Zoroastrianism in Armenia

576 Pages·2016·12.76 MB·English

by  Russell J.R.

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Zoroastrianism
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Armenia
by
}ames R. Russe/1
Harvard Iranian Series
Richard N. Frye
Editor
Volume Five
Zoroastrianism
zn
Armenia
by
james R. Russe/1
Harvard Iranian Series
Volume Five
Richard N. Frye
Editor
Published by
Harvard Univemty
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civtlizations
and
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research
1987
Published by
Harvard University
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
and
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research
175 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Distributed by
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
London, England
ISBN 0-674-96850-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-181-47
This publication has been aided by subventions from James Russell and
The Persian Heritage Foundation.
©1987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
The production of this book was prepared at:
PUBLICATIONS
468 Mt. Auburn Street. P.O.Box 302. Watertown, Massachusetts 02172, U.S.A. Tel: [phone]
ManufaciUred by Publisher\ Choice Book Mfg. Co.
Mars, Pennsylvania 16046
Editor's Foreword
This is the first publication in the series of a study
rather than a text or translation of source material. Little
has been written on the pre-Christian culture and religion
of Armenia, and for the most part years ago; so a new
investigation of the subject is indeed significant.
As usual, the text is the responsibility of the author, for
the editor only makes suggestions which may or may not be
accepted. Since the subject is of interest not only to those
concerned with ancient Iran but especially to students of
Armenian matters, the aid of the National Association for
Armenian Studies and Research in the publication of this
volume was not only most welcome but appropriate.
TABLE 0Ғ CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgements............................................iii
Preface ................................................... v
Introduction ............................................... 1
Chapter
1. The Armenian Ethnogenesis............................. 25
2. Armenia from the Median Conquest to the Rise of
the Artaxiads...................................... 39
3. Artaxiad Armenia .................................... 73
U. Armenia under the Parthians and Sasanians .............. 113
5. Aramazd............................................. 153
6. Vahagn.............................................
7. Anahit and ........................................... 235
8. Mihr............................................... 2бі
9. Tir................................................. 289
10. Sp an dar amet - s an dar amet...............................323
11. Torkc ............................................... З61
12. Hawrot and Mawrot.................................... 375
13. Captive Powers...................................... 399
1^4. Evil Spirits and Creatures........................... ^37
15. The Fire-cult........................................
16. Children of the Sun.................................. 515
Abbreviations of Terms and of Works Frequently Cited...........51*!
Transliterations ............................................ 5^7
Select Bibliography ........................................ 5^9
Maps.......................................................555
Index.....................................................559
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is the revision of a thesis submitted for the degree of
Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Zoroastrianism) at the School of Oriental
Studies of the University of London, 1982, supported by a generous grant
from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal. The Commit­
tee for Cultural Relations with Armenians Abroad (SPCYUKK°) of the
Government of the Armenian S.S.R. generously supplied many books and
journals, for which I am most grateful; my venerable teacher
Miss Vartarpi Tarpinian of Garin (Erzurum), Armenia, provided books
and oral reminiscences of great value. My teacher Mrs. Maritza Tsaggos
read chapters of the thesis and offered many useful suggestions. My
friend Miss Roberta Ervine typed a large portion of the draft manu­
script and offered useful references.
Professor Mary Boyce supervised the thesis; I owe to her an im­
mense debt of gratitude for her constant encouragement, profound learn­
ing, and tireless help. Many revisions suggested by her and by
Professor Sir Harold Bailey are incorporated into the present volume.
My parents, Joseph and Charlotte Russell,. have given me unstinting
material and moral support at every stage of this work. My grandfather,
Mr. S. A. Russell, has through a most generous subvention made this
publication possible. In the years since the defense of the thesis I
have been fortunate to become closely acquainted with the practices of
the living Parsi community in India, thanks mainly to the hospitality
of my friend Khojeste Mistree, Director of the Zoroastrian Studies
Trust, Bombay, and this added knowledge has contributed to the revision
of some passages. The present manuscript was typed by Virginia Brown,
and I thank her and Muriel Bennett for their meticulous labor.
This book addresses a wide and controversial topic: the practice
of the religion of the great Iranian prophet Zarathushtra amongst the
pre-Christian Armenians. Such an audacious undertaking must have its
shortcomings, and these are mine, of course, not my teachers'. Suffice
it to say here that I have hoped to enrich, not to diminish, the cul­
tural heritage of the Armenians by describing their ancient faith in a
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great and venerable prophetic revelation and their adherence to a
