To cut off, purify, and make whole: Historiographical and ecclesiastical conceptions of ritual space

Journal of the American Oriental Society

Volumn 123, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 21-41

  Choksy, Jamsheed K ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949861486     PISSN: 00030279     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3217843     Document Type: Article

References (169)

1. For example, in Yasna 30:3, 43:5, 34:6, ed. K. F. Geldner as Avesta: The Sacred Books of the Parsis, vol. 1 (1886; rpt. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 1982), 106, 142, 125
2. ed. and trans. J. Kellens and E. Pirart as Les Textes vieil-avestiques, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1988), 110, 144, 126
3. ed. and trans. H. Humbach and P. Ichaporia as The Heritage of Zarathushtra: A New Translation of His Gāthās (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1994), 30-31, 60-61, 48-49.
4. For an analysis of how deception knowingly violates orderly rules of inference, and thereby gains dimensions of morality, see Eve E. Sweetser, "The Definition of Lie: An Examination of the Folk Models Underlying a Semantic Prototype, " in Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. D. Holland and N. Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 47, 49, 62-63.
5. On ascombining dot below̌a- versus drug- partially contra Jean Kellens, Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, ed. and trans. P. O. Skjærvø (Costa Mesa, Calif. : Mazda Publishers, 2000), 101, who regards the latter as "a bad order, a false or deceptive order, " in which case the concept would have been denoted as dušascombining dot below̌a- (cf. dušmanah- "bad thoughts"). Kellens is correct, however, in regarding drug- as not simply a lack of order (which would have been rendered as anascombining dot below̌a-).
6. On the Indo-European roots, see Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 5, 18.
7. On the dating of the Young Avestan texts, consult Jean Kellens, "Considérations sur l'historie de l'Avesta, " Journal asiatique 286 (1998): 504-13.
8. On the development of Zarathushtra's prophetic persona, now refer to Jamsheed K. Choksy, Evil, Good, and Gender: Facets of the Feminine in Zoroastrian Religious History (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 9-13.
9. For the suggestion that Zarathushtra's image may itself have no historical basis, see the overview by P. Oktor Skjærvø, "The Literature of the Most Ancient Iranians, " in Proceedings of the Second North American Gatha Conference, ed. S. J. H. Manekshaw and P. R. Ichaporia (Womelsdorf, Penn. : FEZANA, 1996), 221, 224-26, 234,
10. and "The State of Old Avestan Scholarship, " JAOS 117 (1997): 103-7.
11. On the transformation of Zarathushtra's teachings into a more universal dualistic worldview, see details in Jamsheed K. Choksy, "Doctrinal Variation within Zoroastrianism: The Notion of Dualism, " in Second International Congress Proceedings (Bombay: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 1996), 100-104.
12. Shaul Shaked, Dualism in Transformation: Varieties of Religion in Sasanian Iran (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of London, 1994), 22-26, emphasizes the diversity of dualistic and monist beliefs surrounding Ahura Mazda in the third through seventh centuries A. D.
13. Mardanfarrox i Ohrmazddadan, Škand Gumānīg Wizār 8: 104, ed. H. J. Jamasp-Asana and E. W. West (Bombay: Government Central Book Depot, 1887), 60
14. ed. and trans. P. Jean de Menasce as Škand-Gumānīk Vičār: La Solution Décisive des Doutes (Fribourg: L'Université de Fribourg en Suisse, 1945), 98-99.
15. Bundahišn 1: 13-1A: 21, 3: 23-24, ed. T. D. Anklesaria (Bombay: British India Press, 1908), 4-24, 38-39
16. ed. and trans. B. T. Anklesaria as Zand-Ākāsih: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn (Bombay: Rahnumae Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1956), 6-29, 44-45, trans. M. Bahar (Tehran: Tus Publications, 1991), 34-42, 50.
17. The classic study of Zoroastrians' engagement in countering drug- on a daily basis in traditional society is by Mary Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (1977; rpt. Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, 1989).
18. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1978), 1: 450-51.
19. See also Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, rev. ed., trans. M. Sainsbury et al. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), 6.
20. For valuable analyses of cognition and its relationship to culture generally, see Leonard Talmy, Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 2: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2000), 373-77, 390-91, 405-11
21. and Donald Merlin, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 301-26.
