¹ Those innocent of astrological ‘science’ must be warned first, in the words of Bouché-Leclerq, A. (op. cit. infra, 288)Google Scholar, that ‘l'imagination des astrologues est inépuisable, et qui les fréquente doit s'armer de patience’, and secondly that the same virtue is generally needed in reading their detractors. No better or more amusing survey of the subject is to be found than Bouché-Leclerq's, monumental L'astrologie grecque, Paris, 1899Google Scholar, reprinted 1963.

² The Bûndahishn, edited by the late Ercad Tahmuras Dinshaji Anklesaria, with an introduction by B. T. Anklesaria, Bombay, 1908Google Scholar.

³ Zand-ākāsīh, Iranian or Greater Bundahišn, transliteration and translation in English, by Behramgore Tehmuras Anklesaria, Bombay, 1956Google Scholar. The numeration of this edition, by chapter and section, will be used hereafter for convenience, combined with page and line references to the above-mentioned facsimile.

⁴ West's, E. W. translation in Sacred Books of the East, V, Pahlavi texts, Pt. I, 1880Google Scholar, is of the shorter Indian recension; of the sections concerning us only V, 4–5 (in part) and V B, 1–11 are translated (combined in West's chapter v).

⁵ Junker, H., ‘Über iranische Quellen der hellenistischen Aion-Vorstellung’, Vorträge d. Bibl. Warburg, 1, 1921–1922, (pub.) 1923, pp. 165 ff.Google Scholar, Anm. 64; Taqizadeh, S. H., Gāh-šomāri dar Irān e qadim, Tehran, 1937Google Scholar, TabṢere, 308–40.

⁶ Through the generosity of the author I have also had access to a copy of the text, translation, and notes to the GB in the form in which it was presented in 1933 by Sir Harold Bailey as his thesis for the degree of D.Phil. Wherever I have consciously drawn on this the fact is gratefully acknowledged.

⁷ Nyberg, H. S., Texte zum mazdayasniscken Kalender, Uppsala, 1934Google Scholar; Zaehner, R. C., Zurvan, a Zoroastrian dilemma, Oxford, 1955Google Scholar, ad loc.

⁸ Reitzenstein, R. and Schaeder, H. H., Studien zum antiken Synkretismus aus Iran und Griechenland (Studien d. Bibl. Warburg, 7), Leipzig, 1926, 221–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ JRAS, 1942, 229–48 (cited ACB).

¹⁰ This reading of the variously written Phl. word is preferred to the gētī(h) advocated by Henning, , BS0AS, XII, 1, 1947, 64Google Scholar (‘the Old Syriac spelling gtyh’ quoted there appears in a text abounding in misspelt Iranian words). On the analogy of its antonym, mēnōg (< mainyawa-ka-), which seems to have assumed the functions of a displaced *mēnūg (<mainyu-ka-), the ‘learned’ adjective gētīg (<gaēiθya-ka-) was probably also used as a noun (as Man. MP gytyg), leading to a secondary adjective gētīgīg in Phl.

¹¹ Reading: u-šān ōrah ī xwēš bast hēnd pad hampaymānagīh. The statement is repeated at V A, 7 (q.v., with n. 30) and V B, 12.

¹² Reading, tentatively, <h>lk'yn', cf. Man. MP hrwkyn = har(w)kēn.

¹³ v. Henning, , ACB, 231Google Scholar, third paragraph and notes.

¹⁴ See (i) Kharegat, M. P., ‘The identity of some heavenly bodies mentioned in the Old Iranian writings’, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Madressa jubilee volume, Bombay, 1914, 116–58Google Scholar; (ii) Henning, , ACB, 246 f.Google Scholar, F and G; (iii) V A, 3–5 below, with notes.

Filliozat, J., ‘Notes d'astronomie ancienne de l'lran et de l'lnde’, JA, CCL, 3, 1962, 329 ff.Google Scholar, casts reasonable doubt on Henning's conclusion that Sadwēs = Antares, but his own nominee for the position, λ-Aquarii, Skt. śatabhiṣaj, is an insignificant star quite unfitted for generalship. If his argument be accepted, that Sadwēs should be in a line with the Great Bear and the celestial pole (there is no reason for it to be near the ecliptic), the most outstanding candidate seems to be Fomalhaut, α-Piscis Austrini, which has always been visible for part of the year as far north as 45°, though comparatively low in the southern sky. Jackson, A. E. W. made the same identification, without stating his reasons, in the Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics, XII, 86Google Scholar.

