Studies in Zoroastrian exegesis and hermeneutics with a critical edition of the "Sudgar Nask" of "Denkard" Book 9

My dissertation examines the various interpretive dimensions of a ninth century CE Pahlavi (Middle Persian) commentary on the five Old Avestan Ga[straight theta]as (second millennium BCE), the oldest and most sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, ascribed to the prophet Zarathustra himself. Denkard Book 9 is a threefold commentary (Pahl. nask ), thus providing us with an opportunity to study three different interpretations of the Old Avesta. My dissertation comprises two halves. The first half consists of a four-part introduction, three interpretive essays, and a conclusion. The second half is a text, translation, and apparatus criticus of the first of the three commentaries, the Sudgar Nask ( Denkard 9.1-23). My first essay is a study of the division of the Zoroastrian religious corpus into three fields of knowledge: seven Gathic nasks, seven ritual nasks, and seven legal nasks. My discussion focuses on symbolic interpretation, as the 21 nasks are explicitly connected with the 21 words of the Ahuna Vairiia prayer ( Yasna 27.13), and the three fields of knowledge are associated with its three verse lines. I argue that the division of a religious corpus on the basis of its most sacred prayer and the resulting numerological speculations on it are vital for understanding the associative nature of Zoroastrian interpretive thought, and are closely paralleled with Vedic taxonomies of scripture found in the brahman[dotbelow]a literature of ancient India. My second essay contains a close reading of the Sudgar Nask of the Kamnamaeza Haiti ( Yasna 46.1-19), which begins with a question posed by Zarathustra: "To what ground am I bending? Where shall I go to (find) pasture?" Based on the subsequent answer, I argue that the interpretation of this section reveals a reading strategy of "Intertextuality," and the employment of the hermeneutical principle of "Omnisignificance"--literary-theoretical concepts which I have adapted from Rabbinic Studies. My third essay deals with the last section of the Old Avesta , which is interpreted in an eschatological sense by all three nasks. As eschatology is a reflection of cosmogony, the A Airii [schwa]ma Isiio ( Yasna 54.1), at the end of the Old Avesta is juxtaposed with the Ahuna Vairiia , which begins the Old Avesta. I argue that the correlation of the progress of the ritual with the linear progression of cosmology is a characteristic feature of Zoroastrian hermeneutics.