XX1 Table of Contents VIEW PER PAGE:102050ALL SHOWING 1-7 of 7 XENOPHON CHRISTOPHER J. TUPLIN (Ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek Historian

XX1

Table of Contents

VIEW PER PAGE:102050ALL SHOWING 1-7 of 7

XENOPHON

CHRISTOPHER J. TUPLIN

(ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek historian and essayist from Athens, who served among the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger.

XERXES

MULTIPLE AUTHORS name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes.

XERXES I. THE NAME

RÜDIGER SCHMITT the common Greek (Xérxēs) and Latin form (Xerxes, Xerses) of the Achaemenid throne-name which in Old Persian is spelled x-š-y-a-r-š- a.

XIONGNU

ÉTIENNE DE LA VAISSIÈRE

(Hsiung-nu), the great nomadic empire to the north of China in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, which extended to Iranian-speaking Central Asia and perhaps gave rise to the Huns of the Central Asian Iranian sources.

XRAFSTAR

CROSS-REFERENCE

(Avestan xrafstra-) “evil animals” in Zoroastrianism. See MAMMALS iii. The Classification of Mammals and the Other Animal Classes according to Zoroastrian Tradition.

XWĒŠKĀRĪH Ī RĒDAGĀN

MAHNAZ MOAZAMI

(The duty of children), a Pahlavi manual for Zoroastrian children regarding correct behavior.

X~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CROSS-REFERENCE

There are no figures or plates in letter X entries at this time.

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XENOPHON

(ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek historian and essayist from Athens, who served among the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger.

XENOPHON (ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek historian and essayist from Athens, who served among the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger (see CYRUS vi) and then led them back home, a set of events which he described in the Anabasis, one of his major works.

Apart from Socratic links and presumed service in the Athenian cavalry, little is known of Xenophon until he joined the mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger in 401 and became involved in Cyrus’s unsuccessful rebellion against his elder brother Artaxerxes II, who had ascended the throne after the death of their father, Darius II (see DARIUS iv). When Tissaphernes, the satrap of Caria, arrested the Greek generals two months after Cyrus’s defeat and death at the battle of Cunaxa, Xenophon was one of the replacements and played a major role in the homeward trip through Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Armenia, and north Anatolia. After a winter in Thrace, the mercenaries joined Sparta’s defense of the freedom of Asiatic Greeks from Persian rule. Xenophon thus came into close contact with leading Spartans, and when the commander Agesilaus returned to Greece to confront resistance to Spartan hegemony, Xenophon found himself fighting fellow-Athenians at Coronea (394 BC). Whether this caused or reflected formal exile is disputed, but exiled he certainly was. For over 20 years he lived at Scillus (near Olympia) until the collapse of Spartan power in 371 forced him to move to Corinth. Eventual reconciliation with Athens is evident from a sympathetic concern with her problems in Hipparchicus (“On the Cavalry Commander”) and Ways and Means (see Scripta minora) and from the fact that his son Gryllus died fighting as an Athenian cavalryman at Mantinea (362), but it is not known whether he ever returned permanently to his native city. His experiences in 401-394 gave Xenophon unusual exposure to parts of the Persian empire and turned him into a premier contemporary source for its history and institutions. Xenophon wrote 14 works, all extant, of varying genre, extent, and content. Four of them (Hiero, Spartan Constitution, Apology, Cynegeticus) contain no explicit allusion to Persia. Ways and Means (3.11) imagines “kings, tyrants and satraps” investing in the Athenian economy; the fact that satraps are a distinct type of powerful barbarians either reflects a mid-4th-century perception of their semi- autonomous tendencies (the work was written late in the Satraps’ Revolt era) or simply the fact that Greeks had more dealings with satraps than with the king. The technical treatises on horsemanship recommend the Persian method of mounting (On Horsemanship 6.12; Hipparchicus 1.17) and mention Persian (and Thracian) downhill racing (On Horsemanship 8.6), though other material about weaponry and armor lacks explicit reference to Persian associations (On Horsemanship 12). There are several allusions to the king’s power and wealth in Symposium (3.13, 4.11) and Memorabilia (2.1.10, 3.5.11), as well as to Mysian and Pisidian resistance to Persia (Memorabilia 3.5.25; cf. Anabasis 3.2.23) and the deportation of sophoi to the Persian court (Memorabilia 4.2.34). Another Socratic work, Oeconomicus, contains allusions to the king’s horse (12.20), his willingness to reward virtue as well as punish vice (14.6), and his promotion of productive vigor and rivalry among subordinates (12.20, 21.10), besides a suggested analogy between him and Ischomachus’s wife as “king”-bee (Pomeroy, 1984). But it is most remarkable for its lengthy section on agriculture. This argues that royal concern for the protection and cultivation of imperial land is proved by the parallel institutions established to ensure both (and to appraise the activities of the responsible authorities) and tells a story of the Spartan Lysander’s surprise at discovering that Cyrus the Younger regularly spent time gardening in his Sardis paradeisos. This story, like the king’s interest in paradeisoi, of which we also hear, is further proof of the Persian valuation of agriculture. This passage offers interesting generalizations about military occupation (4.5-11; cf. Cyropaedia 8.6.1-16; Tuplin, 1987, pp. 167-74) and has been thought to disclose an imperial ideology under which the king benefits his subjects by promoting agriculture and ensuring that its products are not damaged or diverted by criminal or seditious forces—a win-win situation in which economic well-being means that subjects can satisfy their tributary obligations and the king can protect his power without seeming overly oppressive. This reading goes well beyond anything Xenophon actually says: the only explicit cross-connection, as distinct from parallel, between agriculture and war lies in the relatively banal statements (Oeconomicus 4.15-16) that plowing land is useless if you cannot protect it and that even brave men cannot live without workers (to produce their food). But, even without ideological gloss, the data are interesting, and the fact that, in a Socratic dialogue set in Athens, Xenophon valorizes agriculture by adducing the Persian empire demonstrates his confidence in the validity of what he thinks he knows about the matters in question.

Unlike Oeconomicus, in which Persian details are somewhat tangential to the main theme (Greek estate management), the rest of Xenophon’s works consist of narratives in which Persians play a direct role.

As treatments of Greek history during a fifty-year period in the middle to later classical period, Agesilaus (an encomium of the Spartan king who ruled ca. 400-359; see LYSANDER) and Hellenica (an account of 410-362) embrace various episodes of Greco-Persian conflict. Agesilaus partly overlaps in content with Hellenica, but it also contains distinct material in 8.3-9.7 about the great king’s greed, luxurious life-style, avoidance of public gaze, and arrogant procrastination in the conduct of business. He serves as a foil for Agesilaus, and the excuse for deploying this foil is that Agesilaus refused Artaxerxes II’s suggestion that they become guest-friends (xenoi; 8.3-4)—not the only evidence that Persians and Greeks could make this characteristically Greek relationship (xenia, “guest- friendship”) but unusual in involving the great king (cf. Hellenica 2.1.14, 4.1.29,39, 4.8.28).

Xenophon’s treatment of the Persian dimension of Greek politico- military history in Hellenica is notable for the almost total absence of material after the King’s Peace of 386 BC (5.1.29-36), a peace that reclaimed Anatolia for the empire and sought to confine future inter- Greek conflict outside imperial borders (see, e.g., CARIA, DASCYLIUM); in this it was comparatively successful, but a balanced narrative would have more Persian components after 386 than the 368/7 peace conference narrated in 7.1.33-38. The narrative deftly pictures Artaxerxes’ confrontation with the Athenian ambassadors and reports Greek disdain for the pretensions of royal wealth, exemplified by the golden plane tree that was too small to shade a cicada, but it does not even specify the royal palace at which the gathering took place. The first half of Hellenica (1.1.1-5.1.36) provides a version (lacunose and viewed from a Greek vantage point) of the tortuous path leading from the last phase of the Peloponnesian War to re-establishment of Persian rule in western Asia Minor, and a little light is thrown on the imperial environment. The best moments are vignettes of place or episode: Tissaphernes summoning everyone to Ephesus to “defend Artemis” against Athenian attack (1.2.6); Cyrus promising the silver and gold of his throne for the Spartan war effort (1.5.3); Dascylium’s palace, river, villages, and paradeisoi (4.1.15, 33; Xenophon is the first Greek author to speak of paradeisoi); Zenis and Mania, Greek “satraps” in Aeolis, supplying soldiers, tribute, and advice to Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap of Dascylium (3.1.10-13, 26); Pharnabazus himself, surrounded by concubines and courtiers (3.1.10), but able to dispense with pomp and sit on the grass with Agesilaus (4.1.30); unexpected encounters with better-armed Persian cavalry (3.4.14) or a satrapal army (3.2.15) consisting of Greek mercenaries, Carian White-Shields, and “the Persian contingent” (to Persikon strateuma), whatever exactly that might be; the noble Spithridates (4.1.6) with his 200 cavalrymen (3.4.10), driven to rebellion by Pharnabazus’s demand for his daughter as an unmarried sexual partner (Agesilaus 3.3); cities given to the families of prominent Medizers (3.1.6; cf. Anabasis7.8.8,17-18), and other cities which (it could be claimed) managed to avoid subjection to the king altogether (4.8.5).

