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The Standard Doctrine of Creation in Zoroastrian Pahlavi Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2021

AMIR AHMADI
AMIR AHMADI*
Affiliation:
Independent [email protected]
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Abstract

The main scheme of creation in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature is adopted from the Young Avesta. In this scheme Ohrmazd creates the world in the manner of a skillful craftsman who conceives of the form of his product and then fashions it in matter. The number of the constituents of the world and the sequence in which they are created are already fixed in the Avesta. Pahlavi authors draw on Greek philosophical tradition to rationalise their account of the creation of the world. The article also explores some of the complications that their philosophical elaboration of the Avestan scheme occasions.

Keywords

Zoroastrian Pahlavi LiteratureAvestaCreation MythPresocratic PhilosophyPlato
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 2: Divine Sovereignty, Morality and the State: Maududi and His Influence , April 2022 , pp. 387 - 409
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society

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References

1 See A. Ahmadi, ‘Divine Procreation of the World in Zoroastrian Pahlavi Texts’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (forthcoming).

2 See Burkert, W., ‘The Logic of Cosmogony’, in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, (ed.) Buxton, R. G. A. (Oxford, 1999), pp. 87–106Google Scholar; Burkert, W., Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge Ma., 2004)Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Bremmer, J., ‘Genesis 1.1: A Jewish Response to a Persian Challenge?’ in Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008), pp. 339–345CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 344–345, who suggests an Achaemenid background for Genesis 1.1.

4 Cf. Hadot, P., ‘Physique et poésie dans le Timée de Platon’, Revue de théologie et philosophie 115 2 (1983), pp. 113–133Google Scholar, who describes Timaeus's account of creation as “récit cosmogonique” (ibid., p. 119); D. Sedley, ‘Hesiod's Theogony and Plato's Timaeus’, in Plato and Hesiod, (eds.) G. R. Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold (Oxford, 2009), pp. 246–258. For the theology of Ptah, see S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (New York, 2004), pp. 92–95, 172–177, 180–182; Assmann, J., ‘Mono-, Pan-, and Cosmotheism: Thinking the “One” in Egyptian Theology’, Orient 33 (1998), pp. 143–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Blicker, La cosmogonie égyptienne (Fribourg, 1994), pp. 53, 113–114, 126, 137–145. The case of Ptah is too complex for an absolute statement. See my remarks in Ahmadi, ‘Divine Procreation of the World in Zoroastrian Pahlavi Texts’, note 1.

5 See J. de Menasce, Škand-gumānīk Vičār. La solution décisive des doutes: une apologétique mazdéenne du XIe siècle (Fribourg, 1945); J. de Menasce, Le toisième livre du Dēnkard (Paris, 1973); H. W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford, 1971); S. Shaked, ‘The Notions “mēnōg” and “gētīg” in the Pahlavi Texts and their relation to Eschatology’, Acta Orientalia 33 (1971), pp. 59–107.

6 The references to the Bundahišn are throughout to F. Pakzad (ed.), Bundahišn: Zoroastrische Kosmogonie und Kosmologie (Tehran, 2005). The cited passage is specified by the abbreviation “Bd” followed by the chapter and paragraph numbers. I will not translate the Middle Persian terms gētīg and mēnōg in this article, because there are no adequate English equivalents for them. These two MP terms are not opposite simply in the way material and spiritual, or terrestrial and celestial, or mortal and divine are, although these oppositions are relevant to various degrees depending on the context. Generally, gētīg means visible and tangible, and mēnōg invisible and intangible. See D 3.123. (The Dēnkard 3 passages are cited from F. Fazilat (ed.), Dinkard. Book III 113–194 (Tehran, 2004), unless otherwise stated. The cited passage is specified by the abbreviation “D” followed by the book and chapter numbers). But these determinations do not always hold. The Zoroastrian conception of light in particular resists classification in terms of these opposites. All things exist first in the mēnōg state and what would become the world is subsequently created in stages into the gētīg state. There are contexts in which mēnōg refers to a model conceived by Ohrmazd (something like a mental image) and existing (in the celestial sphere) as a form or body whose substantiality consists in light. Cf. Sh. Shaked, ‘The Notions “mēnōg” and “gētīg” in the Pahlavi Texts and their relation to Eschatology’. In other contexts, mēnōg means “principle” or even “quality”.

