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Food, Purity and Pollution: Zoroastrian Views on the Eating Habits of Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Touraj Daryaee
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Abstract

This article discusses the use of food as a mode of differentiation and identification according to Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Persian texts of the late antique period. In these texts, the list of foods consumed by Arabs and Indians are juxtaposed with that of the Iranian diet, and each group is given anthropological treatment. The article contends that the Zoroastrian dietary law, based on the Middle Persian texts, provides a mode of purity and impurity vis-à-vis others. Finally, the article touches upon the idea of moderation and the consumption of wine as dealt with in some Middle Persian sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Pre-islamic Iranian Literary Heritage , March 2012 , pp. 229 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012

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References

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