22. On the cognitive underpinnings of religion and ritual specifically, see E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 77-83, 84-136, 180-84.
23. On the construction of spaces, see Eve E. Sweetser and Gilles Fauconnier, "Cognitive Links and Domains: Basic Aspects of Mental Space Theory, " in Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar, ed. G. Fauconnier and E. E. Sweetser (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), esp. 11.
24. Contra, e. g., observations that equate holiness with the sacred, with separation (from the world), and therefore with danger, as in Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification, trans. R. Needham (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), 86
25. W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion, trans. J. B. Carmen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 309-10 (who even associates Zoroastrian notions of impurity with sacredness), 355-56
26. Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J. E. Turner (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), 47-48
27. and Jean Cazeneuve, Sociologie du rite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 217-40, among others. See also the subsequent discussion of Rudolf Otto in whose ideas conceptual overlap may have arisen from use of the German term heilig which has come to carry a range of meanings from godly and holy to sacred and pious not originally implicit.
28. For more nuanced interpretations, consult Robert D. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, trans. R. and C. Needham (Glencoe, Ill. : Free Press, 1960), 94-98, 107-10
29. and Carol E. Burnside (Choksy), "The Left Hand of the Sacred, " Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 3. 1 (1991): 3-9.
30. Watkins, Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, xxxiii, does view the sacred as relating to religion, then (p. 73) briefly and incorrectly equates it with the holy.
31. Manushchihr i Juwanjaman, Nāmagīhā 1:2:8, ed. B. N. Dhabar (Bombay: Parsee Panchayat, 1912), 7, for instance.
32. Comparison can be made to Manicheism which also regarded purity as separation (of light from darkness) - on which see the Cologne Mani Codex 83-85, ed. L. Koenen and C. Römer (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988), 58.
33. The term yaoždā- "to make perfect, purify" cannot be read as "sacred" for it refers to purity and purification linked to sacrifice or worship, contra Harriet Lutzky, "On a Concept Underlying Indo-European Terms for the Sacred, " Journal of Indo-European Studies 21 (1993): 290-91,
34. who misinterprets the accurate analysis by Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, trans. E. Palmer (Coral Gables, Fla. : Univ. of Miami Press, 1973), 390-91, 396.
35. Benveniste traces the term's Indo-European base to a notion of religio-legal conformity while demonstrating that a connection with sacramentum occurs in Latin (and as a result subsequently in English, resulting in improper usage of "sacred" as a generic term). On the etymology of yaoždā-, see also Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern: Francke, 1949-1969), 512.
36. On pāk and pāw, see further Malhar B. Belsare, An Etymological Gujarati-English Dictionary (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Gazette Press, 1895), 472, 482
37. Jivanji J. Modi, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees, 2nd ed. (1937; rpt. Society for the Promotion of Zoroastrian Religious Knowledge and Education, 1986), 109-10 (although his derivation should be discounted)
38. and Firoze M. Kotwal and James W. Boyd, A Persian Offering, The Yasna: A Zoroastrian High Liturgy (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 1991), 141-42.
39. For peuinverted e sign-, see Watkins, Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 67.
40. On space being pure, see, e. g., Bundahis̄n 1: 1-2
41. See further Jamsheed K. Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism: Triumph over Evil (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1989), xxvi-xxvii, 10-16, 112.
42. Given geographical and cultural overlap of Iranians and Israelites from the sixth century B. C., it should not be surprising that early Jewish beliefs also manifested an equation of purity with holiness as that which is set apart - on which, see insightful observations by W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1927), 140-54
43. and more recently Lutzky, "On a Concept Underlying Indo-European Terms for the Sacred, " 285-86.
44. More generally on this issue, see Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), 15-21
45. and Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (1991; rpt. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 35, 204.
46. On the etymology of saz-, consult Henrik S. Nyberg, A Manual of Pahlavi, pt. 2 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974), 171.
47. For sacer, sak-, consult Alfred Ernout and Antoine J. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, histoire des mots, 4th ed. (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1967), 586
48. On the use of "sacred, " see further Michel Despland, "The Sacred: The French Evidence, " Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 3. 1 (1991): 41-46.