While in Hellenica Persia represents one strand in the story, in Anabasis, which deals with Cyrus’s attack on his brother and the subsequent fate of his Greek mercenaries, it dictates the story. Much of what happened after Cunaxa took the Greeks beyond the effective reach of Persian power; that was true in Carduchia (Anabasis 4.1-3) and more or less everywhere between Armenia and Bithynia, where they attracted Pharnabazus’s attention (6.4.24, 6.5.7,30, 7.2.7). At Sinope, they were next to a region owing allegiance to Artaxerxes (5.6.8), but northern Anatolia’s relations with the empire remain a difficult question (Tuplin, 2007, pp. 24-28). In the final chapter, their re-entry into Persian Anatolia prompts a remarkable sketch of the Caicus River valley (7.8.8-23), disclosing Iranian settlement, donation of land to favored non-Iranians, and the presence of various types of soldiery. Books I-III and the Armenian section of IV perhaps contain nothing that outdoes this (though the Armenian village described in 4.5.22-36, with its underground houses and a village chief responsible for collecting horse tribute, is on a par and, as narrative, even more colorful), but there is much of interest to the Achaemenid historian, even if it is often in the puzzles Xenophon has created rather than the provision of clear objective data (for a full discussion see Tuplin, 2004). Beside the Caicus valley and Armenian village descriptions, highlights include: Parysatis’ villages in Syria and Mesopotamia (1.4.9, 2.4.27) and, more generally, a landscape of villages, sometimes with associated basileia; a framework of parasangs (a measure of distance) measuring progress through imperial territory and perhaps reflective of on-site information (cf. Tuplin 1997, pp. 404-17); an unexpected definition of “Media” (3.5.15; cf. Tuplin, 2003) and revelations about discontinuous control of territory (Lycaonia: 1.2.19; Mysia: 3.2.23); a non-Iranian satrap (Belesys: 1.4.10), an Iranian neokoros of the Ephesus Artemisium (5.3.6-7), and other distinctive officials, for instance: phoinikistes (secretary; 1.2.21), skeptoukhoi (1.6.11, 1.8.28; cf. Cyropaedia 8.1.38, 8.3.15, 8.4.2), or the man uniquely empowered to assist the king in mounting his horse (4.4.4); dignitaries in fine apparel even on campaign (1.5.8); the trial of Orontas, remarkable as an event and for the preceding history of pardoned duplicity (1.6.1-11; see Keaveney 2012); various militaria, including the only proper battle narrative involving a royal army between the Persian Wars and Alexander (1.8.1-29, 1.10.1-19). Some see Anabasis as validating the Panhellenist view that Greeks could and should combine to attack and dismember the Persian empire; but Xenophon’s sympathy for this view is heavily qualified by context and a sense of Greek weakness (Tuplin, 2004; Rood, 2004).

As an account of the life of Cyrus II the Elder (see CYRUS iii), Cyropaedia is unlike any of the works mentioned above in being wholly focused on Persia. It is also more controversial than any of them because of the problematic historicity of its contents. The work (once greatly neglected, now much studied by Achaemenid specialists and classicists) presents itself as a historical case study on the question of what enables someone to exert authority over large numbers of people (Cyropaedia 1.1.1-2). This agenda has several consequences. One is a text whose pace, circumstantiality and profusion of conversation are more reminiscent of Socratic literature than historiography; the number of discrete episodes from Cyrus’s long life is very small for a work of 357 pages. Another is the final chapter, in which the extravagant depiction of a contrast between the morally and physically enfeebled mid-fourth century Persians and their ancestors provides a sort of corrective editorial gloss to the main text, stressing that the Persians from whom lessons might be learned are not contemporary ones. A third consequence is Xenophon’s choice of a radically un-Herodotean story line, in which Cyrus co-operates with the Median King Cyaxares against Assyria and its allies (including Lydia), wins an empire ruled from Babylon, acquires Media by marrying Cyaxares’ daughter, and dies in his bed of old age. Herodotus said that many stories were told of Cyrus (1.95), and Xenophon’s narrative may reflect things that could have been heard in Persian circles (Tuplin, 1997b), but it is understandable that few regard it as a valid alternative to Herodotus.

But this is not the end of the story: one must discriminate about degrees of historicity. At the opposite end of the scale from the narrative framework are numerous references to practices that obtain “even now” (e.g., kaì nȗn gàr ’éti, 8.2.4: the king still marks a person with public favor by sending food from the royal table). It does not serve Xenophon’s agenda that these references should be less valid or accurate than claims by any other Greek sources to describe Persian social or political mores. (In the light of the final chapter, the chronological horizon of “even now” is that of a text putatively composed before Artaxerxes II’s reign.) Somewhere in between is the long description (8.1-7) of Cyrus’s establishment of a court and other imperial military and administrative institutions. Many individual features are marked as applicable “even now,” but others are not, and it is perhaps arguable that the desire to illustrate points about leadership sometimes drives Xenophon to deform what he knows or thinks he knows about the matters in hand: the line between a legitimate, if consciously selective, view of reality and agenda-driven misstatement will be drawn in different places by different readers and historians. Statements about satrapal imitatio regis (8.6.10) are widely accepted; but one is on trickier ground with, for example, armed eunuch guards, the uncertain ethnic purity of the imperial ruling class, promotion of rigorously meritocratic principles (and systematic competitive dissent) within that ruling class, the odd position of Persia itself within the imperial structure, or the concept of a law both applied and embodied by the king (Tuplin, 2009). Those unsympathetic to Xenophon assume that the capacity for arbitrary choice and invention suggested by the story line extends into this part of the text (which is constructed as narrative, not as synchronic description of a system). Others may feel that the very conception of Cyropaedia depends upon Xenophon’s belief that Persia really provided an example of the acquisition and organization of power that could (despite potential Greek prejudices) provide a legitimate object of inspection. This is not to say that Xenophon idealized the Persia that he personally knew or that Cyrus’s story lacked any ambiguities (Carlier, 1977); it is to say that, as is also evident in other works, he was innocent of stereotype prejudice, and his knowledge about, and informed sense of, the Persian set-up was what drove the project. Any historian who trusts Oeconomicus 4 (where Xenophon could have had no reason to adduce Persia save a belief that what he says was true and pertinent) should be prepared to give Cyropaedia the benefit of many doubts.

Bibliography:

Greek texts of all Xenophon’s works exist in the Oxford Classical Texts and have been published with facing English translation in the Loeb series. Most of the corpus (not Cyropaedia) is available in English translation in the series of Penguin Classics. The entire corpus is also available in Greek and English in the Perseus Digital Library (www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/).

Texts, translations, and commentaries.

Agesilaus, Hiero, Constitution of the Spartans, Constitution of the Athenians, ed. and tr. M.Casevitz and Vincent Azoulay, as Xénophon: Constitution des Lacédémoniens, Agésilas, Hiéron. Pseudo- Xénophon: Constitution des Athéniens, Paris, 2008. Anabasis, ed. and tr. Paul Masqueray, as Xénophon. Anabase, Paris, 2 vols., 1930-31. Commentaries: J. P. Stronk, The Ten Thousand in Thrace: An Archaeological and Historical Commenary on Xenophon’s Anabasis, Books VI.iii–vi, VIII, Amsterdam Classical Monographs 2, Amsterdam, 1995; Otto Lendle, Kommentar zu Xenophons Anabasis (Bücher 1-7), Darmstadt, 1995.

Apology and Memorabilia, tr. M. D. Macleod, Warminster, 2008.

Cyropaedia, ed. and tr. Marcel Bizos and Edouard Delebecque, as Cyropédie, 3 vols., Paris, 1971-78; tr. Henry Graham Dakyns and Richard Stoneman, as The Education of Cyrus London, 1992; tr. Wayne Ambler, as Education of Cyrus, Ithaca and London, 2001; tr. Reżā Mašāyeḵi, as Kuroš-nāma, Tehran, 1963.

Hellenica, tr. John Marincola, as The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika: A New Translation, New York, 2009.

Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises, tr. Robin Waterfield and Paul Cartledge, London and New York, 1997.

Scripta Minora, tr. Edgar C. Marchant, The Loeb Classical Library, Londonand Cambridge, Mass., 1925.

Symposium, tr. Anthony J. Bowen, Warminister, U.K., 1998. Oeconomicus: Sarah B. Pomeroy, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary, Oxford, 1994.

Ways and Means: Philippe Gauthier, Un commentaire historique des Poroi de Xenophon, Geneva and Paris, 1976.

Monographs and articles.

Xenophon (General)

John Dillery, Xenophon and the History of His Times, London, 1995.

Édouard Delebecque, Essai sur la vie de Xenophon, Paris, 1957.

Vivienne J. Gray, Xenophon's Mirror of Princes, Oxford 2011.

Steven W. Hirsch, The Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Persian Empire, Hanover and London, 1985.

Christopher J. Tuplin, “Xenophon in Media,” in Giovani B. Lanfranchi, Michael Roaf, and Robert Rollinger, eds., Continuity of Empire (?): Assyria, Media, Persia, Padova, Italy, 2003, pp. 351-89.

Idem, “Xenophon on Achaemenid Anatolia,” in Inci Delemen and Oliver Casabonne, eds., The Achaemenid Impact on Local Populations and Culture in Anatolia (Sixth-Fourth Centuries BC), Istanbul, 2007, pp. 7-31.