¹⁵ v. Henning, , ACB, 239Google Scholar, note C, on the ‘cloud-station’. The MSS have spnclwš (for Av. spinǰauruška- ‘an enemy of Vishtasp’), both here and at XVIII, 5, instead of the expected spncgl, Av. spənǰaγrya-; cf. Vd., xix, 40, ‘the Vazisht fire, which smites the demon Spenjagr’.

¹⁶ v. V B, 14 and n. 48.

¹⁷ Reading: u-šān rawišn ud kōxšišn ō … pad aztarmārīh-iz paydāg. No satisfactory sense is to be got from the words which fill the gap; they can be read variously as wihēz/wišēb/nišēb + nīrang/nērōg/ud drang. Cf. perhaps IV, 23 = 44.9, ‘the striving of the Mazan demons with the fixed stars’.

¹⁸ v. Appendixes A and B below.

¹⁹ i.e. Ohrmazd; v. Henning, , ACB, p. 231, n. 8Google Scholar.

²⁰ This time of the onslaught of the Evil Spirit, at noon of the day of the vernal equinox, being the first day of the first month, has already been stated in IV, 10 = 42.4. The onslaught set all creation, previously still, in motion; cf. II, 17 = 29.12, Henning, , ACB, 234Google Scholar.

²¹ 19°, i.e. 109° longitude, falls in the ninth lunar mansion ^*Az/barag (106° 40'-120°); v. Henning, , ACB, 243 ff.Google Scholar, Taqizadeh, , op. cit., 326Google Scholar. This statement appears to rule out any possibility of the figure 19° being a simple mistake for the more usual 15°; v. further Appendixes A and B.

²² Reading, with B. T. Anklesaria: ǰašst andar Tištar stārag. Henning, , ACB, p. 246, n. 1Google Scholar, interprets this as ‘Sirius was rising’ and proceeds to calculate an admittedly ‘rather unsatisfactory’ latitude and date at which such conditions might have been observed. But it is surely unbelievable that any astrologer would attempt to combine observed conditions with the ‘nativity’of the world. From the remainder of the paragraph, moreover, it emerges that andar ǰast means that a particular heavenly body ‘happened to be in’ a given house of the Dodecatopos. This reading extends the limits of possible time and place so much as to render any calculation pointless. In all, it seems more likely that the insistence on Sirius being in the first house (here and in VI B, 1 = 61.10) derives from the fact that the ascendant is necessarily under the command of Sirius as ‘the general of the east’ (II, 4 = 26.11, and § 3 below).

²³ Regarding the position of Mercury, v. Appendixes A and B below.

²⁴ Phl. pt(y)spl = ^*Padispar is the first lunar mansion, Γ 0°–13° 20′‘; v. Henning, , ACB, 244Google Scholar, and V B, 5 below.

²⁵ Whatever the origin of the allotment of regional commands among the stars (said at II, 4, to have scriptural authority), this distribution of planetary opponents to each of the star-generals is certainly secondary, following in the main a pattern of planetary authority well established in astrology; v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 201Google Scholar. The pattern described here differs from the norm in making Mercury ‘general of the east’ in place of Saturn. This may have come about through the promotion of Saturn, ρόνος, identified with Zurvan, to commander-in-chief. (Anyone rash enough to enter the Zurvanic jungle has a vast quantity of rotten wood to cut away. Suffice it on this point, without further speculation, to refer to the Armenian recording of the Persian names of the planets, where at least anahit ‘Venus’ and zruan ‘Saturn’ are recognizable; v. Hübschmann, , Armenische Grammatik, I, p. 94, n. 1Google Scholar, quoted by Junker, , op. cit., 169Google Scholar.) Mercury, ambivalent in all ways to the classical astrologers, would then have been the only candidate for the command vacated. See, however, p. 520, n. 46.

²⁶ Of the various Dragons in the sky this is the creature whose Head is formed by the ascending node of the moon (i.e. the point where the moon's orbit crosses the plane of the ecliptic from south to north) and its Tail by the descending node; v. Bouehé-Leclerq, , op. cit., 122Google Scholar; Kharegat, , loc. cit., 126 ffGoogle Scholar. These nodes are naturally within the zodiac and opposite each other. The Dragon is accordingly often represented as supporting six zodiacal constellations on its back, the other six hanging from its belly.