49. Lutzky, "Indo-European Terms for the Sacred, " pp. 285, 286-89, has observed that sak- may be connected with another Indo-European root sek- "to cut, " gaining its religious associations through the concept of separation. It also may be observed that the Hebrew term qadoš < qd "to cut, divide" or qdš "to become pure" denotes "apartness" and consequently "making or becoming pure, " as does the Arabic term hcombining dot belowarām < hcombining dot belowrm "to cut off, divide, separate, set apart, " rather than their common English translation as "sacred. "
50. Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, 455.
51. See further Jamsheed K. Choksy, "Sacral Kingship in Sasanian Iran, " Bulletin of the Asia Institute, n. s. 2 (1988): 35-52, with an extensive bibliography of primary sources and scholarly writings.
52. ed., R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, 2nd ed. (1953; rpt. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1982), 117
53. and obverses of Sasanian drahms or silver coins of monarchs such as Hormizd I (272-73 A. D. ) Wahram I (273-76 A. D. ), and Wahram II (276-93 A. D. ) on which see Robert Gobi, Sasanian Numismatics, trans. P. Severin (Brunswick: Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1971), table 15, pls. 3-5,
54. and Jamsheed K. Choksy, "A Sāsānian Monarch, His Queen, Crown Prince, and Deities: The Coinage of Wahrām II" American Journal of Numismatics, 2nd ser. 1 (1989): 120, pl. 10.
55. Cf. Watkins, Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, xxxiii, 36, 45.
56. Contra Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, 447-52, 467, who conflates the holy with the sacred and with purity even while correctly identifying the Indo-European root of the holy.
57. Yet contra her etymology from keuinverted e sign- "to swell, be full" (p. 291), which follows Pokomy, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 592.
58. Excellent theoretical discussions on the nature of ritual space, often loosely and inaccurately termed sacred space as already observed, as a microcosmic representation of religious universe, are found in the classic inquiry by Paul Mus, Barabudur: Esquisse d'une histoire du Bouddhisme fondée sur la critique archéologique des textes, 2 vols. (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient, 1935)
59. trans. A. W. Macdonald as Barabudur: A Sketch of a History of Buddhism based on Archaeological Criticism of the Texts (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1998).
60. Useful essays also are found in Kapila Vatsyayan, ed., Concepts of Sacred Space, Ancient and Modern (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1991).
61. More specific to the present study is Ron G. Williams and James W. Boyd, Ritual Art and Knowledge: Aesthetic Theory and Zoroastrian Ritual (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1993), esp. 15-20, 25-29, 145, 148.
62. ed. K. F. Geldner as Avesta: the Sacred Books of the Parsis, vol. 3 (1895; rpt. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 1982), 10-15.
63. On the Vedic use of vala, consult William W. Malandra, An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion: Readings from the Aveta and the Achaemenid Inscriptions (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press), 178.
64. E. g., see the reference to urvisgāh in the Rivāyat īthutir 1: 4, ed. M. Vitalone (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1996), 44.
65. Persian Rivāyats, ed. M. R. Unvala (Bombay: British India Press, 1922), 1: 107, 114, 585, 599-601
66. On the etymologies, see Christian Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wörterbuch (1904; rpt. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), cols. 644-45
67. Kent, Old Persian, 185-86
68. Nyberg, Manual of Pahlavi, 82
69. David N. MacKenzie, A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1986; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 82
70. Dēnkard, ed. D. M. Madan, 2 vols. (Bombay: Society for the Promotion of Researches into the Zoroastrian Religion, 1911), 531
71. ed. and trans. S. Shaked as The Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages (Dēnkard VI) (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), 104-5.
72. See James Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, 3 vols. (1892-93; rpt. Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1960), 1: pl. 4
73. Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, Symbolik des Parsismus (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1973), pls. 55-56, 89 (where the photograph from Darmesteter's volume is reproduced)
74. and Kotwal and Boyd, A Persian Offering, pls. 2-3.
75. On the pāwī, see further Kotwal and Boyd, A Persian Offering, 4, 18-19, 32-33, 43, 62
76. and Williams and Boyd, Ritual Art and Knowledge, 26-27, 32, 48.
