Armenian and Iranian Studies 0935411194, 2004003918

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„' '

Armenian and Iranian Studies Ha.rvard Armenian Texts and Stuclies, 9

by James R. Russell

Published by Department of Near Eastem Languages and Civilizations Harvard University and Armenian Heritage Press National Association for Armenian Studies and Research

Distributed by Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 2004

''

This Publication Was Made Possible By a Generous Grant From the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund.

© 2004 James R. Russell Ali Rights Reserved

Russell, James R., 1953Armenian and Iranian Studies/ James R. Russe ll. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN : 0-935411-19-4 (alk. paper) 1. Armenian literature-History and criticism. 2. Armenian language-History. 3. Armenia-History. 4. Religion-Iran-History. 5. Zoroastrianism. I. Title.

PK8507.R87 2004 891'.99209-dc22 2004003918

Printed in the United States of America

Contents lntroduction

xv

1. The Word k 'ustikin Annenian Proceedings, First Intemational Conference on Annenian Ling uistics, J Greppin, ed., Delmar, NY: Caravan, 1980, pp. 107-114

2. The Tale of the Bronze City in Armenian

9

Medieval Arrnenian Culture, T. Samuelian, M Stone, eds., Univ. ofPennsyl vania Ann. Texts and Studies 6, Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983, pp. 250-261

3. The Platonic Myth ofEr, Arrnenian Ara, and Iranian Ardāy Wīrāz

21

Revue des Etudes Anneniennes 18, 1984, pp. 477-485

4. A Poem of Grigor Narekac' i

31

REAnn 19, 1985, pp. 435-439

5. Armeno-Iranica

37

Papers in Honour ofMary Boyce, Acta Iranica 25 Leiden: Brill, 1985, pp. 447-458

6. The Persistence of Memory

49

Ararat Quarterly103, 2 6.3, 1985, pp. 53-57

7. The Truth, But Not the Whole Truth, So Help Me God

54

Ararat Quarterly103, 26.3, 1985, pp. 67-69

8. The Name ofZoroaster in Armenian

57

Joumal ofthe Society for Annenian Studies 2, 1985-1986, pp. 3-10

9. Zoroastrianism as the State Religion of Ancient Iran

65

Joumal ofthe K. R. Cama Onental Jnstitute 53, Bombay, 1986, pp. 74-142

10. Bad Day at Burzēn Mihr: Notes on an Armenian Legend of St. Bartholomew

135

Bazmavep 144.1-4, 1986, Venice, pp. 255-267

11. A Pahlavi Fragment from Holy Echmiadzin, Armenia

149

Studia Iranica 15, 1986. 1, pp. 111-118

12. Some Iranian Images of Kingship in the Armenian Artaxiad Epic REAnn 20, 1986-1987, pp. 253-270

157

13. Aša in Armenia

183

29. Carmina Vahagni

193

30. Pre-Christian Armenian Religion

JSAS 3, 1987,pp. 119-127

15. A Mystic's Christmas in Armenia AnnenianReview40.2-158, 1987, pp. 1-13

16. A Wandering Herder of Camels

207

Annual ofAnnenian Linguistics 8, 1987, pp. 5-15

17. Our Father Abraham and the Magi

219

JCOI 54, 1987,pp. 56-73

18. Mahmī Reconsidered

20. On St. Grigor Narekatsi, His Sources and His Contemporaries

371

Aufstieg und M'edergang der Romischen Welt ll. 18.4, W. Haase, H. Temporini, eds., Berlin, 1990, pp. 2679-2692

31. The Sage in Ancient Iranian Literature

389

1 Gammie, L. Perdue, eds„ Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, pp. 81-92

240

244

33. Kartīr and Mānī: a Shamanistic Modei of Their Conflict

401

407

Iranica Varia: Papers in Honor ofProfessor Ehsan Y arshater Acta Jranica 30, Leiden: Brill, 1990, pp. 180-193

249

Annenian Review 41, 2-162, 1988, pp. 59-65

21. A Shipwreck Awesome and Marvellous: Chapter 25 of the Lamentations of Narekatsi

357

Acta Antiqua 32.3-4, Budapest, 1989, pp. 317-330

The Sage in Jsrael and the Ancient Near East, 1 Gammie, L. Perdue, eds„ Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, pp. 141-146

JCOI 54, 1987, pp. 81-84

343

Joumal ofthe Royal Asiatic Society 1989.1, pp. 51-63

32. Sages and Scribes at the Courts of Ancient lran

JCOI 54, 1987,pp. 74-80

19. An Irano-Judaic Correspondence

and Monājāts

28. Parsi Zoroastrian

HandesAmsorya 101, Vienna, 1987,pp. 655-662

14. Here Comes the Sun: A Poem ofKostandin Erznkats'i

Garbās

175

34. Zoroastrian Elements in the Book of Esther 257

35. The Word chragamahand the Rites ofthe Armenian Goddess

Ra.ft 1988, pp. 57-63

421

Irano-Judaica U, S. Shaked, A. Netzer, eds„ Jerosalem 1990, pp. 33-40

429

JSAS 5, 1990-1991, pp. 157-172

22. The Rite of MuSkil Āsān Behrām Y azad Amongst the Parsis of N avsārī, India

265 36. Two Notes on Biblical Tradition and Native Epic in the ' Book of Lamentation' of St. Grigor Narekac'i

A Green Leaf: Papers in Honour ofProfessor les P. Asmussen Acta Jranica 28, Leiden: Brill, 1988, pp. 521-534, planches 23-24

23. Two Armenian Toponyms

REAnn 22, 1990-1991, pp. 135-145

281

Stāyi šn

457

289 38. Virtue and Its Own Reward: The 38th Meditation ofthe Book of Lamentations of St. Grigor Narekatsi

JSAS 4, 1988-1989, pp. 157-160

25. The Dream Vision of Anania Širakac'i

37. The Do'ā-ye Nām

Corolla Iranica, R. Emmerick, D. Weber, eds., FrankfUJt, 1991, pp. 127-132

AAnnL 9, 1988, pp. 47-53

24. A Credo for the Children of the Sun

445

293

463

Ra.ft 1991, pp. 25-30

REArm21, 1988-1989,pp. 159-170

39. The Etymology of Armenian vardavai 26. The Craft and Mithraism Reconsidered

305

Transactions, Annenian Lodge ofResearch, Free and AcceptedMasons, 18, 1989, pp. 15-27

27. The Book of the Six Thousand: An Armenian Magical Text Bazmavep 147.1-4, Venice, 1989,pp. 221-243

40. 'Sleep' and ' Dreaming' in Arrnenian

319

469

AAnnL 13, 1992, pp. 63-69

Proceedings of the FouJth Intemational Conference on Annenian Linguistics, J. Greppin, ed., Delmar, NY: Caravan, 1992, pp. 147-169

477

41. An Anneno-Persian Love Poem of Grigoris Aght'amarts'i

501

JSAS 6, 1992-1993, pp. 99-105

42. The Mother of AU Heresies: A Late Mediaeval Annenian Text on the Yuškaparik

509

531

693

Prom Byzantium to Iran: In Honour ofNina Garsoian J.-P. MahC, R . Thomson, eds., Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996, pp. 17-35

55. Sound as Symbol: The Case in Pagan and Christian Annenian Poetics

REArm 24, 1993, pp. 273-293

43. On Mysticism and Esotericism among the Zoroastriahs

54. A Parthian Bhagavad Gītāand its Echoes

713

Le Museon 109.1-2, 1996,pp. 113-126

Iranian Studies 261-2, 1993, pp. 73-94

56. Armenian šrawšak 44. On the Armeno-Iranian Roots of Mithraism

553

Studies in Mithra.ism, J Hinnelfs, ed., Rome: Bretschneider, 1994, pp. 183-193

45. On the Origins and Invention of the Armenian Script

57. The Annenian Counterculture That Never Was: Reflections on Eghishē Ch'arents' 565

727

AAnnL 17, 1996,pp. 63-71

737

JSAS 9, 1996-7, 1999, pp. 17-35

Le Museon 107.3-4, 1994, pp. 317-333

58. Polyphemos Armenios 46. The Ascensio Jsaiae and Iran

583

Irano-Judaica llI, S. Shaked, A. Netzer, eds., Jemsalem, 1994, pp. 63-71

47. On Armeno-Iranian Interaction in the Medieval Period Au carrefour des religions: Melanges offerts a Ph1lippe Gignoux, Res Orientales 7, 1994, pp. 235-238

48. On the Name of Mashtots'

59. Annenian Spirituality: Liturgical Mysticism and Chapter 33 of the Book of Lamentation of St. Grigor Narekac'i 593

597

AAnnL 15, 1994, pp. 67-78

49. Grace from Van: A Micro-Historiola

609

JSAS 7, 1994, pp. 35-45

50. Problematic Snake Children of Armenia

621

641

Heredom 4, 1995, Washington, DC: The Scottish Rite Research Society, pp. 269-287

52. Raiders of the Holy Cross: The Ballad of the Karos Xač' (Cross of Celery) and the Nexus between Ecclesiastical Literature and Folk Tradition in Mediaeval Annenia

Hask hayagitakan taregirk' 7-8, 1995-1996, Antelias, 1997, pp. 33-47

REAnn 26, 1996-l 997, pp. 427-439

60. Scythians and A vesta in an Annenian Vemacular Paternoster and a Zok Patemoster

785

LeMuseon 110.1-2, 1997, pp. 91-114

61. The History of the Youth Farman (Patmut 'iwn Fannan Mankann), a Mediaeval Armenian Romance

62. The Four Elements and the Cross in Armenian Spirituality, with an Excursus on the Descent in Merkavah Mysticism

809

661

851

Jewish Studies Quarterly 4.4, Tübingen, 1997, pp. 357-379

63. Revelations of Darkness: Medieval Armenian Apocalyptic in the Epic of Sasun and the Visions of Y ovhannes Kozem

875

Joumal ofAnnenian Studies 6.1, 1998, pp. 3-15

64. Arm.awrhas

889

AArmL 19, 1998, pp. 37-39

New Approaches to Medieval Annenian Language and Literature, J. Weitenberg, ed., Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995, pp. 79-93

53. The Last of the Paulicians

771

Acta Orientalia 50.1-3, 1997, Budapest, pp. 203-244

REAnn 25, 1994-1995, pp. 77-96

51. On Mithraism and Freemasonry

757

REAnn 26, 1996-1997, pp. 25-38

65. A Manichaean Apostolic Mission to Armenia?

677

Proceedings ofthe Third European Conference ofIranian Studies, 1, N. Sims- Williams, ed., Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, l 998, pp. 21-26

893

66. Ezekiel and Iran

899

Irano-Juda.ica V, Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, eds., Jcrusalem: Ben-Zri Institute, 2()()3, pp. 1-15

78. God is Good: On Tobit and Iran

79. The Scepter ofTiridates 67. Truth Is What the Eye Can See: Armenian Manuscripts and Armenian Spirituality

909

68. The Annenian Shrines ofthe Black Youth (t'ux manuk)

925 81. The Armenians,·the Holy Cross, and Dionysius Bar Salibi 951

Nāme-ye Jrān-e Bāstiin

989

999

84. The Epic of the Pearl

85. Some lranica in Eznik

1261

1333

1031 86. Epic in the Armeno-Iranian Marchlands

1347

JAnnenSt 7.1, 2002-2003, pp. 3-20

1051

87. From an Archlve of Unpublished Poems of Yeghishe Ch'arents'

1365

Forthcoming m Festschrift Jos Weitenberg, T. van Lint, ed.

Irano-Judaica IV, S. Shaked, A. Netzer, eds., Jerusalem, 1999, pp. 111-121

88. Room at the Inn: Annenian P ' ut'kavank' and Sraoša 74. The Šāh-nāmein Armenian Oral Epic

1217

Delivered at Annenian Cultural Foundation, Arlington, AM, 2001; forthcommg in JAnnenSt, 8.1, 2004

Delivered at UCLA Conference on Annenian Tigranakertj[)jarbekir, 1999; forthcoming jn Proceedings, R . Hovannjsian, ed

73. Iran and Israel in the Armenian Epic of Sasun

83. The Praise of Porridge

REAnn 28, 2002, pp. 29-100

Delivered at Conference on Redefining East Christian Jdentity Groningen, 1999; forthcommg in Proceedings, T. van ünt, ed., Peeters [2004}

72. The Lost Epic of Tigran: A Reconstruction Based upon the Fragments

1205

1. 1, Tehran, 2001, pp. 49-59

Le Museon 116. 1-2, 2003, pp. 137-179

JSAS JO, 1998-99, 2000, pp. 63-71

71. The Credal Poem Hawatov Xostovanim ("I Confess in Faith") of St. Nersēs the Graceful

1193

Dejjvered at the Eastem Diocese ofthe Armenian Apostolic Church, New York City, 2001; forthcoming in St. Nerses TheologjcaJ Revjew

82. The Magi in the Derveni Papyrus

Armenian Tsopk/KharpeJt, R . Hovannüian, ed., Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1998,pp. 147-183

70. A Scholium on Coleridge and an Annenian Demon

1165

Dejjvered at UCLA Conference on Annenian Kars and Ani, 2001; forthcoming in Proceedings, R. Hovannisjan, ed

Le Museon 111.34, 1998, pp_. 319-343

69. An Epic for the Borderlands: Zariadris of Sophene, Aslan the Rebel, Digenes Akrites, and the Mythologem of Alcestis in Armenia

1135

Le Museon 114.1-2, 2()()1, pp. 187-215

80. A Bas-Relief on the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles at Kars, Armenia

Treasures in Heaven: Armenjan Art, Religjon, and Sodety T. Mathews, R. Wjeck, eds., New York: Pjerpont Morgan übrary, 1998, pp. 147-162

1129

Jran and the Caucasus 5, Tehran, 2001, pp. 1-6

1063

Delivered at Second Intemational Conference on Ferdosī Tehran, Iran, 2000

1433

Jerusalem Studü:s in Arabic and Islam 26: 2002, pp. 205- J5

89. Zoroastrianism and the Northem Qi Panels

1445

Zoroastrian Studjes Newsletter, Bombay, 1994

75. Ch'arents' the Prophet

1073 90. Loycn macuac: On Cosmological Mysteries in Armenian Tradition

JSAS 11, 2000, pp. 11-38

76. Bedros Tourian 's Cruciform Prayer and Its Antecedents

1101

1451

Previously unpublished, 1994

JAnnenSt 6.2, 2000-2001, pp. 2745

91. Khach' atur Kech ' aretsi' : A Guide to Christianity 77. The Šaraf-nāme and Armenia: Some Mythological Themes Tafazzoli Memorial Volume, A . Sadeghi, ed., Tehran, 2001, pp. 49-55

1121

Previous/y unpublished, 1997

1455

Introduction The present volume brings together select studies by the author published in disparate joumals and volumes over the past two decades. (In a few cases where publication has been unreasonably delayed over three years or is likely to be delayed further, or merits publication now, I have decided to go to press with the typescript.) Some deal exclusively with either Armeniaca (ancient, mediaeval, and modem) or Iranica (pre-Islamic): in the case of the former, 1 have been most interested in the sources and religious material of heroic epic and of folklore- material ancillary to the "official" Christian clerical culture. A number of studies deal, also, with the visionaries of the Armenian tradition-Mashtots', Narekats'i, Ch'arents'. They, too, by virtue of their particular individual gifts, stand at a slight angle to the Christian cosmos. (See now also my study and translation of the novella by Derenik Demirjian, The Book of Flowers, Armenian Heritage Press: Belmont, MA, 2003, on the visionary Kostandin of Erznka; and "The Epic of the Pearl" here. As this book goes to press, I am preparing a volume of translation and analysis of the lyrics of another great Armenian poetic visionary, Bedros Tourian.) In the Iranian area, my work includes studies of Irano-Judaica and the culture of the Parsi Zoroastrians of India. The majority of the articles here have to do with Armeno-Iranica. In some cases they serve to supplement the findings of my Zoroastrianism in Annenia (Harvard Iranian Series 5, Cambridge, MA, 1987), where 1 argued that the pre-Christian religion of the majority of the Armenians was, despite special local features, the Zoroastrian faith of the Parthian Arsacids. Several articles deal with witchcraft and magic: the Book of the Six Thousand in particular may retain aspects of pre- and non-Christian religion relevant to the dossier of ancient Armenian culture. With the same interest, I have examined some Iegendry belonging to the categories of belief condemned by the Armenian Church as heresy; some articles deal with the secular dimension of mediaeval Armenian culture-its lyric poetry. Many other studies reprinted here, though, explore an aspect of ArmenoIranian interaction not addressed in Zoroastrianism in Anneni;r. the material of Armenian heroic epic, as noted above, in which I have sought first of ali to identify sources and proto-forms of the devotional conventicles, ancillary to Zoroastrian society in a manner analogous to the Italian confraternities dedicated to the Catholic saints, that the Roman Jegionaries ultimately shaped into the mystery cult modem scholars call Mithraism. The latter term, misleadingly and rather anachronistically, bestows upon the cult the selfsufficient wholeness of ethics, ritual, and cosmology that rnight typify developed Judaism and Christianity. Neither the material available about westem Mithraism nor the volume of such evidence can bear the weight of such a designation; but I use the conventional word without making any claim

xvi

Russell

that the Roman cult was the equal competitor with Christianity some writers have fantasized, much less that proto-Mithraism was ever a religion on its own in han, separate from Zoroastrianism. I have examined also the Armeno-Alan connection, with regard to the question of the transmission of themes from the early narratives of the Sasun cycle into the Arthurian cycle through a North hanian vector-the heroic poems of the Narts. A few good scholarly studies of Armenian epic were published around the turn of twentieth century; since then, much work in the collection and publication of oral variants of the epic has been accomplished, but very little analysis meeting the standards of modem scholarship has appeared. I have taken some modest steps in that direction. The study of the Armenian epics is of intrinsic interest; and the Epic of Sasun in particular has attained the status of popular scripture in modem society. In particular, the composite text in four chapters (called "branches" in the Armenian) has attained canonical status for the purpose of the Russian, French, and English translations, despite its necessary artificiality. This canonization in writing fixes also the linguistic aspect of the text in much the same way the Eastem and Westem literary dialects of modem literary Armenian were stripped of lexical material from the languages of the Moslems of the Armenian highland and grarnmatically fixed. What has been pared off the matter of the Sasun epic is the literature-presumed to be auxiliary-of dastan and romance: the stories of Sheranshah and of the Bronze City, for instance. The first survives as a discrete late mediaeval text, the History of the Youth Fannan; whilst the second became the focus of a compilation of narratives of wisdom and adventure, the History of the Bronze City. Both are studied here, and the written forms of both predate by many centuries the first transcription of the Sasun epic by the great churchman and ethnographer Garegin Srvandzteants' in 1874. (I am preparing a volume of the texts, mainly Indian in origin, that reached Armenia in Arabo-Persian versions, and have traveled across the centuries together in a popular miscellany entitled History of the Bronze City.) Balladry, too, accompanied the recitation of the Epic: the tale of the Karos Cross (see my article here for translation and study of the text) was recited to Srvandzteants' together with the matter of the first branch of the Sasun epic. There were epics in other regions of Armenia than Sasun: An Annenian Epic: The Heroes of Kasht (Ann Arbor: Caravan Books, 2000) presents my study and translation of Karapet Sital's printed revision of an oral epic of the Moks region. The latter did not attain canonical status, its essential aspects being absorbed into the mainstream of Armenian tradition in the form of shattered fragments: aphorisms and anecdotes about fools. As for the ancient surviving fragments of the long epic cycles of the Artaxiad and Arsacid dynasties, most have come down to us in the grabartexts of Armenian high literary culture (mainly in histories, with the notable exceptions of the Letters of Grigor Magistros and the Armenian comrnentaries on the Grammar of Dionysius Thrax) and were rediscovered and evaluated in the conditions of modem nationalism and secularization. They are ali discussed in these pages, with emphasis on their Iranian aspects. I have attempted the reconstruction of the Tigranid epic, most of which has been !ost; and have tried from disparate sources to reconstitute the Zariadrid epic of Armenian Sophene. Studies in this volume on the dish harisa and on the

Armenian and Jranian Studies

xvii

enigmatic T'ukh Manuk ("Black Youth'') illuminate individual topies in Armenian epic; several studies explore the nexus between epic material and Balladry-the Karos Christian prayer and historiographical literature. Khach ~is relevant here. I have looked into the problems of early Armenian iconography in some detail, often in conjunction with a Christian tradition that has epic heroic overtones (the legend of Tiridates and his sword, the imprisonment of St. Gregory the Illuminator). Since such a large book of one 's opera minora must be also an apologia pro vita sua, 1 will suggest that without the study of epic, the narrative of Armenian culture is not fully expressed in the voice of all its people-not just its scribes and divines and princes, but its farmers and blacksmiths and mountaineer freedom fighters. The interval between the production of camera-ready proofs and the date required for submission to the printer has been insufficient for the compilation of an index to this bulky volume. I have chosen, faut de mieux, the expedient of listing here select key words for each article; I hope this will be of some use to the reader. 1. "The word kustikin Armenian." Kustī, wrestling, Zoroastrian vestments, girdle.