The following words, ‘middle of the sky’, though properly denoting the region of the zenith, are also used for the polar region in this text (v. Henning, , ACB, 241, note D)Google Scholar. There may, therefore, be a reminiscence here of another, older Dragon, viz. the circumpolar constellation Draco.

Regarding the name gōčihr, later ǰauzahr(a), it is hardly necessary to repeat that it derives from Av. gao-čihr- (v. Geiger, B., WZKM, XL, 1933, 108 ffGoogle Scholar.) except to emphasize that the epithet is now almost entirely divorced from the moon, which retains instead the same description in translation, ‘holding the seed of cattle’ (v. V, 4).

²⁷ Reading, with B. T. Anklesaria: čiyōn mayān ī sar ud dumb har gāh 6 axtar bawēd. Junker and Bailey, apud Taqizadeh, read unacceptably: har 86 axtar. har gāh is hardly ‘in all directions’, Zaehner, , op. cit., 164, EGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ The line of nodes actually turns in the direction opposite to the moon's movement so as to complete a half circle, 180°, in a little over 9¼ years, when the Head and Tail will have changed places exactly.

²⁹ Reading hampaymānagīh, with Bailey, for the isolated hamčašmānīh of the MSS; cf. V, 5 above.

³⁰ The emphasis apparently laid here on the fact that the common bond between the sun and moon and their adversaries is a phenomenon of the Mixture, unnecessary as it is, since the adversaries were not even present before the Onslaught, lends support to the translation ‘chariot’ for the Phl. word variously spelt lh, lyy, l'/hy. It may be read rah < Av. raθa- ‘chariot’ or r r < Av. rāy- ‘splendour’ (Bailey). In the Škand-gumānīg wizār, iv, 46, it is said that the mihir u māh i aβāxtarī … až brih i du rōšanā raβənd, but brih, Skt. rocis, ‘splendour’, i.e. Phl. bly(y)h, may be no more than a misreading or ‘correction’ of the lhy of the GB. The sun's splendour is eternal, but it could only be conceived of as having a chariot once it began to revoìve.

³¹ By kastagīh ‘diminution’ presumably ‘conjunction’ is meant, when a planet is directly in line with the sun from the earth and accordingly at its minimum elongation, zero.

³² The maximum elongations of Mercury and Venus are in fact approximately 27° and 45° respectively. The figure given for Venus (= 47° 11′, intriguingly, to an accuracy of one minute) is only slightly greater than the true value. The reason for Henning's emendation (ACB, 238, B) of 1,850' (= 30° 50′) to 1,350′ (= 22° 30′) for Mercury is therefore obscure. [I now learn from Professor Henning, and he has asked me to publish the fact, that the figures as printed were the result of a compounded printer's error and that he had intended an emendation to 1,650′ = 27° 30′. While this is eminently more possible, there does not seem to be any reason for assuming greater accuracy in the observation of Mercury than in that of Venus, but rather the reverse.]

³³ v. Taqizadeh, , op. cit., 336 fGoogle Scholar. The only term with a solely astrological meaning is ‘decan’. The Phl. dahīg ‘tenner’ must be calqued on Gk. δεκανός, while the NP and Ar. forms darēgān > darīǰān derive from Skt. drkāna-, drekkāna-, assimilated loan-words from the Gk.

Another oblique reference to the decans is made at VI B, 4 = 62.9 where, in connexion with the three appearances of Tishtar/Sirius as a man, a horse, and an ox (v. Yt., 8, 13–20), it is said: čiyōn axtar-āmārān gōwēnd kū har axtar-ē 3 kirb dārēd ‘as the astrologers say that each sign of the zodiac has three forms’.

³⁴ Reading: handāzag ēn axtar homānāg widerēd. Bailey emends similarly but translates differently.

³⁵ Reading: ka kas ān druz bē dīd hād wēnišn ī čašm bē šud hād. In the preceding paragraph (9A) two different explanations of the brightness of planets have been juxtaposed in such a way as to appear reconcilable, at a pinch—one that they wear a portion of divine light (stolen or rubbed off the sky ?) to deceive, but in fact defeat their own ends, the other that their movement disturbs the divine light of the firmament, which then beneficently screens them from the vulnerable sight of men. Yet another explanation is given in the second Parsi text entitled 'Ulamā-i Islām (v. Zaehner, , op. cit., 412, § 25Google Scholar), where it is said that Ohrmazd bound seven demons to the firmament and then surrounded them with light.

