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Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād Iran Studies Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād Iran Studies Editorial Board Ali Gheissari (University of San Diego, CA) Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle) Christoph Werner (University of Marburg) volume 9 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/is Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād Transcription, Translation, and Commentary By Mahnaz Moazami LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Modern impression of stamp seal: dancing figures and rearing animal. Sasanian, ca. 3rd–7th century ad. Iran, Qasr-i Abu Nasr Culture. Chalcedony, yellow. Dimensions: 0.63in. (1.6cm). Accession number 36.30.23. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1936 (36.30.23). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moazami, Mahnaz. Wrestling with the demons of the Pahlavi Widewdad : transcription, translation, and commentary / by Mahnaz Moazami. pages cm – (Iran studies ; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26921-7 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-26922-4 (e-book) 1. Avesta. Vendidad. I. Title. BL1515.5.V4M63 2014 295'.82–dc23 2014003561 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1569-7401 isbn 978 90 04 26921 7 (hardback) isbn 978 90 04 26922 4 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Demons and Fiends 3 Commentaries and Commentators 4 The Dating of the Text 6 Characteristic Features of the Text 8 The Purpose of the Text 10 Vocabulary and Terminology 11 Purification Rituals 13 Sin and Punishment 14 Presentation of the Text in This Study 21 The Pahlavi Widēwdād 1 Creation of the Different Lands 28 2 Jam’s Golden Rule and the Great Winter 44 3 Delightful and Demonic Places on Earth 68 4 Contracts and Offenses 98 5 Dead Matter and Defilement 122 6 Contamination of the Land by Corpses 164 7 On Nasuš, the She Demon of Dead Matter 184 8 Purification Rituals after Death 220 9 The Baršnūm Purification 268 10 Formulae Against the Demons 296 11 Exorcisms for Purification 302 12 On Ritual Observance for the Dead 310 13 Veneration of Dogs 318 14 Crime of Killing an Otter 346 15 Sinners Deserving a Death Sentence 356 16 Impurity During Menstruation 376 17 Proper Disposition of Hair and Nails 390 18 The Unworthy Priest and the Rooster 398 19 Temptation of Zarathushtra by the Evil Spirit 428 20 Zoroastrian Concepts of Medicine 452 21 Invocations Against the Demons 458 22 Antidotes Against the Evil Spirit 464 vi contents Commentary 471 Commentary on Chapter 1 471 Commentary on Chapter 2 472 Commentary on Chapter 3 473 Commentary on Chapter 4 477 Commentary on Chapter 5 479 Commentary on Chapter 6 483 Commentary on Chapter 7 484 Commentary on Chapter 8 485 Commentary on Chapter 9 487 Commentary on Chapter 10 489 Commentary on Chapter 11 490 Commentary on Chapter 12 491 Commentary on Chapter 13 491 Commentary on Chapter 14 493 Commentary on Chapter 15 494 Commentary on Chapter 16 495 Commentary on Chapter 17 497 Commentary on Chapter 18 498 Commentary on Chapter 19 500 Commentary on Chapter 20 503 Commentary on Chapter 21 504 Commentary on Chapter 22 505 Conclusion 506 Glossary 509 Bibliography 557 Index 577 Acknowledgements The work on the translation began while I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Har- vard University, where I had the pleasure and privilege of working with Pro- fessor Prods Oktor Skjærvø, the Aga Khan Professor of Iranian, and was able to benefit from his vast erudition. My gratitude for the time and trouble he has taken over this project and the generosity of his friendship cannot be ade- quately expressed here; but only briefly acknowledged, and I am happy to have this opportunity to do so. I am immensely indebted to Professor Yaakov Elman, Herbert S. and Naomi Denenberg, Chair in Talmudic Studies and Professor of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, for his unstinting guidance and many perceptive comments regarding the earlier versions of some of the chapters. It is also my pleasure to thank Abbas Amanat, Professor of History and International and Area Studies, Yale University, and Roy Mottahedeh, Gurney Professor of History, Harvard University, who both did much to inform and broaden the vision of this work from the outset. Rahim Shayegan, Professor of Iranian at UCLA, and Mohsen Ashtiany, my colleague at Columbia, have been a constant source of friendship and encouragement throughout the years. I warmly thank my colleagues and students at Yeshiva University with whom I have studied several passages of the text for