2. "The Tale of the Bronze City in Armenian." Hesiod, four ages, four metals, Commodianus, Alexander, Gog and Magog, Dhū'I Qarnain, Diž-e Rāyīn, Mahdī, 1001 Nights, Tālib, Grigoris Ah'amarc'i, Pir Pahlul, Farman, Seven Philosophers, kafas, Ičaj, Artawazd. 3. "The Platonic Myth of Er, Arm. Ara, and hanian Ardāy Wirāz." Naciketas, Er son of Armenios, Pamphylia, Apollonius of Tyana, Ara and Šarnīram, aralēzk; Ardā Wirāz nāmag, anankē, Zoroaster, Lucian, spindle, Gobryas, Abaris, Pythagoras, Zaratas, adrasteia, phroura, Orpheus. 4. "A Poem of Grigor Narekac'i." Erg zannanafi, šaržvarženi, cypress, Song of Songs, basket of reeds, Moses, cirani, sat'beruni, nečim, eyes/sea, raočas.čaēšman-, bottomless sea. 5. "Armeno-Iranica." Raēvant, Reouena, Erevan, Bagrewand, parart, rew, Rēwand, Burzēn Mihr, bunag, Ariazatē, Zarēr, Frazdān, Tiridates and our native Parthia, baga, Nana, Mas~. masyah-, Māzandarān, Jabal Judi, Nex Masis. 6. "The Persistence ofMemory." Parchanj, Chunkoush, yušamatean, Pharsanzes, *Zaredratič, Ashvan, water-a buffalo's belly, rayis, Psalm 51, Work gets done by working, khojabashi, blacksmith and Artawazd, changelings, werewolves, binding spells, Terntez.

pinqāsīm,

7. ''The Truth, But Not the Whole Truth." Millet, dhimmi, Armenian interior, Hagop Barsoumian.

xviii

Russell

8. 'The Name ofZoroaster in Annenian." Golden, angry, old camels, Denšapuh, Zradašt, k'eš, karewor uxtn, dašn, bank, Hrotic', Ahuna Vairya, R. Nathan, might of the Parthians, miles, Adonibezek, Abraham and Keturah. 9. ''Zoroastrianism as the State Religion of Ancient Iran." Iranianness, Goethe, Yima and the var, Soul of the Cow, Astvihād, Malkoš, Digoron Barastiir, haoma, farr, ahūm.biš, Vīštāspa. Arjuna, kingship, bandaka-, AnnaitI, Sošyans, Priam, Buyid medallion, Narasimha. kāla-, moksha, Zarēr, Spandiat, Xiyons, Kang diz, cult of Siyāvaxš, Achaemenian eunomia, Cyrus, Arebsun inscriptions, drauga, Alexander Romance, Dārāb and Zahhāk, misrepresentation of Sasanians as oppressors, Edward Said and Al-e Ahrnad, DēnkardVI, Mādiyān ī Hazār Dādistān, image worship, Zurvanism, advocacy of the poor,

waqf. 10. "Bad Day at Burzēn Mihr." Stepanos of Siwnil(, St. Bartholomew, Hogeac' varu1. ln line 15 there are two more rhyming pairs, atičaf-patičaf and stfi-htfi, which modify erg 'song' or huin 'apron' (?Malxaseanc'). V. Gevorgyan (1979) translates these as axoržalur ev gefgefun 'pleasant to hear and lovely', but it is more Iikely they refer to movements; Arm. *čaf, with preverb pati-, may be a loanword from New Persian čal- 'to walk elegantly', which would accord with Arm. čemēr lit. 'walked' in the next line. V. Gevorgyan in his Afterword offered a convincing explanation of sa( beruni (Iine 13) as so( beruni 'sap-bearing'; the image of the tree is thus a symbol both of outward slender beauty and of the divine gift of life communicated within to the heart. The poem is often divided after line 8, Nēčem t'ē nēčem mijawrēi žam. Nēčem is a hapax which has long baffied interpreters of Narekac'i. The line preceding describes the linked arches of the Virgin's brows (again a conceit of lyric poetry) ; line 9, to be discussed presently, describes her two eyes (or, perhaps, those of the Child, it is not certain) as seas, so it is reasonable to suppose that nēčem ... nēčem in line 8 has something to do with the kic' kic' two brows of line 7 and the cov ... cov eyes of line 9. The image of the eyes is of a dawning, widening light from Heaven ; the Turkish loan-word necim 'star' from Arabic najama 'appear, come into being' may thus be rendered in Armenian here, its meaning fully appropriate to the context 2 • Thus, the eyes of the Virgin are stars, beneath her arching brows. It may be said without exaggeration that the following Iine, Ač'k 'n cov i cov cicataxit cawalanayr ya;awawtun, with its wonderfully sonorous alliteration, is one of the most beloved gems of Armenian poetry. Narekac' i has a similar

15

* * * The poem has two titles, both appropriate to its content. It describes the beauty of a woman, who is crowned at the end of the poem by Christ : she is the Church, bride of the celestial bridegroom. The poet avoids the erotic descriptions of swaying hips that are encountered in the purely secular Iyric poems of mediaeval Arrnenian minstrels : the lady here moves only in lullaby. But other images drawn from the common stock of Armenian and Persian love poetry serve to emphasize that the Church is the bride of Heaven. Narekac·i wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, which was understood by Christians as an allegory of Christ's love for his Church , so such metaphorical treatment is natural here, too : the Iady has the stature of a slender cypress (Arm . noč-i ; cf. the ubiquitous sarv 'cypress' of lranian love poems), her lips are petals, and her breast is full of roses. Many mediaeval Armenian deries wrote Jove poems, some overtly intended as such, others a metaphorical treatrnent of religious themes. It is often suggested today that, in assigning such metaphorical interpretations to their lyric verses, Arrnenian churchmen stirred by the impulses of freedom and secularism were covering themselves against possible inquisition by a repressive and puritanical Church regime. This seems to be an unreasonable extension of the problems faced by modem writers in many countries to the mediaeval period, or at least an extreme anti-clerical exaggeration. There was no discontinuity between the everyday life and culture of the Armenians and the Church that preserved that culture whilst serving for many centuries as the sole focus and repository of Armenian national identity. And is it not somewhat absurd to cast the mediaeval Armenian poets as frightened , furtive victims of the very

1 Varž- may, in correspondence to zarmanali 'miraculous', be derived from Middle Iranian warz-ā wand. 2 V. G EVO RGYAN ( 1979) translates as lusapaycai 'radiant' simply, but without explanation.

34

Russell 438

A POEM OF GRIGOR

J. RUSSELL

line in another Song of the Church (A. K"yoškeryan, XVI.15): Cawal cov cicaf awdov sarženayr «The laugbing, dilating sea swelled in a sweet breeze». In his Book of Lamentation, XXV,4, Narekac·i wrote, Čaragay( p'arac· k 'oc· cawalesc'i «May the ray of thy glory widen». These images are reflected in the poetry of Catholicos Grigoris Att'amarc·i, six centuries later but in a poetic tradition virtually uncbanged: Ač·k· k·o cawal tan zerd ēzcov «Your eyes dilate like the sea» (ed. N. Akinean 1958, 18) ; Ač'er cov i cov unis, soskali varsawor serovbē «You bave two seas for eyes, fiercely shaggy Seraph» (cited by R.G. Atak'elyan, 1975, 282). Narekac'i's description ofher two eyes in line 10 as Erku p'ay lakajew aregakan nman «li.ke two fiery Suns» recalls sacred beings before Mary in Armenian poetry : the eyes ofVahagn (lranian Verethraghna) in Movsēs Xorenac'i's citation of a hymn on the birth of the god were aregakunk' Wt that the sfght of these by man fs most important, as they are tht heavenly ffres, and man's soul ascends after bodfly death to 85

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heayen on the fourth monaing, on the rays of the r;sfng sun. Although Yfma f s saf d to have accompanfed Zarathushtra to the bounds of Paradfse, and to be 'most observant of the sun' (DkM. 193; De Menasce, Dk 111, 188), these tradit;ons, which I thfnk are scholastic, are notable for protesting what fs nost obviously not the case, perhaps 1n an effort to redee• Yfma for the sake of good qualftfes he had once possessed,as kfng. But Yima does not go to Paradfse on the rays of the sun, whose l ight, indeed, i s barred to him. In the two legends of Yfma, for all thei r dffference, Yima ends up 1n a kind of hell. It is a mild hell, 11ke the Dantean first cfrcle in which the enlightened pagans remain. the cfrcle from which Christ fs safd to have rescued the Old Testament patrfarchs and prophets that first Holy Saturday, and perhaps the prospect of Zarathushtra's coming was ·believed by Zoroastrian theologians to have redeemed Yima s1111flarly. It is m11d and familfar, most lfke the sphere of our own earth held by Yama in the Tfbetan tN.rng-k.aa but it is hell, because eYērything is ~ere but God. That fs why the light in the !llaJO fs not the sun' s but someth1ng self-made, as though Yima were Creator, not the Lord - and one recalls that the first thing Dllnte beheld, or at least saw fft to recall, when at last he emerged frcm the Inferno, was the stars, the distant, but at l east It fs hell because it fs pure v1sfble points of the true li9ht. self, and therefore falsehood, the false assunĶ>t i on of autonomy most perilous in ltings. What was Yfma's sfn that made the ldngly xvarenah depart from him? ln the ~-nāme, Ja~id, i.e. Yima, demands that he be worshfpped as God, concluding his argument with these words {Sepehr. ed., Tehrān 2537, p. 28) : Jehān-rā be-xübi-ye man ārāstam, ze rü-ye, zamin ranj man kāstam; lOfar ā xāb o ārām~t~ az man ast, hamān paushesh ē Itām-etān _az man ast. Boiorgf o dēhi'm ā shāhi' 111-ri-st. Ke gŪyad ke joz~ man kasi pādshā-st? Be-dārü o dannān 86

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jehān

gasht rāst. ke b1mārf ā marg kasi-rā na-kāst. '1 have adorned the worl d wfth my gooctless; 1 have eliminated tofl from the face of the earth . Your day and night and rest are from me; all your rafment and pleasure are also from me. Greatness. the diad!tll. kingshi p. are mine. Who wfll say that any but me fs sovel'eign? Indeed by drug and physfc the world has become a place where illness and death have slain none. '

the Pahlavf cOllllll!ntators seek to exonerate Ytrna. as above when he was called the one who saw the Sun most. It fs claflll!d, in connectfon with a passage from the Hām Ya~t descrfbing Yfrna's use of the sacred substance Haoma. that, f111110rtal fty cOll!S fro11 f.rā:rV5n~h 'righteous actfon'. not from the meat of Yima's sacrffices (see J. HalYĶ)el, Madiain der l.oroastrier im Vorislamüe1-n I:ran, Husum. 1982, 37). As we shall see, the cāthās allude darkly to these sacri-'ices, wh11st the sāh-nāme reflects Yima's claf• to have brought inmortalfty. Yfma. by grantfng irrmortality. has assumed the po"lers of God. The reference to inmortality IBY perhaps be found in Yasna 32. although the text is rather obscure. In line s. Yima is referred to as either deffying or sacriffcfng the cow, and his act is described as a sin. In 11ne 10. as Zarathushtra continues to enumerate sinners and followers of the Lie, there is another, who , i n Insler's interpretation. professes the Lfe in order to see the Sun with his eyes. Insler explatns the expression as meaning 'to remain al i ve'; this may refer again to Yima. In 11ne 14. we find the obscure reference to 1• rrortal ity, I th fnk. in a difficult verse which refers to tht killing of the cow and to dīh'l:zoHa. The translatfons of the latter epithet of haoma vary from 'analgesic' (Gershevftch) to the mre traditiona l 'drivfng death afar' (Bth.,Air. Jlb., 751-2. wi th Ph 1 . t r. : dūrOH!h ēd ku oi aa n.a.im i nm"d.olllān ma- tlāN4). It is not connected with Yfma directly. but the cow 1s menttoned in both verses, and these, with the other verses fn bet.een, „1 characterfze a sfngle habit of worshfp. condenned by the Prophet. Agatn.

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tn whtch tnmortalfty was sought by the sacriffcer through the vfolent 1nnolatfon of another 1ffe. One prefers zvazoi!Jlmo •eat1ng' to 's-.earfng' in lfne 8, wfth bagā 'portion ' , not 'god ' ; Insler's translatfon in thfs instance is to be rejected in favour of earlier interpretatfons, for to consider the cow a divinity woul d not have been exceptionable fn Iranian religion, before or after the Prophet's lffe - it does not. of course, imply the rejection of a transcendent God, as the Old Testament symbol of the golden calf does. Thus fn Yasna 32 we ffnd Yfma mentioned. apparently as sacrificer of the cow. Thfs fs repeated fn line 14, and fn 10 and 14 there are oblfque reference~. it seems, to irmK>rtality. Ferdowsl has .~anlfd strfpped of his royal farr and driven from his throne after his sfn by Zahhāk, i.e . , Ali Dahāka, who saws him fn two. The New PJ!rsia~ ~et. a good Musl im, condemns ~am~id's hubrfs unequivocally. (G. Scarcia, fn Yādnāme-ye Jan. Rypka, Prague, 1967. p.44, suggests that ŗa~~āk is a double of Yima. hypostasizing Zoroastrian tradftion is not the latter's clennnfc features.) equfvocal in contrast, but it fs more subtle. One may, perhaps, explafn Yima ' s appearance in Paradise as a scholastic suggestion that great but difficult heroes of old received a general a1111esty with the advent of Zarathu~tra; for such treatment of ancient myths one may compare the Pahlavf legend of Keresāspa. I compared this above to Chrfst's harrowfng of Hell. But what of the simple condemnatfon of Yfma, and of the t)a?'? Yima's crime is complex. In Zoroastrian tenns, his strfving for 1111110rtality, through · drugs and medicines, cannot be condemned out of hand. Zoroastrians l ook forward to the tirre when death sha 11 disappear, and the texts, for instance ~kani VII (Intro . , l ine 27, Sanjana text p. 11, on Yima's advancement of medicine), unhesitatfngly recrnmiend human medical discoveries as an aspect of the progress of the work of Ohnna.zd in the worl d ·towards that end. The Creator, with many other yazatas, receives the frequent epithet 88

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haiKaayotema 'most hea11ng', and Zarathushtra calls H1m

allŪfr.lnĪ

'world healer' (Y. 44.16), referrfng to thfs phenomenal world. Yima seans to have fought effectfvely the essence of Ahrfman's destructive career - death fn our world - fn a manner not wholly out of keepfng wfth Zoroastrian ethics. Anf.mal sacrff1ce, too, was trad1t1onally practiced, and merely k1111ng an anfmal was not fn ftself a s1n. Y1ma's sfn fs entirely spiritual; he 1s rfght to seek il'll!IOrta lf ty, but wrong to want to be dfvine; he 1111.Y sacrfffce the cow, but not wfth selffsh fntent and cruelty. Yfma's hell fs therefore a very spirftual one, free of physical tonnents, but ft fs stfll hell. And Yfma the glorious shfnes only as an exploded star, the brightest light of an age that wrecked ftself by the hubrfs of fts very achievements, unable without the religion that Yfma in his prfde refused to ~overn its science, r1•alise the limits of its power, and know itself fn truth. As the Dēnkmed declares (OkM. p.129), had Yima possesstd the Ma:rrah - the blessing or attainnent - of the dēn - the Relfgion - as well as that of royalty, F~agil'd~ the Renovatfon of the world, should have come then, rather than the tyranny of Zahhak, and our lives today should be without strffe or blellish. We shall see how the metaphor of the king who out of prfde chose the Lie, returns to successive incarnations in lranfan socfet1 •. with dire consequences. Yima 's history is a warning to future generations of ·Iranhn rulers never to confuse the worldly, life-afffnnfng, concrete ethic of the Zoroastrfan relfgfon for rejection of the spfrftual humil i ty and recept1vf ty before God that fs the fount of w1H dominion. But there came after Yfma a steaoral govemment, with its dāta-, 'law', and the d1vine vldāiti- 'dispensation' at the end of time. No longer dependent upon mere force for legitimacy, the new kingdom retains the loyalty of its subjects even in the 1nvaded and battle-torn realm of the present world, called the mfxed state rgunē:riinJ in the Pahlavi books. And omnipotence is thus a moral abs~lute which will become manifest in th~ world and society. rather than the illusion of allegiance amngst those who stfll cleny. xiathra is both here and to cane, both final Ollf'lfpotence and present potentialfty. It has been wondered whether the Amela Spentas are enanatfons of Ohnnazd or tndhidual created beings. On the level of their most effecti'Ye meaning and importance, this is not a useful question: they are both. A human analogy may illustrate this truth. Is not much of man 's own perception of hts independence merely self-w111, illusion, and ignorance ? All things are given. that is, created (in Avestan. the verb is the same), and all one possesses is a gift; without the knowledge that one does not really possess, but has rather received, the thought of possession is an illusion: The tn.1th of possession is not-possessing. The Ame~a Spentas are beings, owing their nature to their oneness wi th their 1111ker. Ahura Mlzdā. who acts through them. By being part of Hf•, they are; by subnittfng in His will, they are free.

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11ght, Vi~tāspa's devotion in accepting re11gion and re11g1ous dom1n1on is seen, not as an opposite of :Jathro, but as 1ts canplement. Ānnaiti, the earth, is indeed paired with :riathra, the powerful sky.

