A garland of flowers for a great Iranist.

• Author: Skjaervo, Prods Oktor
• Position: 'Maitre pour l'eternite': Florilege offert a Philippe Gignoux pour son 80e ainiversaire - Book review

This second volume in honor of Philippe Gignoux is a worthy successor to the first, for his sixty-fifth birthday, (1) containing contributions from colleagues and students in all areas in which he has been excelling during his long career. They are all explicitly or implicitly related to Gignoux's own various contributions to Middle Persian epigraphy and Sasanian history and religion.

The editors' preface and a tabula gratulatoria are followed by a complete bibliography (pp. 9-32), table of contents (pp. 33-34), a "salut amical" by Gilbert Lazard, including remarks on formulas featuring bun in the Pahlavi documents edited by Gignoux and ascribed to Friyag and Xwaren (pp. 35-39), and an essay by Gherardo Gnoli (pp. 41-49) emphasizing Gignoux's contributions to Zoroastrian studies and the history of Sasanian Iran, but also including personal memories of their various collaborations.

The first contribution is a study by Guitty Azarpay, who was instrumental in securing the large collection of Pahlavi documents, studied primarily by Gignoux and D. Weber, for the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, California, thus preventing it from ending up "piecemeal on the auction block" (Azarpay, e-mail 1/20/2012). Gignoux became "the first specialist invited to examine and study the collection when it came to [their] attention at Berkeley in 1987" (Azarpay, e-mail 1/21/2012; see also Weber's contribution in this volume and Azarpay 2003a and b listed on p. 302).

Here, Azarpay discusses a topic dear to Gignoux's heart: the "Imagery of the Sogdian Den" (pp. 53-96, figs. 1-11), beginning with an overview of the "concept and imagery of the Avestan daena, (2) the den of the Middle Persian and Pahlavi sources" (p. 53), as a preliminary to an examination of "a winged figure ... depicted on the sarcophagus of Wirkak, a Sogdian official [sabao] in 6th century China" (p. 54). She briefly reviews the Avestan and Pahlavi textual sources and presents the traditional opinion that already in the oldest texts daena denotes "a man's personal religion," etc., and that den in the Pahlavi and Manichean texts is simply "religion" and was borrowed as such into Muslim writings (pp. 55-56). (3) She then reviews various female figures in Sasanian art that have been identified as the den, (4) before coming to representations in Sogdian art, where it is all but eclipsed by Nana (p. 58). (5) Here she discusses an enthroned four-armed female deity depicted on a wall facing Nana on the opposite wall. The figure wears a floral crown, holds a banner and musical instruments, and sits on a throne supported by a pair of winged dogs, features that Azarpay then compares with various features of the daena/den in Zoroastrian literature (pp. 58-60). (6) This figure Azarpay identifies as the "eschatological daena" (p. 75).

The remarkable sarcophagus of the sabao Wirkak (Chinese Kachan) contains reliefs depicting the journey of "the souls of the deceased, his wife and retinue" (p. 61), beginning with the passage of a bridge, followed by "the judgment of the soul and the fate of the body," etc. (ibid.), and ends with "the newly garmented souls of the deceased couple, now mounted on flying horses and accompanied by heavenly musicians" seen flying heavenward (pp. 61-62). The den is here represented by "a winged and crowned woman" followed by two other female figures (figs. 6-7). Azarpay points out that the den seen in this relief is not the Zoroastrian, but the Manichean den, and that the three female figures are "the three Virgins of Light who ... appear to the soul after its judgment" (p. 63), citing a Manichean text describing the journey of the soul of the saved (pp. 64-66) and "a recently discovered early 13th century [Manichean] silk painting" (p. 64).

The last representation treated by Azarpay is a much-discussed drawing in the Pelliot collection found at Dunhuang of two female figures sitting facing each other (fig. 9); these were first identified by Frantz Grenet and Zhang Guangda as the Zoroastrian good and evil den, the latter in the form of the Central Asian goddess Nana (pp. 66-75). Azarpay investigates the basis for such an interpretation, especially the characteristic features of the bad den as described in Zoroastrian and Manichean sources, concluding that it is unlikely that the Sogdians would have portrayed "their revered Nana as the reviled duzdaena" (p. 68). (7) Rather, Nana's iconography suggests that, in her chthonic aspect, she was identified with the Zoroastrian goddess Spanta Armaiti, the Earth, and the Greek Demeter (pp. 70-71). Azarpay concludes that the significance of the artistic pairing of the two is of Nana as "a cosmic deity with chthonic and regenerative powers" and of the good Den as "the eschatological daena that confronts the soul after death" (p. 76).

Sebastian Brock reflects on Gignoux's contributions to Syriac Studies under the headings of "Syriac literature including medical writings," in particular Gignoux's work on Narsai, Ahudemmeh, Giwargis Warda, and the Syriac Book of Medicines; "Syriac Christianity under Sasanian rule," official and administrative terminology, onomastic studies; "hagiographical texts," including Syriac antecedents to the Sahada; and "magical and epigraphic texts" (pp. 97-108).

Carlo G. Cereti discusses aspects of Gignoux's contributions to Zoroastrian studies (pp. 109-21). He emphasizes various aspects of Gignoux's methodological approaches, among them the "importance to apply a solid historical method" when explaining "religious and intellectual developments as well as relationships between different cultures," a methodology Gignoux applied, in particular, to anthropology and apocalyptic literature (p. 111). Of these two, Cereti then focuses on the prolonged scholarly discussion of the sources and influences of Iranian apocalyptic and the date and sources of the Pahlavi apocalyptic text Zand i Wahman Yasn (pp. 113-19).

Frantz Grenet continues his series of remarks on Kerdir's inscription with four studies (pp. 123-39). (8) The first concerns Kerdir's title, which he parses as "boxtruwan Wahram i Ohrmazd-mowbed" and now renders as "Kerdir, Ohrmazd-mowbed du defunt Wahram (litte-ralement [less than or equal to] a l'ame sauvee [greater than or equal to])" (p. 126). (9) The second concerns Kerdir's lack of a beard; Grenet discards the theory that Kerdir might be a eunuch for the good reason that lack of sexual potency in someone serving goddesses such as Anahita and Asi [not Asi] would disqualify him from their service. Instead, Grenet sensibly suggests that he was simply clean-shaven to avoid the risk of polluting the fire with a wayward hair from his beard. (10) The third is an attempt to make sense of the expression "dwyn mhly"; Grenet now accepts a suggestion by Martin Schwartz that "dwyn" is simply 'mirror', Persian a'ine, (11) used in divination, and renders the expression as "le manthra du miroir" (p. 134). (12) The fourth concerns the term rozan in the expression [...] "rozan i Wahram," which Grenet now renders as "the window of Mars," citing Pahlavi sources, as well as the Book of Enoch. (13) See also on Tardieu's contribution, below. (14) He also presents a revised transcription and translation of the entire vision narrative. (15)

Rika Gyselen reviews Gignoux's works dealing with seals, coins, and silver work (16) (pp. 141-58), (17) highlighting, by several choice examples, how his work has clarified quite diverse aspects of Sasanian history and culture, as well as the typology and formulaics of the seals. As an appendix, she publishes...