7 The literal meaning of nēk-rawišnīh is “proceeding finely”. It must be understood in situ to bear on the entire creation and not simply human conduct, hence something like “flourishing”. Bd 1.34 u-š nazdist dahišn xwadīh dād nēk-rawišnīh ān mēnōg i-š tan ī xwēš padiš weh be kard ka-š dām-dahišnīh menīd čē-š az dām-dahišnīh xwadāyīh būd ‘[Ohrmazd] first created nēk-rawišnīh as the ipseity of his creation—that mēnōg by which he benefited himself when he conceived of creation, for his sovereignty came to exist as the result of his creation of the world’. The creation of a flourishing world is a credit to its maker who thereby becomes a ruler, too. The flourishing world of course adheres to Ohrmazd's plan and thus may be described as virtuous. The translation of this text in D. Agostini and S. Thrope (eds.), The Bundahišn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation (Oxford, 2020), p. 8, is virtually incomprehensible: “At first, he created the essence of creation, goodness, that spirit through which his own body was made good when he thought of creation. For he became Lord through creation”.

8 See J. Kellens, Cinq cours sur les Yašts de l'Avesta (Paris, 2016), pp. 169–188.

9 Cf. Sedley, ‘Hesiod's Theogony and Plato's Timaeus’, p. 248: “The world [in Timaeus's account] was created by an intelligent god, whose superiority as a creative artist guarantees that none but he would even be capable of destroying it, while his goodness guarantees that he will never in fact choose to do so. Ergo his creation will last forever”.

10 It is only after the creation (dām-dahišnīh) that Ohrmazd becomes xwadāy “sovereign”, sūd-xwāstār “beneficent”, frazānag “sagacious”, ǰud-bēš “benign”, āškārag “manifest”, hamāg-rāyēnīdār “all-governing”, abzōnīg “promoting” and harwisp-nigerīdār “all-observing” (Bd 1.33).

11 The passages from the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram are cited from P. Gignoux and A. Tafazzoli (eds.), Anthologie de Zādspram (Leuven-Paris, 1993); the cited text is specified by the abbreviation “WZ” followed by chapter and paragraph numbers.

12 Bd 1.52 az amahraspandān pas az way ī dagrand-xwadāy nazdist Wahman frāz brēhēnīd ‘from among the Amahraspandān—after [creating] the lasting autonomous space—[Ohrmazd] first fashioned Wahman’. Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p. 10, translate this text: “Afterward, from the Way of Long Dominion he first fashioned Wahman”. They incorporate az amahraspandān into the previous sentence: “for Ohrmazd is both: first spiritual, and then material by means of the Amahraspands” (Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p. 10). This analysis is incorrect, and the semantic implications of their translation are problematic. First, the Amahraspandān are not gētīg, how can Ohrmazd be gētīg “by means of” them? See Bd 3.14-22. Second, if the Pahlavi author intended such a meaning, he would have used pad and not az. Third, the idea that Ohrmazd fashions Wahman “from the Way of Long Dominion” contradicts what the Pahlavi text goes on to say, namely that Ohrmazd fashions Wahman from nēk-rawišnīh and stī ī rōšnīh. Incidentally, Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p.199, assert that pas should be “emended” to ī in Pakzad's critical edition of the text. There are two occurrences of pas on the indicated page (22) of the Pakzad edition. Both are straightforward readings, which, moreover, appear to be translated by Agostini and Thrope themselves as “then” and “afterward”, respectively.