³⁶ Reading, with the Indian recension: kōh ī harburz paydāg kū pērāmōn ī gēhān.

³⁷ Reading: andar abēzagīh azabar kōh ī H. pērāmōn ī T. abāz wardēd. Nyberg and Bailey take the first two words to mean ‘during the period of non-contamination’, but before the aggression the sun did not turn at all.

With ‘above … Harburz’ cf. Yt., 10, 118, ‘as that sun goes forth across high Hara in his course’; similarly, Vd., xxi, 5. At GB, IX, 2 = 76.9, however, it is stated that Harburz reaches past the stations of the stars, the moon, and the sun ‘to the summit of the sky’ (ō bālist ī asmān)—a statement incompatible with either the Avestan passages or the present text.

³⁸ Yt., 12, 25, ‘on the peak (taēra-) of Mount Haraiti (haraitī- barəz-), round which my stars, moon, and sun revolve’. Generally, as at GB, XXX, 1 = 199.3, the mountain in the middle of the earth is called čagād ī Dāitī ‘the Peak (cf. Arm. čakat, NP čakad (with -k-!) ‘forehead, peak’, Jewish Pers. čeγād, Kurd, čiyā ‘mountain’) of the Law (Av. dāitya-)'. At IX, 3 = 76.13, the two names, Terag and Daiti, appear side by side.

³⁹ v. § 11 below.

⁴⁰ A more accurate figure is given at § 20 below and repeated at XXV, 26 = 161.9.

⁴¹ ‘East’ is always hwl's'n = xwarāsān in the GB, but ‘west’ appears in a number of forms. Here and at 192.2 hwlwpl'n = Man. MP xwrwpr'n = xwarōfrān < ^*x˅ar- awafrāna- (Nyberg's, reading x^uarōparān, op. cit., 64Google Scholar, is ruled out for Man. MP by the medial -p-). The Phl. could equally well be read xwarnifrān, cf. Man. Parth. hwrnyfr'n, MP xwrnw'r, but the spelling hwl'wpl'n also occurs, e.g. 27.2, to support the above reading and equation. At 52.9, 65.2, etc. hwlwl'n = xwarwarān, cf. Jamasp-Asana, , Pahl, texts 20.13, 118.14Google Scholar, hwlbl'n = xwarβarān; Man. MP xwrpr'n = xwarparān; al-Bīrūnī, Āthār, . All these forms contain the verb Av. √ ⁴par ‘go over’, etc.

⁴² This translation of §§ 7–10 agrees in the main with that of B. T. Anklesaria. Nyberg, , op. cit., 24–7 and 65Google Scholar, is led by an improbable distinction between mas (i.e. meh) and mahist, kas/kēh (= keh) and hasist (= kahist) days, and a misunderstanding of andar šudan, into unnecessary difficulties of interpretation, andar šndan can only refer to the setting of the sun. It is tempting to think of NP (ba)dar raftan ‘to go out, escape’, but the adverb there is certainly not to be connected with andar. (Horn, , Gr. NP Et., 120Google Scholar, compares Kurd, bar ‘draussen’—properly ‘away’, as in bar dān ‘to set free, loose’ — < ^*dwaram, but it is also possible, at least in this context, to think of a contraction of NP badar < *bedar ‘further out’.) Cf. rather Gk. ἡλιοδύσιον, Heb. məbō haš-šεmεš, Arm. arew-mutk', lit. ‘sun-entrance’ = ‘sunset’, and even English ‘the sun has gone in’, i.e. ‘hidden itself’ (suggestions I owe to my colleague Dr. C. J. F. Dowsett).

Regarding the positions of Arazahi and Savahi, v. Henning, , Sogdica, 28 fGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ To understand this surprising statement it is possible at the summer solstice to conceive of a sun whose rays only shine forward and to the left, leaving everywhere to the right of a line from the sun to Mt. Terag, the middle of the earth, lying in darkness. At all other seasons, however, such a simple conception is impossible. Presumably the original idea, either misunderstood or misrepresented by the author, was that the sun's rays could not reach beyond a line running through Mt. Terag at right angles to the line from the sun to the middle of the earth.

