Purity and Pollution in Ancient Zoroastrianism

Abstract

This article introduces the reader to the subject of purity and pollution in ancient Zoroastrianism and attempts to make the evidence availanle for this subject useful for a comparative perspective, by calling attention to certain developments and possible ways to explain these. It sketches a logically coherent and strictly normative system of purity rules that would be valid for most expressions of Zoroastrianism in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, but people are consistently faced with a substantial body of evidence that suggests that these rules were not, or at least not all, strictly applied. It briefly explores Zoroastrian purity laws and the development of prescriptions and rituals, and their practical application, for they are important if Zoroastrian data are to be used as contextual information for biblicists and historians of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Keywords:early Islamic period; pollution; pre-Islamic period; purity laws; Zoroastrianism