their valuable feedback and suggestions. Finally I would like also to express my thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the translation project for their meticulously detailed and pertinent observa- tions. I hope I have managed to take note of them and have incorporated them in the following pages; any remaining blemishes are of course mine and mine alone. Introduction The corpus of the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians is called the Avesta. It is the principal repository of the beliefs of the ancient Iranians, from before the time of the Medes and Achaemenids (ca. 800–300bce) through the Sasanian period (224–651ce). Avestan was the language of eastern Iran, roughly cover- ing the areas of modern Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, in the second and first millennia bce. Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the language of western Iran (Persia) in the Sasanian period. A part of the Avesta, called the Widēwdād (also spelled Vidēvdād), which literally means “the law (serving to keep) demons away,”1 is, for the most part, a catalog of rules and regulations that serves to prevent or reverse pollution through various rituals. The common name of the text in Middle Persian is jud-dēw-dād, “the law (for) keeping the demons separate.” The form Vendidad is used in Western literature and is thought to result from a misreading of the Pahlavi graph for wīdēw-dād.2 The overriding importance of determining what is clean and what is unclean reflects the dualistic nature of the Zoroastrian religion, according to which—as explained in the introductory chapter of the Widēwdād—God (Ohrmazd, the Good Spirit) and the devil (Ahriman, the Evil Spirit) took equal part in the cre- ation process. Thus the world naturally contains both good and evil elements. The Widēwdād gives us a view of the practical consequences of a dualistic re- ligious doctrine—the rules for how to behave in such a society. To break these rules was to incur punishments that carried varying degrees of severity. Par- ticular attention is paid in the Widēwdād to the exposure of corpses, and the protection of earth, water, and fire from contamination by corpses, particularly those of human beings. The most recent English translation of the Avestan version of this text is by Professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø of Harvard University.3 In addition he published 1 E. Benveniste, “Que signifie Videvdat?,” in W.B. Henning Memorial Volume, ed. I. Gershevitch and M. Boyce (London: Lund Humphries, 1970), 37–42. 2 For details, see P.O. Skjærvø, “The Videvdad: Its Ritual-Mythical Significance,” in Birth of the Persian Empire: The Age of the Parthian, ed. V. Sarkhosh Curtis and S. Stewart (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 106. 3 His translation of chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22 are available online in In- troduction to Zoroastrianism: Zoroastrian. (For use in Early Iranian Civilizations 102; Divin- ity School no. 3663a, 2007). Texts Part Two, 120–155, at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/ Zoroastrianism/index.html. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004269224_002 2 introduction in 2006 an analysis of the entire Widēwdād, its ritual, and mythical significance that has radically changed our understanding of this text.4 Earlier scholars have discussed the Widēwdād at some length, but the latest and the only full English translation of the Middle Persian version dates from 1949.5 Western religions have been strongly influenced by the ancient Iranian religions, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism is one of very few religions that originated millennia ago and is still practiced today. Yet we rarely see the tenets and concepts of Zoroastrianism discussed in any depth in wider debates about the historical role and function of religion in society, partly because its texts appear to be both inaccessible and palpably outdated. Modern critical editions of crucial works such as the Widēwdād will do much to remedy this situation. The Widēwdād originally formed the nineteenth book, or nask, of the Sasanian Avesta and belonged to the dādīg, or legal group, that contained the Zoroastrian law books.6 In its present form it has twenty-two chapters ( fragards/ fargards). A list of the contents of the Widēwdād is given in the Dēnkard,7 a Middle Persian text compiled in the ninth century ce that includes, among other things, a summary of the Avesta as it was known in the Sasanian period and several Middle Persian commentaries on the Gāthās.
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