:: Volume 11, Issue 41 (Cultural History Studies 2019) ::
CHS 2019, 11(41): 135-152 Back to browse issues page
Margins more Important than Text, Historical Values of Margins, Memorial Notes and Colophons of Manuscripts in Zoroastrian Tradition
Abstract:   (2194 Views)
In the Zoroastrian tradition, the most important and comprehensive issue is the ambiguity in history and the disregard for time and chronology. Perhaps the recording of time in the sense of its finiteness, with the clear validity of its inevitable beginning and execution, as well as the destruction of evil as the wisdom and providence behind the finiteness of time, has caused the Zoroastrian tradition to never record events and study them in a historiographical process. Zoroastrianism, from the time of the prophet to the present day, has never produced a specific historiographical text. As much as the future and the end of history have been dealt with in the form of futurity and prophecy, the present and ultimately the past, which is the result of the chronology of the present, have not been considered. History in the Zoroastrian tradition is a predetermined narrative which, according to the necessity of the battle between good and evil, takes place gradually and over time, by the will of Ahura and the help of man; hence, it is not the past and present, but the future and the time of salvation and the triumph of good that matters. Thus, looking back and remembering the past is limited to myths and legends that reinforce the hope of a certain future. In addition to scattered documents, especially historical narratives outside the Zoroastrian tradition, often the narrations of neighbors and enemies of the Zoroastrian religion, some texts within the tradition also have historical value. It is true that religious texts are all timeless and oversee religious and ideological issues, but they have retained valuable inscriptions, memoirs, conclusions, and additions to the margins of their papers that have somewhat emptied historical texts. They fill it especially chronologically. In the following speech, the study, identification, classification and mention of the margins of the religious texts of the Zoroastrian tradition, as a tool and framework for the chronology of the history of the mentioned religion, will be discussed.
Keywords: Zoroastrians, Zoroastrian Tradition, Manuscripts, Colophons, Memoirs, Captions and Margins
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review paper: Research | Subject: Special
Received: 2019/06/26 | Accepted: 2020/10/26 | Published: 2019/12/1



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Volume 11, Issue 41 (Cultural History Studies 2019) Back to browse issues page