La Question du rituel : le mazdéisme ancien et achéménide / The Problem of the Ritual within Ancient and Achaemenidean Mazdaism.

Abstract

Confronted by the fact that since the foundation of Zoroastrian studies the erudite have not been preoccupied with ritual, the authors have undertaken to effect the first steps in this direction. J. Kellens, in the first part, takes stock of the relation between the ceremony of the sacrificial rite and the Old-Avestan texts which accompany it and which were composed orally around 1000 B.C. The rites and texts hinge on the notion of organized arrangement: the arrangement of the world in the cosmogonical act of Ahura Mazda; and the arrangement of the rite of men. C. Herrenschmidt, in the second part, shows that despite the differences of languages and sources, the Mazdaian ritual of Achaemenidae (550-330 B.C.) appears to be the continuity of the contents of the most ancient texts, but with a major transformation: the legitimacy of the Persian king was founded in and by the rite. It is thus observed that the question of ritual was at one time at the centre of the relation between the political and religious domains in Iran.