KAYĀNIĀN xiv. The Kayanids in Western Historiography

 

KAYĀNIĀN 

xiv. The Kayanids in Western Historiography  

In Western historiography up into the 19th century, the historicity of the pre-Achaemenid Persian dynasties was taken for granted, and the Kayanids, the “second dynasty of Persian kings,” were commonly identified with the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Median kings as described by Herodotus and other Greek writers. In Barthélemy d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale (1697, pp. 234-35, unchanged in 1777, II, pp. 462-63, and minimally changed in 1789, II, pp. 147-48), the meaning of kay in Pahlavi or “Deilami” is said to be “giant,” as well as “great king,” and the dynasty comprised the series known from the Perso- Arabic authors, including Dārāb, son of Bahman, and Dārā or Dārāb, son of Dārāb.

Thomas Hyde mentions only briefly that all the kings of the Median dynasty bore the title Kay, which he took to mean “famous” (illustris). He also mentions Lohrāsb, about whose genealogy, he says, nothing further was known, except that he was the father of Goštāsb, whom he discusses at length (chap. XXIII). He thought that Goštāsb was either Darius or his father Hystaspes and that Goštāsb meant “made by a horse” (factus equo), referring to Herodotus’s story about the neighing horse (see DARIUS iii). He assumed that Goštāsb had founded the Āḏar-Goštāsb at Balḵ and that this fire was different from the one founded there by Lohrāsb, which was called Nowbahār. He thought that the crown worn by the kings in the reliefs at Naqš-e Rostam in Fars was the Kayanid crown (tāj-e kayāni; see below, end of the article).

William Jones, in “The Sixth Discourse: on the Persians” (delivered on 19 February 1789), stated that “we know [Lower Asia] was under the dominion of Caikhosrau,” whom he identified with Cyrus, asserting that the names were merely the Persian and Greek variants of the same name (pp. 44-45). He identified the Pishdadids with the Assyrians and the Kayanids with the Medes and the Persians, asserting that the Greek historians had made up the history of the Achaemenids, misunderstanding and changing the names: Cambyses for Kāmbaḵš (a title rather than a name) and Xerxes for Širuya (found in the Šāh-nāma) or possibly a title *Šir-šāh (pp. 46-47).

Constantin-François Volney (1808, table p. 283, on the Kayanids pp. 287-301; 1814, pp. 283-96) presented a strengthened argument for the Kayanids being Herodotus’s Medes. He assumed that Ky-axar “the great victor” contained the title kay and identified Kay Kāvus, son of Aphra (according to Mirḵᵛānd) with Phraortes, Afrāsiāb with Astyages. He elaborated on the historical coincidences and differences between the Oriental sources and Herodotus, which he ascribed to Persian royal politics, especially, perhaps, those of Kay Ḵosrow, which may not have been so honorable for Cyrus and his ancestor, although the name subsists in Ḵosrow. He also suggested that the story of the Turanian war under Kay Kāvus resembled the Scythian invasion.

Louis Langlès, in his “Notice chronologique de la Perse depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à ce jour,” in Jean Chardin, 1811, X, pp. 160-62, summarizes the opinions of his predecessors (including Jones, Volney, 1808).

Robert Ker Porter, summing up earlier scholarship, has the chronology of the pre-Achaemenid and early Achaemenid kings shown in Table 3.  

John Malcolm (1829, pp. 510-11) still adhered to this scenario, in the main following Volney; and Louis Dubeux (Kayanids: pp. 233-72) simply gave the Western and Oriental versions separately, without, as far as the present author can see, passing judgement on either.

By Malcolm’s time, however, the Achaemenid inscriptions were being deciphered, which allowed Henry C. Rawlinson (p. 51) to contrast the “distorted and incomplete allusions to Jemshíd and the Kayanian monarchs which are found in the Vendidád Sadé and in the ancient hymns,” with “authentic history,” and Friedrich Spiegel (1852, I, p. 44) called the Kayanids, including Vištāspa, partly purely mythical, partly legendary, without a trace of anything historical.