So too diathra, which for man is the exercise of just rule received from God. The passage frC111 the ~nkard that praises Yima for regarding the Sun, quoted in the first lecture, praises Vi~taspa, also. for propagation of Zoroastrianism. But Vi~tāspa, being the first king to propagate it, had ffr~t to accept it as indeed, does each man who follows it so exercise of dominion in the llli!nner of Vi~t!spa is inaugurated by a passive act of acceptance, not one of selfafffnnfng acquisition. Such asstanption of dominion, preceded by an act of humilf ty, estab11shes the payiJand, the lfnk between the ruler and God. This link describes and afffnns the order of th~ universe as a hierarchical chain of COlllllilnd in which the temporal king finds the true source of leg1tfmacy, not fn force of anns, but by acceptance of the gfft of divi ne order. One notes that the word for law, dāta-, Js fonned from the base meaning 'to give', and that in the concept of Zoroastrian kingship as expressed in the Gllthlzs the princip les of A~a. cosmic rightousness, and Ānnafti, devotion, are brought together with ~athra, another exaniple of the contfnual interplay between the various guardians and shapers of Ahura-created being. The relation of devot1on to kfngshfp is seen in the ·terminology of Iranfan society. In Achaerrenid society, every man was a bandaka- of the king. As will be seen, this word did not universally carry the degrading connotation of slavery, but could be applied to those of high dignity, and means literally 'bound'. It 1s not demeanfng to be bound to one's word or one's duty, and Zoroastrian prayer is called in Pahlavi and in later Persfan Since Zoroastrians do not see themselves as were ~h. before an unknowable God, but as fulffllers abject slaves, of a covenant in which their role as men of free wfll 1s essential to the divine plan, one must see ban&:zgr.~ fro. the vantage point of Zoroastr-fan, not Islamic, doctrfne. In that

the metal of which the sky is made melts for the process of separation and purification of the wf cked and the rfghteous. It fs also, of cour-se, the xHathra Vairya, the desired or chosen reign, that is inaugurated at the end of d~ys. It was noted that Zoroastrfans in accepting the faith accepted an organizing pr-inciple which is seen also in the theory of kfngship: Ma. ll'ļ the third lecture, 1 shall note the use by the Achaemenids of the concept, called in Old Persian arta-. but her-e it may be useful to examine a feature of Zoroastrian apocalyptic teaching. The third and final Sav;or, who is, as the most inĶ>ortant, called sfmply the So~yans in Pahlavi texts (although Prof. Gignoux fnterprets a proper name on a Sasanian sealing asa Mlr-. fonn of his proper name, *Astward), has the proper- name Astvat.ereta, 'Righteousness embodied', "' fn Avestan, the name der-ived from a phrase fn the cāthās, v v v Aatvat aserishable. infinite city of Brahma two thfngs there are. wfscbn and 1a1Wisdom, hidclen, established there: Perishable is unwfsdom. but wisletely divergent from that implied by the transcendent god of time beyond wisdom and ignorance. Zoroastrians do not seek mcikta. liberation from the world, but ŗrd/,egini, the liberation of the world from ev1 l. This divergence indicates that Zoroastrfan concepts of Zurvan were grafted onto a system already integrated and c~lete; they did not evolve together with religious consc1ousness or practice, and probably little affected the latter for most people. In Indian thought, the development of ycga proceeds together with the evolving idea of a transcendent & the Platonic Tmditicn,

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source of ultimate being to be sought beyond the world, fr'Olll a base in ~ani~adic thought; there is no discontinuity fn tradition. as there is with Zurvanism • Arjuna's meeting with K~na takes place on the battleŗield the incarnate god 1s his charioteer, i.e. the guide of his earthly duty and his close friend - but it might as well be in a desert. There are no other people, and the god says of Duryodhana 's men that they have a1'1!11dy killed themselves (11.33). Translated into Christian language, th1s neans that they have chosen to say no to the grace of God, and have freely electt!d damnation. There is no pofnt in givfng in to them on small 111atters, or fn attempting to reach thefr understanding in temporal dfscourse, when they have brolten radically with -11 good, and therefore, all soc1a1 order stenn1ng from cos111ic good. To fail to act fs but to allow the cfrcle of chaos to widen. That is the theological plane of meaning of Lord K~na's statement. its most significant truth. On a lower plane, that of the dramatic frame of the Gf tā, it has quite another, though ultimately related, effect: it freezes the adversary out of action. The enemy becomes nothing more than a prop. having become morally i1TR10bfle. With the rejection of his persona in the highest spfrftual sense, he fs no longer a dramati.a pe1'11ona, ei ther. Arjuna 's decisfon to fight is entirely individual; the fates of those others whose earthly. lives depend on him, cannot enter fnto his decisior.. Now, the religious truth of the Gitā is clearest fn the teaching that the ulti~ate source of wisdOll is devotion, not categorical thinking and the consideration of means and ends; these are finite and fi nal ly illusory as statements of truth. But the Gft! does not. it seems, consider the 1ike1ihood that the world 1$ not ,č!:y/'1.- but divinely-wi lled reality through which man's striving to God is mediated, and that decision 1

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based upon concern for others is valid, part of the truth of decision. We do not hear, though, about the Pandavas. ihis is not to say that K~_na 's teaching is not an accurate statement of Arjuna's duty. But the cnaracter of his bhakti is fundamentally different fran what we should expect to encounter in Zoroastrian1sm, and the particular Zoroastrian stateirent of the reality and validity of the world shou1d lead us to fonnulate the concept of polit1ca1 duty in very different ways. For Zoroastrians, kingsh1p is essential to the maintenance of the world of ~a. and the difference between the Indian and Iranian fonnulat i ons may be seen, for example, in the manner in which the image of a tree is used in literature. ln the Gltā, the cosmic tree is a figun! of samsāro, to be cut down (15. 3). It i s not i n i tse 1f ev11 or disordered - i ts branches are the Vedas - but it is an impediment in tne way of those who would seek ultimate real1ty. K~na says that other men worshi p other gods and wi 11 recef ve their petty rewards, but 'who worships Me will COl!le indeed t) to Me' ( 7 .20-23). But i n the Siare the message of the Gitā rather with another Zoroastrian text, although not an Avestan one . The Memorial of Za1rivairi (to be distinguished from the leglMldS· concernf ng Zari adres and Odati s, reflected i n the

and related fn Greek sources, on which see Boyce , 3SOAS, 1955) is a Pahlavi text with verse passages whose Parthian features indicate that the present text is a translat1on of a COll'Ķ)osition of the Arsacid period, that composition ftself based, in Benveniste's opinion (JA, 1932), on the contents of a lost Ya~t. The story seems to fon11 part of the Kayanian cycle, ~hich deals with events of the middle or late second millenni1111 B.C. - the tfme of Zarathushtra. Zairivari, Phl. Zarēr, is mentioned in Yt. V.112: Shāh-nāme

tam (Anāhitam) yazata aspāyao6o zairi.vairi~ pa~ne I~ d!ftyaya satam aspanam a~nam hazanram gav~m ' - c hfm " ava! -ayaptem Jai6ya!: anumayanf"· aa~ baevara dazd1 mē, vanuhi saviŗte aradvi süre anāhite, yat bava~f aiwf.vanya paJo.~inghem a!t0.kānem h1.111ayakam daēvayasnam drvantam~a ar~)a!.aspem ahm1 gaēthe pe!anāhu.

Zairi .vafri, fighti"ng on horseback, sacrificed to Anahfta in vfew of the water of Daitya one hundred stall ions, a thousand cattle, and ten thousand sheep. Then he asked her: Grant me this bocn, 0 good arid mest powerful Aredvf Sura Anahita, that 1 may be victorious over H1111ayaka the cloven-footed, who 102

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dwells in eight pits, the daeva-worshipper, and Arejat-aspa, the follower of tne lie, in this · world, in battle. In the Memorial, Zarēr, brother of Vihāsp, fights Aroht. aspa but fs killed; the victory goes to the hero SpentD. dāta instead, who leaves no Hyaona {Chionite) alive save Ara~at.aspa, who is sent away mutilated in defeat to tell his people of the victory of Vihāsp and the Zoroastrfan faith. The tale must have been important and widely known in the Parthian period; the Arsacid fonn of Spento,data's name, Spandarat, is important in Armenia. {But the name of the strategos *Zarehr, as found in Aramaic inscriptions fn Armenia, goes back to the different *Zariathra, found f~ Greek as Za ria1:„es, hence the Arm. Zari adri ds of Sophene, and later Arm. Zareh.) The Middle Persian fonn~ attested in the memorial, is also found in Armenian in a dffferent fonn, Spandfat {MP. Spandiyād) . Several A~nian mediaeval hfstorians allude to a cult of Spandiat, perhaps referring to the defffed heroes of pagan peoples by analogy with a famflfar hero whose ŗravaHi received such reverence that his name had becane a recognized by-word. The story begins at the point where ArJāsp (Arejat.aspa}, chief of the Xiyonān, learns that Viŗtāsp, hfs sons, brothers, and adjutants have accepted from Ohrmazd the holy relfgfon of Mazda-worship. Dfsmayed, he sends two messengers to v demand that Vfstasp abandon ft, and to remain hamkēsv ('of the same teaching') as the Xfyons. Thfs kēX fs most 11kely that of daeva-worshfp; fn the Dēnkard, the daeva-worshippers clafm that they always recefve from their deities the wHlth or power they crave - rather like those of prfmitfve relf·gion who are scomed by Krsna. ArJāsp promises Vf~tāsp both 103

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wealth and power if he leaves the Good Religion, but threatens war ff he wfll not. In scorning Ar~āsp's offer, the Iranfan king rejects the two materi a1 rewards of daeva-worsnip. This is notable because wealth is praised by Zoroastrians as a symbol of Ohnnazd's afffrmation of the world and its goodness, while power is the attaimient of kings in partfcular. y Vistasp thus shows that he esteems the giver of things, rather than the things themselves. Vi~tāsp knows and scorns his enemy: he merely gives the order to prepare for war, and there i s no further i ndi cat ion that he cares for the fate of hfs enellf(. He has resisted temptation and harbors no fllusfons about the nature of the adversary. Thfs is equfvalent to the certain knowledge of the goodness of Ohnnazd and the e~fl of Ahreman, a divisfon without ambiguity, without any transcendent being above the two. Zoroastrtan prayers and catechisms often stress this quality of abēgllniintfi 'doubtlessness'. But, 1fke Arj una , Vi hasp i s con cerned about the resu 1t of the battle. Hfs concern is not for the eneft1Y, but for hfs own people, and he asks the ln:~ ~āmasp, who is renowned as a seer and clairvoyant (dānāg ud L16nāg J who of the sons and brothers of the king will live, and who will die. v_ Jamasp, to whom varfous prophecies are attributed in Pahlavi lfterature, replies that Zarēr and others will be killed at the hands of the Xiyons. At thfs point, Vi~tāsp, like Arjuna, seeks to withdraw from the battle: the losses are too high to justify the cause of the war. He says to v_ hfs kfn and to Jamasp: v - baxt edOn - - ciyon - to- Jamasp v_ - goweh. - - ce- az ASma· d1 z-ļ l rey!n bļ· framāyēn kardan ud ~n d1 z dar band ln Ī !hļnēn fraiMylm kardan. awļ~5n pusarln

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ud brādarān ud waspuhragān andar ān diz framāyērn kardan ud ni~astan. ~āyēd ku ā dast i du~mēnān nē rasēnd.

Your fate 1s as thou, ~āmāsp, sayest. But I shall connand that a bronze fortress be made, with a gate of 1ron. And 1 shall comnand that those sons, brothers, and princes, be made to rema1n there; they should not fall into the hands of enemies.

~āmāsp ' s reply is simple and direct. If Yi~tāsp so connands, then ān and ciz&mēn aJ1 Īahr abāz dāitan kē twān 'Who w111 be able to hold back so many enemies from the realm?' For each of the heroes to be k1 lled wil 1 ff rs t have despatched oyer a myriad of the enet11Y, and Spandiyād will deal the final blow. Vi~tāsp promptly relents, and the battle is fought, with lllUCh loss but vfctory for Iran and Zoroastrianism at the end. There is a verse lament, but the Pahlavi is laconic. The whole epfc, as preserved, is smaller than an English short story. Yet it reverberates with meaning, echoing f1"0ll'I the beginnfng to the end of the cosmfc battle.

The bronze fortress is, undoubtably, to be ident1fied wfth Kangdiz, Av. Kanha, the abode of inmortalfty which enters the 1001 Nighta as madlnatu 'n-nWzās, the City of Brass . Vf~tāsp's son P~otan is said.to dwell at Kangdiz fn i11111>rtal1ty (Dk. 9.16.15) - the kfng's desfre in thts case see.s to have been satfsff ed. It was founded by Sfylvaxl (GBd. 29.10, 32.5). whose treacherous 111urder and tragic death was mourned yearly in eastern Iran by the Zoroastrians of Bukhārā, according to Kā~gharĪ, at a place called Dfl ROyfn, the Bronze Fortress (see Catriiridge llistct>y of I1'CDI, Vol.3, 105

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pp. 448-9). ln the Bundahiŗn, Kangdiz fs said to have had seven walls, one of lapis lazuli (Phl. kasak-ēn. OP. kāsaka hya k.apc::uUzka 'b1ue kāsakJ', cHr, 1216, a stone brought from Sogdia, where Bukhārā and Oi~ Rāy1n arel. This ~ay be an elaboration of the original legend, to which can be compared the report by Herodotus of the seven walls of Ecbatana (H. Gaube, I'l'aTlian Cities, pp. 21-2 and 24, i11ustration 16). Such marvels can be transferred from one place to another, to embroider further the renown of a semi-legendary city. In Iran, the Brūnze Fortress was consider2d by the Abü Muslimiyya the ill'ITIOrtal abode of the i r slain and risen martyrleader, and this may go back to the cult of Siyāvax;, for it seems the latter had come to be regarded as a dying and rising god,. l ike Attis in Asia Minor, and from Sogdian accounts it seems he was mourned by ti1e lady Nanai, corresponding to Nana or Cybele in the Attis cult. The Bronze Fortress may be mentioned also as the Orudicaria of the TabuZa Peutingeriana, the 'City of Copper ' , which R.N. Frye tentatively identifies with Kashan (in Festschri.ft Del.Za Vida, I, p.321). like the var of Yima, the City, or Fortress, of Bronze has a morally ambiguous character. In the 1001 Nights it is a pTace of death, of those who shunned God for the things of this world and now are frozen in thefr places, in mute testimony to the evil of denial. A plaque in it identifies a beautiful dead maiden as Tadmor (f.e., Palmyra, to the Muslim Arabs a beautiful dead city), daughter of the king of the Amalekites (Lane tr., p. 528), who were the enemies of the chosen people of God. Jn Iran this Fortress can be a bad or good place to go, depending, it seeins, on whether one goes there after fulfi 11 i ng a grea·t deed or to awa it some predes ti ned future ro 1e, or to escape. Vi~tāsp se~ks escape for his subjects; he does not arrogate to himself any of the illusory power Yima 106

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desire r to a lack of receptfvfty amongst subject peoples. or to the absence of orthodoxy amongst the Pers ians themse 1ves . 1t must. therefore have been a pol1cy 109

consciously pursued, whose political and religious līeaning Gught to be discussed as intentional pl uralism . It is for this feature of tolerance, indeed, of the intentional maintenance of cultural and rel igious distinctions, that the empire of the Achaemenids has been compared to the British Raj in lndia. It is, one readily admits. a difficult matter to draw such parallels between wide l y disparate eras. and on a political level ~t may be unwise and improper. I propose the tenn ' Raj'only because it sunmons up from our melll)ries certa~n desirable features which are rare in emp i re: toler~nce and law. Iran was a society ruled by law, ~a-. and from the way the word is used in the Old Persian inscriptions, ' it is evident that law did not originate with the king. although the king's comnand became law. in the Biblical Book of Esther, which is essent ially a late-Achaemenid Persian tale, much of t~e dramatic tension is based upon the king's inability to countennand his own laws. The king's decrees in the romance are shortsighted and foolish, swayed by anger or. vanity or fear (cf. his anger at Queen Vashti ; Haman's effective flattery), and equilibri1.111 is restored through the reading of the royal chronicles. ihe king gains wisdom through history and precedent, and the aid of wise advisors. and the final resolutfon comes about through the king's willingness to receive Queen Esther's petition. The 1deal of kingship in the Book of Esther fs, then, seen in reliance upon legal precP.dent, rather than on baseless willfulness. and in compassio~ate inclination towards one's subjects rather than anger (one recalls that the kingship of ŗa~~āk is seen as the incarnation of AēB1112}. the dell"()n Wrath . Plutarch renders the meaning of the name of the Ame~a Soenta X~athra Vairya ~s Greek eunorrria 'the state of ~aving good law' · There is an ab111dance of words in Greek for the forms of government, asa speaker of English knows from his own language, and Greek writers, frequently obtuse about matte!"s of rel igion, are llO

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attentive and precise when discussing pol itical institut1on s and law. Hennodios and Aristogeito n, in the Athenian skol.ion, k111 the tyrant Hippurkhos, and make Athens isonornous 'of equal laws'. Anyone else w~uld have said 'free' and left it at that, particularly in an after-dinne r song. But the point was that Athens got equal laws, a concept of very precise meaning in the Athenian social order. Isonomia and eunomia are not the same thing, and Plutarch saw clearly that the Persian concept of perfect rule was good law, not equal law, or, for that mtter, Jeffersonian delllocracy . In an inscr1pt1on at Naql-i Rustam, Da r ius calls the regulation (hadugā) to be followed when pressing criminal charges um&Jna- 'ļijlļ!ll - regulated' (with prefix Olr. hu- 'good', corresponding to Gk . e,, _ in usage, and base rad-, Av. raz- 'regulate, arrange, order') (llib 23-4). He also claims tttat he has ·judged people according to their deeds, not their rank, and punished or rewarded them ' well' (IE. I . 21-22: ubartam, ufrastam). Such usage corresponds to Plutarch's later translation , and accords generally with the Zoroastrian ins istence on the moral rectitude of a thing: vohu Manah, the Good Mind; hunata, good thoughts; and the Vrld when the divinity saw it disturbed (yau&:rtim): the Lie (dn:nqi), Oarius explains, waxed great in the lands, provoking the people to rebellion. His relief at Behistun, unlike the placfd scene 115

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v- Rustam, or the Persepolis at hfs own cliff-tomb at Naqs-i friezes, is severe, reflecting vengeance rather than hannony, and simi larities have been noted between it and the cruel Elamfte carving at Sar-i Pul {below which is a Parthian triumphal reliefthe later Iranians fully understood the scene's meaning, see S. Matheson, Arehe~Zogical Guide t o I ran, p. 135) • Those who rebelled were :;een to be deron-possessed rather than of evil nature; thfs fs in accord with the Zoroastrian belief that evil of any kfnd, be it sickness, death, or misfortune, is an invasion of the person by an alien force : But the dregu:mt- here is not deffned as the adherent of an al ien faith (Phl. akdēn 'one of evfl religion'), but rather as the rebellious subject of the Iranfan King of Kings. Thfs religious definition of loya1ty to the kfng was, I think, ffna l ly the source of grave problems for the Iranian s1:ate, problems with the fnevitability of trageors wished to suppress the memory of the branch of thefr own famfly whose legitilllllcy they had usurped. Such alteration of the h1storfcal record is scarcely unique to Iran, although the Sasanians, with their Fortress of Oblivion, a prfson where people were confined, the very mention of the1r names forbfdden by decree, refined it to a pofnt unsurpassed ~tfl the totalitarian reg1mes of our own day. But the successors of Cyrus were forced also to repudfate his generally peaceful polfcies towards conquered peoples, and thfs factor may have contrfbuted to their desire to belittle his historical role (although elle rites, accord1ng to the testimony of Greek conteinporarfes of Alexander, continued t o be perfonned at his tonm, and it seems that the cunefform fnscriptions in whfch he fs mentfoned at Pasargadae .ere or~ered by later kfngs). Cyrus had adorned Mi!rduk's temple at Esagila; Xerxes, after crushing _a rebellfon, destroyed ft, and it was not rebuilt ~tfl Alexander's conquest. The Jews, allowed to retum to their country by Cyrus, were more fortunate with their. Temple at Jerusalem, for they dfd not rebel . But no Achaemenfd kfng was later prafsed as glowfngly as Cyrus had been, and the Persians too seem to have recoiled in the face of forei!ļ'l oppositfon to their rule: Xerxes in hf s inscriptions at Babylon styles himself King of Persia first, and king of Babylon later, fn a reversal of the pol fte usage of h1s predecessors.

some

of the greatest battles in history, those whose names become proverbial - Thennopylae, Waterloo, Stalingrad - may be seen as epic and decisive because they represent the clash of incompatfble, or mutually inC0111prehensible,ideas. Napoleon d1d 117

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not understand how others rejected him as a 1iberator, preferr1ng feudal un-freedom under their old kings . Similar mutual inctJmPrehension existed between the Greeks, who generally wished to be, if .not always isonomoi, then at least independent of foreign domination, and the Achaeme~id Persians, whose vision of ~unomia had no place for the Greek idea of political freedom. Thermopylae. like Waterloo, was a battlefield of ideas: for the ~reeks. it was a war of apocatypse and self-discovery which sparked their greatest period ofcreativity and growth . For the Persians, it was a cOllĶ:laratively sma11 war, but one which proved the repressfve character of the emp1re, and drained its resources. The Persian exchequer thereafter seerns to have been subject to 1ncreasing ffscal strain. Ir. that lfmited sense, the Persian expedftion in Greece may be compared to the colonial wars of recent times, or ev.en to Amerfcan involvement 1n Vietnam: the tragic failu!"@ of a great, and generally rroral, irrĶ>erial ~r to appreciate the separate identi.t.v and dffferent way of life of a smaller nation not comprehended, literally and metaphorfcally, by 1ts own val ues. The campaign against Greece was not a grave defeat for l!"'an, but for the Greeks it was a natfonal awa~ening. Yet when the ftlcedonians came, it was not as Athenian democrats or as liberators. Philip's ant>itions had been unabashedly imperial - the Greeks had learnt much in th1s regard from their Persfan neighbours - but wfthout the correspondingly magisterial religious vision of cosmic harmony that had lent the Achaernenid state its viab11fty, ho.ever weakened by human prfde and failing. Alexander brought noth1ng but chaos and loss to Iran, and he is rightly remembered as the Hagi-killer in Sogdian Manichaen literature, and fn Pahlavf as the accursed dwel ter in the darkness and sorcery of Eqypt. Egypt was, because of fts assoc1ation with magic and with the captivity of the Hebrews, a syn'bol of man's lower nature, and of captivity in material lust. The ~ahlavf 118

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books record the destruct ion of the Avestan scriptur es. and t1'1etr unantmity on thts point llllSt -persuade us that the Zoroastr1 an clergy remafned fatthful to the ldng. to the last. There were few defectton s, few Hellentz ers. and the complete lack of Greek influence of any endurtng characte r in Iran in subseque nt ages' 1ndtcate s that, whatever the flaws of the Achaementd system, the Zoroastrt an tradtt1on 1n the country was of uribreakable tntegricy , closely tted to the Irantan dynastic way of rule. The swift defeat of Dartus III, ruler of a powerful emptre, sttll must be somehow explaine d, and tn the Iranian elaborat tons of the Alexander Romance of pseudo-Ca 11 i sthenes we find traces of what 1 think ts a genufne and old Zoroastr ian teaching . Verstons of this ficttonal account of the Macedonian's life and conquests P.xist fn · various languages of the Near East, and are based upon a Greek origtnal . The Persian text, the Iskar.dar nāme, differs roore than any other Eastem variant. from the Greek, unlike the neighbouring Annenfan,which is very similar to the Greek. The Persian version is close to the legends of Alexander preserved in the ~-nāme. with some di fference s: in the med1aeva1 Iskan&:zr-nāme, Alexande r ts a Muslim, but in the Māh-nāmi? he is a Christian . The latter text is older, and the Christtan detail must be an anachron istic referenc e to the Sasanian s' major adversar ies. the Byzantfn es. In the Persian tradition . Alexander is presente d as the half-bro ther of oārāb, Darius III. and as the son of Nāhid (t.e. the goddess Anāhttā. an Irantan replacement for the Egypttan god Armon of pseudo-C alltsthen es); he is also portraye d as a manly, 111>rally upri ght Iran1an herc, wh11st hts brother, oārāb, ts shown as a tyrant. Asa bad ·k1ng, D!rlb, ltke la~fd, loses hts fa:z-7', and the Iekand:zl'-rtāmii compares the incursion of Alexande r to that of ļa~~āk accordin gly. Whatever his kingly virtues, h~ ts sttll the invader. One ought not to see here, I think, any Irar1t1n