⁴⁴ p'tyl'nynyt, v. Bartholomae, , Zum sas. Recht, II, 32 ffGoogle Scholar. The verb is a causative formation from an adjective whose meaning ‘retained, restrained’ is well established. Henning, (OLZ, XXXVII, 12, 1934, col. 755)Google Scholar considered the pādirānihət and pādirā. kardārī of ŠGV, xvi, 26, 41, to be denominative forms from NP pāδēr ‘Stützbalken’. pāδēr, carliest defined as a ‘door bar’ (Šams-i Faxrī, ed. Salemann, p. 42u, čūbī bāšad ke az bahr-i iḥkām dar pušt-i dar nihand), may best be derived from a *paddēr <*pati-dwarya- (rather than from either √ dar ‘hold’ or dāru- ‘wood’) and connexion with an adjectival pādyrān seems unlikely. Rather pādīrān <*p tiγrāna- <*pati- √ grā-na-, Av. √ ¹-r, Skt. √ (jā)gr ‘wake’; cf. Man. MP and Parth. uygr'd = wiγrād> *bīrād> NP bīdār ‘awake’ (Henning, , BSOS, X, 1, 1939, p. 103, n. 1Google Scholar), also the Skt. combination prati √ jāgṛ ‘watch beside’ and, in form, Man. Parth. p'dgr'w = pādiγrāw <*pati-grāba-.

⁴⁵ v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 101Google Scholar. Zaehner, , op. cit., 160, 165Google Scholar, H, has ‘does good to those who do good and evil to those who do evil’ (despite his correct translation of an almost identical statement in a Persian Rivāyat, ibid., 417), thus forcing abāg ‘with’ into the meaning of ō ‘to’ and putting into the mouths of astrologers a moralistic statement of which they would have been professionally incapable.

⁴⁶ This note appears to be an addition by a later hand, since the equation of Tir with Aposh is made again by the author of the GB at VI B, 12 = 63.13. There, after a description of the equal battle between Tishtar/Sirius and Aposh (taken from Yt., 8, 20 ff.), it is said: ēd rāy pad ān čim Tīr abāg Tištar hāwand nērōg gōwēnd ‘therefore, for that reason they say that Tir and Tishtar are of equal strength’.

Apaoša- is the only demon opponent of a star general, viz. Tištrya-, specifically named in the Avesta. When the planet Mercury appeared on the Iranian scientific scene it was named after a god, Tīra-, as were all the planets except Saturn (Kaywān <Akk. kaiaw/mānu- ‘the permanent’; in view of NP keivān, this transcription of the Phl., indicating that the word was borrowed after the development of Ir. -ay(a)- >-ē-, seems preferable to *kēwān; Syriac k wān is irrelevant). Once Mercury was established as the opponent of Tištar the equation Tīr = Apōš was bound to follow. Later the names Tir and Tishtar were confused (e.g. GB, III, 18 = 37.6, čiyōn Tīr Tištar ‘as, Tir is Tishtar’). Since the establishment of Mercury as ‘general of the east’ was an Iranian innovation (v. p. 515, n. 25) it may have arisen from nothing more substantial than this same similarity of names.

A different identification of demons with planets is to be found in the late, Parsi text 'Ulamā-i Islām (II) (v. p. 517, n. 35), with no mention of Aposh.

⁴⁷ Reading, with Bailey: margīh ud wadagīh ud driyōšīh pad-iz ham petyārag.

⁴⁸ This passage and V, 6 above must be read in conjunction with III, 18 = 37.6, ‘Sirius … takes the water with the help of Fravardin, i.e. the guardian spirits of the righteous, and entrusts it spiritually to the Wind. The Wind arranges the water well and causes it to pass over the continents, by means of the clouds, and with its collaborators causes it to rain (wārēnēnd)’. Though it is possible to read w't' w'l'n krt'l'n' as wād-ud-wārān-kardārān, it seems better to isolate the divine Wind, assuming that its ‘collaborators’ are the unnamed ‘rain-making gods’ of V, 6 and that Tištar ud Wād ī wārān-kardārān alone, the rain-makers par excellence, are mentioned here.

