P. Oktor Skjaervo

The St. Petersburg manuscripts of the Khotanese Suvarnabhasottama-sutra recently published in exemplary fashion by R.E. Emmerick and M. Vorob'eva-Desiatovskaia (1993, 1995), contain several previously unknown words. Most of these were discussed by Emmerick in an article published in 1995. Subsequent study of the published facsimiles has revealed that a few of these words were wrongly read. These and some others are reconsidered here

Dealing with the inevitability of death and its earthly detritus-the remains of the deceased-are not only universals in human existence, but were also almost certainly the original impulses to religious development. Though all religions deal with death and its aftermaths-funerals, mourning-only some of them elaborate the rituals surrounding death with a scholastic discourse that eventually develops into a labyrinthine scholastic super structure of purity and pollution. Since two Sasanian religions-Zoroastrianism and Rabbinic Judaism-shared a long, mostly peaceful existence for the entire Sasanian period (and more), as well as many theological and ritual doctrines and practices,it should not come as a surprise that common elements crop up in this area as well. Since the proper disposal of the deceased's remains remained a flash-point of controversy between the two-whether to bury or exposeit is noteworthy that on the level of shared scholastic discourse they had much in common. In this article, we shall examine some interesting parallels in their views of corpse-pollution and its effects in these two scholastic cultures, focusing on particular means of transmission of impurity from the dead body to humans, utensils, food and interior spaces. By the second century CE the rabbis had already developed two forms of transmission that were specific to corpses, ohel ("overhanging") and boqa'at ve-olah, boqa'at ve-yoredet ("breaking out and ascending, break ing out and descending"), corresponding to the Zoroastrian sāyag abganēd ("overshadowing" in regard to sagdīd, or repulsing the corpse-demoness) and frōd barišn ("permeating downward"), respectively. We shall exam ine these from Rabbinic sources and two Pahlavi sources: The Šāyist nē šāyist and the Zand ī fragard ī jud-dew-dād. 1 These two papers were the result of ten years' collaboration on Pahlavi texts dealing with rituals and pollution. We are grateful to the ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies for giving us the opportunity to present some of the results of this collaboration at the Conference on "The Zoroastrians" and for accepting the edited papers for publication.

... important ones to date: "Ahura Mazda n'est pas un dieu cr6ateur," in Etudes irano-aryennes offertes a Gilbert Lazard, ed. Charles-Henri de ... An Essay on Its Origin, Serie Orientale Roma, 62 (Rome: Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1989); review of Humbach, The Gathas ...

Jewish-Iranian encounters in ancient times.
The Iranian religious oral and written traditions
The use of Gathic phraseolgy in the Videvdad (Vendidad) and  the Achaemenid inscriptions.
Scholarly discussions about pollution in the Pahlavi literature from late Sasanian times.