13 This of course does not mean that in the Avesta Mazdā's creation of the world is not preceded and guided by the (mental) representation of its form. The notion of “creation” as it is understood in this article (in contradistinction to cosmogony) implies such an antecedent conception of the worldly constituents, and there are numerous indications to this effect in the Avesta. But we do not have an Avestan account of a distinct “mental” stage of the creation of the world. Incidentally, the opposition of mēnōg and gētīg in Pahlavi literature semantically amalgamates two Avestan oppositional pairs: the OAv. ahu- manax́iia- (or manaŋhō) versus ahu- astuuaṇt- (the mental existence versus the existence possessed of bone), and the YAv. mainiiauua- versus gaēϑiia- (celestial versus terrestrial). On the latter, cf. J. Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol. 1. Le Ratauuō vīspe mazišta (Paris, 2006), p 42 (translation of Vr 2.4); Kellens, J., Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol 3. Le long préambule du sacrifice (Paris, 2010), p, 14Google Scholar (translation of Y 16.1-2). In the Gāϑās and probably the YH, the “mental existence” seems to precede the “existence possessed of bone” and resumes after the dissolution of the latter, but (as far as I can tell) only for humans and possibly beneficent animals. Cf. J. Kellens, ‘ahu, mainiiu, ratu’, in Aux sources des liturgies indo-iraniennes, (eds.) C. Redard, J. Ferrer-Losilla, H. Moein, and Ph. Swennen (Liège, 2020), pp. 165–166. For a different view of the OAv. oppositional pair, see Narten, J., Der Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Wiesbaden, 1986), pp. 290–295Google Scholar; A. Hintze, A Zoroastrian Liturgy. The Worship in Seven Chapters (Yasna 35–41) (Wiesbaden, 2007), p. 73.

14 By “philosophical account” I mean in the manner of Greek natural philosophers.

15 Plato's demiurge creates time after the world soul. Cf. Timaeus 37d-38c. “[T]ime was created along with the universe, and since they were created together, they will also perish together, if they do ever perish. And the creation of the universe conformed to the model of eternity, so as to be as similar as possible. For the model exists for all eternity, while the universe was and is and always will be for all time” (Timaeus 38c). For Plato, the cosmos although created is endless. Time is the “image of eternity” (Timaeus 37e). The following edition of the Timaeus is used in this article: Plato, Timaeus and Critias, translated by R. Waterfield (Oxford, 2008).

16 D 7.1.4 weh dēn čihr ohrmazd xēm u-š dahišn pad ham-niyābīh ī fradom dām wahman amahraspand (transcription modified) “the nature of the good religion is Ohrmazd's own character (i.e., nature), and its creation (took place) in collaboration with the first created being, Wahman the Amahraspand”. (The passage from the Dēnkard 7 is cited from M. Molé, La legende de Zoroastre selon les textes pehlevis (Paris, 1967); the abbreviation “D” is followed by book, chapter, and chapter numbers.) Cf. Bd. 1.52 u-š wahman az nēk-rawišnīh ud stī ī rōšnīh frāz brēhēnīd kē-š dēn ī weh ī māzdēsnān abāg būd “he created Wahman from nēk-rawišnīh and luminous substance, [Wahman] who was accompanied by the good religion of Mazdā worshippers”.

17 Cf. Bd 1.52 kē-š rawāgīh ī dām ī Ohrmazd aziš būd… u-š Wahman az nēk-rawišnīh ud stī ī rōšnīh frāz brēhēnīd “[Wahman] from whom was the propagation of Ohrmazd's creation [Ohrmazd] fashioned Wahman from flourishing and the being of light”. By way of Wahman, rawāgīh is grounded in nēk-rawišnīh. The way of proceeding in general that accords with Ohrmazd's will (nēk-rawišnīh) is the source of the propagation (rawāgīh) of his creation, activated by time (*pad ayārīh ī zamān ī dagrand-xwadāy). Cf. WZ 1.27.

18 Note that the author distances himself from the assertion that the sky is the first creation. See my discussion of Bd 1a.2 below.

19 Cf. WZ 3.77-82.

20 Cf. D 3.123 ud gētīg dahišnān hangardīg hēnd šaš asmān <ud> āb ud zamīg ud urwar ud gōspand ud mardōm “the gētīg creations are six altogether: sky and water and earth and plant and beneficent animal and human”. For the six celestial levels see Bd 2.10-15: 1) axtarān čaxrag-ēwēnag; 2) starān a-gumēzišnīg; 3) māh ī gōspand-tōhmag; 4) xwaršēd ī arwand-asp; 5) gāh ī amahraspandān; 6) asar-rōšnīh gāh ī ohrmazd. In Bd 2.16 the author explicitly gives the number of the levels and relates it to that of the gētīg creations: ēn-iz ast šaš pāy ī šaš dahišn čiyōn šaš dahišn ī gētīg “thus there are six levels of the six (celestial) creations as there are six gētīg creations”. Here dahišn must be understood to designate the object as well as the act of creation.