Idem, “Xenophon and Achaemenid Courts: A Survey of the Evidence,” in Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger, eds., Der Achämenidenhof, Stuttgart, 2010, pp. 189-230.

Robin Waterfield, Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.

Cyropaedia

Vincent Azoulay, “Xénophon, la Cyropédie et les eunuches,” Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques 11, 2000, pp. 3-26.

Idem, “The Medo-Persian Ceremonial: Xenophon, Cyrus and the King’s Body,” in Christopher J. Tuplin, ed., Xenophon and His World, Stuttgart, 2004, pp. 147-74.

A. B. Breebart, “From Victory to Peace: Some Aspects of Cyrus’ State in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia,” Mnemosyne 36, 1983, pp. 117-34.

Pierre Carlier, “L’idée de monarchie impériale dans la Cyropédie de Xénophon,” Ktema: civilisations de l’Orient, de la Grèce et de Rome Antiques 3, 1978, pp. 133-63. Paul Demont, “Xénophon et les Homotimes,” Ktema 31, 2006, pp. 277-90.

Bodil Due, The Cyropaedia: Xenophon’s Aims and Method, Aarhus, Denmark, 1989.

Deborah Levine Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique, Oxford, 1993.

David M. Johnson, “Persians as Centaurs in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 135, 2005, pp. 177-207.

Christian Mueller-Goldingen, Untersuchungen zu Xenophons Kyrupädie, Stuttgart, 1995.

Christopher Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001.

Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, “The Death of Cyrus: Xenophon’s Cyropaedia as A Source for Iranian History,” in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, 2 vols., Acta Iranica 24-25, Leiden, 1985, II, pp. 459-72.

James Tatum, Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus, Princeton, 1989. Yun Lee Too, “Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Disfiguring the Pedagogic State,” in Yun Lee Too and Niall Livingstone, eds., Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 282- 302.

Christopher J. Tuplin, “Persian Decor in the Cyropaedia: Some Observations,” in Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg and Henrik J Willem Drijvers, Achaemenid History: Proceedings of the 1987 Groningen Achaemenid History Workshop V: The Roots of the European Tradition, Leiden, 1990, pp. 17-30.

Idem, “Xenophon, Sparta and the Cyropaedia,” in Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson, eds., The Shadow of Sparta, London and New York, 1994, pp. 127-82.

Idem, “Education and Fiction in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia,” in Alan H. Sommerstein and Caroline Atherton, eds., Education in Fiction, Bari, 1997b, pp. 65-162.

B. Zimmermann, “Roman und Enkomion: Xenophons Erziehung des Kyros,” Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 15, 1989, pp. 97-105.

Anabasis

Pierre Briant, ed., Dans les pas des Dix-Mille: peuples et pays du Proche-Orient vus par un Grec, Toulouse, 1995. Michael A. Flower, Xenophon’s Anabasis, or, the Expedition of Cyrus, Oxford and New York, 2012.

Arthur Keaveney, "The Trial of Orontas: Xenophon, Anabasis I,6,” L'Antiquité

Classique 81, 2012, pp. 31-41.

Tim Rood, “Panhellenism and Self-Presentation: Xenophon’s Speeches,” in Robin Lane Fox, ed., The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 305-29.

Christopher J. Tuplin, “The Persian Empire,” in Robin Lane Fox, ed., The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 154-83.

Oeconomicus

Sarah B. Pomeroy, “Persian King and Queen Bee,” American Journal of Ancient History 9, 1984, pp. 98-108.

Other items

Pierre Pontier, “Xenophon and the Persian Kiss,” in Fiona Hobden and Christopher J.Tuplin, eds., Xenophon: Ethical Principles and Historical Enquiry, Leiden and Boston, 2012, pp. 611-30. Christopher J. Tuplin, “Xenophon and the Garrisons of the Achaemenid Empire,” AMI, New Series 20, 1987, pp. 167-246.

Idem, “Achaemenid Arithmetic: Numerical Problems in Persian History,” Topoi, Supplement 1, 1997a, pp. 365-421.

(Christopher J. Tuplin)

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XERXES name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes.

i. The name.

ii. Xerxes I.

iii. Xerxes II.

(Multiple Authors)

......

XERXES i. The Name the common Greek (Xérxēs) and Latin form (Xerxes, Xerses) of the Achaemenid throne-name which in Old Persian is spelled x-š-y-a-r-š- a.

XERXES, name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes.

i. THE NAME

This form and the secondary contracted form *Xšayaršā are reflected more or less accurately in Bab. Ḫi-ši-ʾ-ar-šá/ši, Ḫi-ši-(i-)ar-ši/šú, Aḫ-ši- ia-ar-šú, Ak-ši-ia-ar-šú, Ak-ši-ia-mar-šú (with many other variants; cf. Dandamayev, pp. 82 f., no. 145; Tavernier, pp. 23 f., 66 ff.; Zadok, pp. 207-24, no. 283), Aram. ḥšyʾrš, ḥšyrš, ʾḥšyrš (cf. Porten and Lund, p. 356a), Bibl.-Aram. ʾḥšwrwš (with the wrong vocalization “Aḥašwērōš”), and Eg. ḫšjrš, ḫšjegyptian alephrš (cf. Vittmann, p. 164). From all those renderings are different both El. Ik-še-ir-(iš-)šá (cf. Hinz and Koch, p. 750), that is, /Kšerša/ or the like, and Gk. Xérxēs (originating in *Xérsēs by distance-assimilation x––x from x–– s), which apparently render a shorter two-syllable form *Xšairšā or even monophthongized *Xšēršā; this medially shortened form must have existed already in Old Iranian (probably in spoken Old Persian) and was not created only in Greek (with a quite regular intermediate *Xeírsēs or *Xeírxēs) and Elamite respectively. The longstanding view that Gk. Xérxēs goes back to the attested Old Persian form through *Xḗrxēs, *Xāˊrxās, and OIran. *Xšāršā must be given up for phonological reasons (see esp. Schmitt, 1996, pp. 88 f.), and a common explanation for both the Elamite and the Greek form (which are remarkably similar to each other) must in any case be preferred.

Old Persian Xšaya-ṛšā is a compound with the verbal stem xšaya- “ruling” as the first element and the n-stem noun *ṛšan- “hero, man” as the second element; the original n-stem paradigm, however, is preserved only in the nominative form, whereas the other cases are remodeled analogically in one way or another (see Kent, p. 65a); with the primary meaning “ruling over heroes” it is close to Ved. kṣayád- vīra- “id.” with a similar formation.

Minor bearers of this ancient royal name in later times include the following two:

1. A king of Sophene (Western Armenia). He fled when Antiochus III besieged the royal capital Arsamosata (Iran. *Aršāmašāt) in 212 B.C.E. because tribute payments had been stopped by his father (probably Arsames, the founder of Arsamosata). But at the same time, he asked for negotiations and indeed was graciously received by Antiochus, who demanded only relatively small tribute from him (Polybios 8.23.1–5); he took Antiochus’s sister Antiochis to wife, who later eliminated him (see H. H. Schmitt, esp. pp. 28, 93); he is known also from his coinage (see Alram, p. 68).

2. A son of Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontos (see PONTUS). Still a child, he was captured with some of his brothers and sisters (among them, one Darius and one Cyrus) during the revolt against Mithridates that preceded the king’s suicide. The children were handed over to Gnaeus Pompey, who displayed them in the triumph awarded him in Rome in 61 B.C.E. for his victories in the East, including those over the king of Pontos and his allies (Appianus, Mithr. 108, 117).

Bibliography:

M. Alram, Nomina propria Iranica in nummis: Materialgrundlagen zu den iranischen Personennamen auf antiken Münzen, Wien, 1986.

M. A. Dandamayev, Iranians in Achaemenid Babylonia, Costa Mesa and New York, 1992.

E. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World I, Princeton, 1947.

W. Hinz and H. Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, Berlin, 1987.

K. Hoffmann, “Altpers. afuvāyā,” in H. Krahe, ed., Corolla Linguistica. Festschrift Ferdinand Sommer, Wiesbaden, 1955, pp. 80–85.

R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1953.

M. Mayrhofer, Die altiranischen Namen, Wien, 1979, pp. 30 f., no. 66. B. Porten and J. A. Lund, Aramaic Documents from Egypt: A Key- Word-in-Context Concordance, Winona Lake, Ind., 2002.

H. H. Schmitt, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Antiochos’ des Grossen und seiner Zeit, Wiesbaden, 1964.

R. Schmitt, Die Iranier-Namen bei Aischylos (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. I), Wien, 1978, pp. 29 f.

R. Schmitt, “Onomastica Iranica Platonica,” in Ch. Mueller-Goldingen and K. Sier, eds., Lēnaika: Festschrift für Carl Werner Müller, Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996, pp. 81–102.

R. Schmitt, Die iranischen und Iranier-Namen in den Schriften Xenophons (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. II), Wien, 2002, pp. 65 f.

R. Schmitt, Iranische Anthroponyme in den erhaltenen Resten von Ktesias’ Werk (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. III), Wien, 2006, pp. 111– 13.

J. Tavernier, Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550-330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names And Loanwords, Attested In Non-Iranian Texts, Leuven, 2007.

G. Vittmann, “Iranisches Sprachgut in ägyptischer Überlieferung,” in Th. Schneider, ed., Das Ägyptische und die Sprachen Vorderasiens, Nordafrikas und der Ägäis. Akten des Basler Kolloquiums zum ägyptisch-nichtsemitischen Sprachkontakt, Münster, 2004, pp. 129– 182.