highly moral, uplifting religious code. Cannot a residue of such a
proud heritage have given them the courage, centuries later, to with­
stand the pressures of Islam to which so many of their neighbours suc­
cumbed, and to uphold the loys hawatk0? I hope the living Zoroastrian
communities of Iran and India will find interest and some encouragement
too, in this record of another nation, in many of whose practices the
flame of Zoroastrianism still shines brightly: in his diary entry for
19th February, 1891, the Khshnoomist Zoroastrian mystic Behramshah
Shroff claimed there was a cave full of Zoroastrian scriptures in Ar­
menia, 'where the ancient Parsis lived' (cited by J. R. Hinnells in his
recent study, 'Social Change and Religious Transformation among Bombay
Parsis in the Early Twentieth Century,' p. 685 n. 1+0) . We have not yet
found the books, but the people were there. (On the cave of Mithra at
Van, of which Shroff's report may be a distant echo, see Ch. 8.)
I dedicate this book to Professor Mary Boyce, to my parents, to my
grandfather, and to the memory of my beloved grandmother Bertha Russell
zikhronah le-beraJchan.
PREFACE
From the time of the conquest of Assyria and Urartu by the Medes
to the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Muslim Arabs some thirteen
centuries later, Armenian culture developed under the linguistic, poli­
tical, and religious influence of successive Iranian empires. For most
of this period the dominant religion of the Iranians was Zoroastrianism,
and there exists abundant evidence that this religion was practised also
by Armenians from the time of the Achaemenians. The religion waned in
Armenia after the conversion of the Arm. Arsacid court to Christianity
early in the fourth century, and most information on the old religion
must be culled from hostile Christian texts of the fifth century and
later. Classical writers such as Xenophon, Strabo, and Tacitus stress
Armenia's ties to Iran, however, including common religious beliefs and
practices. There is some evidence also in pre-Islamic Iranian texts.
Some features of Zoroastrian practice in Armenia can be reconstructed
from archaeological remains, and the ethnographic material of recent
times testifies to the survival of Zoroastrian beliefs.
Like their co-religionists in Iran, ancient Arm. Zoroastrians be­
lieved in a supreme God, Ahura Mazda (Aramazd), the Creator of all that
is good, who is helped by the supernatural beings of His own creation,
by righteous men, and by other good creations against the hostile,
separate, uncreated Destructive Spirit, Angra Mainyu (Haramani), whose
demonic hosts, destructive assaults, sins and diseases have polluted
this world. Through an active, ethical life of piety, charity, truth,
cultivation of the earth and veneration for the holy creations, particu­
larly fire, whose light and warmth embody Divine righteousness, man
•** .
struggles towards the great renovation of the world, Fraso.kereti
(Hrasakert), when evil will be defeated and obliterated.
There was probably some local diversity in Armenian religion,
though attempts by the Artaxiads to impose political unity involved
religious centralisation as well. The Zoroastrian cult drew from the
Armenian heritage of Indo-European, Asianic, and Semitic religion; Arm.
Zoroastrianism was, perhaps, distinctive, but it was not a mere
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syncretism. The Armenians generally, though not universally, opposed
the iconoclastic and other reforms of ArdesTr I and his successors and
the attempts Ъу the latter, particularly Yazdagird II, to re-impose
Zoroastrianism on the newly-Christianised nation. But remnants of the
Good Religion survived down to recent times.
INTRODUCTION:
THE LAND OF ARMENIA
The rugged volcanic highland called the Armenian plateau occupies
an area of some 300,000 square kilometres, at a median elevation of
150O-I8OO metres, on the same latitude as the Balkan peninsula; in its
widest extent, Greater Armenia (Arm. Meс HaykC) stretched from 37 -^О E.
Long, and from 37-5"-Ul.ş'N. Lat. The Plateau forms part of a mountain
system including the Anatolian plateau to the west and the Iranian pla­
teau to the east; both are lower than Armenia. The country's soils
vary from desert and semi-desert to forest and mountain meadow. In
sub-Alpine regions, the soil on the north side of a mountain may be
rich chernozem, while the soil on the southern side is rocky and poor
for lack of precipitation. Wind and water erosion and centuries of
invasion, pillage and neglect have denuded many mountains once rich in
forests. But Armenian orchards still provide the apricot, praised in
Rome as the prunus Armeniacus, and the Armenian words for plum, apple
and mulberry (salor, xn.jor, tCutC) are found in Assyrian, attesting to
the cultivation and trade of Armenian agricultural produce in ancient
times. Xenophon, who passed the winter in an Armenian village during
the retreat of his mercenary army, described in the Anabasis the varied
and abundant Armenian fare, much of it dried or pickled for the winter,
as today; he and his men enjoyed Armenian beer. Armenia has a conti­
nental climate, being cut off by high mountains from large bodies of
water, and winter is long and severe, with an average temperature of
-15°C. in January; temperatures of -1*3.5°C. have been recorded in Kars.
Summer is brief and hot, with temperatures of 26-28°C. (but only 20 C.
on the high plateaux). Spring and autumn are the gentlest seasons of
the year in Armenia.'*'
Armenia may be viewed as the centre of a great cross defined by
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the Black Sea on the northwest, the Caspian on the northeast, the
Mediterranean in the southwest, and the Persian Gulf in the southeast:
at the strategic crossroads of the ancient world and lying athwart
crucial trade routes, in proximity to important maritime centres. The
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