Yama/Yima: Variations indo-iraniennes sur la geste mythique / Variations on the Indo-Iranian Myth of Yama/Yima.

• Author: Tucker, Elizabeth
• Position: Book review

Yama/Yima: Variations indo-iraniennes sur la geste mythique / Variations on the Indo-Iranian Myth of Yama/Yima. Edited by SAMRA AZARNOUCHE and CELINE REDARD with an introduction by JEAN KELLENS. College de France: Publications de l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne, fasc. 81. Paris: DE BOCCARD, 2012. Pp. vii + 239, plates.

This collection of papers about Vedic Yama/Avestan Yima (Jamshid) originated from a colloquium held at the College de France in June 2011, and it is introduced authoritatively by Jean Kellens, who has previously devoted a number of studies to this Indo-Iranian mythological figure. Here he provides a succinct account of the principal Avestan texts about Yima (Yasna 9, Yast 19, Videvdad 2), the points on which they agree, and the larger number of points where they disagree. In conclusion Kellens reaffirms his view that on the Iranian side the inherited elements which constituted Yima's mythology have already been adapted in accordance with Zoroastrian theology by the time of the Younger Avesta.

Several contributions provide glimpses of how this adaptation may have operated. Following his claim that the Zoroastrian conception of millennia is already found in Videvdad 2, Antonio Panaino here considers its triadic patterns. Yima's threefold enlargement of the earth is connected with his loss of the [x.sub.v]arenah 'the kingly glory' in three stages or three parts in Yast 19 and the triadic structure of Yima's vara is compared with that of some Zoroastrian ritual buildings. An appendix by Stefano Buscherini deals with the geometrical fact (known in Mesopotamia and ancient Greece) that a circular perimeter maximises the space available inside. Since the demonstration in 1995 by Ivan Steblin-Kamensky that the Avestan phrase kemcit paiti ca[theta]rusanam refers to the four radius measurements that divide a circular figure into four equal sections, the question now appears to have been settled that Yima's vara is some sort of circular construction. However, in other respects this volume merely serves to underline that scholars are as far as ever from agreeing about its function and position: according to Alberto Cantera it is a prison situated in intermediate space on the top of Hara Berezaiti (p. 59); according to Frantz Grenet it, must be a buried cylinder similar to a grain silo which preserves the seed of every form of life (p. 84); and, according to Audrey Tzatourian, in a contribution entitled "Notion d'espace dans le...