R. Zadok, Iranische Personennamen in der neu- und spätbabylonischen Nebenüberlieferung, Wien, 2009.

(Rüdiger Schmitt)

......

XERXES i. The Name the common Greek (Xérxēs) and Latin form (Xerxes, Xerses) of the Achaemenid throne-name which in Old Persian is spelled x-š-y-a-r-š- a.

XERXES, name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes.

i. THE NAME

Xerxes is the common Greek (Xérxēs) and Latin form (Xerxes, Xerses) of the Achaemenid throne-name which in Old Persian is spelled x-š-y-a-r-š-a (with the initial a- of the second element being spread into medial position) and must be interpreted as four-syllable Xšaya-ṛšā (thus first P. Tedesco in Herzfeld, pp. 97 f. and Hoffmann, p. 85, fn. 15). This form and the secondary contracted form *Xšayaršā are reflected more or less accurately in Bab. Ḫi-ši-ʾ-ar-šá/ši, Ḫi-ši-(i-)ar-ši/šú, Aḫ-ši- ia-ar-šú, Ak-ši-ia-ar-šú, Ak-ši-ia-mar-šú (with many other variants; cf. Dandamayev, pp. 82 f., no. 145; Tavernier, pp. 23 f., 66 ff.; Zadok, pp. 207-24, no. 283), Aram. ḥšyʾrš, ḥšyrš, ʾḥšyrš (cf. Porten and Lund, p. 356a), Bibl.-Aram. ʾḥšwrwš (with the wrong vocalization “Aḥašwērōš”), and Eg. ḫšjrš, ḫšjegyptian alephrš (cf. Vittmann, p. 164). From all those renderings are different both El. Ik-še-ir-(iš-)šá (cf. Hinz and Koch, p. 750), that is, /Kšerša/ or the like, and Gk. Xérxēs (originating in *Xérsēs by distance-assimilation x––x from x–– s), which apparently render a shorter two-syllable form *Xšairšā or even monophthongized *Xšēršā; this medially shortened form must have existed already in Old Iranian (probably in spoken Old Persian) and was not created only in Greek (with a quite regular intermediate *Xeírsēs or *Xeírxēs) and Elamite respectively. The longstanding view that Gk. Xérxēs goes back to the attested Old Persian form through *Xḗrxēs, *Xāˊrxās, and OIran. *Xšāršā must be given up for phonological reasons (see esp. Schmitt, 1996, pp. 88 f.), and a common explanation for both the Elamite and the Greek form (which are remarkably similar to each other) must in any case be preferred.

Minor bearers of this ancient royal name in later times include the following two: 1. A king of Sophene (Western Armenia). He fled when Antiochus III besieged the royal capital Arsamosata (Iran. *Aršāmašāt) in 212 B.C.E. because tribute payments had been stopped by his father (probably Arsames, the founder of Arsamosata). But at the same time, he asked for negotiations and indeed was graciously received by Antiochus, who demanded only relatively small tribute from him (Polybios 8.23.1–5); he took Antiochus’s sister Antiochis to wife, who later eliminated him (see H. H. Schmitt, esp. pp. 28, 93); he is known also from his coinage (see Alram, p. 68).

Bibliography:

M. Alram, Nomina propria Iranica in nummis: Materialgrundlagen zu den iranischen Personennamen auf antiken Münzen, Wien, 1986.

M. A. Dandamayev, Iranians in Achaemenid Babylonia, Costa Mesa and New York, 1992.

E. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World I, Princeton, 1947. W. Hinz and H. Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, Berlin, 1987.

K. Hoffmann, “Altpers. afuvāyā,” in H. Krahe, ed., Corolla Linguistica. Festschrift Ferdinand Sommer, Wiesbaden, 1955, pp. 80–85.

R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1953.

M. Mayrhofer, Die altiranischen Namen, Wien, 1979, pp. 30 f., no. 66.

B. Porten and J. A. Lund, Aramaic Documents from Egypt: A Key- Word-in-Context Concordance, Winona Lake, Ind., 2002.

H. H. Schmitt, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Antiochos’ des Grossen und seiner Zeit, Wiesbaden, 1964.

R. Schmitt, Die Iranier-Namen bei Aischylos (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. I), Wien, 1978, pp. 29 f.

R. Schmitt, “Onomastica Iranica Platonica,” in Ch. Mueller-Goldingen and K. Sier, eds., Lēnaika: Festschrift für Carl Werner Müller, Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996, pp. 81–102.

R. Schmitt, Die iranischen und Iranier-Namen in den Schriften Xenophons (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. II), Wien, 2002, pp. 65 f.

R. Schmitt, Iranische Anthroponyme in den erhaltenen Resten von Ktesias’ Werk (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. III), Wien, 2006, pp. 111– 13.

J. Tavernier, Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550-330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names And Loanwords, Attested In Non-Iranian Texts, Leuven, 2007.

R. Zadok, Iranische Personennamen in der neu- und spätbabylonischen Nebenüberlieferung, Wien, 2009.

(Rüdiger Schmitt)

......

______

XIONGNU

XIONGNU (Hsiung-nu), the great nomadic empire to the north of China in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, which extended to Iranian- speaking Central Asia and perhaps gave rise to the Huns of the Central Asian Iranian sources.

Origins. The Xiongnu are known mainly from archaeological data and from chapter 110 of the Shiji (Historical Records) of Sima Qian, written around 100 BCE, which is devoted to them. Comparison of the textual and archaeological data makes it possible to show that the Xiongnu were part of a wider phenomenon—the appearance in the 4th century BCE of elite mounted soldiers, the Hu (Di Cosmo, 2002), on the frontiers of the Chinese states which were expanding to the north. The first mention of the Xiongnu in Chinese sources dates to 318 BCE. Archaeologically, these Hu cavalrymen seem to be the heirs of a long development (the Early Nomadic period, from the end of the 7th to the middle of the 4th century BCE), during which the passage from an agro-pastoral economy to one dominated at times exclusively by equestrian pastoralism had taken place. Among these peoples, in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE the Xiongnu occupied the steppe region of the northern Ordos as well as the regions to the northwest of the great bend of the Yellow River. Numerous archaeological finds in Inner Mongolia and in Ningxia demonstrate the existence of a nomadic culture that was socially differentiated and very rich, in which both iron and gold were in common use and which was in constant contact, militarily as well as diplomatically and commercially, with the Chinese states (in particular Zhao to the southeast). This culture seems to have directly inherited those which had preceded it in the region, but on a wider scale (the Xiongnu pottery of Xigoupan or Aluchaideng is a developed form of the Early Nomadic pottery of Taohongbala; development continued on the site of Maoqinggou from the Early Nomadic period to the Xiongnu period, with a transition to nomadism sometime around the sixth century BCE; for a different view see Minaev, 1996, p. 11, who, on the basis of funerary materials, places the origins of the Xiongnu further to the east, south of Manchuria (Upper Xiajiadan culture), and the response of Di Cosmo, 1999, pp. 931-34). We do not know what influence the Saka cultures to the west may have had in this development.

The name of the Xiongnu (ʿχiʷongʿnuo according to Karlgren) has also been related to other tribal names of Antiquity which have a rather similar pronunciation, following the vague identifications of the Shiji (Pritsak, 1959, strongly criticized by Maenchen-Helfen, 1961). Furthermore, the language of the Xiongnu has been the subject of the most varied hypotheses based on the few words, mainly titles or names of persons, which have been preserved in the Chinese sources: Altaic, Iranian (Bailey, 1985, which has not been followed) and Proto-Siberian (Ket). At present, the hypothesis of Pulleyblank (1962) in favor of Ket seems to be the most well-founded (Vovin, 2000), although it is by no means certain that all of the tribal groups of the confederation belonged to the same linguistic group nor that the late Xiongnu distich was representative of the language (Di Cosmo, 2002, pp. 163-65).

The Xiongnu Empire. The Xiongnu confederation was destabilized in 215 BCE by the offensive campaign of a China recently unified by the Qin, who sent the general Meng Tian to occupy and fortify the pastoral areas of the Ordos and to drive the Xiongnu and their shanyu Touman to the north. The Xiongnu tribes reunified under the charismatic figure of Touman’s son Maodun in 209, crushed the Emperor Gaozu, forced him to sign a humiliating treaty in 198, and reoccupied the Ordos. The status quo then prevailed until 134 BCE, a period during which the Xiongnu secured their pre-eminence over the steppe societies of East Asia. This period was brought to an end by the initiative of the Chinese, who expelled the Xiongnu to the north of the Gobi in 121 and 119 BCE.

In the domain of archaeology, the military domination of the Xiongnu gave rise to the following phenomena: First, the development of a proto-urbanization within the Xiongnu sphere as, for example, fortresses in the excavation of Ivolga on the Selenga by A. Davydova (1995); villages, whether fortified or not, as in Dureny (Davydova and Minyaev, 2002), where handicraft and agriculture were practiced in addition to animal husbandry, which has led to a rereading of the Shiji and Han shu in which it is actually specified that the shanyu must have had towns built in order to preserve the grain they received as tribute, and that they constructed a capital (Minaev, 1996); secondly, the enrichment and very clear sinicization of the contents of the tombs of the Xiongnu aristocracy, such as the tombs of Noin-Ula, a royal cemetery, investigated in 1924 by Kozlov (Rudenko, 1962), in which were found numerous deluxe objects imported as much from China as from the Iranian-speaking West, or the tombs excavated recently at Egiin Gol (Giscard, 2002).

