Iranian Studies
Year:2016 | Volume:6 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

Geographical concept of “Haft kešvar” could be traced back to the Proto-Indo-Iranian period. After the separation of Indians and Iranians, due to geographical circumstances and religious and political changes, original Indo-Iranian narrative of seven part of the earth, turned into its current versions. A comparison of old Iranian and Indian texts, specially Avesta and Vishṇu Purāṇa, shows that in the original Indo-Iranian narrative, the earth was divided into seven parts which contained a central part surrounded by other six parts. In the beginning, amongst these seven parts, which had been separated from each other by some obstacles, only central part was inhabited by mankind. After mankind’s divergence from the prototypical progenitor, the other six parts were also inhabited. In the Avestan tradition – same as Indian – original names of seven parts were replaced by the new ones. Afterwards, with the expansion of Mazdaean religion and transmission of political center to the western part of Iranian plateau, Avestan concept of “Haft kešvar” also changed. In the middle Persian texts, since the central part was considered in the western Iran, direction of the Avestan western part was turned into the east and vice versa. The heritage of septet division of the earth, can be seen independently, also in the Achaemenid sources: we can see a fading trace of septet division in the organization of Achaemenid satrapies.

The script and orthography system which are used for the zoroastrian middle Persian (= Pahlavi) texts, because of their many shortcomings and difficulties, have always caused many misunderstandings and misinterpretations by the ancient users and modern researchers. This indeterminacy of the script and the lack of a complete and accurate understanding of the contents of the texts have caused the past writers and scribes of these texts and modern researchers make unfounded legends in order to legitimize their readings. In this article, after surveying the different written forms of the name of Sogdiana in Pahlavi texts and offering a transcription for one of them, the epithet of this land, haft-āšyan “with seven nests” is studied. This epithet is recorded in a Pahlavi text, Šahestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, and a Persian history work, Gardizi’s Zain al-Axbār. At the end, “haft-āšyān” is considered as a distorted rendering of the Avestan form suγδō. šayana-. The Avestan form is reached to Middle Persian as suwdōšayan, but this middle Persian form is finally abandoned in Pahlavi manuscripts and Islamic texts due to the unawareness of the scribes and also its similarity to haftāšyān.

Because of misconceptions regarding Sasanian calendar, two ancient seasonal festivals, known as Ābrīzgān and Āḍarjašn, have remained unnoticed in modern researches. A sound interpretation of the Old Iranian calendar as described by Biruni would uncover the true character of these festivals. This paper demonstrates that these two old festivals, probably like a few other seasonal festivals, go back to very old times, and the custom of celebrating these festivals predates the time of month-naming in Old Iranian calendar. Customs associated with these two festivals in Sasanian Era and the mechanism for celebrating these seasonal festivals in vague year of the Sasanian calendar are also studied here. These two festivals have been main reasons behind the naming of the first month of summer and the last month of autumn in Old Iranian calendar. Moreover, this paper explains the reasons for creation of both non-seasonal alternatives of these two festivals and the festivals which were celebrated with the coincidence of the names of the day and the month. Later developments in these two festivals after the fall of Sasanian dynasty, both before and after the introduction of Jalali calendar in 11th century, is the last object of the paper.

So far, there has been much discussion among scholars about the identity of the poet of Sāmnāme. Some attribute the poem to the renowned eighth-century poet, Khāju Kermāni, and others have cast serious doubt on this attribution. In this paper, the assumption is that someone named Khāju in the tenth century AH, whose real name is known to be ‘Khāju-ye Shahnāmekhān of Karatēī has compiled Sāmnāme based on Khāju Kermāni’s poem Homāy o Homāyun, with adding some lines about Sām, either by himself or others. In addition, this person has also attributed two other heroic poems, the Shorter Farāmarznāme and Shabrangnāme, to himself. These two heroic poems have been probably written in the sixth century AH and the names of the poets are not specified in the texts.

One of the oldest medical schools in the world is Ayūrvedic school or Indian traditional medicine, whose history goes back to five thousand years ago. This school, which was formed and came to maturity in India, has affected on other medical schools in the world, and Iranian medical school has been also affected by it. In remnant texts of one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages, Khotanese, effect of this school is clearly obvious. Some of the most important Ayūrvedic texts has been fully or partially translated into Khotanese and a small amount of them are still extant. Among the most important surviving medical texts in Khotanese, which in fact are rendering of original Indian medical texts, may be noted Siddhasāra and Jīvakapusta. The present paper aims at presentation these texts and reviewing their content.

Among Sanayi’s works, Hadiqat -alhaqiqa is of significant importance and has been traditionally noticed and admired by many poets and scholars. In this long Masnavi, there are a lot of sociocultural and religious information expressed in an artistic language with an extended vocabulary and the true understanding of them is not so simple to everybody. Some difficulties, however, does not lie in the complexities of the work itself, rather in the text corruptions occurred by the scribes and editors faults and misreadings. This article is dealt with some of those faults and is an attempt to correct them.

In international politeness studies were debates about Iran with a focus on ta'arof, which was typically defined as "Iranian politeness" and described by common phrases. This article tries to present a different view by taking into account that in Iran people differentiate between Adab and Ta'arof. Since there is no definite way to define ta'arof by speech acts, a more structural way to define ta'arof is presented here. Therefore, ta'arof is a constant social discourse between the involved persons and is a tool to regulate social relations, rather being a concrete action. The article starts with a discussion about different concepts of politeness and then introduces shortly to a politeness theory by Watts, which is considering regional differences and global similarities. Then, the article discusses some historical and contemporary questions and topics related to politeness, which could contribute to a better and more comprehensive understanding of politeness and ta'arof. An important step for future studies about this field is a distinction between the explained and the real structure of ta'arof, because the explained structure is always a coherent narrative of one’s actions. At the end of the article, the changing of the meaning of ta'arof is mentioned, and that is may find the meaning of the german word Höflichkeit and that the spreading of the conciseness about ta'arof could enhance other language’s vocabulary and culture.

The Subjunctive mood is one of the verb moods in Middle Persian, like many other languages. This mood has had usage both in the present and also in the past, but in the extant texts just a few of its inflectional forms are available. The past subjunctive has a considerable less frequency in comparison with the present subjunctive, and it is confined to some of verbs which are made with the past stem and the auxiliary verb hād. Nevertheless, in the existing texts there is another form of the past subjunctive which is made by the past stem and the present inflection of the verb būdan. In the grammars of Middle Persian there is no mention of this latter construction. The use of this construction is continued in New (=Dari) Persian and it is possible to find its origins in the Ancient languages (Avestan and Old Persian).