Abstract

This article evaluates the development of a generic term for ‘religion’ in late antique Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. It examines linguistic indications of the use of dēn/δēn as a generic term in the Manichaean Middle Iranian corpora, i.e. Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian, as well as in the corpus of Zoroastrian Middle Persian. The paper considers declination in the plural, the attribution of universal quantifiers or demonstrative adjectives, comparison, and selection, as they occur in the above corpora, to be indicators of generic concepts. Acknowledging that third-century Manichaeism shaped the term for ‘religion’ in the Persian Empire, the paper scrutinizes the reflections of this formative process in Sasanian and also early Islamic Zoroastrianism. The resulting analysis of the linguistic evidence indicates that the newly coined Manichaean concept of ‘religion’ did not find considerable echoes in late antique Zoroastrianism. Furthermore, an investigation of the term daēnā- in the Avestan sources provides earlier evidence for the formation of the term ‘religion’ in pre-Sasanian Zoroastrianism. Finally, the paper highlights the significance of religious contact for the formation of a generic concept of religion.

Highlights

  • Šābuhragān, supposedly authored by Mani himself and dedicated to the second Sasanian king, Šābuhr I

  • The difference between these two linguistic fields becomes even greater if one considers the ratio of appearances of the plural form to all appearances of the noun dēn: considering the occurrences collected in the above dictionary, the plural form constitutes less than 2 percent of all attestations of the noun dēn in Middle Persian; in Parthian, the ratio is approximately 17 percent

  • 103 Benkato (2017, 56f.); a former edition can be found in Sundermann (1985, 22f.). To choose this term in his Iranian texts for the designation of his concept of religion. It seems that Zoroastrianism presented a dualistic scheme of religions in the third century, whereas Mani developed this further into a hierarchy of religions

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Summary

Introduction

In his essential contribution “Mani and the Crystallization of the Concept of ‘Religion’ in Third [1] Century Iran” in Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings, Jason BeDuhn (2015) analyzes the development of a generic term in Manichaeism for the concept that we call ‘religion.’ In his discussion of the conditions necessary for this development, he asserts: “Religions emerged in antiquity when particular sets of religious practices no longer carried exclusive identification with such a native land, but belonged to a community that carried its own disembedded cultic. The examination of the plural declination of a substantive on the object language level that designates a similar concept to our scientific notion of ‘religion’ is reliable evidence for the existence of the generic term religion in the religious field that chronologically and geographically corresponds to the searched corpus. As Lankarany (1985, 62) demonstrates, the lexeme does not designate religion in Old Avestan texts.21 He asserts a relationship between daēnā- and religiosity, .. The vision-soul of the dead person seems to advance (Hintze 2017) in the form of—to quote the Avestan passage HN 2.9—“a maiden, beautiful, bright, with white arms, strong, well-shaped, well grown, tall, with high (standing) breasts, with a body from song, noble, from a brilliant lineage, fifteen years old in look, in form much more beautiful than the most beautiful creatures.” Verse 11 of this text develops the relation of the OAv. daēnā- with the Zoroastrian ethic triad to their identification. Yt. 13.94f., attests the wish of spreading daēnā- on all seven continents (1985, 135, 145f.) To some degree, the phrase anaiβiiāstō daēnąm ‘be ungirded with daēnā-’ (V.18.1-4; Lankarany 1985, 131, 155) alludes to the social dimension of the term as well

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