119

conceptf on of the scourge of God; Ahura Mazdi f s not the kind of d1vtnity who sends At11la or the llt>ngols. as medtaeval Christian s believed . Rather, it seerns that theextem al polittca l threat, like that of disease or any other evil, was regarcled asa perenntal danger which could errupt whenever the organism of the state was weak. Thfs is a concept, not of intention al punishment, but of cause and effect. The cause i s moral, howeYl!r, and the paradiļļll of ~am!;d and ŗa~~āk appears to have been a powerful argu111ent 1n the Zoroastr ian th i nking for just, centraliz ed. and orthodox kingship . Perhaps, too. ŗa~~3k/Alexancler was seen to embody the failings and corruptio n of oārāb. as G. · Scarcia suggested (see above) in connectio n with Yima. ŗa~~āk, A1t Dahāka, is the Zoroastr ian archetyp e of misrule: tyrants are ~id'.zhāgān. Since the an-ēri.h represen ted by this monster is not a speciffc ally national characte risttc. but rather an attitude of religion , a tyrant identifie d as a Zahhāk may be

Iranian by parentag e, 1i ke Al exander, or he may be. ~~cribed in the terms that fclentify him as an an-ēr i n some more concrete way: as a Babyloni an, the ŗa~~āk of old Iranian epic belongs to the nation at once contiguo us to Iran and yet utterly forei gn in religion . To the· Annenians, A~dahak was a Mede; this identifi cation of the monster with Astyages the l't!de, expl icitly stated by the historia n ļlbvsēs Xorenacc i, presumably goes back to the time of Cyrus . _who sei ZP.d the fa:rr of the l't!cles for Pers ia . (The pronund atton of Astyages in l't!dian *Rishtiv aigu, even sounds sOllll!What ltke A!i Dahāka.) Xorenac ci's version of the legend fs contamin ated with aspects that can be explaine d only in tenns of the history of sixth-ce ntury Sasanian lran, hONever . . A~dahak ts describe d as advocati ng the COlllll)nality of wives and other reforms whtch Xorenacci calls anbari bare:rarut~ü.Jn 'not-good benefice nce'. Fr. N. Akinean in Hanr.lēs Amsorya. 1936, correctl y, I thtnk, fdenttffe d _this as . a referenc e to ·the heresy of Mazdak. Mazdak is cal led 'heretic of heretics ' fn the !lmkard, but

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heretical conment on the Zoroastrian religion and order was tantamount to a direct attack on the authority of the state, and, consequently. was in the character of A1; Dahāka. The latter i"epeatedly asks in the Yahs of the Avesta to empty the world of men the ulti111ate desire, ff rarely so openly expressed or clearly perceived, of every nfhil ist, who by defiriition must oppose any system of law. It may be said of the Seleucid adminfstrat ion that s~cceeded the Achaemen ids that it was a_short-lfved mil itary occupation rather ' than a stable, ci vi l government. Macedonian adnfnistration was a network of all i ances based on mutual de fense, whose sole purpose was the ma intenance of power for a minority. Where c·fvfl offfces were introduced, they .ere often adaptatfons of Achaemenian ones: the gazophyZaz is the old Achaemenid ganzabāra - and even the stratē gos inherited the earlier office of the satrap. As for the aols (includi ng the winged synbol now used asa s)'!l'bol of Zoroastrianism) from the great al ien artfstic traditions of Mesopotamia and Urartu, and in Asia Minor, Achaemen i an foundations borrowed freely from Greek art . Achaemenian religious tolerance, based upon Zoroastri an ethics and sound polftfcal wisdom, was as much a feature of the Sasanian state as of the Parth i an. The Sasan i ans remembered t he Parthian Valaxŗ asa pious Zoroastrian who ordered the compilation of the Avestan canon, and Parthian religious centers: Adur Burzēn Mihr at Rēwand in Xurāsān and KÜh-i Khwāja at l ake H āmün in Sistān- rema ined sites of p11grimage i n later cent uri es . Certa i n Parthian i conograph1c convenUons, notably the figure of Mithra, were perpetuated by the Sasanians. It is not. therefore, my 1ntention in going directly from the Achaemen ids to the Sasanians, to imply any religious discontinuity. or to suggest that Parthian politi cal institutions were basically different from those of the precedi ng or following dynastfes. Rather, 1 should regard the Achaemenians, with the help of their Median predecessors, as the first to establish a large. historically doc1.11Ented state on Zoroastrian foWldations . The Sasanians were the last, and the fourth and fina l lecture must address the consequences of this inĶ>Ortant circumstance.

The Achaemenid Raj was not followed by a Parth i an COlllllOnWealth, although later Iranian historiography dismisses the Arsacid relgn, the longest-lived pre-Islamic dynasty fn Iranian history, as a decentra 1ized sys tem of kadt:zg-zwdāyān 'lords of houses • • But thfs system in fact merely established the successfon of various offices in the state by family, a method based upon that of the Achaemen i ds and followed by the Sasanians. The 111111ntenance of regional coinage and the exfstence of regional languages is also a cont inuation of Achaemeni~n practice, discouraged only by the later Sasanians. Arsacid religious tolerance, or the use of Greek fonns in art, can scarcely be adduced as proof of the ~akening of Iranian tradition: the Achaemenians had adopted 1 121

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IV. ADVOCACY OF THE POOR :

THE MALI GNEO SASANIAN ORIU .

In one of the short stories of Anton Chekhov, a rather slowwitted man is invited at the last moment to deliver an eulogy, wnich he gives for the wrong persori, prefacing his disastro usly inappropriate rernarks with a mutiliat ed Latin adage De rrr:Jrtuis nil. bonum 'Say nothing good of ttw! dead,' missing the crucial nisi 'but' before bon1111. That su~s up the attitude of Islam and Isalamic ists. generall y, towards Zoroastrianism and the Sasanian empire lslam supplanted in Iran. There has been little re-evalu ation of the tradition al att1tude , and much encouragement of it, de spite mass i ve new ma teria 1 and research in Sasanian history . It. is an old prejudic e reinforced by others, and partakes of a kind of th ink ing bound up with Westem attitude s towards the Arab world at the close of the last century. Briefly, it is this: Sasanian society began good, because it brought back to Iran the clear vision of pure Zoroastrfanism. The Parthians had been Hellenizers - decadent and cosmopolitan. To be Gloeek and cosmopolftan was acceptable, because that was seen as spreading civiliza tion, although it was not quite as good as being fifth-cen tury classica l Attic Greek - but that leads us into another body of scholarl y ·fiction. But to be Asian and cosmopolitan was demeaning, mongrel, deracina ting; it somehow reinforced the image of Westem Asiatic and Levant i ne peoples as mercanti l e. adaptab le as sal amanders, sl i thery, not good and sturdy and constant. So the Sasani ans began their career as real men. But then they became decadent, partly because their society was top-heavy and priest-r i dden. Forests were deriuded by the incessan t demand for 11t1re wood for the fire-tem ples . The kings lfved a lffe of riotous decadence, far from the hardy 1ffe fn the saddle. All of thfs led to decline. Hind you, Iran's principal rival according to 123

thfs scheme, ByzantilJTI, was no better. After all, it, too, was a king of mongrel: not Greek enough to be like the statues, not Christian enough to be really Church of England, ei ther. (Many Protesta nts in the West sti l l regard the Christians of the Levant as fit subjects for conversion, since their ancient and unaltered rites are considered too gaudy and complicated to conform to the Gospel. And they are scorned as passive and effeminate, too, for failing to perform some unspecified historic al role; never mind that they have survived over a mill ennium in a Muslim sea when the Crusaders could not manage a foothold, that they have rebounded to life after massacres which a sycophantic West prefers to i gnore as ever having occurred.) Now the two effeminate states of Byzanti1111 and Iran were ripe for conquest by the sons of the desert who brought a pure and simple faith on their flashing scimitar s, a kind of Protestantism against all the establ i shed faiths of the time. And at about this point the ancient world rea1 l y and truly ended, although we were tau9ht at school that it ended in 476 with the fall of Rome (somel'low the fact that Rome is still very much with us never entered into it). H1story continued, and anyone who had the sheer nerve not to give up and die aut, 1 ike the Jews or the Annen i ans, was condemned to the withering scorn of Arnold Toynbee. The bias that underlies the critical attitude of scholars l ike E.G. Browne and others towards the Sasanians is founded partly on social darwinis t justific ati ons of European colonial policy. applied to an earlier period by analogy, wi th fresh, virile Arabs equated with pioneers or Englishmen, and partly also upon Protestant h1storiograp~y. likewise analogized to the era of early lslam. Accordfng to the latter conception, the Protesta nt reform5 were an advance in hlalian history, a sign . of progress, but also a sort of house-cleaning within O!rfstendom that brought old, basie truths back into focus. These had, the thesis goes, been corrupted or obscured by the r1ch, priest-ri dden Roman Catholfc Cburch. Much

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of the serious mediaevalist research of this century has had as its task the refutation of thfs simplistic and tenclentious attftucle. Scholars like R.W. Southern and Helen Waddell have shown that the Oark Ages were not dark. The role of the Catholic Church fn socfety, and the fundamental soundness of its Christoioqy, have been vfndicated. It can no longer be suggested seriously, except by Christfan fundamentalists of the most obscurantist sort, that the Church dfd not serve a vftal and productf ve role 1n the Hedfaeval period, or that it ever departed in fts teachfngs from its Apostolfc mfssion fn a fundamental way. The polcmfcal, tendentfous Protestant critique of Catholfcfs• was 1 I think, translated fnto the tenns by whfch the Sasanian [nĶ>ire and fts fall came to be studied by Western Isla~fcists, bolstered by the prejudices of their sources. It seems that this approach, whfch I hope to demonstrate is utterly un~enable, has strongly affected the attitudes even of those historians who profess to remove from their native traditions the tafnt of Western prejud1ce. An example is the scurrilous tract of Āl-e Ahmad, Charbzadegi, 'Westftfs', whose few valid crfticisms of present trends fn Iran are lost in a welter of libellous attacks on great scholars and slanted hfstorical pronouncements. (Edward Safd's book OrientaUsm, a rore learned work, fs regrettably It. too, regards the Mfddle East as wrftten fn a sfmilar vefn. entity.) The Persfan writer, who Arab a purely Islamfc - and longed for the restoratfon of traditfonal Is.lamfc values as he saw them, cleclares that 'fncredfble injustices were visited on people asa result of the ossified customs of the Sasanfans' (Sprachrnan tr .• p. 17). A page earlier, he uses the sane metaphor of lifeless suine in referring to the 'petrified rites of Zoroastrfanism'. Th~ author has a clear problem in explainfng the tenacity of the presumab ly 1i thomrphous band of Zoroac;trfans who fotl'ld a welcome fn Indfa. Since he wishes to fqentffy wfth Iran's eastern sfde, without grantfng that Indfa and the Zoroastrfans may have had a great deal in comon- as they do - he first 125

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dfsmfsses the Indo-European philoloqy in inverted co11111as, as though it were not a legitimate science (for it would establish pre-Islamfc affinities, which are inconvenient to him!), and ther. explains, 'India . . . offered a haven to the rennants of the . Zoroastrians who, like s.tubborn fools, did not even pay the Islamic jezya, packed up lock, stock, and barrel, and folfld refuge fn Indfa. Today there are Parsfs in India (the descendants of these refugees) who, during the colonial period, aided the cause of British tyranny-something awful. And even today they stfll have a tfght hold on the industrfal aristūcracy of Indfa.' (p. 12.) The Zoroastrfans are, in Āl-e Ahmad's view, stubborn fn trying to survive (shades of Toynbee here) after being defined as 'ossified' and 'petriffed'. They are fools for evading discriminatory taxes flllļ)osed upon them by hostile conquerors of their own country. Al 1 the Musl im writer has to say about a thousand years of Parsee history is that some Parsees supported British rule, for about two centurie!; in fact, of that period. Whfch Parsees does he mean? ls it Dadabhai Naoroji, whose every lecture fn London the young Hahatma. G!ndhi attended (Autobiography, Beacon Press, ed., Boston, p. 81), or Madame Cama? Then, to top it off, Parsee contribut ions to the economic 1ife of India are considered a stranglehold. Happily, Al-e Ah~d has gone to his condign judgement in Heaven and has most likely been tried with due severity for his hateful slander of an ancient oeople. One has no wish to dignify his opinions by repeating them here. only to demonstrate that they represent the extreme of a single current of thought that has perverted much l!llre ·Jeamed works. In Charbzadegi, the Zoroastrians of the Sasanian empire are presented as wealthy oppressors of the poor, who turned to Islam as they had (as he sunnises) turned to 11anichaeism and Hazdakism earlier. They are shO'l«'I as reactionaries whose sole mission in life was to sail to lndia with the nefarfous ar>d single purp'Jse of supportfng the i~rialist 126

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des;gns of BrHain, several generations before the Battle of Hastings. There is an old tradit;on, widespread in East Christendom, according to which the Klgi, dwelling in the Mons Victor;alis, possessed a book which predicted the date of Christ's birth, six thousand years after some seminal event. This is the same pattem of think ing we find in the tradi tion that Plato was born six thousand years after the Prophet Zarathushtra. It is a noble legend, a tribute to Persian wisdom and religiosity. Perhaps the same respect underlies the oft-repeated claim, found for example, in the De Anticristo of Ps.-Epiphanius, and, probably derivatively, in the heretical teachings of the Muslim Carmathians, that the Magi were descendants of Abraham themselves. For Abraham was seen as the first believer in one God, the ancestor of Christians, Jews, a·1d Musl ims al ike. The old preface to the Armenian magical text, 'The Book of the Six Thousand', which repeats the crucial number, .drawn from the Zoroastrian tradition of the period from ēbgatih to1A1izārdn, states that it was transmitted from Abraham, through the maz~accikc, the Mazdeans. down to the early Christians. But no known tradition of prophecy, Sibylline or magical, predicted in ancient days the English colonization

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status of Zoroastrians in the Sasanian empire. Prof. f'brony's account of the later history of the Irani and Parsee Zoroastrian conmunities is, for the mest part. meticulous and sensitive, free of Āl-e Ahmad's repellent bigotry.

It seems to me that similar prejudices underlie other works of greater scholarship; the extreme case presented above should be viewed as a means of sharpening one's sensitivity to basie fallacy, to postulates based upon preconceptions which are so basie, perhaps, as to be but dimly perceived by those who build upon them. 1 adduce as an example the article of an honoured acquaintance , respected colleague, Prof. Michael f'brony of UO.A, 'M:uijÜS '. prepared for the second edi tion of the Encydoŗxi.edia of IsZam. The present critique applies only to those parts of the article which, I think, present wrongly the attitudes and

The article begins with a definition of the Magi , Arabic Ma~jüs , as the priestly class of Jran. The term. which is applied in Arabic usage ·with reference to Zoroastrians generally, is then regarded as though. since later Zoroastrians were called Magi. the Magi had been the only Zoroastrians before the Arabs came, as well. If they were not the sole practit;oners of the faith - for it is absurd to imagine such a large and well-organized priesthood wholly without laity - then the other Zoroastrians are not mentioned. The vāstryoHān and hütū:d:ān of Sasanian society. the peasants and craftsmen. are people of indetenninate religion, swayed by various foreign faiths or transient rel igious movements outside the official. that is to say, documented Zoroastrian church. One must assume that cons tant Zoroas tri an references to the various strata of society that comprise the ordered, hanl!Onious whole. are mere wishful thinking . The Magi are then defined as 'closely identified with the rul;ng elite in Sasanian Iran, where their faith was the official religion of the state, an c where they were organized in a social and reli9ious hierarchy. ' Now. if the Magi are closely identified with the elite - a loaded word, perhaps. si-nce it refers to everyone from the King of Kings to the most down-at-heels rural dehqān- then their further stratification must be within that elite. leaving the lower levels still without representat;on. There seems to be some confusion here. Undoubtedly. throne and altar were closely associated: the one ·is shown on Sasanian coins superimposed upon the other. (see Harper I~. 1979) and the title mčbadān mo~ad, a device of the Sasanian period, is based upon the analogQus fonn Īahiin ~ah, and the former served as coronant of the latter. The early Sasanian period saw a great deal of experiamtation in the areas

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of cfvfl and priestly administratfon, as the small prov1nc1a1 house of Sāsān from Pārs gradually adapted itself to the govemment of an imnense empfre. The inscription at the Kacaba-yi Zardu~t of ~ābuhr I mentions eight dignitaries and holders of h1gh office for the rei~ of Pāpak, but s1xty-six for his own. The creation of the office of Ohnnazd rmbad seems to correspond to a grade of sacred fire. the Adur i Ohnnazd (on a gold coin of ~ābuhr II. American Numisma.tic Sodetij; the fire is ~buhr's, so it seems unlikely that.the inscription refers to the fire of h1s father. Onnfzd). Arm. Orrmd::zkan hur. The office survived well into the Sasan1an period; the ffre is not mentioned later on, hrony's theory? The kfng, although not pri1'IUB inter pCIJ'eB, was still reliant upon a system of hereditary off1ces over which the king did not have absolute control. Office was so closely linked to family, rather than to royal appointment, that Procopfus describes the name Mihrān not as a dynastic nal!W!, but as a title. The sal!W! historian {cited by Christensen, /lt:udak, p. 11) relates an incident which serves further to emphasize the hereditary character of Sasanian offices, an inheritance from the Parth1an, an~. probably, Achaemenian systems (on the Sasanian use of Parthian institutio ns, see Yarshater fn La Persia rv!l :Y edioevo). The fleefng king Kawād, Procopius relates, promised the office of but kanānzng to the first man who would declare al l egiance to him, instantly repented what he had said, for such offices go with bfrth. The first to hear his vow and declare loyalty was, fortunately, a llW!ri>er of the right fami ly. The story plays uoon the three variables of good fortune, the irrevocab ility of a royal promise, and the lin:its of royal power; it resent>les so'lll!what in thfs sense the Book of Esther, mentioned in the third lecture.

