IRANIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Year:2002 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:18

Taxation has always been common in the urban, rural and tribal areas. However, the taxation procedures have been changeable in accordance with the locality, local productions and their local values. Due to the broad settlement areas of Lur tribes, and because of the various policies that the rulers, governors, syndics and elders carried out, the variety of these procedures appears to be natural. The study of the social history of these areas approves the diversity of these policies. It is certain that taxes were collected in the form of commodity or in cash. Parenthetically, seeing that the circulation of money, in comparison with the urban and rural areas, was very slow, the amount of the pronounced tax was consistent with agricultural and animal husbandry products. At the same time, monetary value was given to every product unit for plain sailing replacement. The level of authority of the governors and syndics was significant for the collected tax.This article tries to examine different kinds of taxes, methods of replacement, taxation procedures in given time and seasons by using genuine sources, despite the fact that these taxation procedures have never been recorded.

The problem of the self constitutes a very delicate question in anthropology. Here only one of its aspects is taken into consideration: how did Mazdaeism think the self, the internal person? One text of Darius the first, DNb, gives some clues; the human being is caracterized by physical and mental instruments and organs whose center and hart consist in the "Thought". It is possible to consider that "Thought" corresponds to what we call the self.The self, the hard-core of every human being, is not homogenous, because inside of it resides the Anger, as inside of the body resides Panic, the terror in front of death. The Ahurian creation has actually been infested by the demoniac one; then, everybody, including the Great King, bears inside of him/her Anger and Panic, everybody is at the same time informed by life and by death.A rough comparison with the three souls of mazdeism (fravashi, ruvân and daênâ) shows that the same structure had informed both the theory of the souls and the description of the human Self.In conclusion, the mazdean subject could not exist as an entire entity on the earth without the intervention of Ahura Mazdâ. He really became him/herself after death, when united with his/her immortal soul and in presence of Ahura Mazdâ.

In Iranian and Islamic societies, some winds are assumed as spirits or jinn and it is believed that when these winds enter into the human body, possessed the people and cast a spell over them. These winds or jinn-spirits are categorized as detrimental or innocuous. In order to possess and tame the evil-spirits or to drive out the Evil from the body of a demoniac, who has been struck or possessed by a demon-spirit or a jinn-spirit, the medicine men(magician-physicians) or exorcists use two therapeutic methods, namely transformational and permenent. In the permenent therapeutic method, the patient is completely cured and is then returned to his social group, whereas in transformational therapeutic method, the demon-wind or the jinn-spirit is not driven out from the body of a demoniac and thereby is mounted on the body to transmute the personality of the person supposedly possessed by an evil spirit. This would give the person a new social identity. It is then that the person joins the others possessed by evil spirits and starts a new life in society.

Engraved rocks can be considered as the earliest artistic manifestations. According to estimations, this art is to date back to more than three thousand years ago and has a long history in Iran. This article presents and examines this art in Arasbaran-Soungoun. In this region, hundreds of carved and sketched drawings and figures on rocks and in subterranean shelters were found and probed. Not only the drawings and figures but also the diversity of the motifs and images (of animals, humans, symbols etc.) is of great significance. An anthropological study of these motifs would reveal remarkable information about the situation and the limits of the cultural domains, about the cultural relations and the process of cultural diffusion in the prehistoric era at the intersection of Anatolia, Caucasus, Zagros and central plateau of Iran.

Tirmā.Sizz∂.Šu is a festival remnant of Tirgān, celebrated since Indo-Iranian period. It is still celebrated in some parts of northern Iran, especially by the alpine natives of Māzandarān, on 13th of Abān (Nov). Classical historians, relying on Biruni's tradition in Athār alBāqiye (Chronology) mentioned two relations: 1) archery of Arash the archer; 2) the struggle with drought and rain-quest. Later researchers have also presumed the origin of this Aryan festival in the myth of Arash, cultivation and rain-quest simultaneous with the rise of Tistrya Star (Sirius).The new hypothesis suggested in this paper, denies any original relationship between the festival with the myth of Arash, but it is the ritual aspect of the myth of Tištrya, the star and the Deity of rain. According to this Indo-Iranian myth, the Avestan Tištrya, the counterpart of the Vedic Tišya, fights with the demon of drought, overcomes him, frees and spreads the water throughout the world. The motif of fertility and rain-quest in summer was so significant that the myth of Tišya / Tištrya found a ritual function in the eyes of Indo Iranians, and consequently it is more significant than the myth of Arash. As for, how this summer festival comes forth to Autumn in the northern parts of Iran, is by itself another subject of this paper.

Cooperation is an interdisciplinary term in social and biological sciences. Due to the essence of the origin of social sciences, contextual assumptions, the dominant competition-orientated essence of western societies, this term has not received a rightful observation. The complications of social phenomenon in itself and the abovementioned issues have made the definition of cooperation and hence the dualistic classification in all respects difficult.Fortunately, in the last decades, the field works of some Iranian ethnographers and ethnologists have laid the bedrock of fairly accurate and real descriptions. From this standpoint, one can have a critical look at the prevalent classifications.It is concluded that there is a lack of requisite criterion in the current classifications for separating the various kinds of cooperation.

Based on a field research in a spantenous and immigrant district of a suburb of Karaj (north of Tehran), this article deals with the subject of identity among the girls of the second generation. Considering the dynamic feature of identity and the fact that collective identity is formed in conjunction with the collective status and position among others, this study sought to investigate the dynamics of collective identity formation. Availing itself of ethnological method, this study uses qualitative methods for collecting the required data. With an emic approach and in the absence of a predetermined set of elements for collective identity, this study pursued the recognition these identity dynamics and their formation elements. Three categories, namely cohesion generating, cohesion destroying and a medial state, were recognized of which cohesion generating was the dominant category in comparison with the other two. This meant that although of lower status of this neighborhood inside the city, the people under investigation positively considered themselves to be affiliated to the locality.

Examining the geographical variation of Bakhtiāri and Luri dialects in the southern and western provinces, and present in the common features and characteristics of these Bakhtiari dialects, this article focuses on linguistic change and linguistic maintenance in one of the dialects.There .is a persistent anxiety that as a result of the past development of literacy, technology, mass media, etc the official language cause the decline or death of the regional dialects.This case study in the field of Anthropology and sociology of language investigates the current situation of Bakhtiāri dialect in the city of Masjid Soleiman. By analysing the data collected through the questionnaires, the preserving or declining impacts of various factors are scrutinized.