⁴⁹ The text is corrupt: TD₂tl'cwk…' AYT' šp'n¹ šp Y mtr¹. The sun's dejection is 19° =, but reading hast…nišēb ī mihr still leaves a šp'n or the like common to all the MSS. No reading suggests itself (‘shepherd’?, ‘paths’?) except perhaps *šabīg. Libra is not especially ‘nocturnal’ in any general astrological sense (v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 156Google Scholar); indeed it is the diurnal house of Venus. But since it was the Imum Medium Caeli before and at the time of the aggression, i.e. below the earth in darkness, it may have been considered a nocturnal sign by Zoroastrian astrologers.

⁵⁰ Reading: čiyōn <frōd> tarāzūg ul warrag.

⁵¹ This ‘yoke’ (with Bailey), Phl. ywg = ǰuγ, is another name for the bond (paymānag) mentioned in V A, 8. Since a yoke is essentially a solid beam, the word used in ŠGV, iv, 39 f., seems preferable—Paz. ǰīk, Skt. rajju- ‘rope’, for Phl. zyk = zīg ‘tow-line’—but it cannot be read into the GB MSS. The constellations, however, have no bonds with the sun of any importance that we are told of (the only mention of a ny bond being that at V B, 3). It is possible, therefore, that by ‘that too of the Balance’ the imaginary yoke of Libra, Gk. ζυγόν, is meant (cf. GB, 199.4, ǰuϒ ī tarāzūg) and that the use of the same word for the bond of Saturn is a conceit, the more welcome for i ts unexpectedness.

⁵² Reading ≶n>ēw-wizārīhā-tar or, with Bailey, ‘hu-w^o: the meaning is certain from Paz. gaovazārtar (ŠGV, iv, 103) = Skt. suvyaktataram’.

⁵³ Phl. l's Y *k'dws'n = rāh ī Kădwōsān ‘the path of Kaos’, the story of whose abortive flight to heaven is told in the Dēnkard, IX, 21, and the Shahname. The NP name of the Milky Way, (rāh e) k h-kašā;n, literally ‘the (path of the) chaff-draggers’, is surely an inspired popular corruption of the Phl., whence the Ar. sikkatu/darbu 'l-tabbāna' and maǰarra', Tk. samanyolu and -oǦrusu, Arm. yardgol(i het), North. Kurd. kādiz(ān), etc. [continued

The Milky Way crosses the ecliptic roughly at the first points of Cancer and Capricorn, with its own ‘first points’ in Gemini and Sagittarius, and so could be thought of as the Dragon with its Head and Tail in opposite signs. But the author of the GB knew of the retrogression of the moon's nodes (v. V A, 5) and certainly also knew that the Milky Way was as fixed as the stars. Since the whole passage appears, moreover, to be out of context it is open to the suspicion of being a later addition. The question, however, is linked with that of the position of the Dragon in the thema mundi: see Appendix A, end.

⁵⁴ Schaeder, , op. cit., p. 221, n. 2Google Scholar, gives a masterly summary and explanation of the text. It remains only to improve his translation in detail where possible. Taqizadeh, also expounds the passage, op. cit., 332 fGoogle Scholar. See Appendix C below.

⁵⁵ pad spihr ī G., lit. ‘in the firmament of G.’, as we would say ‘in his stars’. Another example of this popular meaning of spihr (primarily the ‘sphere (of the ecliptic)’, v. Henning, , ACB, 239Google Scholar, C) is to be found at XXVI, 34 = 167.1: ‘All goodness … the firmament distributes in the world; him to whom it gives much they call fortunate, him to whom it gives little ill-starred’ (<ō> kē wēš dahēd nēk[īh]-spihr, ud <ō> kē kam dahēd wad-spihr xwānēnd). nēk-/wad-spihr are surely synonyms of NP nīk-/bad-axtar, or -baxt, not ‘the goodly/evil Spihr’ itself (so Zaehner, , op. cit., 338Google Scholar).

⁵⁶ cf. GB, IV, 25 = 44.14, ‘As He says, “At the primal creation, when the Evil Spirit came to the aggression, Time (zamān) decreed (or, fashioned—brēhēnīd) Gayomart's life and lordship as 30 years”’; W. ī Zādspram, ii, 19 f., ‘For it was the decision of Zurvan, the determiner, at the original incursion of Ahreman, “I shall fashion forth (frāz brēhēnam) for 30 winters the salvation of the life (gyān) of the brave Gayomart”. And the manifestation of it was in the firmament, in the dispensations ((baxšišn) of the benefic and malefic (planets), the arrangers of the Mixture’.