21 WZ 1.25 ohrmazd dām tanōmandīhā be ō gētīg dād fradom asmān dudīgar āb sidīgar zamīg čahārom urwar ud panǰom gōspand šašom mardōm ud ātaxš andar wisp būd pargandag hāmist pad šaš gōhrag ī har gōhrag-ē drang ī pad abar dādan and būd goft ēstēd čand miǰ-ē ī ka ēk pad did frōd nihēnd “Ohrmazd created the creation in bodily form in the gētīg state: first the sky, second the water, third the earth, fourth the plants, fifth the beneficent animal, sixth the human being, and fire was spread in everything; all (the creation) in six substances, each of which substance, it has been said, taking as much time for being created as the blink of an eye takes”. Cf. Bd 1.52 ohrmazd pad amahraspandān brīnōmand mad ka-š dād būd hēnd šaš rad čē-š abāz ō gētīg abāyist dād “with the Amahraspandān, Ohrmazd came to a stop when he had created the six rads, for he had to transpose [the world] to the gētīg state”. The subordinated clause čē-š abāz ō gētīg abāyist dād is defective. I have provided the missing object in the square brackets on the basis of the phrase that follows it: u-š nōgtar pad tan ī pasēn anāgīh aziš be abāyēd burdan “in the eschaton [Ohrmazd] must once again remove evil [or corruption] from it”, where aziš unquestionably refers to the world and nōgtar evokes the original purity (abēzagīh) of the world. The main clause appears to refer to the process of creation: the Amahraspandān potentially could have been more, but once Ohrmazd had created six of them, he stopped. Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p. 10, translate the first passage: “When Ohrmazd created the Amahraspands, he became limited. He needed to create these six spiritual masters for the material world”. The notion that Ohrmazd “becomes limited” once he has created the Amahraspandān is obscure and, as far as I know, otherwise unattested in Zoroastrian literature. Appeal to the arrangement of the names of the days of the month (e.g., Bd 3.8) in order to make sense of the notion is not warranted. The second sentence in their translation is problematic, both in syntax and in meaning. As to the latter, cf. Bd 3.8-9. What becomes of the subordinating conjunction čē? If in effect one reads čē as the relative pronoun kē, the Pahlavi sentence would mean: “in creating the Amahraspandān, Ohrmazd stopped once he had created the six rads whom he had to re-appoint to the gētīg world”. There are two problems with this treatment of čē. One is that it fudges over abāz (ō… dādan). More seriously, it cannot be harmonized with the phrase that follows it. There is no question that in anāgīh aziš be abāyēd burdan the object of the verb abāyēd is the infinitival phrase anāgīh aziš be… burdan “to remove evil from it [i.e., the world]”. Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p. 10 make the Amahraspandān the object of abāyēd: “and, later, at the time of the Final Body, he will need them once more to remove evil from it”.

22 Cf. D 3.123 u-š dahišn ō kušišnīg awištāb ud awištābāg ī xwad ast dahišn hamēstār spōzīh ud ham paywand ān ī ǰāwēdānīg nēk-rawišnīh “the reason for his creation is to fight against oppression and oppressors that are indeed the creation of the adversary, and to join the eternal well-being, too”. See also Bd 1.12.

23 Cf. Y 1.16 : “I announce and perform (the consecration) of these (inhabited) spaces, the settlements, the pastures, the habitations, the water points; the waters, the earth, the plants; the earth here, the sky there, the wind (in between) that supports Aṣ̌a; the stars, the moon, the sun, the self-established endless lights; and all the male and female creations of the Life-giving Spirit that support Aṣ̌a and the arrangements of Aṣ̌a”. (The translation is based on J. Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol. 1. Le Ratauuō vīspe mazišta, pp. 20–21.) There is only a rudimentary categorization of the phenomena in this list. As far as I can see there are at least four or five such categories marked out by semicolons in my translation. I am not sure whether the final group refers to human beings or is meant as a totalizing formula to cover what is not explicitly named. The list of course is not a creation list. Nonetheless it reveals what seem to be taken as vital phenomena.

