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Pādyāb and nērang: two Pahlavi terms further considered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mary Boyce
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Extract

This short article is dedicated to a friend and scholar who has greatly promoted the study of Pahlavi by his masterly work on texts and manuscripts, and, earning thereby the gratitude of all, by his truly admirable Pahlavi dictionary. Pahlavi is a language notorious for the challenges it makes to the lexicographer, not the least of which are to be found in the field of technical religious terms. Since priests, setting down instructions for their fellow-priests, could assume a common basic knowledge of the rituals concerned, they felt evidently no need for a precise or consistent use of terms, but relied on context to make their meaning plain. There was moreover a marked tendency, in written as in spoken usage, to abbreviate common phrases and to deal casually with grammatical forms, while among the Gujarati-speaking Parsis Persian technical terms were sometimes given additional or quite new meanings. A student of religion can hope, therefore, by considering perplexing linguistic usages in the light of observances to contribute a little to the lexicographer's pursuit, a small return for the large debt which all such students owe to the work of philologists

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 281 - 291
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1991

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References

1 For illustrations of some of these factors at work to produce the diverse uses of the word bāj see Boyce, M. and Kotwal, F., ‘Zoroastrian bāj and drōn—I’, BSOAS, xxxiv, 1, 1971, 56–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ibid., 2, 1971, 298–313.

2 Anklesaria, B. T., Pahlavi Vendidad (Bombay, 1949), 148Google Scholar.

3 Dhabhar, B. N., Pahlavi Yasna and Visperad (Bombay, 1949), 267Google Scholar.

4 Henning, W. B., Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan III, Sb. PAW 27 (Berlin, 1934), 880 (text, i. 46). For the spelling see the textual footnoteGoogle Scholar.

5 So Henning, loc. cit.

6 So Boyce, M., ‘Cleansing in Zoroastrianism’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, v, (in press)Google Scholar.

7 The origin and original meaning of taro are obscure. Dr. I. M. P. Raeside, whom I consulted, found only one possibility occurring to him, namely, Old Gujarati thara, ‘layer, coating’, with final -o as a simplification of the direct singular in -au. It is conceivable that the Parsis, seeing gōmēz as a ‘layer’ created between impurity and water, adopted this word when first seeking to explain theircustoms to Gujarati-speaking neighbours, and that it grew to be current among them themselves as Gujarati became their mother-tongue. Parsi scholar-priests have explained the word as derived from Pahl. tarrag, Pers. tarr, ‘sap (of plants); plant’ but phonetically this presents difficulties, nor is it very persuasive semanticallyGoogle Scholar. Tarrag is among the substitutes for gōmēz which are allowable if it itself is not to be had (Dēnkard, ed. Madan, , 456.9–10; cf. Saddar Naṣr, Purṣ. 50.1Google Scholar; Saddar Bundaheš, Purs. 97; Persian Rivdyāts, ed. Unvala, , I, 193.1, tr. Dhabhar, 207)Google Scholar; but since gōmēz for outward cleansing might be obtained from any of the ‘creatures of Bahman’ (Riv., ed. Unvala, , I, 311.16, tr. Dhabhar, 295; cf. Vd., 8.11–13, Dādestān ī dīnīg, Purs. 47.9Google Scholar), and so in the past was generally and readily available, it is hard to see why the word for a substitute, even if that were occasionally used, should have been transferred to it. The fact that the Parsi Dastur, Darab Pahlan, writing in Persian in the eighteenth century, avoided using taro, preferring another synonym, Persian āb-i zar (see below, p. 287), suggests that he regarded taro as a non-Persian word.

8 Saddar Naṣr, 50.1, 5 (ed. Dhabhar, , Bombay, 1909)Google Scholar.

9 Unvala, M. R., ed., Dārāb Hormazyār's Rivāyat (Bombay, 1922), 92.17–18Google Scholar; tr. Dhabhar, B. N., The Persian rivdyats of Hormazyar Framarz and others (Bombay, 1932), 96Google Scholar. (Hereafter referred to as Riv., MU, Dh., respectively.) On the idiom pādyāb kardan see further belowGoogle Scholar.

10 Zend-Avesta (Paris, 1771), II, 538Google Scholar. His account, as it concerns the ritual itself, tallies exactly with what I learnt from Dastur (then Ervad) Firoze Kotwal, M., when we studied ritual together in 1966Google Scholar.

11 For the invocation in bāj Anquetil gives the first name as Feraguerd (i.e., Fraxwkard), the second as Varkas, whereas in current Bhagaria practice these are spoken the other way about; but this tiny divergence occurs already, so Dastur Kotwal informs me, in old MSS.

12 Šnš. 3.12 (ed. Tavadia, J. C., Hamburg, 1930)Google Scholar.

13 Darmesteter, , Le Zend-Avesta (Paris, 1892–1893, repr. 1960), I, p. 77, n. 3Google Scholar; Dhabhar, Pahl. Yasna, p. 53, n. 13Google Scholar.

14 This description I owe to Dastur Kotwal in 1966Google Scholar.

15 Riv., MU, I, 84.14–15, n, 11.14, 31.1; Dh., 80 with n. 2. In all three passages Unvala has pādyābhā, Dhabhar (without comment) pādyāvīhāGoogle Scholar.

