Topographies of Rhetoric and Moral Reasoning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Zoroastrianism1
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- 1 Conference dates: May 16, 23, 30 and June 6, 2024.
1These four lectures introduce and excavate the broad contours of Zoroastrian moral reasoning and religious “thought” during and after the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE). Despite 250 years of scholarship on Zoroastrianism and Early Iranian Studies more generally, we still do not possess an up-to-date survey of Zoroastrian theological discourse and hermeneutics as found in the Pahlavi (Zoroastrian Middle Persian) corpus which straddles the late antique (i.e., Sasanian) and early Islamic periods in the Iranian world. A principled examination of the often opaque “emic” or indigenous strategies of knowledge production is crucial for developing a more nuanced historiography of moral reasoning, rhetoric, and identity formation in the rich religious history of the early Iranian world.
The Past is a Foreign Country: Romanticisms and the Weight of “Tradition”
2This lecture explored the formidable weight of tradition (Middle Persian dēn) that Zoroastrian communities in the late antique and early Islamic periods grappled with as they looked back on their ancient and venerable heritage. Taking inspiration from Leslie Poles Hartley’s famous epigram from 1953 — “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” — it reflected on how traditions in bygone eras possessed different frames of reference, social expectations, and religious experiences. This perspective proves particularly relevant for Zoroastrianism, a four-millennia-old tradition rooted in ancient Iranian and Central Asian cultures, yet still practiced today by communities in Iran, India, and in the global diasporas.
3This lecture highlighted the complexity of bridging the archaic Avestan texts, which date back to the second millennium BCE, with Middle Persian (Pahlavi) literature composed many centuries later in the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. Such an immense chronological gap posed profound hermeneutical challenges for both the Zoroastrian priesthood of Late Antiquity —who wrestled with preserving, interpreting, and revitalizing a revered but opaque heritage —and poses equally complex historiographical challenges for us modern scholars attempting to historicize the Zoroastrian tradition’s many layers. Our extant manuscripts only survive in copies from medieval and early modern times in India and Iran, and we encounter cryptic theological or hermeneutical works like the Dēnkard, a vast Pahlavi compilation of 170,000 words, that demand painstaking philological effort to translate, interpret, and historicize their emic forms of Zoroastrian knowledge production.
4Central to my argument is the notion that these Middle Persian texts are not merely “systems” or static repositories of inherited doctrine. Rather, they represent dynamic indigenous forms of cultural hermeneutics, that is, meaningful attempts by Zoroastrian scholastics to make sense of their inherited tradition amidst changing social realities. Their rhetorical strategies — whether mythic, exegetical, polemical, or apologetic — cannot be divorced from the immediate pressures and constraints of their social milieu. The result is that the ancient “foreign country” always remains partially obscured and romanticized; we only glimpse it through the lens of centuries-later hermeneuts who had their own priorities, questions, and, at times, urgent existential fears prompting them to valorize a venerable yet opaque past.
5The lecture also focalized the concept of “tradition” itself. Far from a monolithic entity, tradition constantly mutates and adapts. Zoroastrian hermeneuts in the Sasanian and early Islamic centuries reveal how living communities negotiated this evolution, taking archaic mytho-ritual texts and their attendant practices and selectively re-signified them to address then contemporary social crises and theological debates. We thus observe how venerable motifs — like the cosmic dualism of Ohrmazd versus Ahrimen — are repurposed to speak to fresh political, cultural, or intellectual concerns.
6To conclude, this lecture emphasized that the “past” in Zoroastrian contexts can be simultaneously hallowed, contested, and reimagined. Zoroastrian texts and forms of textuality do not simply document an ancestral legacy; they actively construct and transform it to confront the exigencies of their moment. Recognizing this hermeneutical process opens pathways for more nuanced interpretations of their interpretive modalities. Rather than lamenting textual lacunae or editorial inconsistencies, we can value these complex textual productions as vital instantiations of human cultural agency and windows into centuries of active engagement with and respect for a hallowed religious past. Paradoxically, by acknowledging that the past is, indeed, “a foreign country,” we grow more attuned to the creative interplay between continuity and change in one of the world’s oldest living religious traditions.
Dispute and Difference: Disciplining Selves and Critiquing Others in a Multi-Cultural Empire
7In my second lecture, I shifted focus to the social and theological landscapes of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), exploring how forms of Zoroastrian polemics and apologetics served as rhetorical instruments of boundary maintenance. That is, by critiquing the “Other,” Zoroastrian priests also found ways to articulate, and thereby reinforce, communal values and self-definitions. The Sasanian era was a vibrant, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic society in which a multitude of religious communities — Jewish, Christian, Manichaean, Mandaean, Buddhist, Hindu, and others — coexisted in often uneasy proximity. This multi-cultural environment presented significant opportunities for interfaith encounters and dialogue but also stoked deep anxieties for a state-sponsored Zoroastrian clergy responsible for defending and upholding their social values and positionality.
