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Xwedodah
Xwedodah ( fa, خویدوده; khwēdōdah; Avestan: ) is a spiritually-influenced style of consanguine marriage assumed to have been historically practiced in Zoroastrianism before the Muslim conquest of Persia. Such marriages are recorded as having been inspired by Zoroastrian cosmogony and considered pious, though little academic and religious consensus has been established as to the extent of the practice of Xwedodah outside of the aristocracy and clergy of the Sasanian Empire. In modern Zoroastrianism it is near non-existent, having been noted to have disappeared as an extant practice by the 11th century AD. Etymology While the Avestan term is still of ambiguous meaning and function in the Young Avestan texts, it is only later in Middle Persian that the term becomes used in its current form. The earliest use of the word Xwedodah in Middle Persian in the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam. The nineteenth-century qaêtvadatha style (with q instead of Avesta x) an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scriptural language of Zoroastrianism, and the Avesta likewise serves as their namesake. Both are early Eastern Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian language branch of the Indo-European language family. Its immediate ancestor was the Proto-Iranian language, a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language; as such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexicon to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language. The Avestan text corpus was composed in the ancient Iranian satrapies of Arachosia, Aria, Bactria, and Margiana, corresponding to the entirety of present-day Afghanistan as well as parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vendidad
The Vendidad /ˈvendi'dæd/ or Videvdat or Videvdad is a collection of texts within the greater compendium of the Avesta. However, unlike the other texts of the Avesta, the ''Vendidad'' is an ecclesiastical code, not a liturgical manual. Name The name of the texts is a contraction of the Avestan language ''Vî-Daêvô-Dāta'', "Given Against the ''Daeva''s (Demons)", and as the name suggests, the ''Vendidad'' is an enumeration of various manifestations of evil spirits, and ways to confound them. According to the divisions of the Avesta as described in the Denkard, a 9th-century text, the ''Vendidad'' includes all of the 19th ''nask'', which is then the only ''nask'' that has survived in its entirety. Content The ''Vendidad'''s different parts vary widely in character and in age. Although some portions are relatively recent in origin, the subject matter of the greater part is very old. In 1877, Karl Friedrich Geldner identified the texts as being linguistically distinct from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xanthus Of Lydia
Xanthus of Lydia ( el, Ξάνθος ὁ Λυδός, ''Xanthos ho Lydos'') was a Greek historian, logographer and citizen of Lydia who, during the mid-fifth century BC, wrote texts on the history of Lydia known as ''Lydiaca'' (Λυδιακά), a work which was highly commended by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Xanthus also wrote occasionally about geology. It is believed that Xanthus was the earliest historian to have written a significant amount on the topic of Lydian history. He is also believed to have written a work entitled ''Magica'' (Mαγικά), as well as one entitled ''Life of Empedocles''. It is believed that Xanthus had some knowledge of Persian traditions, and it is plausible that he, a Lydian, would write about Persian religion, but it seems unlikely due to the available evidence. His seat was believed to be at Sardis, the capital. A contemporary and colleague of Herodotus, most of his writings concerned the lineage and deeds of the Lydian kings. Xanthus was known for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shahnameh
The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets (two-line verses), the ''Shahnameh'' is one of the world's longest epic poems. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic. The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Persian language, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revayats
The ''Revayats'' (also spelled as ''Rivayats'') are a series of exchanges between the Zoroastrian community in India and their co-religionists in early modern Iran. They have been ascribed the same importance of the Talmud to Judaism by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi. The word is of Arabic origin, meaning "stories" or "narrations". Overview The content of each Revayat varies but they are usually queries on matters of worship, customs, rituals and observance. The issues range form the mundane, such as queries about the preparation of ink for the writing of religious documents, to important issues including conversion. Over three centuries, twenty-two Revayats were sent from India to Persia. The first Revayat was brought in 1478 AD by Nariman Hoshang of Broach. Hoshang was a layman, supported by Chang Asa a notable leader of the Navsari Parsi community. Hoshang spent a year in Yazd, learning Persian and supported himself by 'petty trade'. Eventually his Persian improved to the extent th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hebrews
The terms ''Hebrews'' (Hebrew: / , Modern: ' / ', Tiberian: ' / '; ISO 259-3: ' / ') and ''Hebrew people'' are mostly considered synonymous with the Semitic-speaking Israelites, especially in the pre-monarchic period when they were still nomadic. However, in some instances it may also be used in a wider sense, referring to the Phoenicians, or to other ancient groups, such as the group known as Shasu of ''Yhw'' on the eve of the Bronze Age collapse, which appears 34 times within 32 verses of the Hebrew Bible. It is sometimes regarded as an ethnonym and sometimes not. By the time of the Roman Empire, Greek ''Hebraios'' could refer to the Jews in general, as ''Strong's Hebrew Dictionary'' puts it, "any of the Jewish Nation", and at other times more specifically to the Jews living in Judea. In early Christianity, the Greek term refers to Jewish Christians as opposed to the gentile Christians and Judaizers (Acts 6:1 among others). is the province where the Temple was loc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wisdom Literature
Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it was disseminated in written form. The literary genre of mirrors for princes, which has a long history in Islamic and Western Renaissance literature, is a secular cognate of wisdom literature. In classical antiquity, the didactic poetry of Hesiod, particularly his ''Works and Days'', was regarded as a source of knowledge similar to the wisdom literature of Egypt, Babylonia and Israel. Pre-Islamic poetry is replete with many poems of wisdom, including the poetry of Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520–609). Ancient Mesopotamian literature The wisdom literature from Sumeria and Babylonia is among the most ancient in the world, with the Sumerian documents dating back to the third millennium BC and the Babylonian dating to the second millennium BC. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keyumars
Keyumars or Kiomars ( fa, کیومرث) was the name of the first king (shah) of the Pishdadian dynasty of Iran according to the ''Shahnameh''. The name appears in Avestan in the form of ''𐬔𐬀𐬌𐬌𐬊 𐬨𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬙𐬀𐬥 Gaiio Mərətan'', or in medieval Zoroastrian texts as ''Gayōmard'' or ''Gayōmart''. In the Avesta he is the mythological first human being in the world. The corresponding name in Middle Persian is 𐭪𐭣𐭬𐭫𐭲 ''Kayōmart''. In Ferdowsi's ''Shahnameh'' he appears as the first shah of the world. He is also called the ''pišdād'' (), the first to practice justice, the lawgiver. The Avestan form means "the living mortal", from ''gaya'' "life" and ''marətan'' "mortal, human being"; cf. Persian ''mard'' "human" ( fa, مَرد). Keyumars is also a popular first name in Persian speaking countries (Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan). In Zoroastrian literature According to the Zoroastrian creation myth, Gayōmart was the first human, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mashya And Mashyana
According to the Zoroastrian cosmogony, Mashya and Mashyana were the first man and woman whose procreation gave rise to the human race. Etymology The names are from Avestan, nominally transliterated as ' and ', but like other Avestan words also, spellings (and hence transliterations) vary from manuscript to manuscript. ' may thus also appear as ' or ' or ' (and variants). Originally and etymologically, ' means "mortal being" as Old Persian ''martya'', Persian ''mard'' and even Sanskrit ''martya'' also mean "mortal" and therefore "man". The root in Avesta and Sanskrit for death is ''mar'', ''mr'', "to die". The causative ''mâr'' means "to kill". Its derivatives ''merethyu''/''mrtyu'' means "death"; ''mareta'' and ''maretan'' means "mortal", and then "man, human being" ''mashya''. For more on the etymology of the ''aša'' and ''arta'' variants of these terms, see Avestan phonology. Attestations According to the creation myth as described in the ''Bundahishn'', Ohrmuzd's (Ahura M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consanguine Marriage
Consanguine marriage is marriage between individuals who are closely related. Though it may involve incest, it implies more than the sexual nature of incest. In a clinical sense, marriage between two family members who are second cousins or closer qualifies as consanguineous marriage. This is based on the gene copies their offspring may receive. Though these unions are still prevalent in some communities, as seen across the Greater Middle East region, many other populations have seen a great decline in intra-family marriages.Heidari F, Dastgiri S, Tajaddini N, et al. Prevalence and Risk Factors of Consanguineous Marriage. European Journal of General Medicine erial online December 2014;11(4):248-255. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed October 4, 2016. Prevalence and stigma Globally, 8.5% of children have consanguineous parents, and 20% of the human population live in communities practicing endogamy.Akrami SM, Montazeri V, Shomali SR, Heshmat R, Larij ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dadestan-i Denig
' ( "Religious Judgments") or ' ( "Book of Questions") is a 9th-century Middle Persian work written by Manuščihr, who was high priest of the Persian Zoroastrian community of Pārs and Kermān, son of Juvānjam and brother of Zādspram. The work consists of an introduction and ninety-two questions along with Manuščihr's answers. His questions varies from religious to social, ethical, legal, philosophical, cosmological, etc. The style of his work is abstruse, dense, and is heavily influenced by New Persian. References External linksFull text in English {{Zoroastrianism-book-stub Middle Persian Middle Persian literature Zoroastrian texts Iranian books ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denkard
The ''Dēnkard'' or ''Dēnkart'' (Middle Persian: 𐭣𐭩𐭭𐭪𐭠𐭫𐭲 "Acts of Religion") is a 10th-century compendium of Zoroastrian beliefs and customs during the time. The Denkard is to a great extent considered an "Encyclopedia of Mazdaism" and is a valuable source of information on the religion especially during its Middle Persian iteration. The ''Denkard'' is not considered a sacred text by a majority of Zoroastrians, but is still considered worthy of study. Name The name traditionally given to the compendium reflects a phrase from the colophons, which speaks of the ''kart''/''kard'', from Avestan ''karda'' meaning "acts" (also in the sense of "chapters"), and ''dēn'', from Avestan '' daena'', literally "insight" or "revelation," but more commonly translated as "religion." Accordingly, ''dēn-kart'' means "religious acts" or "acts of religion." The ambiguity of ''-kart'' or ''-kard'' in the title reflects the orthography of Pahlavi writing, in which the letter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