⁵⁷ Reading: pad karzang ī ābīg ī gyān<ān> ǰast. On the watery nature of the sign of the Crab, v., Taqizadeh, , op. cit., 310Google Scholar. Zādspram, ii, 21, has more explicitly pad ul-āmadān, ī gyānāniz xwānihēd ‘in the ascendant, which is also called the (house of) Life’.

⁵⁸ v.V B, 12–13; in view of what is stated there Taqizadeh's, suggestion (op. cit., 333)Google Scholar that Jupiter's inability to do harm was due to the presence of Sirius in the same house cannot be sustained.

⁵⁹ Reading: pad gyāg ī čahārom, kū mēx', azēr ī zamīg. Phl. gyāg for ‘locus, τόπος’ (v. Appendix A) does not seem to have been noticed before owing to the corruption of ch'lwm into c AHL MN in all the MSS. mēx ī azēr ī zamīg is properly ‘nadir’ (Taqizadeh, , op. cit., 338Google Scholar), but is used here for Imum Medium Caeli; cf. the misuse of the term for ‘zenith’ (v. Henning, , ACB, 241, DGoogle Scholar).

⁶⁰ But v. Appendixes A and B.

⁶¹ The periods of rotation of Saturn and Jupiter are 29 years 167 days and 11 years 315 days, or in round numbers 30 and 12 years, respectively. Jupiter would therefore make approximately 2¼ rotations while Saturn completed one, and so come into the sign opposite its exaltation, from which it started, i.e. its dejection.

⁶² The following happenings are elaborated at GB, XIV, 2 = 100.7 ff., translated and discussed by Schaeder, , op. cit., 226 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Reading: kē-šān purr-rawišnīh ī gēhān ud aβsēnišn ī dēwān ud akārīh ī Gannāg Mēnōg aziš būd.

⁶⁴ v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 184–98Google Scholar. This is expressly stated in the Persian Rivāyat first published by Spiegel, Fr., Die traditionelle Literatur der Parsen, Wien, 1860, 161 ff.Google Scholar, and again in Dáráb Hormazyâr's Rivâyat, ed. Unvala, M. R., Bombay, 1922, II, 62ffGoogle Scholar. The sentence can also be seen in the first line of Tafel 7 accompanying C. Bartholomae's Zendhandschriften d. Staatsbibl. in München. Zaehner, , op. cit., 417Google Scholar, for xāna'ī ki šaraf i īšān ast has the meaningless ‘the house of its ascendant’.

⁶⁵ v. Appendix B below. It may be remarked in passing that a reference to the Babylonian igin of astrology, and perhaps also to the earlier system of the ὁκτώτοπος, is to be found in the text Šahr<istān﹥īhā ī Ērān (Pahlavi texts, ed. Jamasp-Asana, J. M., Bombay, 1897, 18–24Google Scholar; Markwart, , ed. Messina, G., A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ēranshahr, Rome, 1931), § 24Google Scholar: šahrislān ī Bābēl, Bābēl pad xwadāyīh ī ǰam kard, u-s; Tīr abāxtar ōy bē bast, ud mārīg <i﹥ 7 <ud﹥ 12, ī axtarān ud abāxtarān, ud haštom bahrag pad ǰādūgīh ō mihr ud azērīg bē nimūd ‘The pital Babel was built by Babel in the reign of Jam(shed), and he bound the planet Mercury ere [ is generally considered to have influence over the region of Babylon] and he showed e decree(s) [lit., ‘word, sentence’] of the seven and the twelve, viz. the constellations and he planets, and of the eighth part(s ?) by sorcery …’. The rest is obscure; Babel could hardly have shown anything ‘to the sun’ –itself one of the planets—‘and to those below (mankind)’.

⁶⁶ v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 269 fGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁷ v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., p. 122, n. 3Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ v. al-Bīrūnī, , The book of instruction in the elements of the art of astrology, tr. by Wright, R. B., London, 1934Google Scholar; Milky Way, § 167, p. 87; exaltations, § 443, p. 258, ‘according to the Greeks and the Persians’.

⁶⁹ v. Bouché-Leclerq, , op. cit., 280 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁰ v. Bailey, H. W., Zoroastrian problems of the ninth-century books, Oxford, 1943, 50Google Scholar.