77. Regarding the imposition of sequential structure on actions, refer to the pioneering analysis by Van Gennep, Rites of Passage, esp. 10-12, 21. The English translation of Van Gennep's terms préliminaire, liminaire, and post liminaire - where liminaire denotes prefatory - as "preliminary, " "liminary, " and "postliminary, " while not completely faithful to the French, is better suited for understanding Zoroastrianism within this interpretive scheme. There are only a few Zoroastrian rites, such as the Paragncombining dot belowā which precedes the Yasna, that are essentially préliminaire or pre-prefatory to other ceremonies. So the liminal phase in Zoroastrianism is the elimination of confusion, the stilling of disturbance, by order both in the ritual settings and in the minds of participants. My suggestion questions Victor W. Turner's interpretation of liminality as a period of internal turbulence for the performer or "liminal personae, " on which see his The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (1967; rpt. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997), 96, 97, 106,
78. and The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969; rpt. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979), 94-96.
79. For detailed representations of liminal sequences in Zoroastrianism, also refer to Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism, xxiii, 19.
80. Properties ascribed by religion to vegetation are discussed in Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism, 120, 126.
81. Regarding the identity of the early barinverted e signsman- Martin Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1878), 283-84, suggested perhaps appropriately that it paralleled the bundles of twigs - also called kusha - rather than the grass in the Soma ritual.
82. See Modi, Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees, 120a
83. On the applicability of classification to religious experiences and events, consult the classic work by Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain (1957; rpt. New York: Free Press, 1965), particularly 29-30, 36, 47, 409.
84. On the role of spatial orientation in the socioreligious functions of space, see Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 23-24.
85. Regarding the central role of cognition in rites, see also E. Thomas Lawson, "Cognitive Categories, Cultural Forms, and Ritual Structures, " in Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism, ed. P. Boyer (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 195-96, 204-5.
86. Regarding the notion that cognition and its interpretive aspects can vary, to some degree, with culture, see Mark Turner, Cognitive Dimensions of the Social Sciences (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 13.
87. Compare Jonathan Z. Smith's observation that "ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are, " in To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987), 109.
88. See also his Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), 54-55.
89. On this issue, see in general Smith, Imagining Religion, 56, 63.
90. In the Zoroastrian religious battle scheme, ritual spaces and performers - like cosmic space and all persons - are not "'betwixt and between' all the recognized fixed points in space-time of structural classification. " Rather they are an integral part of that structural classification, located in time betwixt cosmogony and eschatology and in space between heaven and hell. Contra in general V. Turner, Forest of Symbols, 93-94, 97 (quotation),
91. and Ritual Process, 95 (quotation repeated).
92. In general, see the pioneering observations on women in religious systems by Weber, Economy and Society, 1: 488-90.
93. One important examination of a mentally constructed societal divide - based in part on issues of purity and pollution that has monumental, long-lasting impact on access to ritual space specifically and participation in sectarian society generally - is Dumont's Homo Hierarchies, esp. 46-61.
94. For sources and discussion, see Choksy, Evil, Good, and Gender, esp. 78-79, 81-82, 91-92, 97-98, 113-14.
95. and Alan V. Williams, "The Body and the Boundaries of Zoroastrian Spirituality, " Religion 19 (1989): 227-39.
96. and Evil, Good, and Gender, 61-62, 111, 113, 115-16.
97. Yašts 13:99, 19:85
98. ed. K. F. Geldner as Avesta: The Sacred Books of the Parsis, vol. 2 (1895; rpt. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 1982), 189, 256
99. trans. H. Lommel as Die Yäšt's des Awesta (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1927), 124, 185.
100. and trans. Malandra, An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion, 99.
101. On the passage in general and the phrase in particular, see insights by Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (1995; rpt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 162-64.
102. Mardanfarrox i Ohrmazddadan, Škand Gumānīg Wizār 4: 63-78
103. ed. Jamasp-Asana and West, 24-27
104. A transliteration of the whole passage, whose salient lines have been translated herein, can be found in Menasce, ed. and trans., Škand- Gumānīk Vičār, 54-56
105. On the nature and role ascribed to the sky, see further Harold W. Bailey's pioneering observations in Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 124-27, 147-48, with reference to the textual sources.
