Societas Iranologica Europaea

State Hermitage Museum Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstracts

Electronic Edition

Saint-Petersburg 2015

http://ecis8.orientalstudies.ru/

Eighth European Conference of Iranian Studies. Abstracts

9

the manuscript he is referring to was indeed manuscript Dorn 306, and who this copy was intended for.

Arthur Ambartsumian

The Problem of Wahrām Warzāwand/Amāwand in the Pahlavi Texts

and Two Main Apocalyptic Versions of His Future Arrival

King Wahrām, entitled as Warzāwand or Amāwand, is one of the important figures in the late Pahlavi apocalyptic literature. The main story of his future arrival is attested in two originally untitled and different by style small Pahlavi texts: “On the Coming of King Wahrām Having Miraculous Power” (Abar madan ī šāh Wahrām ī Warzāwand) (Mss. MK, JJ, DP) [Pahlavi Texts, I-II, 1897-1913, 52, 160-161] and “On the Coming of King Wahrām Powerful” (Abar madan ī šāh Wahrām ī Amāwand) (Ms. E. Blochet, Paris) [Blochet, 1895, 1-3, 241-243, 251-253]. The first one, which is a mostly poetic text, resembling an Arabian or Persian rhymed qaṣīda, has been widely studied and translated by European and Iranian scholars, is of a later origin (10-11th cc.) and strongly influenced by New Persian grammar and has some Arabic words (gazīd ‘poll-tax’, aslīg ‘natural tax’, mazgīt ‘mosque’). The second one is an earlier prosaic Pahlavi text of the same post-Sasanian period, having less new influences and preserving better the original Middle Persian grammar. It enumerates more wide range of Iranian enemies, besides Arabs (tāzīgān), among them are Turanians (tūrānīg), Byzantines (hrōm), Chinese (čīnīstān), and demons of Mazanya (māzīnīgān). This Blochet’s text may be closer to the excluded by J. M. Jamasp-Asana version of the Ms. Ta (Tahmuras collection), because of differences in the second part of the text. This part of the paper is based on my own compared translations and research of the two texts.

The role of king Wahrām consists in liberation of the Iranian lands from invaders (Arabs) at the beginning of the millennium of Oshedar, apocalyptic son of Zarathushtra. In the abovementioned text “On the Coming of King Wahrām Having Miraculous Power” he will come to Iran from India with one thousand elephants. According to “Zand ī Wohuman Yasn” he will arise from China or India as a king of the Kayanid dynasty and with the help of Pashutan, son of king Wishtasp, will liberate Iran. In “Bundahishn” he, as Kay-Wahrām, is glorified as a restorer of the Zoroastrian faith. His deeds and names are also mentioned in the New Persian poem “Zarātusht-Nāmah”, Pahlavi Rivayats, and calendar texts.

The origin of this figure in the later Zoroastrian apocalyptic tradition will be widely discussed in this paper (Avestan yazata Vәrәϑraγna; five Sasanian kings with the name Wahrām, including Wahrām Gōr and Wahrām Chōbēn; Wahram, son of the last Sasanian king Yazdegerd III, whose name was presumably mentioned on a funerary stele near Luoyang in China as Aluohan, according to A. Forte’s article).

Khalil Ahmad Arab

Marriage in Afghanistan

Its Contribution to Domestic Violence and other Social Ills Marriage, with no doubt, is one of the greatest concerns for every adult male in

Afghanistan. In a country with crippling economy, high unemployment rate and an annual per capita GPD of only 528 USD in 2010/11, young Afghans are finding it increasingly difficult to