The Xiongnu military domination also gave them control of Central Asia and put them in direct contact with the Iranian-speaking populations: In 176 BCE Maodun crushed the Yuezhi of Gansu, then subdued the Wusun, Loulan, the Hu Jie and “twenty-six peoples” of the region. In 162 the shanyu Laoshang again crushed the Yuezhi refugees in the valley of the Ili and forced them to migrate to the southwest into sedentary Iranian-speaking Central Asia (Sogdiana, Bactriana). At that time all of Central Asia recognized, at least formally, the suzerainty of the Xiongnu: “whenever a Xiongnu envoy appeared in the region [i.e., western Central Asia] carrying credentials from the Shanyu, he was escorted from state to state and provided with food, and no one dared to detain him or cause him any difficulty” (Shiji, tr. Watson, p. 244). Nevertheless, their control was primarily exercised in the northeast of the Tarim Basin and Turfan, with the Lob Nor as a western frontier: The Office of the Commander in Charge of Slaves, responsible for raising taxes and corvées, was established near Karashahr (Qarašahr). Control of the West seems to have been limited to the collection of tribute from the Wusun (Dzungaria) and Kangju (middle Syr Darya and Sogdiana), while further to the south the Yuezhi (Bactriana) were hostile to them.

Having been pushed back to the north by the Chinese, the Xiongnu entered into a period of internal divisions, during which the shanyu rapidly succeeded each other and the local Xiongnu kings fought over the central government. To the west, between the years 115 and 60 BCE, the weakening of the Xiongnu confederation gave rise to a struggle between the Chinese and the Xiongnu for control of the western regions. The principal events of this struggle included the missions of Zhang Qian in search of alliances in 137 and 115 BCE, the raid on Farḡāna (Ferghana) by a Chinese army in 101 BCE, and the battles for control of the region of Turfan (Jushi) between 67 and 60 BCE. The Office of the Commander in Charge of Slaves lasted until 60 BCE, at which time it was replaced by its Chinese equivalent, the Protectorate General of the Western Regions (see Yü Ying-Shih, p. 133).

In 57 BCE the disintegration of the confederation led to its division between five and then two shanyu, one in the South (Huhanye) who submitted to China in 53 BCE, the other (Zhizhi) controlling the North and West. The latter, finally taking refuge in Kangju, carved out a kingdom in the valley of the Talas and was defeated there by the Chinese general Zhen Tang in 36 BCE, an episode that marks the farthest advance of the Xiongnu and Chinese armies into the Iranian- speaking West (Daffinà, 1969).

The ensuing peaceful period ended when the Xiongnu took advantage of troubles in China (reign of Wang Mang, 9-23 CE) and widely recaptured control of the West before once again splitting into two groups, the Southern Xiongnu and the Northern Xiongnu, in 48 CE. The first group took refuge in the north of China in 50 CE, giving rise to areas of Xiongnu population within the frontiers between Taiyuan and the Yellow River that would endure for several centuries. Their last shanyu disappeared at the beginning of the 3rd century, but the Xiongnu, though highly sinicized, preserved their identity and played a major role in the disturbances and plundering that put an end to the Jin dynasty in North China at the beginning of the 4th century (Honey, 1990).

While the Northern Xiongnu for a time succeeded in playing a role in the West (their armies intervened at Khotan and Yarkand after 61 CE), China regained control of the region of Turfan in 74 CE and chased them from Mongolia: the shanyu took refuge in the Ili valley in 91 CE, while many Northern Xiongnu tribes surrendered to China and were settled within the frontiers. The Northern Xiongnu, with several thousand men, continued to intervene at Hami and in the region of Turfan throughout the first half of the 2nd century. We know nothing of their fate: in the Wei Lue, written in the middle of the 3rd century, the Xiongnu are completely absent from the piedmont north of the Tianshan (Chavannes, 1905).

Xiongnu and the Huns. Could these Xiongnu have given rise to the Huns who appeared on the Volga from the year 370 CE before they invaded Europe? The question is highly controversial and has been the subject of numerous works since de Guignes first proposed the identity of the two groups in 1758. The reference in one of the very early Sogdian documents conventionally called the Ancient Letters of 313 to the Xwn pillagers of Luoyang, where the Chinese sources speak of the Xiongnu, seemed to be decisive evidence in favor of this identification (Henning, 1948) before O. Maenchen-Helfen attempted to prove on several occasions that the two were unrelated, mainly using archaeological data, but also via critical examination of the texts. While we are indebted to the latter for having demonstrated the complexity of the Hun question (Maenchen-Helfen, 1973), and while his prudence has in the main prevailed (see for example Sinor, 1989, Daffinà, 1994, and also a recent synthetic view in Golden, 1992, pp. 57-67 and 77-83), an attempt will be made here to show that Maenchen-Helfen’s reasoning, quite valid from an ethnic point of view (the Huns were basically composed of a conglomerate of peoples), cannot be accepted in terms of political identity (la Vaissière, 2005b).

First, it seems possible to prove that the names are indeed identical. In 313 it was a Sogdian merchant writing in the Gansu corridor who, in a letter to a correspondent at Samarqand, described with precision the plundering of the Southern Xiongnu in China and called them Xwn, a name which must be connected to that of the Huns (Henning, 1948, a point conceded by Maenchen-Helfen, 1955, p. 101). Should it be connected to that of the Xiongnu (ʿχiʷongʿnuo)? This connection poses no problems to specialists in Chinese phonology (Pulleyblank, 1962, p. 139), and above all it is difficult to see what other origin one could give to this name which is always given as an equivalent to that of the Xiongnu in all of its first Central Asian occurrences: aside from the Sogdian Ancient Letter, one must also cite the Buddhist translations of Zhu Fahu (Dharmarakṣa), a Yuezhi of Dunhuang, who in 280 CE translated the Tathāgataguhya-sūtra from Sanskrit to Chinese, and rendered Hūṇa by Xiongnu (Lévy, 1905, pp. 289-90, the Sanskrit version is no longer extant, but there exists a Tibetan version which gives Hu-na), and then did the same in 308 in his translation of the Lalitavistara (of which a Sanskrit version is extant) (Daffinà, 1994, p. 10).

The Sogdians had been acquainted with the Xiongnu since the extension of their empire to western Central Asia in the 2nd century BCE, and one can no longer doubt the quality of the evidence (contra Sinor, p. 179, who presupposes that the name of the Huns is generic without asking why, and above all Maenchen-Helfen, 1955, who unconvincingly attempts to disparage this eyewitness testimony by comparing it to purely theoretical examples); solid reasons are required if we are to consider that the Sogdian merchant and the Yuezhi monk of Dunhuang did not give them their real name, for reasons which remain unknown (despite Parlato, 1996).

But these texts do not imply that the Huns of Europe or Central Asia after 350 were themselves descendants of the Xiongnu: one can imagine that the name Xwn or Huna — an accurate word for describing the Southern Xiongnu who plundered North China in the 4th century as well as the ancient Xiongnu, known as far as India — may then have been used again for very different nomadic peoples. Further still, we have proof of such usage: in Sogdiana in the 8th century, the Turks are sometimes named Xwn (Grenet, 1989), and certain Huns of some Khotanese texts could not be Xiongnu (an example in Bailey, 1949, p. 48). But this generic name did not develop from nothing, and only the Xiongnu hypothesis can account for it.

Moreover, the Wei shu, taking up information precisely dated to 457, states: “Formerly, the Xiongnu killed the king (of Sogdiana) and took the country. King Huni is the third ruler of the line” (trans. Enoki, 1955, p. 44). This leads us to place the “Xiongnu” invasion of Sogdiana in the first half of the 5th century. Here, too, there is hardly any reason to doubt this direct testimony stemming from the report of an official Sogdian envoy in China (see Enoki, 1955, pp. 54-57). Also, the personal names found in the Sogdian caravaneer graffiti of the Upper Indus (3rd to 5th century CE, see Sims-Williams, 1989 and 1992) frequently include the first or last name Xwn, whereas it no longer exists in the later corpus of texts (the Chinese documents of Turfan), which reflects the presence of Hun invaders in Sogdiana and the fusion of the populations (la Vaissière, 2004, pp. 77-78; 2005, pp. 81-82) during a precise period of time.

Nevertheless, this still does not imply that the invaders were Huns/Xiongnu, but at least that they claimed to be. In order to proceed further, it is first necessary to stress the extent to which the testimony of the Wei shu concerning the Xiongnu in the West is isolated. Beginning with the hypothesis of de Guignes, scholars have sought on several occasions to identify a westward migratory movement of the Xiongnu. For a long time, the episode cited above (the establishment of the shanyu Zhizhi in the valley of the Talas) was used for that purpose: the Xiongnu who accompanied Zhizhi to the West were considered to be the ancestors of the Huns of Europe. This is impossible, since the Chinese sources emphasize the small number of these Xiongnu (Daffinà, 1969, pp. 229-230). Even if one takes into account the latest reports of the Northern Xiongnu north of the Tian Shan (153 CE), two centuries still separate them from the invasion of Sogdiana, while we have no reason to suppose the existence of a westward movement of the Southern Xiongnu. But other passages in the Wei shu speak of “remnants of the descendants of the Xiongnu” as western neighbors of a branch of the Rouran (Juanjuan), to the northwest of the Gobi around 400 CE (Wei shu, 103.2290). This information is not without interest, for it implies the survival of a Xiongnu identity far to the north, well beyond the field of vision of the Chinese sources, in the very place one would expect to find Huns/Xiongnu shortly after some of the main body of their troops had passed the Volga and others the Syr Darya, leaving these small groups behind them.

