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Transformations of the Indo-Iranian Snake-man: Myth, Language, Ethnoarcheology, and Iranian Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Martin Schwartz
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Abstract

This article sets forth a history (with literary-textual focus) of the Iranian mythological Snake-man, from the earliest Vedic and Avestan evidence, down to Ferdowsi. The continuous development of the myth in Iran is accompanied by changes in the monster's name, which show linguistic reassociations, while a constant in all of this is the figure's representation as an inimical outsider. The Vedic name of the brute's fortification, the background of which in etymology and realia will be shown to be the pre-Aryan Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, finds a clear but hitherto unobserved correlation in Pahlavi. This illuminates the Indo-Iranian antiquity of the myth in terms of prehistoric inter-ethnic rivalries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Pre-islamic Iranian Literary Heritage , March 2012 , pp. 275 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012

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References

1 Russell, James R., Zoroastrianism in Armenia (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 43.Google Scholar

2 Yasna 9.8.

3 Yašt 5.29.

4 Yašt 15.19.

5 Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, 44–45, 63nn40, 42, 43.

6 See Russell, James R., “Our Father Abraham and the Magi,” Journal of the Cama Oriental Institute, 54 (1987): 61–62,Google Scholar reprinted in Russell, James R., Armenian and Iranian Studies (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 219–39,Google Scholar and see, complementarily, P. O. Skjærvø, “Aždahā: i. Old and Middle Iranian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3: 195a.

7 For this name in an Arabic text, with reference to one of the demons controlled by Solomon, see Schwartz, Martin, “Qumran, Turfan, Arabic Magic and Noah's Name,” Charmes et sortilèges: Magie et magiciens, ed. Gyselen, Rika (Bures-sur-Yvette, 2002), 236n26.Google Scholar I now withdraw the Iranian etymology offered there for the name.

8 Schwartz, Martin, review of Iranisches Personennamenbuch, vol. 1, by Mayrhofer, Manfred, Orientalia, 49, no. 1 (1980): 123–26.Google Scholar

9 “Aždahā: i.,” 194a.

10 Ibid., 194b.

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23 I cannot find Shāhnāmeh Šambarān, mentioned by Skjærvø, “Aždahā: i.,” 194b. I also consulted Dr. Mahmoud Omidsalar, an expert on Shāhnāmeh, who kindly searched for it to no avail.

24 In Crimean Romany, Aždahas (pl. Aždahades) is a flying snake-dragon,“the most common character of Crimean Roma's folktales,” Toropov, Vadim, Crimean Roma Language and Folklore (Ivanovo, 2010), 325–26.Google Scholar The sing. and pl. endings here added to the stem A?daha- reflect Byzantine/Modern Greek influence.