures demonstrated an austere lifestyle and a tendency to withdraw from public view (Meher Baba was silent for many years until his death).
My version of Meher Baba has nothing to do with the devotional sect in his name, who are fixated upon the avatar theme. I regard Iranian Liberal merely as a preliminary study with a bibliography that was not formerly in evidence. See further my web entry Meher Baba (2009). See also Meher Baba short entry (2010) and Aurobindo Ghose (2010).
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