From an archaeological point of view, there are now few doubts that the Hunnic cauldrons from Hungary are indeed derived from the Xiongnu ones. Moreover, they were used and buried on the same places, the banks of rivers, a fact which proves the existence of a cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the Huns (Erdy, 1994; de la Vaissière, 2005b).

The Huns of Central Asia thus consciously succeeded the Xiongnu and established themselves as their heirs, and an authentic Xiongnu element probably existed within them, although it was probably very much in the minority within a conglomerate of various peoples. This is the only hypothesis that accounts for all of the known facts given the current state of our information.

The Xiongnu/Huns in Central Asia in the 4th century. We shall not deal here with the Huns who appeared around 370 CE on the Volga prior to their invasion of Europe (see Maenchen-Helfen, 1973), nor with the Central Asian dynasties of the 5th century that are sometimes called Hunnic in the sources (on the Kidarites, who appeared only from the year 420, see Grenet, 2002; see KIDARITES). In Central Asia, the first references that must be taken into account date from 350 CE. Ammianus Marcellinus then mentions for the first time in his narrative the eastern enemies of the Persians, the Chionites (XVI, 9, 3-4). In 356, Šāhpur II fought against the Chionites in the East, then concluded an alliance: the king of the Chionites, Grumbates, participated in the siege of Amida (Diyarbakir) in 359 (XIX, 1, 7). This name is now attested around the year 430 in the Bactrian documents for a prince of the kingdom of Rōb (north of the Hindu Kush) in the form Gurambad (Sims-Williams, 1997, 13 doc. 4). The influence of Avestan Hyaona might suffice to explain the form Chion, which is divergent in comparison with Xwn, Huna, and Hūṇa. These Chionites could have reached the Sassanid frontiers in 350 CE. Boris Marshak, for other reasons (1971, p. 65) considers the Chionites to have been not Huns but mountain-dwellers of the Hindu Kush, an hypothesis supported by the fact that Ammianus Marcellinus, who knew of both the European Huns and the Chionites, never makes the connection between them (Sinor, p. 179), and possibly by the name of Gurambad. It would then be necessary to situate the invasion of the Xiongnu/Huns one or two generations later: at that time the Armenian sources show that the Sassanids, between 368 and the death of Šāpur II (379), were defeated by a “king of the Kushans” reigning at Balḵ- (Faustus of Byzantium, V, vii and V, xxxvii, tr. Garsoian, 1989, pp. 187-98 and 217-18), and the Kushano- Sassanid kingdom collapsed at that time. Moreover, it was at the end of the 4th century that the alchonno of Kapisa and Gandhara began to strike their own coins re-using those of Šāpur II, which would be perfectly consistent chronologically (on these coins see Alram, 1996, who associates them with the Kidarites, and more generally Göbl). But this reading is contested as some coins can be read alchanno, a name which should be linked with the indian legend rājālakhāna.

This invasion and those that followed it shattered the sedentary economy of Iranian-speaking Central Asia: Bactriana, ravaged for more than a century (until the expansion of the Hephtalites in the middle of the 5th century), declined as the principal center of population and wealth, due as much to the nomadic offensives as to the vigorous Sassanid resistance, while Sogdiana, which had been rapidly conquered, recovered. In Bactriana, all of the available data agree in giving the idea of a sharp decline of the region in the course of the period from the second half of the 4th century to the 6th century: neglected irrigation networks (valley of the Wakhsh), multiple layers of burning (Chaqalaqtepe), abandonment of sites (Dil’beržin Tepe, Emshi Tepe), barren layers in the stratigraphy of sites (Tepe Zargarān at Balḵ-), necropolises over ancient urban areas (Termeḏ, Dal’verzintepe), sacking (Karatepe). In contrast, to the north the populations of the region of the Syr Darya, whether of the delta (Džetyasar culture) or of the middle course (Kaunči culture), seem to have taken refuge in Sogdiana under Hun pressure and rapidly returned the abandoned lands to cultivation. Conversely, the sites of the Džetyasar culture were widely abandoned, and at the middle course of the Syr Darya the city of Kanka diminished to a third of its initial surface area (Grenet, 1996, de la Vaissière, 2002, pp. 105-16). It may also be noted that the sites of Džetyasar are close to the areas in which the Western sources place the European Huns prior to their crossing of the Volga. These peoples who arrived from the north added to the local Sogdian populations, which did not disappear. Sogdiana rapidly rebuilt itself in the 5th century under a stable Xiongnu dynasty, and then under the Kidarites.

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Idem, “Huns et Xiongnu,” Central Asiatic Journal, 49, 2005b, pp. 3- 26.

S. Lévy, “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde V. Quelques documents sur le bouddhisme indien dans l’Asie centrale,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 5, 1905, pp. 253-305.

O. Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns,” Central Asiatic Journal l, 1955, pp. 101-16.

Idem, “Archaistic Names of the Hiung-nu,” Central Asiatic Journal 6, 1961, pp. 249-61.

Idem, The World of the Huns. Studies in Their History and Culture, Berkeley, 1973.

B. I. Marshak, “K voprosu o vostochnykh protivnikakh Irana v V v.” [On the problem of the Oriental enemies of Iran in the fifth century], Strany i narody Vostoka, 10, 1971, pp. 58-66.

S. Minaev, “Archéologie des Xiongnu en Russie. Nouvelles découvertes et quelques problèmes” Arts Asiatiques 51, 1996, pp. 5- 12.

S. Minyaev, Derestuj Cemetery (Archaeological Sites of the Hsiungnu, 3), Saint-Petersburg, 1998.

S. Parlato, “Successo euroasiatico dell’ etnico žUnni’,” in La Persia e l’Asia Centrale da Alessandro Magno al X secolo (Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 127), Rome, 1996, pp. 555-66. O. Pritsak, “Xun, der Volksname der Hsiung-nu,” Central Asiatic Journal 5, 1959-60, pp. 27-34.

S. I. Rudenko, Kul’tura Khunnov i Noinulinskie kurgany [The Culture of the Huns and the Kurgans of Noin-Ula], Moscow, 1962.

N. Sims-Williams, Sogdian and other Iranian Inscriptions of the Upper Indus, I-II, Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, II/III, London, 1989- 1992.

Idem, New Light on Ancient Afghanistan. The Decipherment of Bactrian, London, 1997.

D. Sinor, “The Hun Period,” in D. Sinor ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 177-205.

A. Vovin, “Did the Xiong-nu Speak an Yeniseian Language?” Central Asiatic Journal 44-1, 2000, pp. 87-104.

B. Watson, tr., Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, New York, 1993.

Ying-Shih Yü, “The Hsiung-nu,” in D. Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 118-49.

November 15, 2006 (Étienne de la Vaissière)

Originally Published: November 15, 2006

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XRAFSTAR

(Avestan xrafstra-) “evil animals” in Zoroastrianism. See MAMMALS iii. The Classification of Mammals and the Other Animal Classes according to Zoroastrian Tradition.

(Cross-Reference)

Originally Published: August 26, 2015

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MAMMALS iii. The Classification of Mammals and the Other Animal Classes according to Zoroastrian Tradition

MAMMALS

iii. The Classification of Mammals and the Other Animal Classes according to Zoroastrian Tradition

The first written information about certain animals in Iran comes from the Zoroastrian literature, according to which the entire animal kingdom is divided into two classes: “beneficent animals” (Av. gao.spəṇta-; MP. gōspand), such as cattle, dogs, and other domestic animals, which all play important roles in promoting human welfare, and, in the opposing camp, “evil animals” (Av. xrafstra-, MP. xrafstar), creatures potentially harmful to human beings and their agricultural crops or else hideous and obnoxious in aspect. Beneficent animals can be tamed and eaten or sacrificed to the deities. Evil animals are regarded as inedible, unacceptable as sacrificial offerings; they should be killed. The bipartition of animals into beneficent and harmful represents without doubt one of the most original aspects of the Iranian religious worldview as described in the available Zoroastrian literature.

BENEFICENT ANIMALS

A systematic animal classification in ancient Iranian is found in the Avesta and with more details in Middle Persian texts. In the Avesta there is a distributive description of the whole physical world, with the exception of humans, in Yasna 71.9. It consists of yazamaide (“we worship”) formulae, which only mentions the names of various entities worshipped, without saying much about them:

We worship all the waters (which are) in springs and flowing in rivers,

We worship all the plants in their shoots and roots,

We worship the whole earth, We worship the whole sky, We worship all the stars, the moon, and the sun,

We worship all the endless lights,

We worship all the animals, those living in the water and those living underground, the flying ones, those roaming in freedom (or: wilderness), and those worthy of (or: attached to) the pasture

(Darmesteter, I, pp. 431-32; Humbach, 1991, I, p. 148)

Yašt 13.74 provides a list of animals divided into domestic (pasuka-) and wild (daitika-); this opposition also occurs in Yasna 39.1-2 (Darmesteter, I, p. 269; Humbach, 1991, I, p. 148). In Yašt 8.48 the creatures are first divided into those living underground and those above the earth, followed by the first four members of the standard list: those living in the water, those living underground, the flying ones, and those roaming in freedom. Here the last member, that is, those worthy of the pasture, is missing. The reason could be either that the quintuple list is an expansion of an older quadruple list preserved only here or that the last member was left out for some unknown reason (Schmidt, 1980, p. 215).