24 Cf. PRDd 46.3-36. (The passages from the Pahlavi Rivāyat are cited from A. Williams, The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnig, 2 volumes (Copenhagen, 1990); the numbers following the abbreviation “PRDd” refer to chapter and paragraph.) Fire is a “creation” only in a loose sense, as I explained above. Although the main ground for its inclusion in the lists of gētīg creations is the indigenous daxšagān doctrine, one cannot rule out the encouragement of the astrological significance of the number seven.

25 The passages from Yašt 13 are cited from W. W. Malandra (ed.), Frawardīn Yašt. Introduction, Text, Commentary, Glossary (Irvine, 2018).

26 Cf. Y 65.1 yazāi āpəm ardəuuīm sūrąm anāhītąm; see J. Kellens, ‘Le problème avec Anāhitā’, Orientalia Suecana LI-LII (2002–2003), pp. 317–326.

27 Cf. D 3.123 ud gētīg dahišnān hangardīg hēnd šaš asmān <ud> āb ud zamīg ud urwar ud gōspand ud mardōm “the gētīg creations are six altogether: sky and water and earth and plant and beneficent animal and human”.

28 The passages from Yasna 19 are cited from J. Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol 3. Le long préambule du sacrifice (Paris, 2010).

29 The six items also occur — sometimes along with other items (notably fire) — in purification or consecration contexts, such as Visperad 7.4 or Vīdēvdād 11.1 (and 10). See Ch. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wörterbuch, (Berlin, 1961), col. 402–403, 507. The list in Vīdēvdād 11.1 (repeated in 10) is interesting. It starts with fire rather than the sky, and gives terrestrial creations followed by celestial ones, and ends with a comprehensive formula: fire, water, earth, cow, plant, male and female righteous humans; stars, the moon, the sun, and the endless lights; and all good things created by Mazdā that have the brilliant form of Aṣ̌a. Note the order of cow and plant. The Vīdēvdād passages refer to F. Geldner (ed.), Avesta: the Sacred Books of the Parsis, 3 (Stuttgart, 1896). Cf. A. Ahmadi, ‘Zoroastrian Doctrine of Formation of Heavenly Bodies in Pahlavi Texts’, Iranian Studies (2020).

30 See Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol 3. Le long préambule du sacrifice, p. 29: “(ceux que Y 34.5c’ appelle) « les démons infects et leurs hommes-liges »”.

31 For Eudemus, Aristotle's pupil, Ahura Mazdā was apparently consubstantial with light (Eudemus fr. 150 Wehrli). On the reliability of Damascius who reports the text, see G. Betegh, ‘On Eudemus Fr. 150 (Wehrli)’, in Eudemus of Rhodes, (eds.) I. Bodnár and W. Fortenbaugh (New Brunswick, 2002), pp. 337–357. Hintze, A., ‘Monotheism the Zoroastrian Way’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24 (2014), pp. 229–232Google Scholar, argues that Mazdā “generates [“all good spiritual beings”] out of himself”, and that the terminology of procreation expresses this consubstantiality.

32 Yt 13.86: sky, water, earth, plant, cow, Gaiia-marətan.

33 See Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol 3. Le long préambule du sacrifice, p. 32 : “la répétition de dā̊ŋhōit̰ se justifie par la séparation des créations célestes et des créations terrestres”.

