¹ See Hultgård, A., “Bahman Yasht: A Persian Apocalypse,” Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium, ed. Collins, John J. and Charlesworth, James H. (Sheffield, 1991), 114–34Google Scholar for a clear, succinct review of the different positions on this question with a further noting of similarities with Indian material. Grenet, Frantz (“Religions du monde iranien ancien,” Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses. Résumés des conférences et travaux, 115 [2008]: 103–9)Google Scholar makes an in-depth analysis of eschatology in the Avesta and a review of possible contacts with the Jewish world.

² W. Sundermann, “Bahman Yašt,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3: 493.

³ Cereti, Carlo G., ed. and trans., The Zand ī Wahman Yasn: A Zoroastrian Apocalypse (Rome, 1995).Google Scholar

⁴ The original Phl text is preserved in a number of different codices whereof the most important are K20 and K20b in the Copenhagen collection, which represents one tradition, and the MSS DH and K43 belonging to a second independent tradition. There were also at one time a number of Pāzand versions but only the one contained in Antia's Pazend Texts is extant. There is a Persian version from 1496 (Cereti, Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 2–4). The earliest edition was a lithographed reproduction of codex DH by K. A. Noshirvan in 1899. It was followed by an edition by B. T. Anklesaria in 1945 which was destroyed by fire but was restored and finally appeared in 1957. Two editions in Iran include the 1944 edition by S. Hedāyat and that of M. Mohassel in 1991.

⁵ The ZWY uses the rhetorical devices in a way that reminds one of the conventions observed by Zumthor, P. (“Style and Register in Medieval Poetry,” Literary Style: A Symposium, ed. Chatman, Seymour [London, 1971], 265ff.)Google Scholar in his study of the medieval French grand chant courtois. In analysing the third song of the Chastelain de Coucy he notes that at the morpho-syntactic level one finds repetition of the same phonetical elements throughout the poem; at the clausal level there is sentence coordination and juxtaposition rather than subordination. The vocabulary reveals series of semantic groups such as amour–amer–amant, cuer–courage and chanter–chanson. At the level of motifs the main ideas are repeated in variation throughout the poem. He notes the profound unity of the poem in which form and content are melded together.

⁶ Both Cereti (Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 174) and Grenet, Frantz (“Religions du monde iranien ancien,” Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses. Résumés des conférences et travaux, 116 [2009]: 109)Google Scholar comment on this term which is the traditional way of indicating nomad invaders who are usually described as being “disheveled.”

⁷ The Persian rendering of this story from 1496 is much longer and more complete as noted by Tavadia, Jehangir C. (Die Mittelpersische Sprache und Literatur der Zarathustrier [Leipzig, 1956], 123)Google Scholar but its thrust is more about the nature of Mazdak's heretical teachings which he is requested to explain to the dastwars. Relevant sections are quoted and translated by Cereti (Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 174–75) who also discusses the identity of the dastwars convoked by Husraw in this chapter.

⁸ The similarity of this scene to Ardā Wirāz Nāmag 2.17, 3.2 and passim has been noted by Cereti (Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 173, 179).

⁹ See Cereti, Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 180ff. on the identity of these kings and quotations from discussion in other Phl texts.

¹⁰ I have translated the segment jud- by “deviant” rather than by its general meaning “different” which is neutral as to value. In some texts of this period it occurs so often as the opposite of all that is good that it seems to have acquired a slightly pejorative shade of meaning.

¹¹ Compare the passages on the decrease and increase of crops in the section on agriculture (4.16–19).

¹² P. Gignoux (“Nouveaux regards sur l'apocalyptique iranienne,” Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres [1986]: 340) proposed that the group designated by the color red was the Khorramiiyya who revolted in 816–17. This was contested by Cereti (Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 199) but Daryaee, T. (“Apocalypse Now: Zoroastrian Reflections on the Early Islamic Centuries,” Medieval Encounters, 4 [1998]: 198–99)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has now proposed a somewhat later battle in which the Khorramiyya took part (833–34) on the basis of information in Arab historical works which corresponds more closely to details mentioned in 6.5 of the ZWY. This is supported by Grenet (“Religions du monde iranien” [2008]: 109) who interprets the larger historical crisis described in the ZWY as referring to the Abbasids in their rise to power and their governors, the Tahirids.

¹³ It has been suggested (Czeglédy, K., “Bahrām Cubīn and the Persian Apocalyptic Literature,” Acta Hungarica Orientalia, 8 [1958]: 39)Google Scholar that at his death Wahrām Cōbēn came to be seen as a savior figure who would one day return. Subsequently his figure melded with that of the god of victory.