 Nevertheless, Martin Haug, not much later, referred to Kauui/Kay as the title “of a whole dynasty of the ancient  Bactrian rulers” (1862, pp. 246; idem, 1884, p. 290) and concluded from the fact that the ancestors of Darius and Vištāspa in the Achaemenid inscriptions and those of Goštāsb in the Avesta and the Šāh-nāma were not the same that the Achaemenid and Avestan Vištāspas were not identical (1862, pp. 254; idem, 1884, pp. 298-99). Spiegel (1891, p. 198), again, categorically stated that Vištāspa was not historical, but the last of the mythical kings. Similarly, James Darmesteter, in his early work, simply referred to the Pishdadids and the Kayanids as the first two mythical dynasties of Iran (1877, pp. 166-67, n. 4), and, in his Zend-Avesta (1893, III, p. xli), stated that the Kayanids were mythological heroes with no connection to any known historical reality and that the Avestan legend ends with Kauui Vištāspa.

In late 19th-century universal histories, it is not always clear whether the authors considered the Kayanids to be historical. For instance, Marius Fontane in volume two of his Histoire universelle, dedicated to Les Iraniens, seems to suggest that at least Kay Ḵosrow and Garšāsb were historical kings ruling different parts of Iran (IV, pp. 264-65), while Cornelis Tiele, comparing the Old Indic evidence including Kavi Uśanas, was more specific: Kauuis were a kind of visionary (sehern) or magicians, who were later made into a royal dynasty (II, p. 72).

By the late 19th century, however, the historicity of Vištāspa, as well as that of his Kayanid predecessors, had become inextricably linked with that of Zarathustra, and, in the section on the history of Iran in the Grundriss (II, p. 410), Ferdinand Justi characterizes the pre-Zarathustrian kauuis as legendary, while Kauui Vištāspa, who was historical, as were the Gathic circle (as proved by the family relationships between them and the historical Zarathustra in the Young Avesta and later traditions), had been artificially attached to the Kayanids.

Williams Jackson (1898, pp. 211-12; cf. 1928, p. 280), made a reference to Kauui Vištāspa “[b]eing a member of the Kayanian line,” which would imply that he considered the Kayanids, like Vištāspa, as historical.

Even after the Achaemenid inscriptions had been well deciphered, there were scholars who firmly believed in the identity of the Avestan and Achaemenid Vištāspas, notably, Johannes Hertel (1924) and Ernst Herzfeld (1929, Teil I and III, p. 185; idem, 1930). Herzfeld (1929, Teil II, p. 155) revisited the Median background of the Kayanids, endeavoring to show in detail how the Kayanid “history,” by subtracting the mythical elements, could be reduced to Median history.

Arthur Christensen, whose 1931 study was a response to these two scholars, not an independent study of the Kayanids, moved the Kayanids back into history, but his conclusion that at least some of the kauuis were historical was based upon the assumption that Zarathustra was historical (p. 27). He then also surmised that the genealogy of and principal details about the preceding kings would have been known at Vištāspa’s court and remembered in the Zoroastrian milieu (p. 29). Finally, he opined that “the kingdom of the kauuis in Eastern Iran was the first purely Aryan large-scale political organization on Iranian territory: the age of the kauuis is the first heroic age of the ancient Iranians” (p. 35).

Herzfeld countered Christensen’s arguments in another article (1936), where he maintained his opinion that the Avestan Vištāspa was the legendary version of the real Vištāspa (p. 70). Later, Georges Dumézil (1986, p. 226), too, criticized Christensen’s conclusions, pointing out that the prolonged discussion regarding the historicity of the obviously mythical Kayanids was aggravated by being connected with the problem of the identity of Vištāspa.

Even in the second half of the 20th century and later, there has been some reluctance to give up the historicity of the Kayanids, principally because of the axiomatically assumed historicity of Zarathustra and Vištāspa.

Mary Boyce, in her article on the Kayanian heroic cycle, viewed the kauuis on the background of a heroic age (cf. Christensen, above) as “warlike leaders,” but Kauui Vištāspa as following Zarathustra’s new ideas, among them his “explicit rejection of a life dependent on the sword,” which would rule out encouraging “a literature celebrating martial exploits for entertainment,” although his subjects and others did preserve the narratives about the Kayanids (Boyce, 1954, pp. 46-47).

