Half-human and Monstrous Races in Zoroastrian Tradition.

• Author: Agostini, Domenico

Descriptions and accounts of half-human creatures were already widespread in antiquity and late antiquity in Indian and Classical literature and have been widely studied in modern scholarship. (1)

In contrast the Iranian, and especially Zoroastrian, sources of such literature have been granted very little attention. (2) Though the extant Avestan texts do not refer to such races, chapters and passages of ninth- and tenth-century Pahlavi books such as the Draxt i asurig (The Assyrian tree), the Bundahisn (Primal Creation), the Ayadgar I Jamaspig (The memorial of Jamasp), and the New Persian epic Sahname provide interesting and varied descriptions of these fabulous people.

This article aims to bring into conversation the aforementioned primary sources, and discuss their accounts on the sag-saran (dog-headed), war-casman (breast-eyed), war-gosan (breast-eared), dawal-payan (leather-strap-legged), and widestigan (lit. 'those who are a span long'--dwarfs or perhaps pygmies) from an Iranian, and especially Zoroastrian, perspective and through a comparative approach to some similar neighboring traditions.

A DIDACTIC SOURCE: THE DRAXT I ASURIG

The Draxt i asurig is a versified work (3) originally composed in Book Parthian, (4) though only a Pahlavi version has survived. It underwent a long period of oral transmission. The Draxt i asurig reports a dispute between a palm tree and a goat in which the two enumerate their qualities. This poem can also be ascribed to the genre of wisdom literature (andarz) because it includes a series of instructions and didactic precepts. The literary genre of dispute, sharing characteristics with oral literature from Mesopotamia, was probably adopted by Iranians as early as the Achaemenid period. (5)

As for the Draxt i asurig, though the Pahlavi version can likely be dated to the Sasanian period, the original tradition might date back to the second century BCE, as Sidney Smith argued. (6) In particular, this period plausibly refers to that of the great Parthian King Mithradates I (165-132), when Iranian and Aramaic elements interacted in Mesopotamia and Elymais. (7) In Draxt i asurig 88-96 (8) the goat, while enumerating its importance to mankind, mentions three fabulous races as follows:

(88) +kof o kof +sawem wuzurg kiswar bum (89) az kust i hindugan tar o warkas [i] zreh (90) jud sardag mardomag ke manend tar o bum (91) widestig ud war-casm ke casm pad war est (92) sar-san sag +man brug-is man mardoman (93) ke dar warg-e xwarend az buz sir dosend (94) o-iz mardomag ziwisn az man est (95) pes-parag az man karend o wasag hur man (96) ke xwared sahryar kofyar ud azad (88) I go mountain to mountain over the land of the great continent, (89) from the borders of the land of Indians across the sea Warkas. (90) There are different species of human races who dwell over that land: (91) dwarf and breast-eyed whose eyes are in their chest, (92) those with heads like dogs and with eyebrows like men (93) who eat tree leaves and goat's milk. (94) And also for these people life depends on me; (95) they prepare appetizers from me such as beer and koumiss (96) that rulers, mountaineers, and nobles drink. This passage provides scant but interesting information. Dwarfs (or perhaps pygmies), breast-eyed, and dog-headed races are located beyond the borders of India. Furthermore, the passage refers to the Warkas Sea (Av. Vourukasa-), commonly translated in Pahlavi literature as Fraxkard, the Zoroastrian cosmic ocean surrounding the Xwanirah (Av. Xvanira[theta]a-), the mythical and central continent inhabited by Iranian people and by six other historical peoples, among whom are Indians according to late traditions. (9) This ocean divides the Xwanirah, called in Draxt i asurig 88 simply the "great continent," from the other six external continents. (10) The crossing of this ocean by the goat helps to assign to the far off, mysterious eastern region indefinable and almost unknown geographical and anthropological boundaries. (11) It is not even clear if the region is one of the other six continents. Despite the strange appearance of the inhabitants of this land, they are described as both active and peaceful, consuming only leaves (and likely goat's milk) and are even said to enjoy commercial relations with neighboring human peoples. Such a description evokes the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century concept of the "noble savage" in Western European travel literature ante litteram. (12)