106. Zadspram i Juwanjaman, Wizīdagīhā 3: 2, 4
107. ed. and trans. M. Ph. Gignoux and A. Tafazzoli as Anthologie de Zadspram (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 1993), 40-41.
108. Connections between religious beliefs about time and space in Jewish and Christian traditions, among others, have also been documented - on which, consult essays in Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity, ed. Alberdina Houtman, Marcel J. H. M. Poorthuis, and Joshua Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
109. For uses of such spaces in Israelite and Babylonian contexts, see Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. W. R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), 20-21, 26, who utilized a phenomenological approach.
110. Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wörterbuch, cols. 517-21
111. and MacKenzie, Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, 34.
112. On the efficacy ascribed to words recited in Zoroastrian ritual contexts, see also Williams and Boyd, Ritual Art and Knowledge, 39.
113. Gemot L. Windfuhr, "The Logic of the Holy Immortals in Zoroastrianism" in Proceedings of the Second North American Gatha Conference, ed. S. J. H. Manekshaw and P. R. Ichaporia (Womelsdorf, Penn. : FEZANA, 1996), 257, also noted this point. Hence, the holy cord or kustīg worn by Zoroastrians was said to be star-spangled, encircling each devotee's midsection like the zodiac encircling the axis of the sky.
114. For texts and discussion, see Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in Ninth-Century Books, 145-47.
115. On the primeval links between Yima, vara-, ritual, time, cimiuatō. pinverted e sign̄rinverted e sign̄tu-, and eschatology, consult Kellens, Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, 13-14, 71-75, 95-98
116. On the question of spiritual salvation through ritual, see generally Weber, Economy and Society; 1: 529-34
117. On mīžda-, also consult Almut Hintze, Lohn' im Indoiranischen: Eine semantische Studie des Rigveda und Avesta (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2000), 141-68, 200-25, 226-27, 230-34.
118. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 112.
119. On the conceptual issues, see further Sweetser and Fauconnier, "Cognitive Links and Domains, " 2, 4, 5, 8.
120. Contra Lutzky, "Indo-European Terms for the Sacred, " 297-99
121. Veikko Anttonen, Ihmisen ja maan rajat: 'Pyhä' kulttuurisena kategoriana (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1996), 38, 88-90
122. and Ilkka Pyysiäinen, review of same, Temenos 32 (1996): 265-69.
123. The nexus between perception, belief, and holy experiences was eloquently elucidated by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (rpt. New York: Collier Books, 1961), esp. 42, 45, 47.
124. On the issue of classification of perceptions as "intended . . . to connect ideas, to unify knowledge, " consult Durkheim and Mauss, Primitive Classification, 3-4, 7-9, 81 (quotation), 82-85
125. On the imposition of order on the world using shared perceptions and understandings, see Naomi Quinn and Dorothy Holland, "Culture and Cognition, " in Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. D. Holland and N. Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 3, 6, 16. It should be noted, however, that Quinn and Holland regard cultural models as determining cognitive functions rather than a complex amalgam of both.
126. On cognition as a basic mental operation, see Mark Turner, Cognitive Dimensions, 52.
127. In The Literary Mind (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), v-vi, 9-11, he advances a seemingly obvious but often ignored observation that the manifold manifestations of language not only inform the core of most thoughts and actions but make them possible. The result, it seems, is culture, whose specificity is determined in place and time by the symbolic store of ideas and actions unique in some degree, but not in all respects, to a group of individuals.
128. On the centrality of symbolism to culture, now see Marshall Sahlins, "Two or Three Things that I Know about Culture, " Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n. s. 5 (1999): 400.
129. On the role of mental categories in cognition, refer to George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987), esp. 5-10, 13, 56-57, 109-10, 145-48, 153-54, 280-83, 302-3, 313-17, 370-73.
130. On the terms, see further Bruce Lincoln, Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1986), 119
131. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, and Other Essays (1948; rpt. Prospect Heights, Ill. : Waveland Press, 1992), 47, 52, 53, respectively.
