The Bundahišn :The Zoroastrian Book of Creation

4.57 ( 7 Ratings by Goodreads)
The Bundahišn

The Bundahišn :The Zoroastrian Book of Creation

(Author) (Author) (Author) (Author)
4.57 (7 Ratings by Goodreads)
hardback
Published: 6 October, 2020
Standard worldwide delivery by Wed, July 15 - Mon, July 20
Order within 0
Condition: NEW
$167.36
Price includes shipping
Available 20+ in stock
- +
Add to basket Wishlist This
FREE Returns within 30 days
More Details

Description

The Bundahišn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology. Compiled sometime in the ninth century CE, it is one of the most important surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature in the Middle Persian language and to pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Despite having been composed some two millennia after the Prophet Zoroaster's revelation, it is nonetheless a concise compendium of ancient Zoroastrian knowledge that draws on and reshapes earlier layers of the tradition. Well known in the field of Iranian Studies as an essential primary source for scholars of ancient Iran's history, religions, literatures, and languages, the Bundahišn is also a great work of literature in and of itself, ranking alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions. The book's thirty-six diverse chapters, which touch on astronomy, eschatology, zoology, medicine, and more, are composed in a variety of styles, registers, and genres, from spare lists and concise commentaries to philosophical discourses and poetic eschatological visions. This new translation, the first in English in nearly a century, highlights the aesthetic quality, literary style, and complexity and raises the profile of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian literature.
See more

More Details

Type Book
ISBN13 9780190879044
ISBN10 0190879041
Number Of Pages 264
Item Weight 567 g
Product Dimensions 160 x 239 x 23 mm
Publisher / Reseller Oxford University Press Inc
Format hardback
See More +

Media Reviews

Agostini and Thrope have produced an excellent translation together with introductory matter and notes that make the Bundahišn readily accessible to not only Iranists, but also to Indo-Europeanists and students of religion in general. * William W. Malandra, Journal of Indo-European Studies *

Show more

Author's Bio

Domenico Agostini is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Tel Aviv University. He has been the recipient of the Prix Pirasteh in Persian Studies at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris (2008) and the Polonsky fellowship for Outstanding postdoctoral researchers (2013-2017). He has published extensively in the field of the Zoroastrian apocalyptic ideas and Middle Persian literature. Samuel Thrope is a research fellow at the Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a fellow of the Martin Buber Society at Hebrew University. His translation of Persian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad's The Israeli Republic was published in 2017, and he is co-editor, with Roberta Cassagrande-Kim and Raquel Ukeles, of the 2018 exhibition catalogue Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past.

Show more