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Professor Morony appl fes utterly wrongly, the dualist confrontat1on of good and ev11 to the really complementary divfsfon of society fnto hfgher and lower classes. He says, 'Haterfal wealth was equated w1th the v1rtue and gonctiess inherent 1n the upper classes,' wh1lst 's1n and evfl (were) fnherent fn the lower classes.' Th1s fs, 1n essence, Āl-e Ahmad's sunmation of Sasanfan socfety as well . It strikes at the very root of the wor1~-aff1rm1ng Zoroastrian order, and is based, I think. on· many of the m1sconceptions I outlined above, together with a nunber of parallels which are not validly drawn. Wealth in Zoroastrianism fs regarded as l!Bde by Ahura Mazdā, who is invoked as raēvant~, Phl. rāyorrnnd 'rfch'. In Armenian, Aramazd 1s praised as the g1ver of parart-utcü.m'fatness, abundance' (a loan-word from Iranian). The other ya.zatas are fnvoked by their 1'aY'1 :1lczremthaSa 'wealth and glory'. There is evfdence that zoaēva- 'rich' was a royal epithet, cf. the name of the city of Rēw Arda~lr. There is also a Georgian prope_r name, Rev, from Iranfan„ and I have attempted to show in the Boyce Festschrift how Erevan fn Annenian might have been called Reven, an Iran1s1ng homonym of the city's Urartean name, based upon the naine of the place where the Parthian sacred f11'f! was enthroned, Rē'iand, later Rāvini, also meaning 'rich'. But the Zoroastrfan system,for all fts affinnatfon of life and wealth fn thfs world, never suggests that such joy ought to be rooted fn self-prfde, fn contempt for others, or fn excess. It is, self-evfdently, a system whose very difference fro111 Indo-Iranian paganfsm, from the materia11sm of c1ēt.1-parastih, 1s 1n the d1v1ne mora11ty that infonns all things. that is the source of their meaning and the basis of their existP.~ce. Poverty as destitution, Hkohih, fs regarded as an evil of Ahreman, like the other evfls that befall man, but evil cannot come from God and cannot therefore be regarded as a sign of heavenly dfsfavor. The kfng is the 135

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first among men, but all men are the creation of Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Sp1rft; nowhere in Zoroastrian doctrine could it be suggested that there is such radical spfritual inequality amongst rnen, or that demonic destitution reflects the judgement of Ohrmazd. There is a second kind of poverty, which is praised by Zoroastrianism. The Ahuna Vairya speaks of Ahura Hazdā's creation of a shepherd for the poor, dragübyo. Kaj Barr analysed this tenn, dragu-, Phl. driyoĪ, NP. &:zrin~. asa word for a believer, corresponding to the Chrfstian understanding of the poor in spirit. Such poverty has as its spiritual side the qualities of devotion and receptivity which we have seen in Vi~tāspa, and which are probably basie attftudes to the acceptance of any relfgion. On the physical side, Zoroastrian behavior varfed from the rational rnean enjofned in many an&zra. to mild ascet;cfsm and renunciation, of property and marital relations. The Sasanian church seems to have restrfcted the more ascetfc practices to prfests, who had the knowledge and self-control, presumably, to resist the te~ta­ tfon to self-mortification and the consequent rejection of the material world. The point of ascetfcism was to concentrate one's spiritual awareness, not to deny the world, as the Manfchaeans and some Christfans dfd in thefr practice. I have mentfoned that the priests setved as judges. Thefr office fs described and prafsed, fn relfgious documents and on their seals as driyoHān 'Yēzci:zgār.H:h, advocacy of the poor. ( The term i s di scussed by De Manasce fn ft1Bia11ges Ren:ri Masse, Tehran, 1963. It is found in Armenfan as Yatagov amenayn al'ke'loce 'intercessor for all the deprived", as a laudatory epithet of St. Nersēs in Pcawstos Buzand, see Garsoian, REArrrr, 1981. See also Perikhanyan Chshchestvo i ~o. pp. 359-60. In ."lēr.og i Xrad, XV. 20, it is the king himself who gives hayyārrrr:rncflh ud Yā~-gāwih 'aid and fntercessfon' to the poor, see J. Damesteter, Etudes IraniB7fl'U!s, II, Parts, 1883.• p. 155. In the same chapter of NX, s11eh good 136

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rule is called 'Mazdean'; created.)

THE MALICNEO SASANIAN ORDER

;ts opposite is

te~d

Ahriman -

The Sasanian empire was, like Catholic Europe, covered by a network of temples that provided a variety of what we would now call social services, such as education and care for the poor, and probably also medicfne, and perfonned ~ wide range of adninistratf ve functfons. Sasanian Zoroa ~ trianism certain1y served an opulent royal court, and thP. st ~ te suffered serious deffcfts because of rufnously expensfve mil itary campa igns. But none of this suggests that the country was prfest-rfdden, or that the Magi were the mere supparters of a cruel plutocracy, or, fndeed, th~t the latter were the only laHy in the land. Such a mf.staken view forces Morony later fn liis art i cle to postulate reforms rather than to -ecogn i ze conti nuity, when evi dence of Zoroas tri an 1ife after the Musl im conquest goes agafnst his views on the earlier period. Thus, the high-priesthood of the Hudēnān pēKābāy in 9th century Pārs he calls 're-established', although it traced its descent to the fourth-century Adurbād 1 Amahraspandān. He regards the and:zrz lfterature of the ninth-century books as a Zoroastrian accomroodation to its modest, often strai tened situation under Islam, but such moral tales in fact reflect the conditions of Sasanian life, and are usually attrfbuted to Sasanian clerfcs. The andara texts have close parallels amongst other peoples who did not share the conditions of post-Sasanian Zoroastrfans. Zoroastrian pfous foundations are attrfbuted to the influence of the Islamic u:zqf, but, whatever mutual contacts may have existed to modffy the Zoroastrfan system at a later date, and they are so sl ight as to be negl fgible, the Mazdean co11111Unal charftfes probably belong to the early days of the lranian state, if not of the Good Religion i t self. For veneration of the fravaiis at yearly feasts, and SD"cial foundations ir. the nemory of kings, go back to hoa ry a nt i qu i ty . One reca 11 s the sa criff ces for Cyrus at Pasargadae, for instance . The l.JCl.qf, as Perfkhanian demonstrates

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fn VDI, 1973, belongs to what Frye called 'the lranian conquest of lslam' . Morony finds even the invocatfon pad nām i ya;idān a twelfth-century calq~ on the expression bisrrriLiah, but P. Gignoux has rrore convincingly argued precisely the opposite, that the lslamfc expression is pre-dated by the lranian, upon which it is nost 1i~ely based ( see Gignoux in Pad Nām i ra;sdān, Travaux de l 'lnstitut d'Etudes lraniennes, Paris, 9, pp. 159-63) . The Sasanfans generally continued the tradftional policy of relfgious toleration,and their attitude towards the Jews, whose Resh Ga'luta often dfned wfth the King of Kings. contrasts with the growing ant·i-Semitfsm of the Byzantine legal code (and this despite increasfng evidence that Olristians and Jews had lived peacefully t9gether rrost ofthe tilll! in the early Olristian centuries). The Sasanian state tended to persecute primarily those Christians who were converts from Sasanian noble families, although there .ere manymore Iranians of lesser dignity who becallll! Christian and gelferally escaped ill-treatment. The beginnings of the lslamfc wriZlet system have been seen in the Sasanian organfzatfon of tolerated religious minorities, whose leaders were dfrectly responsfble to Ctesiphon, and, in the case of the Nestorfan Church, .ere forced to reside there. Sasanian behavfor towards loyal Olristians 'IMS correct, even cordfal -- Xusr0 11 dedicated a sflver plate to a Christian saint at Reshafa (see Peeters, Analsata BoHandiana, 1947. 5-56) -- but the fires of persecutfon, as S. Brock has suggested, we·re fanned by the suspfcion of Christfan loyalty to the Byzantfne enemy. Although Byzantfne-Sasanfan treatfes provided for the toleration of Christians in lran and magouaaioi fn Asia Minor, the Church of Persia flourfshed IChile the Mazdeans of Asia Minor are described by the fourth-century writer St. BasiT as a degraded, impoverished minorfty. llhen Byzantine actninistration of .its Annenian thfll'lls led to tlle astonishfngly rapid disappearance of the A~iln clyN~tfc f-11fes, and of all the national traditions att1ched to tlllll, ft ft 138

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scarcely surprising that the Zoroastrians should have vanished all the 111>re completely. It is against this background that one is to view Sasanian policy, which responded to provocation in a defensive and violent way, but generally was tolerant. The same could be said of the Achaemenids. The Sasanians seem to have regarded internal heresy as an intolerable threat. Just as Xerxes smashed the daivadlmas, we find Sasanian suppression of the cults of Mani and Mazdak, both of which had enjoyed periods of favor at the royal court and can scarcely be regarded as popular upheavals against social injustice. One finds no evidence that there existed at any stage the 'high-church' and '1 ow-churcti' dis ti ncti ons i n Zoroas tri ani sm coi ned by Prof. Wilferd Madeluri9 in his Columbia Lectures in lranian Studies, 1983, to provide a Pnlofer base for Mazdak. Rather, Mazdak's nechanistic, essentially at1•st direct way, while purporting to share the same origins and outward features. Manichaeism cherished the destitution which the Zoroastrian church sought to amel iorate, and threatened the social order which Iran had accepted as infonned by the divine. There is evidence in eastem Iran that the Sasanians destroyed Buddha images in Bactria ·and established fire-altars in their place (see B. Staviskii, Kushan-skaya Baktriya, Moscow, 1977, 176); perhaps Buddhism was seen as a threat too, but the extent of the spread of Buddhis11 in lran is not known {see Bulliet, Il'Cllt, 1976; also our rev. of Bailey in Īron-Nāmeh, Oct. 1983). The images of the Budclla 139

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(cf. NP. bot 'idol') could have been perceived generally as tmages to be broken, as in Zoroastrian Annenia (although the Buddha image evolved too late for the Buiti of the Vidēvdāt to have been Siddhartha), where Arda~ir 1 destroyed statues in the bagink:! of Bagawan. The Sasanians, then, did not differ greatly from their predecessors, at least in the fundamental principles of their l"Ule. They shared wfth the Achaemenians and Patthians a number of instf tutfons and palicies, whose millennial survival in the face of profound change vindicates the Zoroastrian understanding of man fn society. "1en lran was fnvadl!d, it was several centuries before most Iranians accepted lslam, and the turbulence of that period of acceptance indicates that conversion was strongly motfvated by economic desperation and just as strongly opposed by those who stOod to benefit from the taxes extorted from Zoroastrian lran •. But the new Islarnic order rested uneasily i_n Iran, and the tyrant presented himself as a 11berator from tyranny. A c011Ķ>lex of western prejudices, including romanticization of the Arabs and a process of analogy based upon a Protestant view of the Middle Ages, contributed to scholarly acceptance of the fals i fication of Sasanian history. This false picture continues to be presented by Islamicists, despite the evidence of Zoroastrian humanism and concem for the poor, the striking consistency of lranian tolerance, and the tenacity of Mazdean faith arrongst the cormnn people of Iran. The dark fmage of Sasanian history has obscured and stained all that came before, depriving our oresent culture of an important part of its foheritance. Iranian concepts of society and kingship reflect profound spiritual insight that has outlasted the sovereignty of . the Good Religion in the lands of its origin. The Ft:zraJc ut6s of the poor f n hea ven has she 1tered h f s driyoKān. strengthened them at their hearths or led them across the seas . 140

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They have l ived longer without thei r King

of Kings than 111der him, yet their lfght is undi11111ed, the light that shines in the dome of xlathra and promises greater flluminatfon to all the world.

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POSTSCRIPT Sfnce these lectures were read at Bombay, J. Balcer's valuable study of Achaemenian provincial administration, Sparda by the Bi tter Se,;, has been published by the Scholars Press. M. Morony's large work, Il'aq af'ter the f. fusZim Conquest, Princeton, 1984, essentially repeats the theses of his earlier articles, as for instance on p.296 : 'Magianism was essentially a ruling-class religion •.• efforts at creati ng a larger group ident ity by spreadfng the Magian way of life among cam1on Persians appear to have begun in the late Sasanian period.• Yet the writer of the ninth-century BundahiHn laments the fact that it is only the poor who have remained faithful and refused to convert to Islam. whilst the ri~h have flocked to the new faith to preserve their position. The forefathers of the Parsis do not appear to have been noblemen, either. Transcriptions of Pahlavi vary wildly in Morony's book, reflecting ignorance of the original texts~ and for Talmudic material he relies upon a sixty-year-old translation almost exc1usively. The Yazdis in Iran are most likely descendents of a long line of sturdy vastryā~ān. not impoverfshed nobles! It is regrettable that Morony's deprecations of a noble religion, based upon faulty premises, are likely to be received as the most important monograph on the period since Ch.ristensen's L'Iran Sons Les Sassanicks. It remains for me to thank the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute for their patfence during the revision of parts of these lectures for publication. J.R. RusseZl Navsa:ri

Bahram 9 August 198S.

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As is well known, the Armenian Church has for many centuries claimed apostolic ( arak'elakan) foundations: after the foundation legend of the Parthian Arsacid nobleman St. Gregory the Illuminator, first Thaddeus, and then Bartholomew succeeding him, came to be claimed as the real founders of the Church. The Illuminator is made to re-visit the scenes of their original missions during his own itinerary to destroy the shrines of Armenian nonChristian worship. The Greek ecclesiastical historians Eusebius and Socrates write that India was the scene of the apostolate of St. Bartholomew; Step'anos of Siwnik', who died in A.D. 712, is the first, as it seems, to claim that Bartholomew visited Armenia as well; he connects this mission to the already ex.isting legend that St. Thaddeus had visited the country.1 The text Narratio de rebus Armeniae, a Greek translation of ca. 700 from an Armenian original, claims that Bartholomew aperkhomenos eis Parthian ebaptisen en tā; Euphratēi potamāi ton anepsion tou bas.ileās Persān, «departed [India] into Parthia and baptised in the river Euphrates the nephew of the king of the Persians», at a place called Kalē Arkhē, probably Karin (modern Erzurum, in Barjr Hayk', Upper Armenia). 2 This narrative evidently includes Armenia in Parthia, or at least in the so-called "legende Parthe" of the apostle; the legend is found .in Latin, Greek, and Arrnenian versions of the life of Bartholomew. 1. M. VAN ESBROECK, «Chronique Armenienne,:o Analecta Bollandiana 80, 1962, 426. 2. M. VAN ESBROECK, «La naissance du culte de S. Barthelemy en Armenie,» REArm N.S. 17, 1983, 174.

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Within Arrnenia, it was further claimed that Bartholomew founded the Monastery of All Souls, Hogeac' Vank': the Letter of Movsēs Xorenac'i to Sahak Arcruni, an apocryphal document of the ninth or eleventh century, was designed to confer apostolic legitimacy upon the monastery. 3 Hogeac' Vank', or, as Lynch spells it according to Modern Armenian pronunciation and usage, Hogotz Vank, stands on the bank of the Mircem ~ay a few miles west of Kesrik, a town on the road leading directly south from Van. To the east of Kesrik, on the Kesrik su, is the fortress whose name Lynch on his map spells as Kangeva. In the vicinity of the monastery was Darbnac' K'ar, the Stone of the Smiths, the site of the heathen shrine St. Bartholomew destroyed. Hogeac' Vank' contained a famous sacred image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and was an important place of pilgrimage; the nearby fortress of Kanguar was in the days of the Arcrunid dynasty in Vaspurakan the chief stronghold of the district of Anjewac'ik.4 (Its name is variously attested as Kangeva, Kangever, Kanguar, and Kinkivar, in Armenian; Mas'ūdī apparently refers to it as ALKNKWR, the settlement of ALMAJRDAN in Azarbaijan.5 ) East of this area, in the contiguous district of Albak, on the shore of the Great Zab, is the Armenian Monastery of St. Bartholomew, a building of the thirteenth century. Bartholomew, asa missionary to the peoples of the East, was of obvious interest to the Armenians in their search for a suitable apostolic founder of their Church; they were only keeping up in the kind of rivalry in which the older Christian communities had engaged in the third century, with Rome claiming Peter and Paul; Ephesus, John or Luke; etc.6 The apostle in Parthia would also have confronted the Zoroastrian religion, the faith of Armenian Arsacid kings themselves before the Conversion, and, later, the militant creed of the Sasanian Persians, who on several oc3. VAN ESBROECK, «Chronique,» 428; R. W. THOMSON, tr., THOMAS ARTSRUNI, History of the House of the Artsrunik', Detroit, Ml: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1985, [213), [234 ], [235). 4. T. ARTSRUNI, loc. cit. 5. N. ADONTZ/N.G. Garsofan, Armenia in the Period of Justinian, Louvain, 1970, 175, 248, 43-7 n. 34, *205; H. HüBSCHMANN, Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen, repr. Amsterdam, 1969, 342-3; J. MARQUART, Erānšahr, Berlin, 1901, 24 6. See EJ. Goodspeed, A History of Early Christian Literature, Chicago, 1966, 27.

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casions attempted to force the Armenians to abjure Christianity and to retum to the Mazdean fold. In the ijfth century, the forces of St. Vardan Mamikonean looked to the Book of Maccabees as an example of courage and a consolation in thcir unequal resistance to the latter-day Antiochus, Yazdegerd II. The mission of Bartholomew offered episodes which if anything corresponded even more directly to Armenian experience, and thus invited adoption. The spurious Letter of Xorenac'i does not record any encounter between the apostie and the Persians, but a later Armenian Life of Bartholomew does so. The Vkayabanut'iwn srboy arak'eloyn Bardolomēosi «Martyrology of the holy apostle Bartholomew»7 has the apostie first at Edem near the borders of India. The people of the place worship demons who inhabit a well, creating terrifying apparitions of churning water and making thunderous noises. Bartholomew banishes the demons and seals the well, as a result of which the people become thirsty, and in their anger they pick up stones to throw at the apostle ( ew areal virgs i jefn kamēin arkanel i veray afak'eloyn).8 But he hinds them, and then creates a placid and sweet pool and baptizes them. He departs, and travels west to Assyria, where he raises the dead boy Andronicus. This episode is generally known in the versions of his life. The city, Bustr, has «seven shrines», ( ei5t'n bagink', like pagan Armenia), with «idols hammered and carved in the likeness of man, in the shape of Ares :a nd on the scale of Aramazd' ( kurk' .kfealk' ew k'andakealk' i nmanut'iwn mardoy, i jew Aresi ew i č'ap' Aramazday). The description of the statues is alliterative, recalling the pre-Christian epic fragment preserved by Xorenac'i on the erection of the palace of Eruand (Movsēs Xorenac'i 11.65: ... kfel kop'el zdurnn Eruanday ark'ayi), and the mixture of Greek and Parthian names also recalls the style of Xorenac'i: Ares corresponds to either Mihr or Vahagn (Mi0ra, V;)r;)0rayna), both of whom have characteristic and well-documented iconography, whilst Aramazd (Ahura Mazdā), conversely, is used to translate Zeus, whose statue would have been larger than those of the other Hellenic gods. Bartholomew destroys the statues, to the understandable conster· nation of the locals, and departs for the lands of the Parthians, Medes, and Elymaeans- the same order as the men of the nations 7. Text in Vark' ew vkayabanut'iwnk' srboc', 1, Venice, 1874, 200-211. 8. Jbid„ 202.

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at Penteco st in Acts 2.9. Nothing untowar d happens here; quite to the contrary , «many of the Parthian s turned to the Lord» ( bazumk ' i Part'ewac'n darjan i Tēr) and he «illumin ated many there» (lusaworeal and bazums ).9 Then, though, «he went to the regions of the Persians and the Magi, and began to preach to them his customa ry teaching, the Gospel accordin g to Matthew, and whateve r proofs there were concern ing the Magi he laid before them. He reached the place of worship of their fire-temple, which they worship ped accordin g to the laws of Magiani sm, and raising his hands to the east against the Sun, which they worship ped, he forbade it and caused the power of its rays to fail until the sixth hour of the day. Anda sign from heaven - a column of fire - stood in the midst of the fire-tem ple to rebuke with terrors and great marvel their erroneou s ways, rather than that they should worship Helios, and Sep'ay, and Ares and Prenay. But even though so many great marvels and wonderf ul signs were shown from on high, he did not terrify them into turning away from their worship of the element s, in which they were mistake n in supercil ious pride by their false mythology. But only eight, whom he took, did he enlighte n, removin g them from the midst of that ruined and barbarous nation.» 10 He proceed s to Goh'n in Armenia , a region in the southea st of the country associat ed also with the mission of St. Thaddeu s (just as fictitiou sly). Golt'n is the source of the heathen songs quoted by Xorenac'i; St. Mesrop in the fifth century found that many pre-Chri stian practice s survived with tenacity there. Bartholo mew is seized and tortured by the Armeni an king, Sanatruk. Then he is cast out of the city. Dying of his wounds, he prays that God send the country (Armenia) a pastor (Arm. hoviw). The tomb of the saint is said to be in Korbano polis, or in Ourbano polis «of Greater Armenia » (tēs Megalēs Armenias), or simply en Alban.ēY; St. Marouth a, fifth century «discovered» the apostle's remains at a place called Obianos, in Barm. Various explana tions have been propose d for these puzzling names; perhaps the place is Areban/ Arabion , the castle of Mānī in the Acta Archelai. 11 Sanatru k's daughte r, named, plausibl y, Sanduxt , is said to have become a Christia n, for which she suffered martyrd om, and Xorenac'i reports that her relics and those of 9. Ibid., 207, 208. 10. Ibid., 208. 11. See VAN ESBROE CK, «Chronique,» 426-8.

