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Dahma Āfriti and some related problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mary Boyce
Mary Boyce
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
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Extract

The Yazata of the benediction known as the Dahma Āfriti is a figure whose importance in the Zoroastrian pantheon has been obscured, it seems for two main reasons. One is that, although she was apparently originally accorded a place among the thirty ‘calendar’ divinities, she subsequently lost this, probably in an Achaemenian calendar reform. The other is that later still her identity became confused through her name acquiring several Middle Persian forms: Dahm Yazad, Dahmān Āfrīn, Dahmān, the last, since it is a formal plural, causing some misunderstandings in her veneration locally.

The Avestan adjective dahma is understood to have meant originally ‘instructed’, that is, in the Zoroastrian faith; but, to judge from its use in context, it developed the sense of ‘pious, devout’, occurring frequently with ašavan as a term for a good Zoroastrian. The name of the benediction is accordingly generally rendered as the ‘Pious Blessing’. Much power was attributed by Zoroastrians to solemnly pronounced words, and the compilers of the extended yasna liturgy set the ‘Pious Good Blessing’, Dahṃa VaohviĀfriti, after the Ahuna Vairya, Ašəm Vohū and Yenhē hātąm as the fourth of the mighty utterances which crush and destroy Anra Mainyu and his hordes (Y.61:l–2). (The other three form a group because together they precede the Gāthās, and together are the subject of the commentary which forms (Y. 19–21.)

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 209 - 218
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1993

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References

1 Bartholomae, C., Altiranisches Wörlerbuch (Strassburg, 1904), 704–5Google Scholar. In Dēnkard VIII.43.1 a dahm is distinguished from an anēr, that is, a Zoroastrian, and hence an Iranian, from a non-Iranian, hence an unbeliever. This West (SBE, xxxvn, p. 145, n. 1) saw as confirming the sense of dahma as ‘Vollbürger oder Mitglieder’, proposed by Geldner, K., Studien zum Avesta (Strassburg, 1882), 14Google Scholar, and endorsed by Bartholomae as already the Avestan word's main meaning.

2 This accounts for the fact that the Old Avestan išyō is not numbered among them here. On their treatment together see most recently Skjaervø, P. O., ‘Bag Nask‘, Encyclopaedia Iranica, III/4 (1988), 400–1Google Scholar.

3 On this section see Bailey, H. W., Zoroastrian problems in the ninth-century books (Oxford, 1943, repr. 1971), p. 11, nn. 2, 3Google Scholar.

4 That is, religious obedience, hearkening to the word of Ahura Mazdā and his prophet, see Kreyenbroek, G., Sraoša in the Zoroastrian tradition (Leiden, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 The exact sense of this is debated.

6 Most probably Ahura Mazdā.

7 Vd. 7:41, 9:37

8 Anklesaria, B. T., Pahlavi Vendidād (Bombay, 1949), 168, 248Google Scholar.

9 cf. the adoption by Irani priests of the meaning given apparently by the laity to pādyāb, see Boyce, ‘Pādyāb and nērang: two Pahlavi terms reconsidered’, BSOAS, LIV, 2, 1991, 285–6Google Scholar.

10 Vd. 22:5. The passage continues: ‘and (makes) him who is not sick to be sick, and him who is sick, whole’. This appears in part to reflect the use of āfriti also for a malediction, cf. Vd. 18:11, Dēnkard III.321.

11 On this as an inheritance from ancient animalism see Boyce, , Zoroastrianism: its antiquity and constant vigour, Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies no. 7, 1992, 53, 66 ffGoogle Scholar.

12 Darmesteter, J., Le Zend-Avesta (Paris, 1892–1893, repr. 1960), III, 66Google Scholar; JamaspAsa, K. J. and Humbach, H., Pursišnīhā: a Zoroastrian catechism (Wiesbaden, 1971), I, 48/49Google Scholar.

13 Vərəthraghna (Yt. 14:11) and Vayu, see Darmesteter, op. cit., II, 560.

14 JamaspAsa-Humbach, op. cit., 50/51.

15 A mythic link can be sought between ‘the Ahura’, i.e. *Varuna Apąm Napāt, and the plant haoma, see Boyce, , ‘Varuna the Baga’, Monumentum G Morgenstierne. I, Ada Iranica, 21, 1981, 70–71Google Scholar; but this ancient association was hardly still a living one in Zoroastrianism.

16 Greater Bundahišn, ed. Anklesaria, B. T. (Bombay, 1956), 26. 90–94Google Scholar.

17 Information from Dastur Dr. Firoze M. Kotwal. The Yašt-i keh is known to the Parsi priests as the Bāj-i drōn, see Boyce, M. and Kotwal, F., ‘Zoroastrian bāj and drōn I’, BSOAS, XXXIV, 1, 1971, 62 and ffGoogle Scholar.

18 See Modi, J. J., The religious ceremonies and customs of the Parsees, 2nd ed. (Bombay, 1937), 342, 450–1Google Scholar.

19 Boyce, , A history of Zoroastrianism, II (Leiden, 1982), 247–8Google Scholar.

20 Nyberg, H. S., ‘Questions de cosmogonie et de cosmologie mazdéennes II’, JA, 1931, 128 ffGoogle Scholar. [ = Acta Iranica, 7, 1975, 320 ffGoogle Scholar.\.

21 ‘On the calendar of Zoroastrian feasts’, BSOAS, XXXIII, 3, 1970, 513–39Google Scholar.