8I begin with the figure of Kerdīr (Kartīr), an equally enigmatic and influential high priest from early Sasanian times whose inscriptions from the 3rd century CE offer us a rare glimpse of priestly authority being fully exercised in its political dimensions. Kerdīr boasted of subduing competing false doctrines and idol-temples, thus safeguarding the empire’s official Mazdean creed. In enumerating groups such as Jews, Christians, Nazoreans, Hindus, Buddhists, Manichaeans, and others, he underscored that Zoroastrian self-identity hinged on identifying, taxonomizing, and, ultimately, containing religious difference. This dynamic had real consequences for minority faiths and for how Zoroastrians themselves perceived their position in a shifting imperial environment.
9I then turn to texts from the early Islamic period — most notably portions of the Dēnkard — to illustrate the redactional and theological continuities between late Sasanian concerns and the new Islamic dispensation. While the Zoroastrian priesthood’s worldly influence waned under Muslim rule, polemical and apologetic writings, coded as they may well have been, remained essential. Through these discourses, the community navigated evolving social realities and challenged the ascendancy of Islam. Yet these writings were hardly neutral observations; they reveal a deep-seated impulse to define the boundaries of religious truth, often through pointed contrasts. By portraying non-Zoroastrians outsiders as misguided and unworthy, these priestly authors implicitly shored up their own credentials and those of their faith.
10Moreover, I emphasize the importance of “discourse” as the socially anchored production of meaning. Whether through theological debates, critiques of “heretics” and “heresy” or confessional self-portraits, each polemical text helped shape the collective ethos of the community whilst disciplining internal difference. At times, we observe a discourse amongst insiders — priests writing for priests — debating and codifying nuanced points of ritual, law, or theology. In other instances, we find a broader rhetorical strategy designed to deter apostasy or to refute perceived doctrinal threats. In both settings, controlling the narrative — whether in Kerdīr’s public inscriptions of the 3rd century or the dense scholastic treatises of the 9th century — proved vital to preserving an often-embattled sense of identity.
11Finally, I argue that this rhetorical approach cannot simply be dismissed as bias or scapegoating. Rather, it represents an authentic window into how Zoroastrian scholastics and religious leaders rationalized their own positions, taxonimized rival communities, and thereby forged an enduring sense of self. Far from trivial, these boundary-preserving and boundary-making strategies were integral to Zoroastrian survival and durability across centuries of religious competition. They vividly demonstrate how “dispute” and “difference” have long functioned as the scaffolding of Zoroastrian communal life and theological reflection, thus structurating the Zoroastrian social experience.
Doubt and Decision-making: The Hermeneutics of “Choice” in a Dualist World(view)
12In this third lecture, I focus on the theme of moral reasoning in Zoroastrianism by examining how the tradition conceptualizes “doubt” (gumān) and regards it as an ever-present factor in human decision-making. From the earliest strata of the Avestan corpus onward, Zoroastrian texts portray the cosmos as sharply cleaved between good and evil. The faithful are enjoined to choose righteously and wisely, yet how to make such a choice is not always self-evident. Consequently, the tradition also acknowledges the psychological and cognitive struggles that believers face in a world of “mixture” (gumēzišn), where deception and malevolent forces constantly dissimulate and, hence, confound certainty.
13This lecture begins by showing how certain Avestan passages already link certain geographical regions of evil with “doubt” introduced by the Evil Spirit, a conceptual alignment that the later Pahlavi translations cum commentaries (zand) expand upon. By the Sasanian and early Islamic eras, we find an elaboration of this theme in a variety of Middle Persian texts. The latter underscores how, in the wake of Alexander’s conquests of the Achaemenids, Zoroastrian communities struggled with religious texts being “scattered” or “lost,” the priests often uncertain about ritual details, and a laity increasingly susceptible to outside influences. “Doubt” became a perennial threat to religious cohesion, prompting a robust theological rationale for cultivating sure knowledge or certainty (abē-gumānīh).
14One of the major aims in this lecture was to demonstrate that Zoroastrian “moral reasoning” rests on more than just an abstract good-versus-evil dualism; it explicitly contends with the quotidian problems of doubt and confusion — individuals wavering between contradictory opinions and socio-religious influences. Pahlavi hermeneuts, I argue, treat these moments of hesitation as spiritually and socially decisive and, ultimately, eschatologically deterministic. To doubt the existence of the demons, for instance, is to yield one’s consciousness to illusions and, hence, Zoroastrian demonology serves a fundamental social purpose beyond its metaphysical and mythological valences. The tradition weaves together striking psychological insights of individual decision-making within the battleground of cosmic conflict, prescribing correct ritual praxis, deep theological study, and meaningful communal cohesion to mitigate the corrosive effects of chaos and confusion.