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St. Thaddeu s were taken to a «rocky place» - Ann. arapar - at Valarša pat (modem Echmiad zin) (Movsēs Xorenac'i II.34). Perhaps the Arrnenia n word is a rational ization of a name like Areban or Obianos, but this is mere speculat ion. The version of the life of Bartholo mew discusse d above appears to bear the stamp of Armenia n anti-Sas anian propaga nda : it is the Persians who are associat ed with the Magi and «Magianism» (mogut'i wn). It is they who remain recalcitr ant and hostile, yielding only eight converts to the Christia n faith, whilst the Par· thians accept Christia nity en masse. The mention of Sun-wor ship is common place, and seems to have been, with fire-worship (Ann. krakaran), the most conspicu ous feature of Zoroast rianism for Armenia ns; the small commun ity of Armenia n Zoroast rians who survived to recent times were called Areword ik' «Childre n of the Sun» 12 • The worship of the element s (erkrpag ut'iwn tarerc'n ) correspond s to the term tarrapa štut'iwn «idem» used of Mazdean s elsewhe re in the old Armenia n sources : Zoroast rians offer reverence to the seven chief material creation s of Ahura Mazdā, and to the seven Am;}ša Sp;mtas - divine Bounteo us Immorta ls - who preside over them. Of the Persian gods, Helios and Ares, are obvious: Sep'ay and Prenay are both genitives of unknow n names. Pfenay may be Farnah «Divine Glory» or the like; less likely is Gk. phrēn «mind», to translat e Mazdā «Wisdom». Sep'ay could be Sophia, badly mangled , but Persian sapāh «army» is also a faint possibility, referrin g to the heavenly host of the Fravašis , the mighty spirits of the righteou s departed (cf. Av. hamaspa0maēdaya-). Speculation seems fruitless here. There is another account of Bartholo mew's mission, in the so - called «History of the Hi'ip'sim ean Virgins» which seems to derive from local Vaspura kan traditio n and to celebrat e St. Bartholome w's mission in Anjewac 'ik', where he visited the Rock of the Smiths: «Many demons (dewk') lived in that rock, and they deceived the people of the place, giving ( them) in that place potions of sickness (dels axtakan s) ... they made the sounds of smiths striking anvils, with terrible wonders and terrors (ahawor hrašiwk ' ew zarhuranāk '). The people of the country were accusto med to them and lingered at the cave [k'arayrin; another reading is k'urayin «at the crucible», i.e., where potions were prepare d for 12. See J. R. RUSSELL, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, Cambridg e, Ma: Harvard Univ. Press, Harvard Iranian Series, Ch. 16 (in press).

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them] ... the place was named Darbnac' K'ar. The holy apostle arrived and expelled the smiths, the collaborators of the evil one, and shattered the idol, which was named as Anahit (zkursn p'šreac' or yanun Anahtay ēr). 13 The same narrative explains that the potions were love potions like the ones rnade by Cyprian :to make Justīne fornicate with him. 14 Cyprian as a Christian convert is the hero of the popular lzistoriola of Kiprianos read by Armenians to this day to protect themselves against sorcery. 15 The wonders and terrors recall the sound effects at the well of Edem, or Bartholomew's own efforts at the fire-temple of the Persians. The text seerns to be basec.l loosely on the style of the Martyrology already discussed, though it seems likely that there was a shrine of the Lady Anahit at the place; her association with matters of love and procreation was traditional. 16 The mention of Cyprian seerns to confirm that the text is late, and heavily influenced by folk religion and tradition. The tradition of Bartholomew at the Rock of the Smiths survived locally; it is retold at length in a late mediaeval panegyric, the Nerbolean vipas( an)akan i p'oxumn Astuacacin Kusin ew yalags patkerin srboy, or bereal hanguc'aw (t)esč'ut'eamb Hogoyn i sahmans Anjewac'eac', i telin koč'ec'eal Hogoc' Vank' «Epic Encomiurn on the Assu:ŗnption of the Virgin Mother of God and on the holy picture which by the supervision of the (Holy) Spirit was brought and enshrined within the borders of Anjewac'ik', at the place called Hogoc' Vank',» of the priest-scholar Nersēs Mokac'i (b. ca. 1575, d. 1625). Born at Asknjavs, Mokk' .(the district on the western side of Anjewac'ik'), Nersēs was connected with the Amrdolu Monastery of Balēš (Bitlis), the Mec Anapat (Great Wilderness) of Siwnik', and the monastic community of Lim Island in Lake Van. Mokac'i wrote the first hundred stanzas in 1609, and the last three hundred are attributed to Step'anos šataxec'i, his 13. Cited in Fr. L. Ališan, Hin hawatk' kam het'anosakan krānk' Hayoc', Venice, 1910, 42. 14. Ibid., 434. 15. See, for example, Girk' alāt'ic' or koč'i Kiprianos «The book of prayer which is called Cyprian », subtitled Vasn amenayn azg pataharac' ork' gan i veray mardoy «For all kinds of misfortunes which come upon a man». Eleventb edition, Jerusalem: Armenian Convent of St. James', 1966.

16. See RUSSELL, Zor. Arm„ Ch. 7.

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BAD DAY AT

141 BURZĒN

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pupil and a native of the same area. 17 The poem describes the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the apostles visit her bedside and make an image of her on cypress wood. She blesses it so that people in her absence may worship it (erkrpagin). It has the power to vanquish deformity and leprosy (ankerp axtin ew borotin). Bartholomew does not arrive in time to see the body of the Virgin - she has ascended - but he is given the sacred image, which will ultimately repose in Hogwoc' Vank'. 1 translate the stanzas in which are described the apostle's journeys to the East and Armenia : 18 Then he greeted his brothers And turned eastward again, To go to that diocese ( vičakn) Where Sanatruk had kfüed Thaddeus. Lifting up the inviolable treasure He departed for northern Mesopotamia (mijerkrays); Passing through that diocese He went again to the place of the Magi (mogastans), To the city of Khorasan (Minč' i k'alak'n Xorasan), The throne of their kingdom (At'or noc'a ark'ayut'ean), Where he extinguished the fire-altar (Ur ew šijoyc' zkrakarann) And established light in place of fire. And he set up, agaii.nst the Sun, The Giver of light to the souls of men, And for three hours he darkened This created source of light. But he caused not to grow with holy seed That rock which bears no fruit, Save eight who were chosen And were baptized by him. With them he turned away And turned once again towards Armenia, Entering the province of Golt' (sic!) And converting many to the Lord. 17. Text ed. by A. DOLUXANYAN, Nerses Mokac'i, Banastelcut'yunner, in the series Hay k'narergut'yan matenašar, Erevan, 1985, 77-143. 18. Text, Mokac'i, 118 f .

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He established the unsullM, ~. r"•t U. /lwrpn.._'llJ.l,nvf n•'-'llz._,,,l',,,,_p1r.,, -4.„~,,,.'bn·ul:L r r:>tāt , Wbolcness and lmmortality, thc waters and the plants, givc their namc to a flower used in an Ascension Day rit- l. lranian Aša. val cmploying watcr and plants together.2 Tbe word is cognatc to Olnd. r:ta-. and corOmanos, pcrhaps Vohu · Manah, was is to OPers. (a}rta-, the form most beptad rcsponds Tbe worshipped in Asia Minor.• 11amed in a speech of Christiari bishops rc- commonly follnd as an element of bistorical 1ponding to tbc Mazdcans in thc tcxt of Eliše: Iranian namcs from thc. Achzmen ian period Mihr (Mi9ra), they aay, is hamharz lčaj ~wl- on. LUders rcndercd Vcdic Ŗta as ••Trutb"; as non-lndo11erordač astuacoi •• (but an) adjutant or the a conccpt it finds closc parallels in mighty scvcn gods."• After tbe destructio n Europcan idcas,e. g., Old Egy. maat, ~order, wrought by tbe Christians, rccords of Zoroas- arutb, corrcctncss, .rigbt, authcntic ity as a trianism in Armenia are fragmentary, yet the cbaracteristic of tbe order of Jifc,"' and AkbBut absence of any direct mention of Aša Vahišta, 4lian lcīttu and mflaru, as „mora! right" .• dcorrcspon closcst thc fmds term Fire, with Jrimian the associated ness, Righteous Bcst tbc rcligion. Vedic in cxpect, would of c one cncc, as is striking, because of the grcat importanc thc divinity in thc Zoroastrian system. ln this Aša, as a principle of universa! order and of paper it is proposed to present a dii;cussion of truth, serves as a matrix or mediator of word the role of Afa in thc Zoroastrian system and and action, as well as being a discrete being, to suggest bow the concept of thc divinity of cf. the Av. formula aili] hačā "according to Aša", i. e„ rightly. Amongst the various natural phenomena, firc was sccn to be similarly pervasive, and corrcspondenccs bavc been • (Communication to thc 1986 Mccting oft hc Association lntcrnationalc dcs Ētuclcs Armčnicnncs , Brusscl>.) 1 Scc J . R. Russcll, Zoroastrianism in Armtnia. Harnrd lranian Scries, Cambridgc, MA. 1987 (in prcss) (hcreaftcr Zor. Arm. ), Ch. 10. 1 tbid.. Ch . 12. ' lbid. . Cb. 14. • E. Ter-M ina!Can, cd., EliJri Vasn Vardanay rw Hayoc' l'a1'razmin , Ercvan, 1957, 35 lincs 7-8.

• F. Kuipcr, -Rcmarks on tbc A~stan Hymn lo M itllra," JIJ 5, 1961-2, 42. • B. Gci1cr, -Ŗta und Vcrwandtes," WZXM 4, 19H, 108.

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notcd betwccn Av. Aša and thc Vcdic god of the immediatc and the temporal to thc perfect firc. Agni, who in thc Ŗg Veda possesscs thc and the fīna l. frcqucnt cpilhet ņāvan- "possessor of ņa".1 ln Jn thc Gā8ās. Aša appears to be closely asthe Zoroastrian scriplure, firc as thc sevcnth crcalion permcatcs thc othcr six (sky, watcr, sociated with thc cvents of the fīnal Renovacarth; plants. animals. man). It is aša.aojah- tion of the univcrse, Fraš6.k:>rti, Aša holds fi"strong through Aša" (Y. 43.4), a rcminder nal rcwards and punishmenls (Y 51.4), and of Aša (Y. 43 .9) ; the Sun is thc grcalest of Ahura Mazdā will apportion thcse through physical fircs. and lhc )ink between conccpts S~nta Mainyu, the Bounleous Spirit, and Atis further affirmed in that the movement of ar, Fire, with the aid of Ārmaiti and Aša (Y. the grcal celestial luminary is in accord with 47.6). Such passages alludc cvidenlly to th e Aša.• The Sun is in the Veda, similarly, asso- role of Aša in melting the mclals in the mounciatcd with Ŗ ta, of which it is called the tains to create the burning river of purgation twcl vc-spoked whecl.' The formai systems through which the rcsurrected gcncrations elaboratcd by Jndians and lranians appear to must pass, " tbe requ itals with thc (molten) rcstatc the ancicnt lndo-European homology iron" of Y. 30.7. Equally, Aša plays a role in of Sun and cycs, '0 the lattcr thc organs of sight the aftcrlifc; according to thc Greater or lraand, hencc, of the capacity to distinguish what nian Bundahišn, 26.35, thc duty (Phl. xwēš­ is truc, rcal, and righl (cf. Arm. čšmarit lūirīh) of Ardwahišt is to make surc tbat sin"truc", lit. "seen by the cyc", a loan-word ners in hell are not punished beyond thcir defrom Parthian). Though rightcous behavior serts. Jn Vedic, ŗiāvan is an epithct of the and virtue bere in this life are obviously the Gods, the deceased fathers, and thc initiated primary rcasons for any religious sy5tem to seers (kavi-); ŗta- itself is connected to tbe evolve a concept of cosmic order sucb as Aša, rea1m of death, being bidden "wberc they unand Z.Oroastrianism is perbaps tbe most life- harness the horses of tbe Sun." 11 Tbe term for affirming of ali tbe great faitbs, it is in tbe na- lhe place of imharnessing of borses, Av. avanture of the religious quest also to look beyond lūilii, loc. sg., ·appears to be used by Zara9uštra in Y. 33.5 in an cscbatological sense; it is possible tbat bc expressed bis original vision of the end of tbe world in the poetical terms of ' Sec L H. Gray, Tltt FouNl11ti011S of tltt J,..,,;111t R~ the dcath or the individual which alrcady li,ions. Bomt.y, 1929,Rpr. 1930,38, 44. cxisted in lndo-lranian re)jgion. As bis reli• Sec Y. Yamamoto, "'Tbe Z«outrian laDplc c.lt ol &ion evolved, believers elaborated tbe details firc ill arcbuolasy and liicratuR, r Orit111 1s, 1979, 25. again following tbe imagery A aumber oi Jn.nian elements appoar IO bc iw-nt iD tbe of' thc apocalypse, is aliamanistic rcliaions d Sibcria, probebly dilJiued from of' their Propbet: the Savior at Fra.šO. lt~r~tipre-blamic Centra! Asia. Amonast thcac wouJd appcar 1o IWlled, 1ignificantly, Astva1.:.r~ta. after the llc tbc belief ol the Saaai peoplc, nconled by N. F. &ata- Gallic pbrase ostvaJ aiilm llyāJ „May Aša beand wanm cv.,. in 1897, tbat "'llle spiril 111 rare come corporeal!"" Tberc is some evidence cry livin1 tbing; u 100n u tbc lpirit clcpuu from tllis bcfrom tbc OPers. inscriptions that thc term in1. it dies, tbat is, tbc body is returncd to tbc cartb and (a)rtāvan- was an epithet of the dcad: Xcrxes tbc soul joins tbc lesions or apiriu tbat wandcr over the carth" (cit. by N . A. Alcksccv, S~omanizm t)'Mrloyoadvises those who desire šiyāta ahani}" j žva

"°"'

6ychnylch norodo1· S ibiri. Nov05ibirsk, 1984, 73). • See M . Bloomfield, Tht ReliĶion oftlle Yeda, 1908, 126-7, cit. by Janc Harrison, Tliemis, lrd cd„ Cambridgc, 1927, repr. 1962, 526-7. Thc usociation or .A!a in Zoroastrianism • ·ith firc, and espccially with thc luminarics of hcaven. aecms 10 have inspired tbc unsrammatic.al isolation or the words Alam. ycnhc. raoči as a propcr namc (Yt . 13.120, mcaning ~Ala, wboae aR the li&bts") from Y. 12. 1, in wbich Ah and thc U,hts aR bolb dc1eribed as bclonging 10 Ahura Mazdā. • See 8. Lincoln. M }'lh, Cosmos, and Socirty, Cambridgc, MA„ 1986, 17, 33.

" F. Kuiper, rev. of U. Bianchi, Zamīin i Ohrmazd. llJ l,21S. " On this and similar formations, aomc explained on thc btiis or Vedic vcrses containing thc words wbich makc up tbc Avcslan namc, ICC M . Mayrbofer, Z11m No-nsgut drs A.,,,sto. Vicnna, 1977, para. 4. 1.

177

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urā marta artavā ahaniy "May I be happy while alive and may I be artāvan when dead!" to worship Ahura Mazdā with corrcctly-performed rituals (artāēa brazmaniya) ." Thc spirits of the dead rcceive reverence amongst Zoroastrians as uyrāfravašay6 aiīiu114m "the powerful guardian-spirits of thc righteous";" in later litcrature, the term Ardafravaš or Ardafravard is used interchangeably witb Aš6ān in rites for the dead."

Aša, as is secn from the forcgoing, is associated not only with truth and cosmic order, bu t with justice. The fravaši, guardian of thc righteous man in his life asa sort of spirit-double, is vengeful aftcr death if hc suffers wrong. ln the Cyropaideia of Xenophon, the dying Cyrus invokes the vengeful powcr of those who died suffering injusticc (tiln adika pathonton)." Antiochus of Commagene records 11 his lrano-Greek hierothesion on Nemrut Dag that be preserves ''a just counterfeit ļmim"ēma dikaion) of the immortal tbouJht (phrontis) which oftentimes stood by mc as a

" XPh 47-51 , in ll. -Kcnt, O/d l'rrriott, Ncw· Hann, l9SJ, ISI. Tbc phruc .UUIJ br1U""'11i:yo i1 a a u; lao '-s CVCD propoucd lo - tbc Āramak ļlrql. W- ia tbe aeconc1 wmd. M. Scbwartz in tbe 0-hrilp Hutory of lran. Vol. 11 Cambridae, 1985, 619, llu lllllJClted tbat •tīilā rden lo t•e being Arta, on tbc analOI)' 111 Aw. diJ lata. M. lloaolyubov, ~Ir. an~vovd.oi udpisi K.erka ," Ud. 'Zllp. Lntl~d•o Uaiv. «15, Smyo lowd. 11011k 24.1, Lcnīoarad, 1981, l , llOla Ik auociation or A!a witb formai wor1bip in Y. '°.7. On lbc pllruc ace M. Boyce, A History of z,,,oostrionism, 11, Hb. d. Or. I. 8. 1. 2. 2a, Lciden, 1982, 17S-6. Tbc Sasanian priesl kartir in his insription•, c. g„ KNRm pera. 22. alao af.

_,o-

fums thal the ardāy "riļh1co1" onc" asccnds to bcaven ar1er dcath; bis words may follov.· • canon or formulae aoing badt to thc 0Pcr5. tcau tbemsclvcs, acc P. 0 . Skjaerve " Tbcmatic and Lm1u11ic Parallcs in tbc Achacmenian and Sassanian JnscripLion," Ac1a Jranico 25, Lcidcn, 1985, 601. " C. Bartholomae, Altiro•isdies Worttrbuch, StraslburJ, 1904, 992- 5. " Sec B. N. Dhabbar, T/u P"sian Riv6y111s of Hormo6J6r Fromorz, Bombay, 1932, 170-2. " Cit. by J . Bidez. F. C..mont, us Mores Htl/Jnisls. Paris, 1938, I, 185.

65 7

ltindly hclper in my kingly endeavors," presumably hisfravaši." Aša, thcn, is truth, order, righteousncss, and justice. It is associated witb firc, and with the greatcst physical fire, the Sun. It is an at· tribute of the spirit. and of the man who ascends at dcath to Heaven. lts fire will play an important part in thc final judgement and lhc rcdemption of tbe world. It is invoked and claimed by Kings.

2. Greece. Plutarch, De Jside et Osiride, 46, ide.ntifies Jranian Aša with afētheia " trulh"; and when Epimenides slept his sleep of initiation in thc cave of Diktaean Zeus, "hc mel with the gods, and with divine intercoursc, and with Trutb (Alēthcia) and Justice (Dikē) ."" Truth and Justice appear to be attained through askisis, rigorous training in orefi, virtue or excellence; Plutarcb writes, „to those who imitate him iD Yirtue, God gives a 1bare of his Eunomia and Dikē."" Persian religion was seen often, as iD the Menipp11s of Lucian, in terms of ascetic practices and initiations followed by revelatory visions, probably OD tbe modei of prbJed accounts of the life of Zara9uštra, 10 it is not impossible that tbe statements cited about diltē and AJētbeia are inspired in part by lranian ideas of Ala. The idea of asceticism and tbe life of contemplation seem remotc from ·tbe activc, ethical life prescribed by normative Zoroastria.nism, yet it 1eems that in ancient times some religious lranians practiced aucb a life. Dinkord VJ reflects it, though real mortification of tbc body was never favored; a life of 111 measured simplicity, rather, is indicated. ln Babylonian the of 55a Batra Tractate Babo Talmud is found this passage: "PRDKT bclps the cily [in thc payment of the poll-tax) but

" Gray, Fo11Nlotions. 71 . • Maximus ot Tyrc, cit. by Harrison. Tltemis, S3 and 526-7. " Ibid„ BO. citing Plur.arch, Ad. princip. i1ttn1d. • Sce S. Sbakcd, Tiit Wisdom o/ tht Sasanion Sorn (Dinkord YIJ. Bouldcr, CO. 1979, lntro., UJtvii.

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only when the city has saved him (paying his poll-tax for him]. lf then 'NDYSK' [saved him by the fact that he was not entered on the lisl of the taxpayers]. that is God's help (and he is nol obliged to thc: city for anything]." Medilr val commcntators take 'NDYSK' to mean "tax collc:ctor, notary". As for the first term PRDKT. it is suggested that it is a loan from a MPers. pardāxtag. to be understood as one who has "complctcly abandoned worldly affairs, completely given over to the rel igious. contcmplative life."" Jf the inlerpretation is right, wc have a word for a follower of the contemplativc life which was well lmown enough to be used in the Babylonian Talmud asa term for a Sasanian Luftmensch; it would tally well with Greek allusions to Persian contcmplativcs. Wc shall return presently to thc _question of contcmplation and Aša.

Jt appears that the prc-Socratics Hippasus and Heraclitus may havc bccn aware of the Zoroastrian doctrines concerning Aša. Heraclitus wrote, ''This cosmic order, which is the same for ali, was not made by any of the gods .or of mankind, but was ever and is and shall bc ever-living fire, tindled in measure and quenched in measure." Fire is seen to be present in various otber substances, including water, as in Zoroastrian doctrinc.„ Aristotle was familiar witb the writing of Hippasus, whom . he mentions, and it 1eems bardly fortuitous that justice (to dilcoion) in the Nicomachean Ethics, J 134b, when universa] and uncbangeable, is oompared to fire, "whicb burns herc and in Persia" (hfJsper to pyr lc.ai enthade kai en Persais kaiti). Aristotlc goes on to distinguish between universa! and political forms of justice. Onc recalls from Hcrodotus that the Persians werc similarly fascinatcd by the variant and sometirnes contradictory ideas of right and wrong they cncountered amongst

11

Scc Y. Solodukho, Mhrsian Borrowings in tbc Babylonian Gcmua.'' in J. Ncusncr, cd„ Solodukbo, SC111itt

VirwsofTalm11dicJ11daism, Lcidcn, 1973, 102. " Scc J. Duchesnc-Guillcmin. MFire in lran and in Grcecc,'' Eall and w„s1. Romc, 1962. n:pr. in DucbesncCl11illcmin. O~ra Mi1t0r11, lll, Tchrān, 1978, 12.

