Pahlavi

by Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo and Enrico G. Raffaelli, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto

Introduction

Zoroastrian communities have provided interpretations of their sacred corpus, the Avesta, since the early phase of their history. The Avesta itself contains commentaries on some of its passages. After the period when Avestan ceased being a living language, and Avestan texts were not composed anymore (around the 4^th century BCE), Zoroastrians produced translations and commentaries of their sacred texts to facilitate their understanding.

This blog illustrates the characteristics of the exegetical passages of the Avesta, and of the main corpus of the Pahlavi literature of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the most extensive literary corpus of Zoroastrian pre-modern literature.

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University of Toronto

Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo is the FEZANA Professor in Zoroastrian Languages and Literatures in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He has previously held academic positions at the Free University of Berlin, University of Copenhagen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of Salamanca. Among other publications, he is the author of the monograph The Zoroastrian Law to Expel the Demons: Wīdēwdād 10-15. Critical Edition, Translation and Glossary of the Avestan and Pahlavi Texts. Iranica 23. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. He has worked on ten international projects in the fields of Old and Middle Iranian languages and literatures, Zoroastrianism and Indo-Iranian linguistics.

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Zoroastrian Exegetical Literature

Introduction

Miguel Ángel ANDRÉS-TOLEDO

University of Toronto

Pahlavi

Introduction

University of Toronto

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