⁷¹ v. Boyce, M., The Manichaean hymn cycles in Parthian, OUP, 1954, 193, s.vv.Google Scholar; Salemann, C., Manichaeische Studien, St. Petersburg, 1908, 110, s.vGoogle Scholar.

⁷² Instead, the expected Persian form pastān of a word < *paštān < paitištāna- is perhaps to be found in the phrase X. ptš pst'n. Printed pt šps'n this occurs in Jamasp-Asana, , Pahl. texts, 20.4, 23.7Google Scholar, after the name Aži Dahāk, and 85.3, following that of Wuzurgmihr ī Bōxtagān. It is difficult to imagine what title these two beings could have in common, or what connexion with harems. The following reading of 85.3 f. makes good sense without emendation of the text: man, W. ī B. <i﹥ nēwān-padiš-pastān šahr ī Ōstīgān-Husraw, darīgbad, … ‘I, W. B., curopalate, of the city of Ostigan-Husraw, abode of the brave (or, good), …’. In both the other passages, admittedly, acceptance of the sense ‘where Aži Dahāk dwelt’ would require that another name, that of the reputed founder of the city in question, had been omitted.

⁷³ op. cit., § 461, p. 275.

⁷⁴ Zum sas. Recht, IV, 39.

⁷⁵ op. cit., 218, end of note.

⁷⁶ Hyleg, from Ar. and NP haylāǰ, has not to my knowledge been explained before. It is evidently the Arabicized form of a Middle Persian hilāg (cf. Ar. faylasāf <Gk. filósofos, tāǰ < MP t'g), a regular agent or present participle in -āg from the verb hištan, hil- ‘to let, allow, abandon’, translating the Gk. ἀφέτης understood as the ‘looser’. In the same way the cochoden, another reputed dispenser of years of life, is well known to have its name from Pers. kad-xudāy, translating οἰκοδεοπότης.

⁷⁷ v. Bouehé-Leclerq, , op. cit., 404–28Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ In ch. xii, quoted and translated in full by Zaehner, , op. cit., 399–401Google Scholar. Unfortunately the text suffers one of the many tendentious readings of Phl. to be found in the book. Entirely ignoring the Pazend pa wašōftan, Skt. vināśayitum, Zaehner corrupts the Phl. text further and combines it with another story, ‘scabrous’ indeed (ibid., 157), to represent that ‘Ahriman conceived and bore [the planets] by committing sodomy on his own person’, in order to lend credence to an old Christian polemic against Zoroastrian ‘senselessness and disgusting imbecility’. The correct reading of the sentence (xii, 7, Zaehner's 4), preserved in t h e Pazend, is plainly, ‘Then Ahreman created those seven planets, which are called the seven commanders of Ahreman, for the destruction and taking away from the creatures of Ohrmazd of that goodness, in opposition to the sun and moon and those twelve signs of the zodiac’.

⁷⁹ Or ‘in the most profitable manner’, reading meh-sūdīhā. Both the Phl. and Paz. texts have -dādestān- written in full, but the Skt. mahālābhatāyai suggests a Phl. original ms-swtyh' (as a t viii, 30), which could easily be misread as ms-DYNAyh', with t h e ideogram for dādestān.

⁸⁰ ed. Messina, G., Libro apocalittico persiano, Roma, 1939, iv, 2 fGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Christensen, A., Les types du premier homme et du premier roi dans l'histoire légendaire des Iraniens, I, Stockholm, 1917, 64–101Google Scholar.

⁸² op. cit., 233 ff.

⁸³ Hartman, Sven S., Gayōmart, étude sur le syncretisme dans l'ancien Iran, Uppsala, 1953, especially pp. 91–110Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ The resulting confusion is explicit in a question posed in Dēnkard, III (DkM,20): pursīdkū, gōwišn ī 2 dastwar abar Gayōmart—ēk kū andar ēβgadīh 30 sāl zīwist ud ēk kū *ka ēβgad <mad> pad gyāg murd— ān ī ēk ō did hambasān paydāg. har 2 padīriftan čāstan čim ? ‘He asked: The words of two authorities on Gayomart—one that he lived for 30 years during the aggression and one that when the aggressor came he died on the spot–are plainly contradictory. Why teach the acceptance of [or, and accept] both ? ‘The answer vouchsafed is best passed over in silence.