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the nations thcy subducd, whom thcy subjectcd to a singlc law." ln the samc work, Aristotlc sets out to show how happincss, eudaimonia, is the activity of man according to virtuc, aretē!' dcdaring happincss the chief good (1097b). Later hc: proposes, " lf happiness is activity in accordancc with virtue (kar' arerēn), it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with thc: highcst virtue (kara tēn kraristēn) , and this will be that of the best th ing (tou aristou)" ( 1l 77a). This happiness consists in contcmplation of an absolute good which is divine and pcrfect. Jf one substitutes thc term Aša for Gk. aretē, one arrivcs at a paraphrase of the great Zoroastrian rnantric prayerofY. 27.14:

Afam

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vohū vahišt~m asrī

uštli

astī ustā

cryday conccrns» (such as making money for thc tax man to collect ). The Afam Vohū is one of the most frequcntly rccited Zoroastrian prayers, second only to the Ahuna Vairya, so it is possible that Aristotle was familiar with a translation or paraphrase of it which influenced his own thinking. It is scen that lranian ideas concerning thc interrc:lationship of fire, cosmic ordcr, justicc: and truth carly werc considc:red by Grcek philosophers; Aristotle himself appears to have been awarc of some of thcse ideas. It is most likcl y that lranian thought, again, helpcd to give refincd form to conccpts already present from lnd-Europcan antiquity: the link between light, sight, truth, and, hence, the Sun . It may bc expcctcd that lranian Aša will be scen in Armenia, closer as it was to lran, in stili brighter focus.

ahmāi hyaJ alai '1ahištāi asilm.

"Righteousncss is tbc best good. It is happiMay we bavc bappiness. -R.ightcousness belongs to the Bcst Righteousncss." Aristotle'5 to ariston is contemplation of tbe divine, the activity of the Persian pardāxtag. one supposes. for the lranian, the „best things" are 'the teacbings or the Gā8ās, cf. Y. 30.2, Sras~r to pyr lcoi enthade lcai en Persais lcaiei). Aristotlc gocs on to distinguish bctwcen universa) and political forrns of justicc. One recalls from Hcrodotus that the Pcrsians wcrc similarly fascinated by thc variant and somctimcs contradictory idcas of right and wrong thcy encountered amongst

" Sec Y. Solodukho, MPcnian llom>wings in tht Babylonian Gtmara," in J. Neusncr, cd., Solodukho, Sovitl l'irws o/Talmudic J„daism. Lcidtn, 1973, 102. 11 Set J. Duchesnt-Guilkmin, MFirc in lran and in Gn:cct," East aru/ Wt'n. Rome, 1962, repr. in DuchesneGuillcmin, OJN'a Mi1t0ra, lll, Tebrin, 1978, 12.

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thc 11ations they subducd, v.•hom thcy subjected to a single law." ln the same work, Aristotlc sets out to show how happiness, eudaimonia, is thc activity of man according to virtuc, aretē,„ declaring happiness the chicf good ( I097b). Later he proposes, "lf happiness is activity in accordance with virtue (kat' aretēn), it is rcasonable that it should bc in accordancc with the highcst virtue (kara tēn lcratisiēn) . and this will bc that of thc bcst thing (tou arisrou)" ( l l 77a). This happiness consists in contcmplation of an absolutc good which is divine and perfcct. J( onc substitutes thc term Aša for Gk. areiē, onc arrivcs at a paraphrase of thc grcat Zoroastrian mantric praycr of Y. 27.14:

Ašilm

Armenian and lranian Studies

vohū

vahištilm

asrī uštā astī usrā

ahmāi hyaJ alai vahištdi asilm.

"Rigbtcousncss is tbc best good. It is happi-ncss. May we havc happincss. -Rightcousness bclongs to thc Bcst Rigbtcousncss." Aristotlc•s to ariston is contemplation of thc divinc, tbe activity tbc Persian partlāxtag. onc supposcs. For the Iranian, thc "bcst thinas" are ·thc tcacbings of the Gāflās. cf. Y. 30.2, Sracr tā g.!JuJ.iiš t1ahiltā „Listcn witb your cars to the bcst things!" This is thc tāh'ānīg "Gā9ic" wisdom often laudcd in tbc Pahlavi books, wbich, as it aecms, was to IODlC dearce ~c1ervcd for a spiritual Elite remOYcd from cv-

or

• Herodotu, Histtwks, 3.39; - J. IL Rusaell, M Aristolle and tbe ...U- YaA11 ,„ .l.oroutrian Studics Nt'Wskrt"'· Bombay, 1986. • R.elated asa cagnatt to a„a-, ..,. J. Poltomy, lodor„""'nisd„s Ety""""8iscll„s WZJrt„hch. 1, Bcrn, 1959, .56, relatcd also to Latin ritus (cf. the association witb lwarmaniya "rites",abovc). Tbere is in Gn:ck 1 Jater loan from lranian meaning "the righteollS deceased". a'laios, llCC Schwartz. op. cit.• 689. It does not setm that tht stress on the afterlife must contradict the usagt according to which tbc ,,Savan is a liYing riahteous man; afttr death be is judged to bave been righteous. Tbt Zoroastrian is encouraged to takt a positive .XW ol •imsclf ia lift (aee, e. a„ Cida1 Andan f l'(Jryl>tlt.~Iān, pua. 2, in which tbe believer dcclares that lit is a man, DOt 1 dtw, one oi the (!ood f-lūirr} - though in Ibis tcs.t, too, the •ord olifiiw "righteous„ is ased only in conncction with lhe moment dtcease, panl. 32).

or

eryday conccrns" (such as making moncy for šir, Artašam (from • Artaršam?), and, attcsted the tax man to collcct ). The Aš;,m Vohü is onc in Greek transcription, Ardoatēs (cquivalcnt of the most frequently rccitcd Zoroastrian to OPcrs. Artavardiya-"'). and Artapatēs praycrs, sccond only to thc Ahuna Vairya, so (with -pati 'rulcr'). Art(a)- with cndings alone it is possiblc thal Aristotlc was familiar with a appcars in Artak, Artēn (the Jattcr found also translation or paraphrasc of it which in- in Aramaic as 'rzyn"') . Of particular intercst is flucnced his own thinking. It is sccn that lra- Arti( with an old ending possibly scen in the nian ideas conccrning thc intcrrelationship of theophoric name Haldita, an Armenian , fathfirc, cosmic order. justicc and truth carly werc er of Arxa, mcntioned in the Behistun inscripconsidercd by Greek philosophcrs; Aristotle tion of Darius." The cnding is scen also in thc himself appears to have been awarc of some of theophoric name Tirii, which contains the thcse ideas. It is most likely that lranian name of the lranian yazata Tir, whosc temple thought, again, hclpcd to givc refined form to in Armenia, Erazamoyn, stood near Artaša t." conccpts alrcady prescnt from Indo-European Artīt' is found with an apparently G reck cndantiquity: thc link betwccn light, sight, truth, ing as Artit'ēs in the Arm. text of Agathangeand, hencc, the Sun. It may bc expected that los as thc name of the son of a hcathen priest, lranian Aša will bc sccn in Armenia, closcr as who was trained and ordained as a bishop by St. Gregory the llluminator (he is called Arit was to lran, in stili brightcr focus. tios in thc Greck tcxt)." for the lheophoric namc Tirik, well documcntcd, tbcrc is in Aga3. Aregakn ardaru{ean 1Hayastan cageal. thangelos the similarly Hcllcnising parallcl Tirikēs, also son of a bcathen pricst," and otbThe namc Aša Vahišta is not found in Ar- er Hclleno-Jranian names, such as Mesakēs, mcnian. Thc sccond montb of tbc Z.Oroastrian tbe namc of a priest or Vahagn, Uxtanēs of calendar is namcd aftcr tbe Am;,ša S~nta, Scbastia, a tenth-ccntury bishop and historiand the namc docs ap~ in tbe Cappadocian and Vrt8nēs, cldest son or St. Grcgory, c;alcndar, whosc forms wcre raxcd in thc suggest thc prcscncc in Armcnia of a mixcd Achacmcnian period, as Arlaestin Araiota, or population and culturc analogous to the condiArzastēs.• Jn Arrnenian, thc namc of thc .scctions on the Saka Black Sca Jittoral or in Ponond month, Hoļi, is simply a Caucasian word tus, wherc is attcstcd thc most famous Hclleincaning "llCCOnd". Tbe Am;,ša S~nta givcs Īio-Jranian tbcophoric name of ali, Mithrillis namc also to thc lhird day of tbe 7.oroastri- &tēs. an montb; in Armenian, thc third day is Aram," which probably is unrelatcd to arta-. - Thc prcsence of a number of theophoric (Aram was onc of the lcgcndary ancestors of names with arta- in Armcnian suggests tbat Armenians were acquainted witb Iranian Aša. the Armcnians). For, although Ardawan and Artašēs arc fairly A numbcr of propcr namcs are found in common in various forms and probably indiArm „ howcvcr, with arta-; some form the bacatc lranian political influence more tban the sis of toponyms.• The names are: Artawan, prcscncc of belief or cult, thc "Armenian" Artawazd (cf. Av. Ašavazdah- ), Artašēn form Artii suggcsts that Armcnians werc ("Whosc abode is arta?" Arm. Šēn, Olr. aware of arta-, asa concept, or of Aša asa disšayana- ). Artašēs (OPers. Artaxša~a- ), Arta-

an,

• Set M. Mole, CMlrr. Myth 1987

tinct Am~a Sp;mta. Thc nature of thc evidencc for pre-Christian rcligion in Armcnia is such that it would bc most unlikcly to encountcr any cxtcnsivc statcmcnt of mora] or metaphysical teachings. Wc find rathcr, rcfercnccs to visiblc features of cult, such as vencration for firc (Arm. krakapaštuiiwn "fircworsh ip", moxrapaštufr,,.m "ash-worship") in tempies (Arm. a1ruša11) ." Although fire is thc cmbodiment of Aša, it was not the purposc of Christian chroniclers to discover to the readcr Zoroast rian philosophy. but to rcprcsent thc defeatcd faith as idola1rous and primitive. The Armcnian scholar Archbishop Tiran Nersoyan has obscrvcd, however, that "the 51rong influence of monothcistic Mazdeism on Armcnians of the pre-Christian period disposcd thcm favourably toward thc religion of Christ,"• and it may bc further suggested that certain moral precepts of the old religion blcnded barmoniously witb the new dispensation Armenians call stili lusoy hawatk", "the faith of light". It was seen how Jranian con(:epts of the interrelationship of justice fire, and virtue seem to have entered into the refinement of Aristotclian arefi and dilci. The reward of arefi became metaphysical happiness, ratber than timt, the social estecm of Homer's society, and 7.eus was now arbiter of cosmk justicc, not tbe mere King of a heroiŗr order." It would bc nsh, and unprovable, to imagine tbat without the introduction of Ira11ian thought the pbilosophy of tbe Grceks ahould not bave developed in the direction it did, but the presencc of Jranian ideas is unmistakable, their inspirational power often praised. Tbere are in Armenian a numbcr of terms related etymologically to arta- but not loanwords, frorn the lndo-European root •ar- with -t- extension c:ualogous to lranian, Arm. ard. "right (r.ow)", cf. Gi.:. arti. Arm. ardar trans-

„

Sec Zor. Arm.. Ch. 1S.

•

Abp. Tiran NcrM>yan. Divint Liturgy of /lit Armtni-

•n Apos1ofic Or1liodoz Cliurcli. New York, 1950, 245of (1 am indebted to Mr. Hratsch Sartissian for a c:opy

this volumc). " See M . Finlcy, Tiit World of Odyutus. Penauin Boob, Harmondswonb, Middl., 1972, 162, 245.

181

Jates principally Gk. dikaios "just", and is closcly associated with thc idca of truth also, the adv. from inst. ardarew being cmployed to translate Gk. alēthos. factitivc ardaracuianem likcwise equivalent to Gk. afētheuo. " The adj. ardak, as distinct from thc theophoric narnc Artak, fourth century, means "even, flat". With prefixcs, J'Ord and zard corrcspond to Gk. kosmos, ··order, adornrncnt" ." ln the Arm. tr. of thc Holy Scripturcs, ardar glosscs SadukeCik' "Sadducccs". thc word therefore carried thc sensc of "morally righteous" as wcll as "just". "truthfu l", and "ordered" (Arm. yardar) or "cven" (onc recalls the rolc of Aša in ensuring thar the damncd are given balanced punishmcnt). The semantic group of words formed from ord in Armenian thus tills ali thc conceptual categories Ma represcnts in thc Zoroastrian tradition, exccpt that of light and fire. The use of ardar in Arm. Bible translations also correaponds to Iranian words from ona- in, e. g., the Sogdian version of Luke 1.75, where Arm. ordaru(yamb parallels Sgd. ortāvyā (Syr. beaadīqūtltā, Gk. dilcaiosyliii), elsewhere ardar fl&r&llels MPers. ardāylla. • Jn tbe Arm. Bible, 0rdar is synonymous witb onpart „without -'ebt"; the lranian opposite or tbe oJavan- is pnD.tanu- (Olr.:part-), „onc wbose body is forfeit in debt" There is a Biblicai association of the righteous with death and the bcavcns because of the concept of eternal rcward and tbe ucent of the soul (probably both Jrallian importations of the post-cxilic period), Wisdom of Solomon 2.16, Arm. Erarii zvaxllm ortlaroi „he blesses tbe end of the righteous", Daniel 12.3 Bazumlč ordaroi lbrew zastels „the multitudes of the rightcous (are) lilce the stars". Ps. 96.11 speaks of light for the rightcous, /oys cageai ardaroi "light dawned for (or, •or) the righteous."

.„

cr.

• Sce Nor Jlaŗrirk " Haylcazran uzui, 1. 346, 1. Y.; on tbc suffu ..,,, ICC R. Godcl, /nlrodMclion 10 1lir StMdy of CJ.nical Ar-..U.n. Wicsbaden, 1975, 65. • NBHLI, 711. • Geīac:r. op. dl.. 111>-J. " f.lod. 23.7: Zonpartn ,_, zardarn mi spa,,.,.iirs.

sur1> t987

661

But the only passagc in the Bible 1 find in menian powcr, has exerted an influence upon which ardarufiwn " righteousness" is explicit - subsequent Armenian literature out of ali proly associated with fire, and with thc Sun at portion to its theological importance within that, is in a vision ofthc Prophct Malach i, who Christianity or Judaism, and it scems inesca~ livcd probably in the timc of Ezra and Nehc- ablc that one should rcgard Arm. ardar „righmiah, i. e., at a time whcn Judaism flourished teous" asa Zoroastrian Armenian term equivin the full noon of Achacmcnian rulc: ew ca- alent to arda wān in lranian in its religious associations. The terms sound so similar that the gesc"ē jez erkiwlacoi anuan imoy aregakn ardaruieam ew biškufii.·n i (ews nora "and the Armcnians probably rcgarded thcm as various Sun of Rightcousncss will dawn for you who branches from thc samc Mazdean tree: the fear my namc, with hcaling on its wings" phonctic coincidence of cognates bad far(M al. 4.2 ). This is to happen at thc timc of thc reaching semasiological consequcnces, and it great final j udgemcnt , which will bc burning, appears that thc Armcnian Zoroastrian ardathe prophet dcclares, like fire swecping ruliwn of rightcousness, truth, justicc; posthuthrough a bcd of r.eeds, and thcn thc Lord's mous reward, and the Sun as wcll, entered Aruving messenger, Elijah, will come. D'Alvicl· menian Christia nity, wearing Jigbtly a Biblical la saw in thc image of tbe Sun of Right- garment that itself is cut in Zoroastrian faeousness the winged disk of the Egyptian shion. Rē." But in Malachi's time thc symbol, varHerc is the Sun of Righteousness in Armeiously elaborated, bad becomc pre-eminently llia. tbe greater fire extinguisbing tbe lesser: that of the Achaemenians, asa sign, variously interprcted, of Ahura Mazdā, tbc xvar~h­ .Aregakn ardarulean i Hayastan caņal •0divine glory" (cf. Arm. 1-w. fozŗlc) bestowed paycaŗučučer surb zekeleči on Kings, or tbe fravaii of tbe rightcolis. lts llelmamb arean srboin.· primary meaning as a solar symbol, with all 11tOHanawlisoča xnayea i mez tbat the Sun implies for Zoroastrians, ·~ porgewatu bareai: · pears, however, to have becn remcmbered in ew olormea lčo oraracoč. Achaemenian iconography.• ne fiery ApocPancali surb zawalcawk' hoviw& nuufMnlč. alypse which attends the appearancc or the lrov hogwoyn Iijučin Winged Sun in the vision of the Hebrew zbočn zkrakapait parsičn: Prophet seems inspired by the role of Ma Va..aHanawli. _. hilta at FrašO.br~ti; Elijah talces the place of Parlewakan tesanolin ytüa}ll60Yn tudeČllAstva1.~r~. if indecd it is not the Sun of leamb Righteousness itself witb bealing on its wings zlurwatoy ordis srboyn which is „Rightcousness Embodied". The Grigori psakazard teseal· image of a fire consuming rceds would also 111aHanawli . ..• bave sounded very famiJiar to any Armenian "'Sun of Righteousness dawned in Armcnia, or lranian listener.„ by thc shedding of the blood of saints you This singlc Biblical referencc to right- caused the holy Church to shinc. Spare us by eousness as the Sun, couched in Zoroastrian their intercessions, 0 giver of good gifts, and imagery and permcated with Zoroastrian es- have mercy upon your creatures. With their chatology, composcd at thc zcn ith of Achac- glorious, holy children, the awakened she~ berds, thcy extinguished by the füe of the spirit the conflagration of fire-worship of the Persians. (Spare us . .. ) Gregory the Parthian, • G. D' Alviella, Tiit Mi1ra1ion of Sy,,.bols. London, inspired by Him who sces, heheld from tbc 1894,xiii.

•

„

Sec Boyce. Hisl. Zor. 11, 114. Fawstos Buund 5.S; 1tt N. G. Ganoīa.n, lntro. to tbc

Facsimilc of tbe 1883 St. Petcnburg ed., Caravan Boob, Delmar, NY.1984, llii.

• $oralan lioņwor rrroč. Jenasalcm, St. .Juncs' Preu, 1936, 762.

Russell

182 662

1111. Sllf'ti 1987

Light" sung in thc Arewogal, Sunrisc Office of thc Armcnian Church. Thc sccond stanza bcgins with thc linc Loys, i lusoy cogumn areof light, Right~us It is pcrhaps worthwhilc herc to notc that gakn ardor "Light dawncd is Cbrist; hc 1s so Sun Rightcous Thc "' Sun; "firc-worship", dcscribcd herc as "Pcrsian", lcast two othcr spiritual songs of was cradicatcd by Grcgory in Armcnia, not in callcd in at thc Armcnian Churcb.• Christ is sbown as an Jran: it is Armcnian Zoroastrianism to which cffulgcnt Sun on most Armcnian Crosscs, in thc hymn rcfcrs. appcarancc likc thc Ostcnsorium or ēačanl. St. John thc Baptist and thc Virgin arc d cThough th is is thc hymn which links cxplic- scribcd as Sun-cycd in Armcnian tcxts, pcritly a nd ironically thc Sun of •arta- to thc pctuating ancicnt Armcnian and Jran ian rclifirc of thc samc divinity, to stalc that Chris- gious imagcry,„ or as thc morriing star, ~er­ tianity is thc truc light, a spiritual radiancc, alding Christ thc Sun of Rightcousness h1mthc most important hymn incorporating thc sclf - thc Saviour, Rightcousness, .Arta, .Ardaimagc is thc abcccdarian hymn of dawn of r11fiwn. cmbodicd, Cbrist who is justicc, "thc Ncrsēs Šnorhali which bcgins: Arawawt lutruth and thc light". Zoroastrian Aša is to tbc soy/ Aregokn ardar/ Aris loys cageo "Morn- philosophical Grcelc thc object of contcmplaing of light, /Rightcous Sun, /Sbinc your light tion; to thc Christian Armcnian, the object of on mc." Šnorbali, according to K.irakos of wonbip and hopc oi salvation. Ganjalc, rashioned hymns to rcplace thc songs _ and araspelll („fables". a word used often of J.R.RUSSEU pre-Cbristian traditions) of his bodyguards at c.ohambia U.~ty. HromkJa.• Onc or thcse was, apparcntly, thc 111-Yad. V.S.A. hymn Loys araril lllsoy „Light, Crcator of past thc childrcn of thc faith adorncd with diadcms. (Spare us . .. )"

„ ErrtiolwfiwNč ArrWOĶali Hayu111ne11yi Elukt!woy, Jcl'llJ&lcm, 19S7, 49; Sara.bit. 790. (1 am indebted to M s. llobcru Ervine roc tbc f11St wol) • Sar11b11. $20, Sl7. • Set J. R . Russcll, "O Sun oi Rigbtcousness!" Arorol Quarterly (fortbcoming).