34 See Ahmadi, ‘Zoroastrian Doctrine of Formation of Heavenly Bodies’. The Gāthic account of creation (Y 44.3-7) is quite different, although obviously the six constituents of the YAv. doctrine are present there, too. See J. Kellens, ‘Les cosmogonies iraniennes : entre héritage et innovation’, in Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek (eds.) B. Huber, M. Volkart, and P. Widmer (Halle, 2008), pp. 508–509; J. Kellens, Études avestiques et mazdéenes vol 6. Lecture sceptique et aventureuse de la Gâthâ uštauuaitī (Paris, 2020), pp. 47–59. Kellens, ‘Les cosmogonies iraniennes’, p. 509, describes the Gāthic account as “une théorie de la chronologie cosmogonique conçue comme un processus qui va de l'engendrement du principe régulateur de tout (Aṣ̌a) à l'apparition des générations humaines”. The Yasna Haptaŋhāiti list of creations in Y 37.1 is curious. See A. Hintze, A Zoroastrian Liturgy, pp. 162–167. It mentions the creations in the following order: the cow, Aṣ̌a, the waters, good plants, the sky (literally “lights”), the earth (būmi-), and all that is good. It is not clear whether “all that is good” is meant to cover what is not mentioned by name or the intermediary space between sky and earth, as Kellens ‘Les cosmogonies iraniennes’, p. 508, maintains, which would presumably include the heavenly bodies. Cf. Bd 2.1 ohrmazd andarag ī asmān ud zamīg rōšnān frāz brēhēnīd “Ohrmazd fashioned the heavenly bodies between the sky and the earth” The absence of human beings in the YH list is hard to explain, so is the order of the items—pairing them as the syntax suggests does not help that much in this respect. See Kellens, ‘Les cosmogonies iraniennes’, p. 509.

35 WZ 2.9 adds mādag “female” to the description of the gāw.

36 In Bd 1a.18-1a.25 the author adapts the schedule of creation to the gāhānbār festivals: Bd 1a.18 u-š ēn šaš dahišn pad šaš gāh ī gāhānbār be dād. The process of creation takes a whole year, in which the festivals punctuate the six periods of creation with six periods of presumably rest and celebration. For instance, Ohrmazd creates the sky in forty days (pad čehel rōz) after which the god rests for five days during the mēdyōzarm festival (Bd 1a.20). Incidentally, this adaptation shows the problematic nature of reading a “cosmogonic sacrifice” into Bd 3.26. Would the author of Bd 1A have adopted the gāhānbār frame for the creation scheme if there was a conception according to which creation of the world is accomplished during a sacrifice? Conversely, would the author of the Iranian-manuscripts version of Bd 3.26 (whether or not the same as that of chapter 1A) ignored the gāhānbār scheme of the chapter which is specifically about creation of the gētīg world, and made a noon sacrifice the time frame of creation? See the appendix.

37 In the Timaeus (32b-c), the demiurge arranges the four Empedoclean elements “so that as fire is to air, so air is to water, and as air is to water, so water is to earth; and so he bound together and structured the visible and tangible universe”. Cf. Simplicius, in Phys. 24.13: “[Anaximander] said that the principle and the element of existing things was the apeiron [indefinite, or infinite], being the first to introduce this name of the material principle. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other apeiron nature, from which come into being all the heavens and the worlds in them” (in G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield (eds.), The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 2007, p. 107). “Principle” translates archē and “element” stoicheion. Aristotle used stoicheion, which designated letters of the alphabet, for the “elements”. On the notion of archē “principle” cf. Timaeus 29b; On the Soul 402a in J. Barnes, (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, 1984), 1, 641.

38 Cf WZ 34.50 ohrmazd pad āb be dād… čē āb čihr dārēd ī rōšnāg ud waxšāg… čiyōn ka tōm ī urwarān be ō āb rasēd ā-š zōr ī waxšagīh az-iš <ud> xwēd bawēd “Ohrmazd created through water… for water has a nature that illuminate and makes grow… as when plant seeds are watered, they receive the power to grow and become succulent”. Aristotle wonders whether Thales's “supposition” that water is the archē of cosmos is not rooted in the observation that “seeds” have a moist nature and grow in moist conditions.

39 Cf. D 3.123 bun stī ī gēhān baxtag ī anaγr-rōšn dādār nazdtōm “the original being of the gētīg world is a part of the endless lights, which is the closest to the creator”. Bd 1.1 ohrmazd bālistīg pad harwisp-āgāhīh ud wehīh zamān ī akanārag andar rōšnīh hamē būd “Ohrmazd was forever on high in light with omniscience and goodness [and] the unlimited time”. As Bd 1.2 indicates, the unlimited time, omniscience and goodness are hypostatized, although they also remain Ohrmazd's defining qualities and temporal mode of existence.