In the Visperad (1.1 and 2.1), the chiefs or prototypes (ratavō) of the animals are invoked and revered. The categories of animals are the same as in Yasna 71.9. In the Avesta the chiefs are never identified, but the Middle Persian translation of the Visperad gives the following, although the zoological identification of some of these animals is not certain:

ābīg, kar māhīg (living) in water, sturgeon unīg, kākomag (living) in burrows, stoat/ermine wāyindag, karšift flying (birds), hawk/falcon frāx-raftār, xargōš roaming in freedom, hare/rabbit

čarag-arzānīg, xarbūzworthy of the pasture, goat

(Darmesteter, I, p. 444)

Middle Persian texts other than the translations of the Avesta offer more details on animals (Table 1). A remarkable classification, based on taming degree, foot forms, habitat, color, and morphological differences, is found in the Bundahišn; it demonstrates the method and rigor of the categories and reveals details with which the redactors depict certain animals that were in the process of disappearance. Several chapters of this book are dedicated to animals: chapter 13 on the nature of the five kinds of animals (TD1, fol. 38r; TD2, fol. 48v; DH, fol. 184v; tr. Anklesaria, pp. 117-26); chapter 22 on the nature of the evil animals (TD1, fol. 59r; TD2, fol. 73r; DH, fol. 200r; tr. Anklesaria, pp. 182-88); chapter 23 on the nature of the wolf species (TD1, fol. 61r; TD2, fol. 75v; DH, fol. 201r; tr. Anklesaria, pp. 188-91); and chapter 24 on fabulous creatures (TD1, fol. 61v; TD2, fol. 76v; DH, fol. 201v; tr. Anklesaria, pp. 190-205). Chapter 13 of the Bundahišn has a close parallel in another Zoroastrian text, the Selections of Zādspram (chap. 3.50-65).

According to the lost Avestan Dāmdād Nask “the creating of the creation” (DKM, 3, p. 681, 11-20), of which summaries are given in the Bundahišn (chap. 13.9) and Zādspram (chap. 3.51), the beneficent animals were grouped into five classes, comprising domestic animals and wild animals as well as birds, fishes, and burrowing animals; and they were again subdivided into genera and species. A slightly different classification of beneficent animals is given in The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg ([PRDD], chap. 46. 22). This classification is described first in the creation myth according to which the beneficent animals are all descendants of the sole-created cow/bull (gāw ī ēwdād), the first animal to live on earth, which was killed by the Evil Spirit; all species of beneficent animals were brought forth from his purified seed. The animal world is first divided into a tripartite classification, then into the traditional quintuple one, and a more modern one, which is also quintuple. The latter is then further subdivided twice, into a list of eleven or twelve, and finally into individual species.

The Bundahišn, for the threefold division, uses the term kardag, which is absent in Zādspram. For the modern quintuple division, generally the term ēwēnag, genus, is used. For the 11 or 12 subdivisions, the Bundahišn has no term; Zādspram uses bahr, group; for the individual species both have sardag. Both sources use the same Avestan list. Zādspram follows the order known from the Avesta (see above; in Yasna 71.9, Visperad 2.1). In Bundahišn 13.9, however, the sequence is in part inverted:

čarag-arzānīg worthy of the pasture frāx-raftār roaming in freedom wāyindag flying (birds)

ābīg (living) in water unīg (living) in burrows

The second quintuple classification is basically the same in both sources, but with different terminology:

Bundahišn (chap. 13) Zādspram (chap. 3.54) dō-kāft-pāy, double cloven-footed gird-sumb, round-hoofed xar-pāy, ass-footed dōgānag-sumb, double-hoofed panj angurāg panjag, five-fingered panj-čang, five-clawed wāyendag, flying/bird murw, bird

ābīg, (living) in water māhīg, fish

This is the basis for the further subdivisions into genera and species; the latter are stated to total 282. Although Zādspram and Bundahišn agree in most respects, there are major differences. One is that the Bundahišn numbers the species from 1 to 12; Zādspram does not give any number, but names select ones: “(Ohrmazd) divided [animals] into genera: as the round-hoofed ones are one single (genus), they are all called horse; the double-hoofed are many, such as the camel, the bovine, the sheep, the goat, and other double-hoofed (animals); the five-clawed are the dog, hare, rat, sable, (and) others; and birds, and then fishes” (chap. 3.54; Gignoux and Tafazzoli, eds., 1993, pp. 50-51). The genera named are eleven; but since it is explicitly stated that there are others in the classes of the double-hoofed and the five-clawed, it is possible that Zādspram did not know the fixed number 12, as the Bundahišn has it.

There is also a discrepancy between the number of species enumerated (178) and the stated total of 282 in the Bundahišn; species are divided within species to make a total of 282. According to Zādspram (chap. 3.55), there are animals, not listed, “of revealed names and unrevealed names” (paydāg-nāmān a-paydāg-nāmān), altogether 282 species, with species within species numbering 10,000 kinds. From this statement it is evident that the names of many species in the older tradition were not known to the later authors, even if “10,000” is regarded as a symbolic number rather than an actual total. The Bundahišn implies that the 95 species missing (that is, the difference between the total of 282 species and the 178 named species) must be made up by a subdivision of species with species, presupposing that the system of 12 or 11 genera is closed.

It should be noted that in the Bundahišn twelve large species are mentioned, while Zādspram lists only eight large species (numbers 2, 3, 4, and 11 of the Bundahišn are absent in Zādspram). However, both texts agree on the number of 282 species, which means that their common source did not name more either and that this number was a well-established tradition. According to Hanns-Peter Schmidt (1980, p. 225):

the number 282 can be of different provenience than the classificatory list and may be a symbolic number: The purification and dedication recitals for the collection of the Bahrām-Fire number 1128, and this is four times 282. 282 is also very close to the number of days of human pregnancy, that is, 280 or ten lunar months. 282 may be composed of 280 days of gestation and the days of conception and birth. What is still more striking is that Bundahišn XV, 12 states that humans, horse species, and bovines are born in ten months. The numbers 282 and 1128 would then have a specific meaning in the process of creation. The differences between the two versions suggest that there was a more elaborate system behind it. In the Sasanian period almost all branches of science were influenced by non-Iranian traditions, and the case of zoology is not an exception. The classification found in Middle Persian texts owes much to the ancient Greek tradition. The attempt by redactors of these texts to construct a coherent animal classification may indicate that prior to their work this had not been done. The comparison of the Bible classification of animals with Middle Persian texts yields numerous passages closely parallel, both in form and content. It has been suggested that such correspondence was under the influence of the Academy of Athens, which had moved to Iran in 529 CE after the emperor Justinian closed it. Its philosophers were welcomed in the Persian court by Ḵosrow I (r. 531-579), who, according to the historian Agathias, was a great admirer of the works of Plato and Aristotle (Christensen, 1944, p. 422).

EVIL ANIMALS

The evil animals (xrafstars; Table 2) are created by Ahriman, the Evil Spirit. He created his creatures from material darkness, in the form of a frog—black, ashen, worthy of darkness, and evil, like the most sinful-natured xrafstar. (Bund., TD1, fol. 5r.; TD2, fol. 74r; tr. Anklesaria, p. 44).

The word xrafstar (Av. xrafstra-, MP. xrafstar), evil animal, has been variously interpreted, and its exact meaning is much disputed. According to the traditional interpretation Zarathushtra used it in the Gāthās (Y. 28.5; 34.5) pejoratively for “the enemies of the religion” (Bartholomae, AirWb. col. 538). Some scholars see in it a reference to evil animals whom Zarathushtra chose to exclude from the sacred place of worship and hence symbolically from the whole good creation (Humbach, 1991, pt. I, pp. 118, 140; pt. II, pp. 24, 107). H. W. Bailey suggested that the term is a derivation of an Indo-European verbal base *√(s)ker, (s)kerp-, (s)krep- “to bite, sting, cut,” which looks promising (Bailey, 1970, pp. 25-28). But, the krt suffix -tra- is never formed on an s- extension. There is a great likelihood that there were two different terms in Iranian daevic vocabulary, as we have *prystr in MMPers., and plstl is attested in the Bundahišn (TD 2, fol. 73v.9). Therefore, the term can be derived from fra-pt-tar, “things that fly- creep” (Gershevitch, 1954, 62, 246; Moazami, 2005, p. 302). Jean Kellens proposed that the term approximately means “affreux, sauvage” (Kellens and Pirart, 1990, II, p. 231).

In the Young Avesta and Middle Persian texts, the term xrafstar is used specifically for reptiles and amphibians such as frogs, scorpions, lizards, and snakes, and insects such as ants, beetles, and locusts. In general, any animal that crept, crawled, pricked, bit, or stung, and seemed hideous and repulsive to human beings, was xrafstar. Predators such as felines and wolves were also creatures of Evil Spirit, but in Middle Persian texts they are referred to as dadān, “wild animals, beasts.”