22 See most recently Marshak, B., ‘Istoriko-kul'turnoe znachenie sogdiyskogo kalendarya’ in Mirovaya kul'lura: Traditsii i sovremennost’, ed. Knyazevskaya, T. B. (Moscow, 1991), 183–97Google Scholar; Eng. tr. by Pittard, W. as ‘The historico-cultural significance of the Sogdian calendar’, Iran, XXX, 1992, 145–54Google Scholar.

23 Discussed in some detail by Boyce, op. cit. in n. 11, pp. 108–10.

24 For other instances of remarkable tenacity of old usages after calendar changes see Boyce, art. cit. in n. 21.

25 Dhabhar, B. N., Pahlavi Yasna (Bombay, 1946), 258Google Scholar.

26 Dēnkard, ed. Madan, M., 815.4–8Google Scholar; tr. Kotwal, F. M. P., The supplementary texts to the šāvest nē-šāyest (Copenhagen, 1969), 106Google Scholar.

27 Kotwal (ed.), op. cit., 52/53.

28 Dhabhar, B. N., Zand-i Khūrtak Avistāk, ed. (Bombay, 1927), 175, tr. (Bombay, 1963), 334Google Scholar.

29 Greater Bundahišn, ed. Anklesaria, T. D. (Bombay, 1908), 175. 6–12Google Scholar, tr. Anklesaria, B. T. (Bombay, 1956), 227Google Scholar.

30 Book III.82.1, ed. Madan, 82.8–9, tr. de Menasce, J., Le troisième livre du Dēnkart (Paris, 1973), 92Google Scholar.

31 III.195.8, ed. Madan, 209.17–18, tr. Menasce, 203.

32 Ch.46.4–5. This is followed by a further statement that ‘he created the earth, and its stability (is) from the mountains’, and then the puzzling and apparently inconsequential words: ‘The good Lord Mihr and Dahmān Āfrīn, Master (?) of truth and Master (?) of righteousness’ (mihr ī xwudāy ī nēk ud dahmān āfrīn *rad ī rāstīh ud *rad ī ahlāyīh), see Williams, A. V. (ed. and tr.), 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1990), l, 160–3, II, 72, 206Google Scholar.

33 Book Vll.9.3, ed. and tr. by Molé, M., La légende de Zoroastre scion les textes pehlevis (Paris, 1967), 92/93Google Scholar.

34 See G. Kreyenbroek, op. cit. in n. 4.

35 Y.57:22, see Kreyenbroek, op. cit., p. 49 with p. 88 nn.

36 Modi, op. cit. in n. 18, pp. 354–78; Kotwal, F. M., ‘The Jashan and its main religious service, the Afrinagan’, paper given at the seventh North American Zoroastrian Congress, Houston, 1990 (privately printed)Google Scholar.

37 Le Zend-Avesta (Paris, 1771), II, 65Google Scholar.

38 Unvala, M. R. (ed.), Dārāb Hormazyār's Rivāyat (Bombay, 1922), I, 159.18Google Scholar; Dhabhar, B. N. (tr.), The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz and others (Bombay, 1932), 172Google Scholar.

39 Khodadadian, A., ‘Die Bestattungssitten und Bestattungsriten bei den heutigen Parsen’, doctoral dissertation, Freie Universitāt Berlin, 1973 (unpublished)Google Scholar; cf. the Persian Rivāyats, ed. Unvala, , op. cit., I, 159.8–11Google Scholar, tr. Dhabhar, op. cit., 172.

40 Kotwal, F. M., ‘The authenticity of the Parsi priestly tradition’, JCOI, 45, 1976, 29, 30/31Google Scholar.

41 e.g., Pahlavi Vendidād, 13:23, Pahlavi Yasna, 32:16.

42 The attested meaning of dahm as ‘pious, good (person)‘is actually illustrated in one of the three Pazand Āfrīns which are regularly recited at the end of each Āfnīnagān service. This Āfrīn (for which see Antia, P. K., Pazand Texts (Bombay, 1909), 86–90Google Scholar) is variously called that of Haft Amešaspand or Hamkārā or Dahmān, the last name because in it blessings are called down on the attendant congregation, who are described as ‘the pious ones who have come to this offering’ (dahmān kē pa īn myazd drāz rasīd hēnd).

43 See Kotwal, art. cit. in n. 40, pp. 29, 33, n. 22.

44 This MS was formerly in the possession of the late Dr. J. M. Unvala, and after his death, on the advice of Dastur Kotwal, was given for safe-keeping to the present Dastur Meherji Rana of Navsari. Facsimiles of the relevant pages from it, and from the MS F 4 cited below, are reproduced by Dastur Kotwal, art. cit. in n. 36, pp. 14, 15, who also adduces the relevant passage from F 7. (The present writer is much indebted to Dastur Kotwal for his kindness in going into the MS evidence fully in private communication.) On the MSS F 4, F 7 generally, see Dhabhar, B. N., Descriptive catalogue of all manuscripts in the First Dastur Meherji Rana Library, Navsari (Bombay, 1923), 2–3, 4–7Google Scholar.

45 It is moreover interesting that J. J. Modi, writing in the twentieth century (op. cit. in n. 18, pp. 355–6), could still consider the Pazand preliminaries to an Āfrīnagān to be the principal and most important part of the service.

46 By what is presumably a simple error Modi (op. cit. in n. 18, p. 363) gives the tâ ahmi nmāne as the variable section of the ‘Āfrīngan of Daham Yazata’ at the Čahārom ceremony, thus making confusion complete.

47 See Dnabhar, op. cit. in n. 44, p. 6.