Ilya Gershevitch (pp. 185-86) proposed that one particular family of kauuis (composers of hymns) from Sistān acquired political power and, at the time of Zarathustra, ruled in Chorasmia (Zarathustra’s homeland according to Henning, 1951), but Zarathustra would not be using the term kauui in its original sense, since he disapproved of their adherence to the traditional Indo-Iranian rituals and their opposition to his reform.

It is not entirely clear how Boyce viewed the historicity of the kauuis in her History of Zoroastrianism (1975). In the case of Kərəsāspa/Garšāsp, she assumed the surviving texts preserve “a mixture of historical fact . . . with elements from folklore and popular superstition” (p. 103). About the Kayanids, she said that they were “Airya princes” who formed the Kayanid dynasty, which came to be presented as succeeding the (wholly legendary/mythical) Pishdadids, and the stories about them, she surmised, might have derived “from the oral traditions of Vīštāspa’s own house” (p. 105; cf. Christensen, above). She also refers to the “pagan” kauuis being “cast as upholders of the Good Religion” (p. 106).

The assumption that the kauuis were historical was challenged in the post-World War II period, along with the historicity of Zarathustra and Kauui Vištāspa, by, among others, Jean Kellens (1976; idem, 1997-98, pp. 750-52), Almut Hintze (1994), and Prods Oktor Skjærvø (1996).

As late as 1980, Gherardo Gnoli, in his study of Zarathustra’s homeland, stated that denying the Kayanids any historical background “only leads to exaggerations that are hardly acceptable,” as it would mean splitting Kauui Vištāspa in two (p. 7), that is, one epic and one historical, and he criticized (p. 234) Kellens (1976), suggesting that, if some of the Iranian mythical history goes back to Indo- Iranian times, “a sort of history can be glimpsed in it.” In FARR (AH ), he referred to the Kayanians, who reigned “there where lake Kąsaoiia is formed by the river Helmand, there  where the mountain Ušiδā is located” (Yašt 19.65-72), but this text contains no reference to Kayanids, but, rather, to “the one who shall stand forth from there, where. . . ,” that is, according to Yašt 19.92, Astuuaṯ.ərəta, the Saošiiaṇt.

In 2003, Hanns-Peter Schmidt criticized the assumption of the non-historicity of the kauuis, also targeting Kellens, 1976, citing “the communis opinio, represented in particular in the comprehensive study of Arthur Christensen” (p. 373, n. 1). Schmidt also admitted the legendary nature of the tradition, however, suggesting that we will never know how much in it is “genuine, old” (p. 372), that is, presumably, historical, tradition.

On the Qajar Kayāni crown (tāǰ-e kayāni or kolāh-e kayāni) and its successor, the Pahlavi crown, see CROWN JEWELS OF PERSIA and CROWN v. IN THE QAJAR AND PAHLAVI PERIODS. Both crowns are now in the Museum of The Treasury of National Iranian Jewels (Muza-ye jawāherāt-e melli), affiliated with the Central Bank (Bānk-e markazi; see also Amanat, 2001).

 

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Manfred Mayrhofer, Iranisches Personennamenbuch I, Vienna, 1979.

Jean de Menasce: see Dēnkard, book 3.

Mēnōy xrad, ed. Tahmuras D. Anklesaria as Dānāku mainyô-i khard, Bombay, 1913; tr., E. W. West, as “Dînâ-î maînôgî khirad,” in Pahlavi Texts III, Sacred Books of the East 24, 3rd ed., Oxford, 1885, pp. 3-113; tr., Aḥmad Tafażżoli, as Mīnōg ī xrad/Minu-ye ḵerad, Tehran, 1975; repr., Tehran, 1995.

Abu’l-Fażl Rašid-al- Din Meybodi, Kašf al-asrār wa ʿoddat al-abrār, ed. ʿAli- Aṣḡar Ḥekmat et al., 10 vols., Tehran, 1952-60; reprinted several times.

Moḥammad Mirḵᵛānd, Tāriḵ-e rawżat al-ṣafā, 11 vols., Tehran, 1959-72; ed. Jamšid Kayānfar, as Tāriḵ-e rawżat al-ṣafā fi sirat al-anbiāʾ wa’l-moluk wa’l-ḵolafāʾ, 7 vols. in 11, Tehran, 2001; tr., David Shea, as History of the Early Kings of Persia from Kaiomars, the First of the Peshdadian Dynasty, to the Conquest of Iran by Alexander the Great, London, 1832.