• Scc J. R. Russell, •A Poem ei Grigor Narekaci," &l0mm1U1ialtion to lhc J983 Mcetin& ai tbe AIEA. REArm. 198S,43~l9.

J. Soc. for A rmenian S tud 3 (1987)

Printed in the United States of America

119

James R. Russell

HERE COMES THE SUN: A POEM OF KOSTANDIN ERZNKATS'I Erznka, modem Erzincan, in the ancient province of Acilisene (Arm. Ekegheats' ), lay on the great northem trade rout.e that crossed Armenia in ancient and medieval times, and in the period of Mongol domination and before, its commercial wealth supported monast.eries in and around the town where scholars worked. In ancient times, Persian noblemen of the Achemenian administration seem to have lived at the place, then called Erēz, for a rich rhyton and other sumptuary objects have been found in the vicinity. As at other sit.es of Persian habitation in Asia Minor, there was here, too, a shrine of Anāhitā (Arm. Anahit). Nearby was the t.emple of Nanē, a goddess closely associated with Anahit; and with the coming of Christianity to Armenia in the fourth century the site of Nanē' s sanctuary, at T'il, became the resting place of Christian patriarchs. In 1273, the grave of St. Nersēs Part'ew was rediscovered there, and the notable event was celebrated in an oration of Hovhannēs of Erznka (surnamed Pluz [the Short], ca 1240-1293), a theologian whose works include hymns (sharakank 1, a treatise on the movements of planetary bodies, and an encomium on the occasion of the knighting of the two royal princes of Armenian Cilicia. Less is known of the life of Hovhannēs' s younger cont.emporary, the poet Kostandin of Erznka (ca. 1260-ca.1340). He was a clergyman whose poetic talents beca.me evident early in life, exciting the envy of monastic brothers, and in several poems he laments his ill treatment at their hands. This seems probable, but one stili recalls the legendary hostility of his fellow monks toward Movsēs Khorenats'i. The dull malice of the ignora.mus toward the talented is no strange tale. A collection of the poems of Kostandin is preserved from 1336, copied for a wealthy Armenian of Tubriz-the great comrnercial cent.er of northem Iran in the Mongol period, several stages from Erznkaand editions of his work have been published by M. Poturian1 and Armenuhi Srapyan.2 A selection of poems with Armenian t.ext and free translations on the page facing was published recently in Erevan. 3

© 1987 Society for Armenian Studies 183

184

Russell

120 James R. Russell

The poem considered here is Bank' yaghags aregakann ardarut'ean, or ew tsageats' i horē miatsin ordin K'rist:os, zor arakok' khosi (Words Concerning the Sun of Righteousness, Which Is also Christ, the OnlyBegotten Son Born of the Father, Which Is 'lbld in Parables.)• ¢ critical treatment of such medieval Armenian allegorical verse requires comment. It is common in the poetry of diverse religious traditions to present a tale or image in t he first part, and then to identify the characters the allegory represents in the second part. For example, in a Middle Persian Manichean hymn (it is recalled that Mānī, author of an "Epistle to the Armenians," must have bad Armenian followers) there is presented the tale of a king who sends his horsemen to bring a boy to be a bridegroom. At the end, the real nature of the characters is explained in a simple list: "The sovereign is Ahrmēn [the Destructive Spirit] . . . the three doors are the fire, the lust .. ." and the boy is the spirit of light whom the wicked ruler of this world wishes to capture and imprison in the darkness of material form. 5 The story upon which the allegory is based may be secular, or may even have belonged to an earlier religion; the point is the poet's intention in treatingit as he does, with sincerity and conviction. The ancient Near Eastem symbol of the Tree of Life is used in the medieval Armenian wedding song to present the community of New 'Thstament figures and Christian saints.6 Although the first part of such a text may not easily accommodate the intended meaning of the allegory deciphered in the second part, it does not follow at all that the second part need be a justification on the face of religious censorship for the retention of the first: The Armenians might have sung an unadorned song about the Tiee of Life before they became Christians, probably in the context of an earlier faith. It does not follow that the explanation of a New Tustament allegory was added to a "pagan" song the medieval writer enjoyed. lest he be condemned as a heathen. More likely, old images were seen in terms of the new faith, Christianity. Where the two parts fit badly together, it is bad art, not ill-concealed paganism or secularism. One often hears the suggestion, as in the Introduction to the recent bilingual edition of Kostandin Erznkats'i, that the tenth-century St. Grigor Narekats'i was t he founder of a kind of secularizing Renaissance. His scenes of natural beauty, and those of Kostandin Erznkats'i and others after him, are considered the product of a poetic inspiration lacking any genuine underlying religious faith; the allegory is disingenuous. According to this view, the expression of religious sentiments should be ignored or derided as primitive, and allegory must in poems of real talent be seen as defensive, as though the poet intro-

Armenian and lranian Studies

185

Here Comes the Sun 121

duced it only after coming to himself, following a blind. pagan fit of untrammeled creativity: " My God! I've done it again! Well, 1'11 add this and this to make it appear Orthodox, else they shall have my head:' And the ruse works! The monolithic power of the Church is fooled. and Kostandin and his fellows are emulated; Armenian literature becomes an underground phenomenon of atheist or naturalist subtexts, right down to the nineteenth century; only Raffi's Kaytser (Sparks) kindles the flame that bums off t he dross. Kostandin's complaints about the monastery and his praises of the season of spring are supposed to prove he was a free spirit chafing at the bit of ecclesiastical censorship. Although Christendom has had its share of hypocrites who garb lewdness in the raiments of piety, such a procedure must surely not be assumed to have been the guiding principle of medieval Armenian poetry. Such a view should lead us to t he impossible conclusion that the men of the age of faith lacked all true conviction, that deep down they felt a profound and irremediable dichotomy between nature and nature's God, and that the Armenian Church must have exercised so potent a reign of terror over its unwilling subjects that the embattled Armenians illuminated manuscripts, built churches, fought wars, and resisted conversion to Islam, all for a faith that they feared greatly but believed in not at all One should be constrained by this absurd view to conclude also that Armenian allegorical poetry differed fundamentally from close and contemporary analogues elsewhere in that it was a response to totalitarian repression! The theory thus imposes t he circumstances of the present time upon a remote age. It is completely untrue, and prominent Soviet Armenian scholars have themselves in recent years condemned extreme expression of it. For Kostandin, as for other medieval Armenian poets, nature was informed by the reality of the Christian spiritual world and history of salvation, which imposed order upon, and infused with meaning, all phenomena and all events, past, present, and future: this Christian truth informs the beauty of nature, the glory of spring, and the lawful love of man and woman; it does not obliterate or invalidate them. It is with this due respect for Kostandin's religious sincerity that we approach his poem. The first word of the title, bank ' (words), recalls Narekats'i's use of the term to describe his meditative prayers of lamentation and praise. Armenian ban is the equivalent of Greek logos: Heraclitus first used the latter word to mean " the true account of the law of the universe;' 1 and in Classical Greek philosophy it means "discourse" ;8 the Manicheans used it to mean "chapter" in their Ewangelyon zīndag (Living Gospel). 9 The Christian understanding of the word was conditioned, of course, by John 1.1: (Arm.) I skzbanē ēr

186

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122 James R Russell

bann (ln the beginning was the word). Kostandin's poem ought, then, to have the character of a prayerful meditation upon the rational struc· ture of God's universe. (Not every ban-a-steghtsut'iwn, poem, literally, "creation of a ban:' has this character, of course. The word is evidently a calque upon Greek logotekhnia.) The equation of the Sun with righteousness is old and traditional in Greek philosophy as it is in Christianity. It may perhaps derive ultimately from the Zoroastrian belief that the Sun, as the greatest physical fire, embodied Aša Vahišta, the divine being whose name means Best Righteousness; Mithra, the god who is judge and guardian of 10 covenants, was also associated with the Sun and with divine love. The image of the Sun of Righteousness would have been familiar to Armenian proselytes from Zoroastrianism, and in one sharakan it is intentionally contrasted to the Zoroastrian sacred fire, perhaps in ironic commentary upon the Zoroastrian belief that the greater fire can overwhelm and vitiate the power of the smaller, if the latter is exposed to it: Aregakn ardarut'ean i Hayastan tsageal pay tsarats 'uts'er surb zekeghets 'i heghmamb arean sērbo ts 'n: maght'anāk ' sots 'a khēnayea i mez pargewatu bareats': ew oghormea k 'o araratsots '. Pantsali surb zawakok' houiwk 'n zēwart 'unk ; hrou hogwoyn shifuts'in ēzbots 'n ēzkrakapash t parsits'n. . ..

Sun of Righteousness dawned to Armenia, you have made the holy church shine by the bloodshed of the saints. Spare us by their intercessions, bestower of goodly gifts, and have mercy on your creatures. With the glorious and holy children. vigilant shepherds, by the fire of the soul they quenched the flame of fire-worship of the Persians. . . .11

In another hymn, the aregakn ardarut'ean (Sun of Ŗighteousness) banishes ezkhawam angitut'ean (the darkness of ignorance).12 So Kostandin rejoices that the sun has lighted and warmed the cold, dark dungeon of the world; those who do not believe in that Sun, he declares, are as sleepers in darkness (stanzas 2 and 8). Knowledge of the Sun is brought to Armenia, one recalls, by St. Gregory the Illuminator, Lusaworich; who converted the royal court first; the legend of his career, and even, perhaps, his later epithet, appear to be pattemed upon Zarathushtra's mission, as described in the Pahlavī Dēnkard: *ham bahr ī Dēn Mazdēs n ā w urd pad D4dār framān o Kay Wīštāsp šāh, rošnēnīd pad an ī m eh rošnīh andar oy abartom Yazdān, dah ībed, kišwar frazānagān. . . . [Zarathushtraļ by the command of the Creator brought the same bestowal of the Religion of Mazdā·worship to the king Kavi Vlštāspa, and the rulers of countries and the wise men of the clime were illuminated by that great light which was in him [from] the Gods Most High."

The mother of J esus, the blessed Virgin Mary, is also seen as a being With sunlike eyes which dilate in the dawn of the Holy Nativity, in

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the Meghedi tsnndean (Melody of the Nativity) of Grigor Narekats'i; another hymn presents her as the channel of the divine fire, unconsumed li.ke the bush out of which God spoke to Moses: Or uarets'ar i yarp'woy n ew och' kiz:ar ēst morenwoyn: ayl etur zhats 'ēn kenats ' kerakur banaworats; bareklwsea at K 'ristos fn}el ēzgir meghats' merots '.

[You] who were kindled by the Sun but, like the briar-bush, was not consumed, but granted t he bread of life, the food of rational beings, intercede with Christ to erase the record of our sins. 14

Armenian tradition thus regards Christ and God as the Sun of Righteousness; Mary is Sun-like or else a receptacle of the Sun's fire. The light emanates from, but is not different from, the endless light of the Father (one is reminded again of a Zoroastrian concept, t he asar roŠnīh [Endless Light) in which dwells the supreme God, Ahura Mazdā). Christ's humanity mysteriously comprehends this incomprehensible infinity, as another hymn explains: Charagayt' p'arats' H6rordid miatsin, or ēz/,oysd anuayrap'ak mannnou paragreal, aysor i T'abor p 'arok ' p'aylets'er:

'lbday you shone in glory on Mount Tabor, only-begot ten son, ray of the glory of the Father, having comprehended by the body your illimitable light. 16

Another hymn describes the emanation thus: Loys i lusoy tsageal i Horē ew lusaworeats ' ztiezers (Light from light, bom of the Father, indeed illuminated the universe).16 Kostandin's poem, which describes the emanation of Christ from the Father, light from light, the illumination of the world with the spring of life, and the illumination of man's soul by faith, is part of the seamless garment of Christian Armenian theology and poetry. His images hark back to the Zoroastrian past, but the poem is not a recrudescence of the elder faith. Nor, indeed, is it a forced allegory or veiled expression of naturalism; it is a fervent prayer for enlightenment (stanza 9). In that same stanza, Kostandin refutes what he regards asa false belief: Es ch'em i hawatal ayn sut hogoyn t'ē ink 'en loys:I Or ch'uni shafawegh yaregakan i mets lusoyn. (1 believe notin that lying spirit, that it is light itself,/ And no beam stretches from the Sun, from the great light). What is the belief here described? One thinks immediately of the fallen son of the morning, Lucifer, bu~ even the haughty devil does not deny that Christ is the emanation of the Father. The "lying spirit" may be the sun-god of the sun worshippers, the physical light that is no metaphor. There were in Armenia down to recent times a few, apparently scattered, groups called Arewordik' ļChildren of the Sun). The eleventh-century Grigor Magistros, who

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was concerned with refuting the Arewordik', takes pains to stress in elaborate detail in his fifty-fifth Letter tbat tbe light of God's commandments must not be confused with tangible, physical light as sucb. Tbe beautiful hymn Loys ararich' lusoy (Light, Creator of Light) sung in the Arewagal Sunrise Office of the Armenian Church was composed by St. Nersēs Shnorhali (d. 1173), apparently after he beard men singing hymns to the rising Sun at Htomkla17 Kostandin appears to be within Annenian theological tradition, expressing a contemporary concern in his abjuration of Sun-worship in the literal sense. Kostandin's hope for illumination is linked to perfection and eternal life, expressed in tbe image of perennial beauty, the classical spring (stanza 3): "And the red rose opens in the great light of the Sun."

TRANSLATION 1.

Now this night is past: Tbe morning's sign has come, And the shining star rises, Herald of tbe light. Tbe darkness was rejected And ali tbe world rejoiced, Calling blessings to each other Tbat they were wortby of the light.

2. For them who bad been captive And in the deep dungeon's dark Now tbe light is bom In the great light of the Sun. The earth was cold and frozen By the icy winter blast, But Spring has come at last, In the great light of tbe Sun.

3. The eartb' bas come to life, Mountain and plain are mantled in green, And the trees burst into flower In the great ligbt of tbe Sun. Flowers in ali tbeir nations

Are adomed in every color. And tbe red rose opens In tbe great light of the Sun.

4. The fountains of the waters Burst bubbling forth in laughter, And the rivers rushing churn In the great ligbt of the Sun. All tbe creatures that are, And those that lay unsouled and dead Bebold! tbey are revived In the great ligbt of the Sun. 5. How are you not amazed? Why do you not ask of tbese things, About this Sun Full of its shining ligbt? This new light for us has dawned, Far brigbter tban tbe Sun, And to its migbty luminescence Tbe elder stars are servants.

6. A beam brimming ligbt was bom Of tbat ligbt, of tbat beginning, Light born from light, From tbe great light of the Sun. This light is of that ligbt Which is itseH lord of ali light And is called king. And the ligbt of ali is from his light. 7. The arc of heaven stood amazed Before that Sun, For it bad never seen such light Nor tbe Sun from tbat ligbt. The eartb was happy, Glad at the tidings that The duskless great ligbt has dawned, And tbe Sun of that light.

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8. Some are soulless, without understanding, Blind in their eyes, Who believe not In the Sun and its light. In darkness they drag out their lives, Asleep in dreams They share no light From the Sun, from the great light. 9. I believe not In that lying spirit, that it is light itself And no beam stretches from the Sun From the great light. 1, Kostandin, who wrote this Long for that light, That I may be enlightened In the Sun, in that great light. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK, N.Y. NOTES 1. Fr. M. Poturian, ed., Kostandin Erznkats 'i, XIV daru zhoghovrdakan banasteghts (Venice, 1905). 2. A. Srapyan, Kostandin Erznkats 'i, 1hgher (Erevan, 1962). 3. L. Mkrtch'yan, Intra. and ed., Loysn arowotun (Morning Light Poems of Kostandin Erznkats'i) (Erevan, 1981). ' 4. The poem was published in Bazmavēp (1866), p. 206, and Anahit (Paris), No. 5, p. 102. Mkrtch'yan's text (pp. 118-123), based upon Srapyan, has also a Russian transla· tion by Nina Gabrielyan, poetic but inaccurate as to detail. My translationis based upon Poturian's text, pp. 88-90, No. VI. 5. See J. Asmussen, Manichaean Literature (Delmar, N.Y., 1975), pp. 99-101. 6. See J. R Russell, Introduction to Grigor Narekats'i, Matean Oghbergut'ean, Classical Armenian 'Thxt Reprint Series (Delmar, N.Y.), 1981, pp. viii·ix. 7. Edward Hussey, cited by R. C. Zaehner, The City within the Heart (London, 1980), p. 99. 8. See M. L. West, Early Greek Philcsophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1971), p. 5. 9. J . P. Asmussen, art. "Angelyūn," in Encyclcp'tnrl; twrb1t(...9Ln1 · t; ... LnLrJ: F ..,l,funr"''l:f.r [?- "'L" un'-f'p 9-rfprl; twrbft"'!l"li, Jb'lb'lf .,,i,nll (l; ... LnLrl= 1 Sw'l 'r"'l"'l"'rJ"'r f 9-rr'f:"r twrbft"'9"J [ļ- "'Ln'-f'l • J lTM''l""'.,,' P.llwqjtp 1 H fl.fi,

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TRANSLATION He stood to the right of the Existent, at his right hand, And to his own right, right beside right, He stood at the left of the Father of the glory of light. At the breast of the begetter, the name of dawn 5 Dawned of the Sun, and came into love; The Virgin gave birth to her breast's blossom. Breast's blossom, the breast of the Father From Heaven descended like a cloud Bedewing us sweetly with his love. 10 Love from the cloud, the cloud moved by love: The breath through its fleece streaming Caused the draps of rain to sprinkle down. Love was made known by love And filled with the desire of flowering love: 15 Love was made one with love. The moon rounded full in light As in splendid procession the orb of the night Followed the sharp, shining stars . Dew descended at the dawn 20 To the new Zion at the waxing Of the sweet Sun and the moming star. Bringer of spring, marvel of spring, Beauty full or praise, adomed with rieb hue, ls joined at the nuptial all new. 25 Come we now in wondrous joy, Robes colored brightly forms twirling lightly, Fashioning winding wreaths of leaves. Commentary Lines 1-3. The mystery of the Trinity, the three-iŗi-one , appears to be expressed by linking the members in a circle . Christ is of course to

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the right of the Father, who is called in Armenian Ē ("He Is") . The Holy Spirit thus stands at the right of Christ and at the Father's left hand. Lines 4-9. Christ moves from the breast of the Father to the breast of the Virgin, where be is seen as a flower, probably the rose (before whom, in medieval Armenian Christian allegories employing the image of the gol 6 bolbol of Persian poetry, St. Jobn the Baptist comes as a nigbtingale, singing-i.e .1 crying in the wilderness} . The rose is the most perfect of flowers; it unfolds sunlike and red-buming. Vard ("rose"J and vai burning are joined in Armenian VardavaI, the Feast of the Transfiguration . In a celebratory song, Narekacci joins rose and burning sun: gohar vardn vai aieal i vehic c varsic"n arpcenicc f"the rose-jewel burst aflame from the lofty tresses of the Sun"J. (Kcyoškeryan, p. 117, lines 1-2) One manuscript has vardic"n ("roses"J instead of "tresses"; the rose is sunlike . It is apposite to note that in the hymn on Vahagn, the god hur her unēr "bad fire for hair." The tresses of the Sun are the beams whicb reach the rose . In the Šarakan (Hymn} Norahraš psakawor ("Diademmed in marvellous wonder 11 } of St . Nersēs Šnorbali (died 1173}, tbere are plays on vai ("flaming"} and vai ("to be armed"ļ with Vardan (i .e., Vardan Mamikonean 1, the Christian Armenian commander in the war of 451; vardān means "hero," appropriately, in Parthian} and vard ("rose"} . Rases are red-flaming; Vardan's red blood "diadems 11 the holy Church . But Šnorhali's alliteration is muted compared to that of Narekacci:

Norahraš psakawor ew zawraglux aiakcineac c, Vaiec car zinu Hogwoyn ariabar enddēm mahu: Vardan k caf nahatak or vanec cer ztL

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