Dualism in Transformation: Varieties of Religion in Sasanian Iran.

• Author: Choksy, Jamsheed K.

The book under review offers far more than its title suggests. It is, in fact, a succinct condensation of the wide-ranging knowledge and precious insights of Professor Shaul Shaked during many decades of research. Certain themes, central to Zoroastrianism during the Sasanian era (A.D. 224-651), are emphasized: cosmogony and dualism (chapter 1); eschatology and vision (chapter 2); man and the divine (chapter 3); a hierarchy of religious expressions (chapter 4); and the instruments of religion (chapter 5). Five appendices, discussing Avestan and Pahlavi passages, follow. In its range of scholarship, particularly the use of Middle Persian or Pahlavi sources and the constant reference to parallel issues in non-Iranian materials, this work is as monumental a contribution to the field as was Sir Harold W. Bailey's Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1943; 2d ed. 1971).

The first question taken up, one with relevance to the book as a whole, is why the Zand or Pahlavi translation of and commentary on the Avesta displays divergences from the scripture. Scholars of Zoroastrianism have been quick to dismiss the Zand as a product of medieval magi who poorly comprehended the Avestan language. Shaked, on the other hand, makes a highly relevant observation - that the Zand's divergence was not due to mere ignorance but to a "process of free elaboration and interpretation, sometimes taking the form of allegory, as in the Jewish midrash" (p. 6, n. 4).

Chapters one and two form a fascinating unit that stresses ties between beginnings and endings. In keeping with the book's general intent of probing the limits of dualism, Shaked discusses Zurvanite versions of the dualist creation myth and offers an interesting, certainly plausible, suggestion that those individuals were simply transmitting a different version of the Iranian creation story (p. 18). Since special attention is paid to the Zurvanite tales preserved by al-Shahrastani, it is curious that Shaked does not discuss or cite in this context Robert C. Zaehner's major study, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955; rpt., New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1972), 55-70, where Shahrastani's accounts were utilized to reach different conclusions. Turning to the terminus of Zoroastrianism's universal dualist scheme, Shaked addresses the issue of when the faith's eschatology and apocalyptic vision developed (pp. 27-31, 36-37). While not siding completely...