H. K. Mirza: see Pahlavi Rivāyat.

Marijan Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien: Le probl.me zoroastrien et la tradition mazdéenne, Paris, 1963 (also pub. as Le problème zoroastrien et la tradition mazdéenne).

Idem, 1967: see Dēnkard, book 7.

Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfi, Tāriḵ-e gozida, ed. ʿAbd-Ḥosayn Navāʾi, 2 vols., Tehran, 1957-60.

James H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism: Lectures Delivered at Oxford and in London, February to May 1912, London, 1913.

Mojmal al-tawāriḵ wa’l-qeṣaṣ taʾlif-e sāl-e 520 hejri, ed. Malek-al-Šoʿarāʾ Moḥammad-Taqi Bahār, Tehran, 1939; ms. ed. Iraj Afšār and Maḥmud Omidsālār, as Mojmal al-tawārīḵ wa’l-qeṣaṣ taʾlif-e sāl-e 520 qamari: Nosḵa-ye ʿaksi-e mowarraḵ-e 751 (Ketāb-ḵāna-ye dawlati-e Berlin), Ganjina-ye nosḵa-bargardān-e motun-e fārsi, no. 1, Tehran, 2001.

Theodor Nöldeke, “Kayanier im Awestâ,” ZDMG 32, 1878, pp. 570-72.

Idem, “Das iranische nationalepos,” in Grundriss II, pp. 130-211; published separately, Berlin and Leipzig, 1920; tr., Leonid Th. Bogdanov, as The Iranian National Epic, or, The Shahnamah, Bombay, 1930; repr., Philadelphia, 1979; tr., Bozorg ʿAlawi, as Ḥamāsaye melli-e Irān, Tehran, 1969.

Henrik S. Nyberg, Irans forntidiga religioner, Stockholm, 1937; tr. Hans H. Schaeder, as Die Religionen des Alten Iran, Leipzig, 1938; repr., Osnabrück, 1966. Pahlavi Rivāyat, ed. and tr. Alan V. Williams, as The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg I-II, Det Kong. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, hist.fil. medd. 60, 1-2, Copenhagen, 1990; ed. and tr. H. K. Mirza, as “The Pahlavi Rivayat Preceding the Dadestan i Dinik,” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1942; tr., Mahšid Mir-Faḵrāʾi, as Rewāyat-e Pahlavi, Tehran, 1988. The Pahlavi Texts Contained in the Codex MK Copied in 1322 . . . , vol. II, ed. Jamaspji Minochehrji Jamasp-Asana, Bombay, 1913; reprinted as Motūn-e Pahlavi: tarjama, āvānevešt by Saʿid ʿOryān, Tehran, 1992 (page nos. in brackets).

Eric V. Pirart, Kay.n Yasn (Yasht 19.9-96): l’origine avestique des dynasties mythiques d’Iran, Sabadell-Barcelona, 1992.

Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia . . . during the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, 2 vols., London, 1821-22.

Ebrāhim Purdāwud, “Kayāniān,” in idem tr. with commentary, Yašthā, two vols., Bombay, n.d., II, pp. 207-88.

Henry C. Rawlinson, The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated with a Memoir on Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in General, and on that of Behistun in Particular I, London, 1846.

Rigveda, ed. Barend A. van Nooten and Gary B. Holland, as Rig Veda: A Metrically Restored Text with An Introduction and Notes, Cambridge, Mass., 1994; tr., Karl Friedrich Geldner as Der Rig-Veda aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche übersetzt und mit einem laufenden Kommentar versehen, 4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1951-57; repr. in one vol., Cambridge, Mass., 2003.

Ḏabiḥ-Allāh Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa-sarāyi dar Irān, 4th ed. Tehran, 1984, pp. 485-548.

Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, ed. and tr. Touraj Daryaee, as Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late Antique Geography, Epic, and History with English and Persian Translations, Costa Mesa, Calif., 2002.

Šams-e Faḵri Eṣfahāni, Vāža-nāma-ye fārsi: baḵš-e čahārom-e Meʿyār-e jamāli, ed. Ṣādeq Kiā, Tehran, 1958.

Šāyist nē šāyist, ed. Jehangir C. Tavadia, as Šāyast-nē-šāyast: A Pahlavi Text on Religious Customs, Hamburg, 1930.