132. Note an earlier comment by Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, 78, "Thus, when a man dies, society loses in him much more than a unit; it is stricken in the very principle of its life, in the faith it has in itself. "
133. See further Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism, xxii.
134. Cf. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, 50, 51.
135. trans. P. J. de Menasce as Le troisième livre du Dēnkart (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 360
136. cf. Robert C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961), 274.
137. Dēnkard, ed. Madan, p. 321
138. trans. Menasce, Le troisième livre du Dēnkart, 305, with deletion of a superfluous i.
139. On death itself as a location, see Lefebvre, Production of Space, 35.
140. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, 47, 51, 52, 53
141. Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory: Pure and Applied (Glencoe, Ill. : Free Press, 1949), 58-59
142. Cazeneuve, Sociologie du rite, 26-38
143. and Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 103-8, among others.
144. Bundahišn 34: 4-33
145. and Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg 48: 55-67, 100-107
146. For parallel passages, and analysis using homologies, where at death the body's composite parts are said to return to the cosmos and at the end of time the body is recreated from the cosmos, see Lincoln, Myth, Cosmos, and Society, 122-24, 132-39.
147. For the cross-cultural applicability of this phenomenon see Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, 55, 58-61.
148. Consult Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols., trans. E. F. J. Payne (rpt. New York: Dover, 1969), I: 37, 199, 2: 166-67, 230, 463, 466-67, 498
149. and Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, 67, 76-77, 80-81.
150. Cf. in part Marcel Mauss, Œuvres, vol. 1: Les fonctions sociales du sacré (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1968), 35-40, 357-400, among others.
151. Contra specifically Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, trans. J. W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1923), esp. 29-30.
152. For the numinous point of view, see further Robert R. Marett, The Threshold of Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1914), 143-48, 159-69,
153. and Faith, Hope, and Charity in Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 2-7, 21-22, 39, 40-43, in terms of social psychology
154. Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 28, 48, 681
155. and Kristensen, Meaning of Religion, 15-18, 182-83.
156. On Zoroastrian ideas on death as pollution and on ritual as a means of helping people cope with death, see initial observations by Jamsheed K. Choksy, "Aging, Death, and the Afterlife in Zoroastrianism, " in How Different Religions View Death and Afterlife, 2nd ed., ed. C. J. Johnson and M. G. McGee (Philadelphia: Charles Press, 1998), 249-50, 253-54, 261.
157. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, 28, also 86.
158. A fuller description, with reference to the source materials, is found in Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism, 11, 32.
159. See John Sallis, Stone (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1994), 3-4, 49-51, 72-79, 108-15, who builds upon the philosophical analyses of Hegel and Heidegger about the ways people apprehend stone.
160. On such double-scope integration, see Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002), esp. 180, 305, 353-60, 391.
161. Parallel links between symbolic forms, eschatological beliefs, and purificatory rites connected with reestablishing order and thereby reassuring devotees that a solution to existential stress does exist in religion are discussed by Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism, xxii, 111-37.
162. Robert C. Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi: A Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), 119-20, approaches the issue of eschatological significance briefly but more broadly.
163. Contra Fritz Staal's interesting contention that "ritual is for its own sake" without meaning or goal, in Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras, and the Human Sciences (1990; rpt. New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 116, 128, 131 (quotation)-140, 453.
164. On automation of behavior, consult John A. Bargh, Annette Lee-Chai, Kimberly Barndollar, Peter M. Gollwitzer, and Roman Trötschel, "The Automated Will: Nonconscious Activation and Pursuit of Behavioral Goals, " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81. 6 (2001): 1-2, 6, 11-12.
165. For the cognitive basis of action duplication through observation, see Giacomo Rizzolatti, Luciaro Fadiga, Vittorio Gallese, and Leonardo Fogassi, "Premotor Cortex and the Recognition of Motor Actions, " Cognitive Brain Research 3 (1996): 131-41
166. and Giacomo Rizzolatti and Michael Arbib, "Language within Our Grasp, " Trends in Neuroscience 21 (1998): 188-94.
167. From "Auguries of Innocence, " ll. 3-4.
168. Bundahišn 1: 2: ed. M. J. Unvala (Bombay: N. p., 1897), 1.
169. Robert C. Zaehner, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (1955; rpt. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1972), 278, provides the same reading using other editions of the text.