¹⁴ For further comment on the identity of Wahrām see Cereti, Carlo G. (“Again on Wahrām ī Warzāwand,” Convegno internazionale sul tema: La Persia e l'Asia centrale da Alessandro al X secolo [Rome, 1996], 629–39)Google Scholar and Grenet (“Religions du monde iranien,” 110).

¹⁵ Cereti (Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 145) has added an <ī> to the text to obtain rādān bawād >ī> gāh, which is not necessary in my opinion.

¹⁶ Grenet (“Religions du monde iranien,” 111) observes the unusual figure of the heretic (ahlamōγ) who convinces Azdahāg to break his chains. At the same time the motif of the scoundrel put in chains by a hero and freed in the final cataclysm belongs to the apocalyptic genre. It is seen in AJ 16.38 where we find Wadēnagān, the demon bound by Jam and freed under Bēwarāsp to destroy crops of grain.

¹⁷ The speech of persuasion is also found in the Manichaean literature, i.e., in Mani's account of the making of the world. When the Living Spirit requests the Father of Greatness to send the Third Messenger he embellishes his speech with the same rhetorical elements (Josephson, Judith, “Parallelism in Middle Persian Prose,” Iran: Questions et connaissances. Actes du IVe congrès européen des études iraniennes; organisé par la Societas Iranologica Europaea, Paris, 6–10 septembre 1999, vol. 1, La période ancienne, ed. Huyse, Philippe [Paris, 2002], 70–71).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Josephson, Judith, “Manušcihr's Tractate on the Frašgird-kardārīh: Chapter 36 of the Dādestān ī dēnīg,” Zarathushtra entre l'Inde et l'Iran, ed. Pirart, Éric and Tremblay, Xavier (Wiesbaden, 2009), 157–68.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Goody, Jack, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977), 10,Google Scholar who identifies this group in a parenthesis as “(a very large category over the five thousand years of written experience)” in between his discussion of lists in Pharaonic Egypt and today's alphabetical lists. Lausberg, Heinrich (Handbook of Literary Rhetoric [Leiden, 1998], 299)Google Scholar defines “enumeratio” in rhetoric as a list in which the items are part of a whole. The term for the whole can head the list, conclude the list, or be omitted.

²⁰ Lausberg (Handbook, 293) notes that synonymia of the words used does not imply complete equivalence but includes semantic differences with which the speaker can give emphasis to his arguments.

²¹ Zumthor (“Style and Register,” 266) notes the frequency of this rhetorical device in his corpus of French medieval poetry. He quotes the following series: douter–craindre–redouter (doubt–fear–dread), pitié–merci–gré (pity–mercy–gratitude) and confort–solaz (comfort–solace) and states that one finds all kinds of substitutions even within one and the same poem.

²² Collins, John J., “Apocalypse: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia, 14 (1979): 13.Google Scholar

²³ John J. Collins, “Genre, Ideology and Social Movements in Jewish Apoctalypticism,” Mysteries and Revelations, 19. He is here quoting Collins, A. Yarbro, “Introduction: Early Christian Apoctalypticism,” Semeia, 36 (1986): 7.Google Scholar

²⁴ Boyce, M., “Middle Persian Literature,” Iranistik (Leiden, 1968), 50.Google Scholar

²⁵ For an edition of the text see Messina, Giuseppe, ed. and trans., Libro apocalittico persiano: Ayātkār ī Žāmāspīk (Rome, 1939).Google Scholar

²⁶ Zand ī Wahman Yasn, 14.

²⁷ The short form DkM stands for Madan, Dhanjishah Meherjibai, ed., The Complete Text of the Pahlavi Dinkart, 2 vols. (Bombay, 1911).Google Scholar

²⁸ This section of the AJ ends on a more positive note; the messenger shows the king of Pādišxwārgar the treasures of Afrāsīyāb, which he takes, acquires an army, wins over the traditional enemies. This leads directly to the appearance of Pišōtan. See Pourshariati, Parvaneh, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire (London, 2008), 404ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the motifs of the AJ in the light of the eighth and ninth century history of Khorāsān.

²⁹ See Molé, Marijan, La légende de Zoroastre selon les textes pehlevis (Paris, 1967), 210–11,Google Scholar where he identifies the expression waxšēnišn daxšag ī pad ōš as referring to a commentary to the Phl version of Yasna 43.14 explaining how to act toward evil individuals in one's community.

³⁰ P. Zumthor, “Style and Register,” 265–67. In this context Zumthor (ibid., 266, 273) has coined the term “register” for this level of collective text, impersonal in the sense that it has no individual author, which is the source from which ideas and expressive forms of one particular instantiation of a genre (e.g. le grand chant courtois or, as it could be applied to the present study, apocalyptics) are taken.