Ulrich Schapka, “Die persischen Vogelnamen,” Ph.D. diss., Würzburg, 1972.

Hanns-Peter Schmidt, Vedisch vratá und awestisch urvāta, Hamburg, 1958.

Idem, “Gathic maga and Vedic maghá,” in K. R. Cama Oriental Institute International Congress Proceedings (5th to 8th January, 1989), Bombay, 1991, pp. 220-39.

Idem, “Zaraθuštra and His Patrons,” in Mehrborzin Soroushian, Farrokh Vajifdar, and Carlo G. Cereti, eds., Ātaš-e dorun. The Fire Within: Jamshid Soroush Soroushian Memorial Volume, Tehran, 2003, pp. 357-76.

Rüdiger Schmitt, Iranische Personennamen in der griechischen Literatur vor Alexander d. Gr., Iranisches Personennamenbuch V/5a, Vienna, 2011.

Nicholas Sims-Williams, The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C2, Berliner Turfantexte 12, Berlin, 1985.

Prods Oktor Skjærvø “Iranian Epic and the Manichean Book of Giants: Irano-Manichaica III,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 48/1-2 = Éva Jeremias, ed., Zsigismond Telegdi Memorial Volume, Budapest, 1995 [pub. 1997], pp. 187-223.

Idem, “Zarathustra in the Avesta and in Manicheism: Irano-Manichaica IV,” in La Persia e l’Asia centrale da Alessandro al X secolo . . . (Roma, 9-12 novembre 1994), Rome, 1996, pp. 597-628.

Idem, “Eastern Iranian Epic Traditions III: Zarathustra and Diomedes: An Indo-European Epic Warrior Type,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 11, 1997 [pub. 2000], pp. 175-82.

Idem, “Royalty in Early Iranian Literature,” in Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed., Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies . . . Cambridge . . . 1995, Wiesbaden, 1998a, pp. 99-107.

Idem, “Eastern Iranian Epic Traditions I. Siyāvaš and Kunāla,” in Jay Jasanoff, H. Craig Melchert, and Lisi Oliver, eds., Mír Curad: Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins, Innsbruck, 1998b, pp. 645-58.

Idem, “Eastern Iranian Epic Traditions II: Rostam and Bhīṣma,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 51, 1998c, pp. 159- 70.

Idem, “Avestan Quotations in Old Persian?” in Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, eds., Irano-Judaica IV, Jerusalem, 1999, pp. 1-64.

Idem, “Rivals and Bad Poets: The Poet’s Complaint in the Old Avesta,” in Maria G. Schmidt and Walter Bisang, eds., Philologica et Linguistica: Historia, Pluralitas, Universitas: Festschrift für Helmut Humbach zum 80. Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 2001, Trier, 2001, pp. 351-76.

Idem, “Praise and Blame in the Avesta: The Poet-Sacrificer and His Duties,” in Studies in Honour of Shaul Shaked, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 26, 2 vols., Jerusalem, 2002, I, pp. 29-67.

Idem, “Zarathustra: First Poet-Sacrificer,” in Siamak Adhami, ed., Paitimāna: Essays in Iranian, Indian, and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter Schmidt, 2 vols., Costa Mesa, Calif., 2003, II, pp. 1-47.

Idem, “Smashing Urine: On Yasna 48.10,” in Michael Stausberg, ed., Zoroastrian Rituals in Context, Leiden and Boston, 2004, pp. 253-81.

Idem, “Avestan and Old Persian Morphology,” in Alan S. Kaye, ed., Morphologies of Asia and Africa, Winona Lake, Ind., 2007, pp. 853-940.

Idem, “The Gāθās and the Kusti,” in Mahmud Jaafari-Dehaghi, ed., One for the Earth: Prof. Dr. Y. Mahyar Nawabi Memorial Volume, Tehran, 2008a, pp. 117-33.

Idem, “Tahādī: Gifts and Counter-Gifts in the Ancient Zoroastrian Ritual,” in Beatrice Gruendler and Michael Cooperson, eds., Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on His 65th Birthday Presented by His Students and Collegues, Leiden and Boston, 2008b, pp. 493-520.

Idem, “Middle West Iranian,” in Gernot Windfuhr, ed., The Iranian Languages, London and New York, 2009a, pp. 196-278.

