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The Old Iranian Calendars Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

S. H. Taqizadeh
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Extract

Most Iranists are probably acquainted with some of my writings on Iranian chronology and systems of time-reckoning. One of the essential points in my outline of the history of the Iranian calendars is the theory I put forward about the date of the creation of a fixed religious year, co-existing and running parallel with the civil year, which was a vague one. This fixed year, called in Pahlavi literature Vihēǰakīk, was, however, theoretical and without any application in daily life. It was used only by the Zoroastrian clergy for the purpose of ascertaining the original position of the religious festivals and keeping them in or about their astronomical positions. By the ‘original position’ is meant the places these most important religious days occupied in the tropical year at the time of instituting the Vihēǰakīk year, which time may or may not have been the epoch of the initial adoption of the Mazdayasnian or ‘Young Avestan’ civil year in Iran. The date I proposed was 441 B.c., or at any rate some time in the first decade of the second half of the 5th century B.c.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , October 1952 , pp. 603 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1952

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References

page 605 note 1 In Ossetic särd(ä) means, as pointed out by Marquart, ‘summer,’ which word doubtless continues Old Persian θard- and Avestan sarǝd- ‘year’.

page 606 note 1 [This name should be pointed pyčx'xy ryd: it continues, in fact, Av. paitišhahya + ratu.—W. B. H.]

page 606 note 2 [Saehau's form should be replaced by it continues Av. maiδyōišოma.— W. B. H.]

page 608 note 1 It cannot be assumed with certainty that this periodical intercalation was effected regularly, i.e. in 320, 200, 80 B.c., and A.d. 40 and 160, etc. If we take seriously the passage in the Dīnkart, in which the maximum delay permitted in carrying out the intercalations is said to be five months, we must presume that some of the intercalations were deferred to a later time.

page 609 note 1 [This view is supported by the fact that the Khwarezmian names of the Gahanbars are identical with the ‘Old Avestan’ ones: Mδy'r-ryd (so to be read) = Maiδyāirya; Myθ-zrmy-ryd = Maiδyδizarǝmaya; 'rθmyn-ryd = Ayāθrima; one is missing; the two remaining above, p. 606, n. 1, 2. The order, however, is gravely disturbed.—W. B. H.]