15I also draw attention to how Zoroastrian texts link “doubt” to key historical moments. Alexander’s putative destruction of the Achaemenid royal archives and the subsequent disruptions in scribal continuity fueled a crisis in textual transmission with these disruptions sowing further uncertainties about canon formation, ritual practice, and communal identity. Centuries later, in the early Islamic period, the Zoroastrian priesthood once again faced challenges as new religious ideas proliferated and ever-increasing numbers of conversions and acts of apostacy threatened Zoroastrian unity. Once more, “doubt” reappears, not merely as an abstract notion but as a real-world cause of communal anxiety in an era of rapid minoritization.
16In concluding, I emphasize that Zoroastrian theology’s repeated engagement with “doubt” reveals a sophisticated grasp of how age-old beliefs and values evolve under cultural pressures. Rather than a sign of weakness, these explorations of “doubt” or gumān highlight an unwavering commitment to truth-seeking within a dualist framework. By foregrounding moral reasoning and choice, Zoroastrian texts offer a nuanced portrayal of religious life where “right thinking” emerges through vigilance, learning, and active discernment — an eternal challenge in a world shaped by the cosmic struggle between the forces of good and the pandemonium they actively confront.
Profit and Loss / Benefit and Harm: Cosmographies and the Teleologies of Human History
17For the final lecture, I turn to the grand sweep of Zoroastrian cosmology and eschatology, especially focusing on the contrasting concepts of “profit/benefit” (sūd) and “loss/harm” (zyān). Within Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature, these seemingly everyday terms being the bearers of profound theological weight. They lie at the very heart of how Zoroastrian priests conceptualized human history, the ultimate triumph of good and the eventual defeat of evil.
18I begin by tracing the lineage of sūd back to its archaic Avestan roots, where closely related words can connote flourishing, well-being, or even the world’s eschatological renewal. By Late Antiquity, in Pahlavi texts like the Bundahišn, the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram, and the Dēnkard, sūd emerges as a cosmographic compass, guiding believers to recognize the teleological arc of existence. If the preceding lecture addressed how individuals must cope with daily doubt and moral dilemmas, here I underscore a broader, collective project: sustaining cosmic order so that all creation might attain the promised “Renovation” (frašgird).
19A core principle is that Ohrmazd, faced with Ahrimen’s onslaught, devised the material world to entrap and, ultimately, to outmaneuver evil. Sacrificial acts, righteousness, and good deeds all generate sūd on multiple levels — individual, communal, and cosmic. Meanwhile, evil in its various guises (disease, despair, moral failing) brings about damage and loss, i.e., zyān. The tension between these metaphysical forces fundamentally shapes the teleology of human history, culminating in the final transfiguration when evil is forever vanquished. The Zoroastrian texts often phrase this in terms of calculable benefit: the meticulously enumerated gains (i.e., humanity’s collective good thoughts, good words, and good deeds) eventually outweigh the sum of all harm.
20I also highlight the literary elegance of these sources. Certain passages adopt a quasi-economic or strategic metaphor, depicting Ohrmazd’s creation as a “first mover” advantage, akin to making a decisive opening in chess. From this perspective, human beings function as co-creators or friends of cosmic good when they offer the right sacrifices, maintain ritual purity, and cultivate virtues like generosity and honesty. Every positive moral or ritual action contributes to the cosmic ledger, nudging the scales toward sūd.
21Finally, I argue that the emphasis on “profit and loss” is more than a rhetorical device. It reflects a lived moral economy in which each moment’s ethical decision can ripple out into cosmic repercussions. Far from being an abstract or otherworldly system, Zoroastrian teleology flows from practical concerns: how to manage crises of faith, political subjugation, or cultural marginalization. Positioned against those uncertainties, the promise of an ultimate sūd served as both a consolation and a rallying cry for Zoroastrians. Thus, by analyzing the interplay of benefit and harm, we gain a deeper appreciation for how Zoroastrian communities throughout Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period rationalized their place in history and staked their hope on a future free from evil’s destructive reach.
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Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, « Topographies of Rhetoric and Moral Reasoning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Zoroastrianism », Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses, 132 | 2025, 225-232.
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Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, « Topographies of Rhetoric and Moral Reasoning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Zoroastrianism », Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses [En ligne], 132 | 2025, mis en ligne le 04 septembre 2025, consulté le 16 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/asr/5621 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14mfq
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