As for the humanization of the monstrous races in the Parthian context, we find another example in the likely fifth-century Nestorian apocryphal Acts of Saints Andrew and Bartholomew among the Parthians, preserved in the fourteenth-century Ethiopic Gadla Hawaryat (Contendings of the Apostles), in which a dog-headed person called "Abominable" becomes Christian and acquires a human aspect. (13) However, striking similarities with the physical and anthropological descriptions of these people already appear in certain earlier Greek and Roman sources such as Ctesias, Megasthenes, Pliny the Elder, and Aelian. In particular, the dog-headed ([phrase omitted]; Cynocephali) and dwarfs or pygmies ([phrase omitted] 'those who are a fist long' and Trispithami [phrase omitted] 'those who are three spans long") (14) are already said to live at peace with men and--while uncivilized and with a wild appearance--to keep commercial relations and live in a salubrious region in India (Ctesias apud Photius' Library 72:21-24, 40-43, Megasthenes apud Pliny's Natural History 7.2:23, 26, and Aelian's On the Nature of Animals 4:46). (15)

Moreover, the dog-headed race is known for drinking milk, as are the people in the Draxt i asurig, and eating the dry fruit of siptachora (16) (Ctesias apud Photius' Library 72:40, and Aelian's On the Nature of Animals 4:46). (17)

As for the breast-eyed, there are passing references in Classical literature that point to a tradition of the Acephali having eyes on their breast and living in Libya (Herodotus, Histories 4:191), (18) while the Blemmyes (19) with both mouth and eyes located in their breast dwell in Ethiopia (Pliny, Natural History 5.8:46). (20) The term used for these breast-eyed races is Sternophthalmi ([phrase omitted]), for which the Middle Persian term war-casman could be a possible caique. The Sternophthalmi appear in several passages in Classical literature about remarkable races, together with Pygmies and Cynocephali (Homer and Aeschylus apud Strabo's Geography 1.2:35, and Pseudo-Apollodorus apud Tzetzes' Chiliades 7, 144:759-68). (21) The fact that the Greek sources predate the Pahlavi version of the Draxt i asurig, and some of them even the supposed Parthian original, is important, if not decisive, evidence for the literary and philological dependency of this Iranian text and of its monstrous nomenclature. This may point to a Greek narrative tradition that circulated also in the Iranian world, probably since the Achaemenid period through Greek writers and scientists such as Ctesias and Megasthenes who gravitated towards the Persian royal court, (22) in which the three races were part of an established set of monstrous societies. Afterwards it is reasonable that these stories remained current and widespread in the Iranian world via the Hellenizing cultural policy of the Parthians, and later through that of the Sasanian dynasty, which attempted to assimilate and translate into Middle Persian some elements of the Greek literary tradition. (23)

A COSMOGONIC SOURCE: THE IRANIAN BUNDAHISN

The second Pahlavi source in question is found in the fourteenth chapter of the Iranian Bundahisn. (24) This is a major cosmologic and cosmogonic work based on detailed Avestan sources, and primarily contains the story and description of the nature of the world and of mankind from creation to the resurrection of the dead. It is not possible to date the first compilation, but it probably took place in the late Sasanian period. Moreover, as is true for most Pahlavi literature, the book underwent many redactions up to the first centuries of the Islamic era, including a substantial one in the second half of the ninth century.

The Bundahisn 14: 36 (25) reports as follows:

[TD1 43v: 12-44r: 4] ciyon dah sardag mardom i az bun guft panzdah sardag az frawak bud wist ud panj sardag hamag az tohm i gayomard bud hend ciyon zamigig ud abig ud wargos ud war-casm ud ek-pay ud an-iz ke parr dared ciyon sawag ud wesagig dumbomand ke mdy pad tan dared Ciyon gospandan ke xirs gowed ud kabig ud + mazandaran ke balay sas ek i mayanag basnan ud + widestig ke balay sas ek i mayanag basnan hromayigan ud turkan ud sinigan ud dayigan ud tazigan ud sindigan ud hindugan ud eranagan ud awesan-iz i gowed ku pad an sas kiswar + hend az en harw sardag-e nogtar was sardag bud hend. The ten races of men mentioned at the beginning, plus the fifteen races descended from Frawag, make twenty-five human races, all of which are from the seed of Gayomard: including terrestrial men; aquatic men; breast-eared and breast-eyed; one-legged men; men with wings like bats; forest-dwellers with tails and fur on their body like animals called bears; monkeys; people of Mazandaran who are six times a normal man's height; dwarfs who are one sixth of a normal man's height; Romans; Turks; Chinese; Dayigan; Arabs; Sindhis; Indians; Iranians; and others who they say inhabit the six continents. Many other newer races came from each of these races. In this passage, the same fabulous races found in the Draxt i asurig appear (with the exception that the dog-headed are missing and instead we have the breast-eared). These are included in the twenty-five "more-or-less" human races that were generated from the seed of the primordial human being Gayomard. Although there is no geographical indication, the fact that Xwanirah, as can be seen above, is the dwelling place of the historical people, suggests that these three monstrous races were scattered alongside others over...