Zoroastrian Orality, Customs, and Ecology Course: An Intro
Introductions and overviews may sound like an easy couple of hours, but the first two hours of this class peppered us with new concepts about oral traditions and a footnote on women in the Avesta.
The third course in the TISS–PARZOR Online Certificate Programme on Culture & Heritage Studies: A Zoroastrian Perspective is on Zoroastrianism’s oral and written texts, rituals, customs, and ecology. If you missed it, here’s the first post on this program:
Overview
The first lecture of Zoroastrian Orality, Customs, and Ecology gave us an overview of what to expect for the next month and introduced lectures on oral and written texts/transmission. It’ll have one more MCQ (multiple-choice questions test) than the previous two courses, and the usual final essay assignment. It’ll also have two extra lectures on Saturdays (there goes my sleep!) and three optional tutorials. The first lecture, being an overview, should’ve been the lightest. My brain died. This does not bode well for the next month with us getting into the meat of each topic and different lecturers each day. With my brain injury, I have trouble adjusting to new faces and new accents, so this could get interesting.
That’s why I’m going to try and post on each lecture the same or next day.
As Dr. Kerman Daruwalla the course co-ordinator said, even if you’re auditing the course, try to do the MCQs and essay as just listening equals only about 30% absorption of the material. I write to encode it into my deeper, longer-lasting memory. I hope!
Summary First
I appreciated that Dr. Kerman gave us a neat summary near the end of the two hours before Q&A time. A minimalist listing of five points.
Zoroastrian texts survived orally for about 2,000 years before the written form appeared.
Rituals ensured the survival and continuity of Avesta, the language of Zoroastrianism (no other culture or religion uses Avesta).
Oral transmission began about 2000 BCE. Written transmission began later in about 500 CE.
Both oral and written transmission continued simultaneously into the present day.
Zoroastrian languages evolved with geographical moves.
Oral Transmission
First Nations have traditionally transmitted their texts orally, and the Western tradition looked down upon this as an inferior form of transmission. That’s starting to change as we learn and understand better about oral transmission.
I’d like to add as an aside that human beings’ memory can be phenomenal. Think about the actors who memorize Shakespeare’s plays or those who can quote Biblical scripture from memory. There’s this myth that memorization is bad. But memorization is the key to accurate oral transmission and instant recall — faster than any computer or Google search — of important texts or poetry that speaks to one’s soul. It’s an innately human skill worth developing instead of sneering at as bad for children’s education. Critical thinking requires memorization skills.
Fixed versus Fluid
Two types of texts are used in oral transmission: fixed and fluid.
Fixed Texts
Fixed texts don’t change through the millennia. How can this be? They use metrical texts with a specific number of syllables and fixed stanzas. These texts are meant to be heard; the hearing will tell you when the speaker has strayed off the text, for it will have lost its meter. The meter tells the speaker when they’re accurately transmitting the texts. That’s why the Gathas remained unchanged even though they were only transmitted orally for 2,000 years before being written down.
These fixed texts were in Old Avestan and are the proof of Zarathushtra’s existence as an historical person.
Fluid Texts
Fluid texts are what Westerners think of when they think about orally transmitted texts. Zoroastrian fluid texts
usually comprise the heroic texts or praises of divinities. They accrued elements through the millennia as the people moved geographically. New stanzas may have been added when Zoroastrians moved from Eastern (current day) Iran to Western. Fluid texts may have originated before the fixed texts.
Old Avestan, which existed during the first Zoroastrian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, gave way in a natural progression to Young Avestan. There’s a transition between the two, which is Middle Avestan, but doesn’t seem to exist much.
Written Transmission
A writing system was not invented for the first 2,000 years because oral texts were seen as pure and written as desecrating the texts. The texts were also meant to be chanted and recited; as Dr. Kerman explained, their format was designed to cause people to hear them. Out loud, I assume is what they really mean, unless not everyone can hear writing in their heads when reading written texts?
In 500 CE, during the Sasanian Empire, written Avestan was invented. An authoritative priest recited the oral texts, and someone invented symbols to correlate with the sounds and included 15 vowels (if I heard that correctly) to reflect the full sound quality. The written language conveys sound not meaning. Meaning comes from other languages that are co-written to expound on or give direction to the Avestan script.
Dr. Kerman showed us an example of an Avestan manuscript fragment from Bombay University Library’s Digital Archive. The first two lines were written in Avestan script, a right-to-left script. The next two lines looked rather strange. Turns out it was Gujarati, a left-to-right script, written upside down. When scribes wrote these two types of languages next to each other, they’d write Avestan, turn the paper/cowhide upside down, write in Gujarati, turn it back right side up, and continue in Avestan. They drew a flower to denote the change in language. Interesting way to resolve two types of script flow on one page.
