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Rediscovering the Jāmāspi: A Walk in Four Steps
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
The Jāmāspi is one of the most popular Zoroastrian texts. It was probably conceived as a kind of encyclopedia for laymen. At the beginning of the last century, it was still well-known among the Zoroastrian community of India and has reached us through various manuscript traditions: Pahlavi, Pāzand and Pārsi. A philological analysis of all the manuscript traditions suggests that there was a Pahlavi archetype of the text. Moreover, it shows clearly that the Pārsi codex M52, which represents the best preserved tradition, was the result of a collation of all the existing Pahlavi and Pāzand materials. The study of the language and the narrative pattern allows us to consider the Pārsi transcription as a mechanical transcription from a Pāzand model.
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- Research Article
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- Iranian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Pre-islamic Iranian Literary Heritage , March 2012 , pp. 169 - 180
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- Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012
Footnotes
The Jāmāspi was the subject of my PhD dissertation, consisting of a new philological edition, according to all the manuscript traditions (especially to the Pārsi tradition which, as noted below, is the best preserved and most complete).
References
2 Modi, Jivanji Jamshedji, ed. and trans., Jâmâspi: Pahlavi, Pâzend and Persian Texts (Bombay, 1903), xl,Google Scholar says: “of all the Pahlavi books known at present, no book has been so well-known by the name, among the Parsis, as the Jâmâspi.”
3 Modi, Jâmâspi, xli, summarizes this phenomenon clearly: “the Gujarati Jâmâspi has out grown its original limit by the addition of some kinds of prognostications or forebodings, rightly or wrongly connected with the name of Jâmâsp. I have come across several Gujarati manuscripts known as Jâmâspi, and have found, on comparison, that no two books are alike in matter of style and subject. Each subsequent writer or copyist adds what best suits his fancy.”
4 On this pattern of transmission of narrative apocalyptic material, see Hultgård, Anders, “Forms and Origins of Iranian Apocalypticism,” Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979 (Tübingen, 1983), 390.Google Scholar
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11 I am very grateful to the Staatsbibliothek of Munich for allowing me to consult codex M52 (Cod. Zend 52) and to the Meherjirana Library of Navsari for allowing me to consult codex RJ and all the codices belonging to Dastūr Erachji Sohrabji Mehrjirana's collection.
12 For a description of this manuscript see Bartholomae, Christian, Die Zendhandschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München (Munich, 1915), 84–85,Google Scholar and Unvala, Jamshedji Maneckji, Collection of Colophons of Manuscripts Bearing on Zoroastrianism in Some Libraries of Europe (Bombay, 1940), 63–64.Google Scholar
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20 For more information about these codices, see Modi, Jâmâspi, xxv–xxvii. With regard to the uncertain location of these codices I am sincerely grateful to Dastur Firoze Kotwal, from whom I received the following message in an email message on October 6, 2007: “Please note that the mss. MU1, 2, 3, 4 and DP have disappeared at places nobody knows where. Dr. J. M. Unvala inherited his father's mss. MU1, 2, 3 and 4 and might be housed in his home in Navsari. I have heard that a bookseller from Ahmedabad approached Dr. Unvala's sister and took the bulk away. The rest were gifted to the Meherji Rana Library which were not catalogued in print. If you are lucky, you may find one or two among the gifted lot … The same is true about the ms. DP.”
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23 See West, “The Pahlavi Jamasp-Nāmak,” 97.
24 See Benveniste, Émile, ed. and trans., “Une apocalypse pehlevie: le Žāmasp-nāmak,” Revue de l'histoire des religions, 106 (1932): 340.Google Scholar
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32 Similarly, Gignoux, Philippe, “Apocalypses et voyages extra-terrestres dans l'Iran mazdéen,” Apocalypses et voyages dans l'au-delà (Paris, 1987), 352Google Scholar, claims: “cet essai de retrouver la métrique du texte a pour conséquence de mutiler parfois certains passages, il demeure arbitraire et même gênant pour l'historien des religions.” Utas, Bo, “On the Composition of the Ayyātkār ī Zarērān,” Monumentum H. S. Nyberg (Leuven, 1975), 2: 409–10Google Scholar agrees with Benveniste's suggestion and adds: “The text is obviously adapted from an original in verse. This is valid for chapter XVI, as argued by Benveniste, but it may also be so for other parts of the work, although it is difficult to establish the actual verse lines on the basis of the often quite confused secondary material in Pazand and Parsi.”
33 See Monchi-Zadeh, Die Geschichte Zarer's, 18, 33, 43, or Pagliaro, “Il testo pahlavico,” 569–70.
34 See Messina, Libro apocalittico persiano, 12.
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