Zoroastrianism in Armenia - J R Russell

576 Pages·2021·12.76 MB·English

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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. Vaha gn.............................................

7. Anahit and ........................................... 235

8. M i h r ............................................... 2бі

9. Tir................................................. 289

10. Sp an dar amet - s an dar a m e t ............................... 323

11. Torkc ............................................... З61

12. Hawrot and Mawrot.................................... 375

13. Captive P o w e r s...................................... 399

1^4. Evil Spirits and Creatures........................... ^37

15. The Fire-cult........................................

16. Children of the S u n .................................. 515

Abbreviations of Terms and of Works Frequently Cited...........51*!

Transliterations ............................................
5^7

Select Bibliography ........................................
5^9

Maps.......................................................555

I n d e x .....................................................559

1

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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

iii

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

V

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
2
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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