The Bundahišn states that the physical existence of the evil animals, the shining of their eyes, and their psychic wind are of the Beneficent Spirit, but their spirit of sinfulness and malevolence are of the Evil Spirit, which is of great advantage, since when humans see them they can either kill or avoid them (Bund., TD1, fols. 58v., 59r.; TD2, fols. 73r., 73v., tr. Anklesaria, p. 183).

Evil animals did not receive the same systematic attention as did beneficent animals, but a classification of them is found in the Avesta (Vidēvdād, chap. 14.5–6; Moazami, 2014, pp. 348-49) and later Zoroastrian literatures. This classification starts with snakes, followed by reptiles and amphibians, then insects and worms, and ends with flying insects:

Vidēvdād, Avestan Vidēvdād, Middle Persian aži udarō. θrąsa az ī uδraišag, snake crawling on its belly aži spaka kahrpuna az sag karbunag, snake *dog lizard

(dog-shaped lizards?) kasiiapa kašawag, tortoise vazaɣa dāδmainiia wazaɣ ān ī zamīg, frog puffed-up/living on earth vazaɣa upāpa wazaɣ ī abīg, water-frog maoiri dānō karša mōr dānkeš, corn-carrying ant maoiri araēka kutaka mōr ī halag, small ant, swift-moving ants pazdav guθō/gāzō.vərəta pazūg guhward, dung worm maxši ərəɣaiiti maxš ērang, raging/repelling fly

The Bundahišn assigns separate chapters for xrafstrān “evil animals” and gurgān, “wolves.” It divides evil animals according to whether they live in water, on the earth, or in the air. The worst of each type are the frog (in water), the many-headed dragon (on the earth), and the winged snake (in the air) (Bund., TD1, fol. 59r.; TD2, 73r., tr. Anklesaria, pp. 182-83). The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg ([PRDD], ed. Williams, 1990, chap. 21a.3-46) lists the animals in a different sequence from that given by the Vidēvdād and Bundahišn (TD1, fols. 59r., 59v.; TD2, fol.73 r.; DH, 200r.; tr. Anklesaria, p. 185) and includes species that may be later additions:

According to the Zoroastrian worldview, evil animals are not always harmful, and their existence is not completely useless. The Beneficent Spirit in his omniscience diverts some of these evil animals to the benefit of his creatures (Bund., TD1, fol. 60v; TD2, fol. 75v; tr. Anklesaria, p. 189). For instance, their bodies are used in the composition of remedies with a mixture of drugs, because they are from the four beneficial elements: water, earth, wind, and fire. (Bund., TD1, fol. 59r; TD2, fol. 73v; Anklesaria, p. 183; Gignoux, 2001, p. 53).

Among wild animals created by the Evil Spirit, the wolf appears to have a close relation with the Evil Spirit and demons (see DĒW). Its creation is directly attributed to the Evil Spirit, which desired to create the species in secret, in the form of fever, disease, and other evils, so that humans would not see them when they come upon them. (DkM, p. 92; de Menasce, chap. 95, p. 101.) The Evil Spirit produced the wolf in fifteen species (Bund., TD1, fols. 60v, 61r; TD2, 75v, 76r; DH, fol. 201r, tr. Anklesaria, p.189.): gurg, wolf; gurg ī syā, black wolf ; babr, tiger; šagr, lion; palang, panther; yōz, cheetah; xaftar, hyena; tōrag, jackal; gār-kan, cave digger; karzang, crab; gurbag, cat; būg, owl; gurg ī ābīg, aquatic wolf; kōsag, shark; and gurg ī čarnak/čahārwāg, wolf (?).

The Bundahišn states that some of the evil wolf species are avoided out of fear, but others can be tamed, such as the elephant and the lion; the lion was created by the Evil Spirit, but according to a model established by the Beneficent Spirit (TD1, fol. 61v.; TD2, fol. 76v.; tr. Anklesaria, p. 191; The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz and Others, p. 270).

The lion had a venerable place in Iran as a symbol of kingship; undoubtedly in part for the simple reason that the lion was observable as a powerful and beautiful wild animal (see Root, 2002, pp. 169-209). The elephant, which was imported to Iran from India, was probably counted among the evil animals because of its unfamiliar appearance, and classifying it with the lion must have been influenced by the association of both animals with royalty, for only kings kept and used them for hunting and warfare. The creation of the bear, monkey, and some other evil creatures are attributed to the union of Jam (JAMŠID), the mythical king of Iran and his twin sister Jamīy with demons (Bund. TD1, fol. 44r, 44v.; tr. Anklesaria, chap.14B, pp. 136-37; [PRDD] 8e9, p. 13).

Bibliography:

B. T. Anklesaria, ed. and tr., Zand-Āāsih: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn, Bombay, 1956.

T. D. Anklesaria, The Bûndahishn TD2, Bombay, 1908.

H. W. Bailey, “A Range of Iranica,” in W. B. Henning Memorial Volume, ed. M. Boyce and I. Gershevitch, London, 1970, pp. 25–28.

A. Cameron, “Agathias on the Sassanians,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 23, 1969- 1970, pp. 67-183.

A. Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, Copenhagen, 1944.

J. Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, 3 vols., Paris, 1960.

E. B. N. Dhabhar, The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz and Others, Bombay, 1932, repr. 1999.

[DkM] D. M. Madan, ed., The Complete Text of the Pahlavi Dinkard, 2 vols., Bombay, 1911.

I. Gershevitch, A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian, 1954.

Ph. Gignoux, Man and Cosmos in Ancient Iran, Serie Orientale Roma no. 91, Rome, 2001.

Ph. Gignoux and A. Tafazzoli, Anthologie de Zādspram, Paris, 1993.

H. Humbach, The Gathas of Zarathustra and the Other Old Avestan Text (in collaboration with J. Elfenbein and P. O. Skjærvø), 2 vols. Heidelberg, 1991.

J. Kellens and E. Pirart, Les Textes Vieil-Avestiques, 3 vols., Wiesbaden, 1988-91.

J. de Menasce, Le Troisième livre du Dēnkart, Paris, 1973.

M. Moazami, Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād, Transcription, Translation, and Commentary, Leiden and Boston, 2014.

Idem “Evil Animals in the Zoroastrian Religion,” History of Religions 44/4, 2005, pp. 300- 317.

[PRDD] A. V. Williams, The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1990.

M. C. Root, “Animals in the Art of Ancient Iran,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, ed. B. J. Collins, Leiden, 2002.

H. P. Schmidt, “Ancient Iranian Animal Classification, ” Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 5/6, 1980, pp. 209-44.

(Mahnaz Moazami)

Originally Published: May 5, 2015 ______

XWĒŠKĀRĪH Ī RĒDAGĀN

(The duty of children), a Pahlavi manual for Zoroastrian children regarding correct behavior.

XWĒŠKĀRĪH Ī RĒDAGĀN (The duty of children), a Pahlavi manual for Zoroastrian children regarding correct behavior.

Xwēškārīh ī rēdagān is a short text of wisdom literature genre (see Andarz and andarz literature in pre-Islamic Iran) and probably post-Sasanian in date. The text, which is only extant in a Pāzand version (E. K. Antia, Pâzend Texts, pp. 73-74), contains code of behavior and duties for children and schoolboys. The manuscript, written in the second part of the 19th century, consists of 112 pages and seems to be related to the Pāzand manuscript N22 of the India Office Library in London (Freimann, 1918, p. 482). The manuscript contains also the Bundahišn (incomplete), Šāyest nē šāyest, and Andarz ī dānāk mard (West, 1896-1904, І89).

James Darmesteter published the text with a French translation in 1889 (JA 13, 1889, pp. 355-63). He compared the text with Francis Seager’s The School of Vertue (London, 1557), a child’s manual of manners and etiquette (repr. in F. J. Furnivall, ed., Manners and Meals in Older Time, London, 1867, pp. 333-55). E. K. Antia (1909) published the text in his Pâzend Texts. H. F. J. Junker (1912) published the text in German, with Pāzand text, transcription, translation, and commentary. A. A. Freimann (1918) published the Pāzand text with a sub-lineal Pahlavi transcription and English translation of the text.

Bibliography:

E. K. Antia, Pâzend Texts. Bombay, 1909, pp. 73-74. J. Darmesteter, “Les devoirs de l’écolier,” JA 13, 1889, pp. 355-63.

A. A. Freimann, “Andarz i Kôtakân,” in The Dastur Hoshang Memorial Volume: Being Papers on Iranian Subjects, Bombay, 1918, pp. 482-89.

F. J. Furnivall, Manners and Meals in Older Time, London, 1867, pp. 333-55.

Dastur Dr. K. M. Jamasp Asa and Mahyar Nawabi, eds., The Incomplete Text of Bundahisn, Xvēškārīh-i Rētakān, etc. MS. T 28 (The Pahlavi Codices and Iranian Researches Mauscripts, 27), Asia Institute of Pahlavi University, Shiraz, 1976.

H. F. J. Junker, Ein mittelpersisches Schulgespräch, Heidelberg (SHAW), 1912, pp. 1- 26.

E. W. West, “The Pahlavi Literature,” in Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie II, 1904, pp. 75-129.

(Mahnaz Moazami)

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