Idem, 2009b: see Kellens, 2007.

Idem. The Spirit of Zoroastrianism, New Haven and London, 2011.

Friedrich Spiegel, Avesta, die heiligen Schriften der Parsen: Aus dem Grundtexte übersetzt, mit steter Rücksicht auf die Tradition, 3 vols. in 2, Leipzig, 1852-63.

Idem, Erânische Alterthumskunde 1. Geographie, Ethnographie und älteste Geschichte, Leipzig, 1871.

Idem, “Awestâ und Shâhnâme,” ZDMG 45, 1891, pp. 187-203.

Werner Sundermann, “Iranische Personennamen der Manichäer,“ Die Sprache 36, 1994, pp. 244-70.

Abu Manṣur ʿAbd-al-Malek Ṯaʿālebi, Ḡorar aḵbār moluk al-fors, ed. and tr. Hermann Zotenberg as Histoire des rois des Perses, Paris, 1900.

Moḥammad b. Jarir Ṭabari, Taʾriḵ al-rosol wa’l-moluk, ed. Michaël Jan De Goeje et al., 15 vols., repr., Leiden, 1964, I/1, pp. 179-83; tr. by various scholars as The History of al-Ṭabari, 40 vols., Albany, New York, 1985-2007, III, tr. William M. Brinner, as The Children of Israel, 1991; IV, tr. Moshe Perlmann, as The Ancient Kingdoms, 1987.

Tāriḵ-e Sistān, ed. Moḥammad-Taqi Malek-al-Šoʿarāʾ Bahār, Tehran, ca. 1935; tr., Milton Gold, as The Tārikh-e Sistān, Rome, 1976.

J. C. Tavadia: see Šāyist nē šāyist.

TD4a, ed. by K. M. Jamasp Asa, Y. Mahyar Nawwabi, and M. Tavousi, as Manuscript TD4a: The Pahlavi Rivāyat, Dātistān-i Dinīk, Nāmakīhā ī Manushchihr and Vichītakīhā-i Zātaspram etc., The Pahlavi Codices and Iranian Researches 52, Shiraz, 1978.

Cornelis Petrus Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im Altertum bis auf Alexander den Grossen, tr. Georg Gehrich, 2 vols. in 3, Gotha, 1896-1903.

Yuhan S.‑D. Vevaina: see Dēnkard, book 9.

Constantin-François Volney, Chronologie d’Hérodote, conforme à. son texte, pt. 2: Empires des Assyriens et des M.des: Prise de Troie, selon les annales de Tyr et de Ninive; Époque de Ninus, selon les Arabes homérites; Époques de Zoroastre, de Zohak, de Féridon, etc., prouvées par Hérodote, Paris, 1808.

Idem, Recherches nouvelles sur l’histoire ancienne, 3 vols., Paris, 1814-15.

Ernst Waldschmidt and Walter Lentz, “Manichäische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 13, 1933 pp. 478-607.

Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo- European Poetics, New York and Oxford, 1995.

Dieter Weber, “Zur sogdischen Personennamengebung,” Indogermanische Forschungen 77, 1972, pp. 191-208.

Geo Widengren, Die Religionen Irans, Stuttgart, 1965.

Alan V. Williams, see Pahlavi Rivāyat.

Wizīrgerd ī dēnīg, ed., Peshotan Behramji Sanjana (Peśotan Behrāmjī Sanjāṇā), as Daftar ī Wizirgerd ī Dēnīg, Bombay, 1218 [AY]/1848.

Ehsan Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” in Camb. Hist. Iran III/1, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 359-477.

Yašt 19: see Hintze; Humbach and Ichaporia; Pirart.

Zādspram, Wizīdagīhā, ed. and tr. Philippe Gignoux and Ahmad Tafazzoli, as Anthologie de Zādspram: edition critique du texte pehlevi, Studia Iranica, Cahier 13, Paris, 1993.

Zāmyād Yašt: see Almut Hintze; Humbach, 1999.

Zand ī Wahman Yasn, ed. and tr. Carlo G. Cereti as The Zand ī Wahman Yasn: A Zoroastrian Apocalypse, Rome, 1995. 

(Prods Oktor Skjærvø)

Originally Published: January 1, 2000

Last Updated: May 16, 2013