40 For Anaxagoras see Kirk et al. (eds.), Presocratic Philosophers, p. 372: “‘For air and aither are being separated off from the surrounding mass, which is infinite in number’ (Fr. 2 Simplicius in Phys. 155, 31) … ‘From these things, as they are separated off, the earth is solidified; for water is separated off from the cloud, earth from water, and from earth stones are solidified by the cold; and stones tend to move outwards more than water’ (Fr. 16 Simplicius in Phys. 179, 8 and 155, 21)”. The order “air and aither” reflects the perspective of the “mixture in the middle” from which they are “separated off”. In Phaedo 96a-100a, Socrates describes to his friends his disappointment when he discovered that Anaxagoras's cosmogony was no different from other physical theories and that despite his notion of the cosmic nous he in fact had no place for an intelligent cause in its account of the formation of the world. See Plato, Meno and Phaedo, (eds.) D. Sedley and A. Long (Cambridge, 2016). For Heraclitus see Kirk et al. (eds.), Presocratic Philosophers, p. 198: “‘All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods’ (Fr. 90, Plutarch de E. 8, 388D) … The pure cosmic fire was probably identified by Heraclitus with αίθήρ (aither), the brilliant fiery stuff which fills the shinning sky and surrounds the world; this aither was widely regarded both as divine and as a place of souls. The idea that the soul may be fire or aither, not breath as Anaximenes had thought, must have helped to determine the choice of fire as the controlling form of matter”. See G. E. R. Lloyd, ‘Greek Cosmologies’, in Methods and Problems in Greek Science (Cambridge, 1991a), pp. 141–163.

41 Almost all our knowledge of the phusikoi “physicists” comes from Aristotle and his pupils Theophrastus and Eudemus. In the first book of Metaphysics (1.3-10) Aristotle gives an account of the ‘philosophers’ beginning with Thales, after defining what philosophy is (1.1-2). According to this definition, philosophy is explaining things through their principles, which belong to one of four categories: material, moving, formal and final causes. The first philosophers (i.e., Thales and Anaximenes) explained the cosmos through material principles; but, says Aristotle (Metaphysics 1.3, 984a16ff), later philosophers realized that matter being passive does not give rise to anything on its own and requires a moving cause if it is to become something; still later philosophers brought to bear in their explanations of the world the final and formal causes. See J. Barnes, (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 volumes (Princeton, 1984), pp. 1552–1569. Aristotle distinguishes the phusikoi and other philosophers from the “theologians”, i.e., composers of theogonies. For him, first substances are gods, i.e., heavenly bodies; it is in this perspective that he is prepared to admit anything philosophically salvageable in theogonies. See Metaphysics 12.8 1074a37ff.

42 Fazilat, Dinkard, p. 80, rightly edits tšn to tcšn on the basis of MD 126.14 and 207.6.

43 Cf. A. Hintze, ‘Monotheism the Zoroastrian Way’, p. 231. The Bundahišn manuscript TD2 version of Bd 1.43 has Ohrmazd az ān ī xwēš xwadīh +kē gētīg rōšnīh kirb ī dāmān ī xwēš frāz brēhēnīd “Ohrmazd created the form of his creation from his own essence which is gētīg light”. TD1 and DH have stī ī instead of gētīg (see Pakzad, Bundahišn, p. 19). Based on the place of the text in the account, I think that the correct reading is ohrmazd az ān ī xwēš xwadīh az stī ī rōšnīh, etc. Nonetheless, qualifying rōšnīh with gētīg is not at all absurd and in itself quite comprehensible within the Zoroastrian conception of the ontological status of light.

44 “But of the Magoi and all the Areion race, according to the relation of Eudemus, some denominate the Intelligible Universe and the United, Place, while others call it Time (Chronos): from whom separately proceed a Good Divinity and an Evil Demon; or, as some assert, prior to these, Light and Darkness. Both the one, therefore, and the other, after an undivided nature, hold the twofold co-ordination of the superior natures as separated and distinct, over one of which they place Oromasdes as the ruler, and over the other Arimanius” (Fragment 150 Wehrli cited from R. G. Edmonds, ‘Misleading and Unclear to the Many: Allegory in the Derveni Papyrus and the Orphic Theogony of Hieronymus’, in The Derveni Papyrus: Unearthing Ancient Mysteries, (ed.) M. A. Santamaría (Leiden, 2019), p. 93 note 95).