16 Anklesaria, Pahl. Vd., 120.

17 Riv., MU, ii, 9.16–18; Dh., 398.

18 Riv., MU, i, 485.16–18; Dh., 330.

19 Saddar Bundaheš, appendix, para. 49 (ed. Dhabhar, , Bombay, 1909, 178; tr. Dhabhar, Riv., 578)Google Scholar.

20 So, essentially, Dhabhar, loc. cit. (‘ceremonials and purity’).

21 Spiegel, F., Avesta (Vienna, 1853), I, 186.20; Anklesaria, Pahl. Vd., 329 (with slightly different text)Google Scholar.

22 See Dhabhar, Riv., 355, and index, p. 650 s.v. ‘Nīrang (ritual)’.

23 Riv., MU, I, 576.1; Dh., 347.

24 Saddar Naṣr, 77.

25 Perron, Anqueti du, Zend-Avesta, II, 544Google Scholar.

26 Riv., MU, I, 579.1.

27 Riv., MU, i, 311.16; Dh., p. 295, n. 3. Cf. Vd., 8.11–13.

28 Riv., MU, i, 579–82; Dh., 353–5.

29 Riv., MU, i, 576–9 (Pazand text); Dh., 351–2 (Pahlavi text).

30 So Boyce, Encyclopaedia Iranica, art. cit. in n. 6.

31 Riv., MU, i, 315.8–17; Dh., 299.

32 Edited and summarily translated by Modi, J. J., The Persian Farziāt Nāmeh and Kholaseh-i Dīn of Dastur Darab Pahlan (Bombay, 1924), text 3–5, transl. 4–8Google Scholar.

33 See Modi, Farziāt Nāmeh, transl. p. 4, n. 5; Dastur F. M. Kotwal apud Boyce, art. cit. in n. 6. Otherwise the kustī may only be retied without preliminary ablutions when the wearer is already in a state of ritual purity (as between religious ceremonies)Google Scholar.

34 Riv., MU, i, 311.2–6, Dh., 294.

35 This reproduces almost word for word the first sentence of Saddar Naṣr, ch. 74 (ed. Dhabhar, , p. 52)Google Scholar. Dhabhar here (Riv., p. 294, n. 8) assumes that chiz-ī means either gŋmēz or one of its substitutes (cf. Saddar Naṣr, ch. 50.2, and above, n. 7). The writing of gōmēz in the other passage of this same Rivāyat in Avestan characters suggests that the authors may have adopted this lack of explicitness here as a precaution, lest the rivdyat fall into hostile handsGoogle Scholar.

36 Riv., MU, i, 311.10–11; Dh., 295.

37 dast tā bršnjh (?).

38 Farziyāt Nāma, ed. Modi, , text 3.12Google Scholar.

39 ibid.., 3.19.

40 ibid.., 4.9.

41 ibid.., 4.13.

42 ibid.., 4.17

43 ibid.., 5.6–8.

44 Zend-Avesta, II, 2.

45 On the essential similarity, on a lesser scale, of the rites of *pad pādyāb kustī kardan and those of the barašnom see Boyce, art pit. in n. 6Google Scholar.

46 Anquetil's rendering, slightly modified in the light of that of Seervai, K. N. and Patel, B. B., ‘Gujarāt Pārsis’, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, IX, ii (Bombay, 1899), p. 208, n. 2Google Scholar.

47 Seervai-Patel, loc. cit.

48 Modi, Farziāt Nāmeh, 119.

49 ‘Gujarāt Pārsis’, 208.

50 The religious ceremonies and customs of the Parsees (2nd ed., Bombay, 1937), 87–8Google Scholar.

51 ibid., 88–9.

52 On the likelihood of this requirement having come to be made in consequence of pondering on Vd. 18.19–26 see Boyce, art. cit. in n. 6Google Scholar.

53 The present writer was misled by this usage (art. cit. in n. 6) into supposing that at some stage gōmēz was actually used, at least by priests, in all 5 gāhs. Had this been so, it would have been less easy to see how the Zoroastrian kustī rite (of ablutions with water, followed by fixed prayers, 5 times a day) could have created a pattern for the Muslim wuḍū, as appears to have been the caseGoogle Scholar. —Pace Choksy, J. K., Purity and pollution in Zoroastrianism (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1989), 56, 58Google Scholar it was never a matter of the Parsis substituting water for gomez. Water has always been the essential cleansing agent, with gōmēz only a barrier to protect its own cleanness when this was thought necessary. Choksy’s other statement, that the Iranis still perform all 5 daily kustī rites with gōmēz only, is wrong in every respect.

54 Riv., MU, l, 261.18–19; Dh., 262.

55 Dhabhar, loc. cit., rendered pādyāb va kustī as pādyāb-kustī, explaining (n. 1) the sentence to mean ‘wash his hands and face ceremonially and untie and retie the kustī’. Naturally learned Parsi priests are in most cases the best commentators on Zoroastrian ritual texts; but clearly there are occasional snares for them in dealing with Irani texts where the use of technical terms is similar to, but not the same, as their ownGoogle Scholar.

56 Saddar Naṣr, 50.5.

57 Seervai-Patel, , ‘Gujarāt Pārsis’, 241Google Scholar; Modi, , Ceremonies and customs, 66Google Scholar. The great importance attached by orthopractic Parsis down to the early decades of the present century to the ritual use of taro for removing or warding off corruption is vividly brought out by Maneckji N., Dastur. Dhalla in Dastur Dhalla, the saga of a soul, an autobiography, transl. from Gujarati by F., and Rustomji, B., (Karachi, 1975), 25, 28–9, 48–9, 546–7Google Scholar