The oldest extant written Avestan was scribed in 1278 and resides in Copenhagen. The colophons of it and the next two oldest include the dates written and the progenitors. In that way, scholars are able to trace back the written texts to about the ninth and tenth centuries.
A later course will dive into the languages of Zoroastrianism, which descend from the Indo-European root, the same root that eventually led to English. The Indo-European root branched into Indo-Iranian languages, which branched into Iranian. Proto-Indo-Iranian led to Proto-Iranian and then into Old Avestan. (Proto meaning pre-historic, which linguists reconstructed.)
Eastern Iranian includes Avestan (Old and Young). Western Iranian includes Old Persian, which Zoroastrians switched to when they moved geographically west of their Central Asian origins. Middle Persian followed. Then after the exodus after the Arab Muslim invasion, several languages were simultaneously adopted: New Persian, Old/Middle Gujarati followed by Parsi Gujarati in India and Dari in Iran. Sanskrit and Pazand was also used. (Interesting note: although Dari shares features of Persian, only Zoroastrians understand it. Pazand means “with interpretation.”)
The Achaemenid Empire used Aramaic as their written language, but it lacked the vowels needed to transmit the Zoroastrian texts such as the Gathas or the devotional songs sung by the laity from generation to generation. That’s why Zoroastrian texts were transmitted orally for millennia. The oral tradition of fixed texts is why Zoroastrian rituals survived for about 4,000 years up to today.
Since 500 CE, oral and written transmissions co-existed; however, today, only about 15 priests can recite the long liturgies. As priests die, and if no new ones replace them, then in about a decade this facet of Zoroastrian culture will be lost. Just one aspect of why UNESCO put Zoroastrianism on the risk-of-extinction list.
Female Priests
One revelatory facet of the oral tradition is that it included instructions for both female and male priests! This contradicts so-called traditionalists who adamantly insist only men can be priests. The exclusion of women began during the Sasanian period. A few female priests have been allowed to assist men in India and Iran today. Assist! Sheesh. For a religion that portrays itself as equal-gender, this sure smacks of hypocritical patriarchy. Even more interesting, for decades, scholars have known the original texts call for gender parity.
The Avesta testifies to the concept that women were accorded moral and religious agency equal to that of men.
In Avesta
“The egalitarian ideals of Zoroastrianism—in particular, the recognition of women as “men’s partners in the common struggle against evil” (Boyce, 1972, p. 308, fn. 83) have long served to protect the dignified status of women within the Mazdayasnian community. Such notions of gender parity are firmly rooted in the teachings of the Avesta and reflect the character of early Iranian society (Schwartz, p. 4) as well as bestow “a modern appearance on this ancient religion” (Hintze, 2003, p. 403).” From Encyclopedia Iranica
The editors of my 2008 copy of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures worked to use inclusive language. The Avesta predated this modern take by 4,000 years. The Avesta’s “message of equality is articulated through the use of explicitly inclusive formulae….The Avesta testifies to the concept that women were accorded moral and religious agency equal to that of men.” Purity laws differed for the genders yet subjected both to purity rules. Although I’d heard of the ones controlling women during certain times of the month, I hadn’t heard of the one for men during certain, uh, events of the night. Did men excuse themselves from those rather quickly?
The Avestan texts frequently praise and venerate its righteous adherents, irrespective of their gender. They call for religious education of both women and men. Furthermore who receives education for priestly service depends on who has the highest esteem for truth and is less needed for household duties. In other words, not gender but capability and truthfulness. Patriarchy ascribes falsely that only women can manage a household, but I know men who can keep a house running smoother and cleaner than I can, and I’m no slouch.
“Evidence from the Avesta suggests women too once played an active role in conducting rituals,” including sacrificial rites. I find it interesting that minors can also lead:
In “the Nērangestān (N. 22.2 [= N. 40]) which permits “any male … or female or minor” (kahiiācit̰ nā … nāirikaiiā̊scit̰ apərənāiiūkahecit̰) who knows the sacred texts to act as a zaotar-, that is, a specialized priest in charge of pouring the libations.”
Women were also seen as ruler material both on Earth and in the spiritual plane. Women could become patrons.
If traditionalists don’t get out of the way of returning to the Avesta prescriptions, Parsi women will continue to turn their backs on Zoroastrianism and marry out as a way to reject while hastening this rapid descent to extinction some Parsi men are sticking to.