45 Cf. J. Kellens, ‘La Gâthâ ahunauuaitī dans l'attente de l'aube’, Journal Asiatique 302 2 (2014), pp. 279–282. YH 36.6: “We now declare, O Wise Lord, that this light here has been the most beautiful form of your forms, ever since yonder highest of heights was called the sun” (Hintze, ‘Monotheism the Zoroastrian Way’, p. 231); “Nous te reconnaissons, ô Ahura Mazdā, le corps le plus beau des corps: ces lumières-célestes, la plus haute des hauteurs depuis que le soleil a reçu son nom” (Kellens ‘La Gâthâ ahunauuaitī’, p. 280). The phrase “since the sun was named” means “since the sun has been in existence”.

46 This is why Genesis 1 may be described as a creation myth.

47 Cf. S. Jamison, The Rig Veda Between Two Worlds (Paris, 2007), pp. 35–38.

48 See Sedley, ‘Hesiod's Theogony and Plato's Timaeus’.

49 Timaeus 53bc (see note 15 above for the edition used).

50 Cf. Timaeus 29a: “It is perhaps clear, then, that he [i.e., the demiurge] used an eternal one model, because nothing in creation is more beautiful than the world and no cause is better than its maker”.

51 At any rate, such is how things appear within the type of account (eikōs muthos “likely fable”) that is suitable for what “has come into being” or “generated”, i.e., the cosmos, as opposed to the type of account (logos) which is expected of “being”. Cf. Timaeus 48b-c, 53d.

52 Or, at any rate, merely a blind sorting of the “traces” of the four elements by the attraction of like to like (cf. Timaeus 52e-53a).

53 We can see here a pale reflection of the beginning of Hesiod's theogony.

54 Y 19.15 “The divine Ahura Mazdā pronounced the ahuna vairiia (the divine one organized all; the evil one became bound) and banished the partisan of druj with this interdiction: ‘neither our minds, nor our announcements, nor our wills, nor our choice, nor our words, nor our actions, nor our visions, nor our souls associate [with one another]’”. The two phrases that I have put in round brackets are in my view a subsequent expansion. The two original statements are straightforward reports on what Mazdā utters (from √mru), and the coordination by means of -ca duly expresses the persistence of the logical subject.

55 Cf. Bd 1.52 ; WZ 21.9.

56 Cf. Timuş, M., ‘Le “corps eschatologique” (tan ī pasēn) d'après la théologie zoroastrienne’, Studia Asiatica 4 and 5 (2003–2004), pp 795–800Google Scholar, 803.

57 Cf. Jong, A. de, ‘Shadow and Resurrection’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 9 (1995), pp. 215–224Google Scholar.

58 A. Ahmadi, ‘Cosmogonic Sacrifice: A Ghost Zoroastrian Doctrine’, Indo-Iranian Journal 60 (2017), pp. 1–16.

59 I assume that preserving the narrative order is a desideratum of our reading of the text. One could, of course, deny that narrative coherence should be a criterion in judging the issue. One could, for example, maintain that Chapter 3 is composed by a different author who, moreover, did not feel himself bound by the account of creation in Chapter 1A since he held a different doctrine of creation, or he might have been simply unaware of the content of the earlier chapter, or that, if the chapters were compiled by a third person, the narrative order (and with it the chronology of events) was unimportant to this compiler.

60 See Pakzad, Bundahišn, p. 52.

61 Agostini and Thrope, Bundahišn, p. 25.

62 See Bartholomae, C., Altiranisches Wörterbuch (Berlin, 1961), col. 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 The Dēnkard 5 texts from cited from J. Amouzgar and A. Tafazzoli, Le cinquième livre du Dēnkard (Paris, 2000).

64 Baghbidi, H. Rezai, The Rivāyat of Ādur-Farrōbay ī Farrōxzādān (Tehran, 2005), p. 16Google Scholar.

65 The Pahlavi Rivāyat texts are cited from A. V. Williams, The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg (Copenhagen, 1990).

66 Or andar yazišn kunišn <ī> dām hamāg be dād “in the service, [Ohrmazd] set the task of creation in its entirety”.

67 But this favours giving kunišn (in the supposed yazišn kunišn) verbal force, and makes the phrase vulnerable to the criticism based on the usage of andar.