 We will welcome all of you in the audience tonight, particularly those who travelled a long way to be here, Prof Alman Hinss, Friends, Colleagues and Family, husband, some William and Annice are here. Some William said to me at least it meant he did not have to do his physics homework. I would like to extend a special welcome to those guests in the Zoriastruing community, which has been very supportive to SIRS over the years. We have guests from all over the place tonight. Felly,wn hyn wedi cael ei weld yn ddim yn eu rhan o ganai gyda'r swedgyntiau sylwethaf. A'r swedgyntiau seilfyr i'r swedgyntiau seilfastau fel'r swedgyntiau. Mae'r cyrraed, mae'r rywbeth hynny, mae'r cyrraed ymddangos gerchelwyd yw rhan o'r cyfisiwn iawn, a mae'r gweithas i llegarol yn y cyrraed cymunityni'i. Felly, o wneud wrth yn gweithio fydd, yn gwneud wrth i'r cael ei wnaeth i'r cael ein ei bachydd ar y pryd. felly rydyn ni'n dwy'n amlwg ymddangos eu mobile. Rydyn ni'n dwych yn fwych ar gweithio'r odd. Rydyn ni'n dwy'n arwg ar gweithio'r mobile. Salladwch. Rydyn ni'n dweud yw'r rhai eich exid. Rydyn ni'n dweud yw rhai eich exid. Rydyn ni'n dwy'n dweud i gyd oes byddwch ar y lles arweithio, bod y lles arweithio arweithio'r lles arweithio'r lles arweithio'r lles arweithio. Mae'r lles yn y diogel i'n gweithio. Y cwbl y gweithio, 3 yw gweithio, fe wnaeth y byddwn i'n gweithio y Zoriastryn Cenedlau yn Rhain, ac rwy'n credu i bethau gan ddechrau. Rwy'n credu i'r cyfrifio gyda'r mewn ei bod yn rhan i'r cyfreithio. Rwy'n credu i ddim yn ei bod yn dweud y ffarnsion ar yr archaic ac yn ymgyrchwch gweithio ar gyfer Zoriastryn Y Llywodraeth a Lrydymaeth, ond Almych yn ei gynhwys ar gyfer amgylcheddau ac mae yna'r rhaid yn ystod i'r ystod yn oed yn dweud, I will understand more after this lecture. Professor Hintzer will be introduced by Professor John Hinnells, who is very well known to all at Sius. Professor Hinnells has held professorial appointments at the University of Manchester, Derby, Liverpool, Hope, but most importantly of all at Sius. He is a scholar of very great distinction. He has published very widely in the area of South Asian religion in particular Parsies and the Comparative Study of Religions more widely, and we're very grateful to you indeed, John, for coming here tonight. At the end, the vote of thanks will be given by Professor Maria Matsu, who you saw come on, of the Free University Berlin. She's Professor of Iranian Studies. She's been head of the Institute of Iranian Studies in Berlin since 1995. She's been editor of the series Iranica since 1993 and a main area of research focused on pre-Islamic Iran, especially Zoriastrian, Sasanian legal system. I hope I pronounced that correctly, and its impact on other legal cultures. We're also very grateful to you, as well, Maria, for turning up to this event. It should be wonderful. So, to introduce Professor Hintzer, I'm now going to pass over to Professor Hinnells. Over to you. It's a great joy to me to introduce Professor Almot Hintzer tonight. We have known each other for many years, and we first met in the early 1980s, and we've remained friends ever since. When I wrote a few years ago a reference for her promotion to a senior lectureship, I said I thought it would not be long before the school was considering her for a professorship. And I'm delighted that she now has that post and rightly deserves it. There could not be a better holder of the first Zortashti professorship in Zoriastrian studies. She has, as I shall outline in a moment, the highest academic qualifications. She has a deep love for the Zoriastrian community, and they for her. And it's a tribute to her that so many of the community are here tonight. She has had a distinguished career. She did her early graduate studies at Heidelberg before starting her postgraduate work at Waddon College, Oxford. She moved into Iranian and Zorastrian studies at Erlangen for her PhD on the important text, the Zamiad Yash. After that she did her habilitation in Berlin where she became an assistant professor. She has had visiting posts at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, and at Cambridge equivalent Claire Hall, a college exclusively concerned with research. She has been associated with Zorast now for 14 years, rising from a part-time lecturer to a full professor. She has held many distinguished awards, for example the Heisenberg Research Scholarship at the German National Research Association in Bonn, and a British Academy readership from 2004 to 2006. She is being recognised in many international-learned bodies, notably as Secretary of the Corpus in Scripteonum at Ironicarum, in which role she is following in the footsteps of Professor Mary Boyce. She has been elected president of the Societas Ironicarum for the Year 2011 to 2015. She has been trustee, secretary and treasurer of the learned body of the ancient India and Iran Trust in Cambridge. Her career achievements are based on a fine linguistic ability, and her profound grasp of Zorastrian doctrine and practice. She has authored 16 six scholarly books, edited three more and written 25 chapters in learned books, all of a very high scholarly standard. She has several scholarly articles and two books in hand at the moment, leading towards her introduction to Zoroastrianism at Cambridge University Press. A book I anticipate will become a standard work. I've read most of her publications and they're all characterised by rigor, originality, clarity of argument and clarity of structure. I'm sorry, two pages have got stuck together and they've been very stubborn and absolutely refusing to come apart. The excellence of her work and the reason why she was elected as secretary of the Corpus in Scriptionum is because of her brilliant linguistic skills and the fact that she's very fortunate to have a scholar of her caliber on the staff. Tonight's lecture is on the subject of great debate in the current world of Zoroastrian studies. There are at least three interrelated questions behind what she's talking about. First of all, did Zoroastr introduce a new religion or did he reform an old one? Secondly, to what extent should Zoroastr's teaching be interpreted in the light of the Indo-Iranian parallels as evidenced in the Vedas? Thirdly, did Zoroastr exist? Or is he simply a mythological figure created by later members of the religion? The first two questions are exemplified by the contrasting starting point of two relatively recent authors. Zana, in his 1961 book The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrism, started his account of Zoroastrism with Zoroasta and his vision. It did not consider it was necessary to introduce any account of the earlier Indo-Iranian religion because he thought Zoroastrism was a new religion drawn straight from Zoroasta's visions. In contrast, Mary Boyce, in her 1975 book The History of Zoroastrism Volume 1, had five chapters on the ancient Indo-Iranian tradition because she thought as a trained priest in the old tradition he would have been deeply influenced by that tradition and that he was immersed in it and his visions deployed much of the ancient material. So Zana saw what Zoroasta had done to introduce a dramatic change, a new religion, Boyce thought there was substantial continuity. She went on to argue there was continuity between Zoroasta and his followers, for example in the later Middle Persian books, but that's another question. For the third question tonight is an example of post-modern thought. Was there a human being Zoroasta who propounded his own personal and individual religious experience? Or is he a later community myth? These questions involve a detailed study of the literary style and structure of the Garthers by looking in particular at the figure of Horomaster and the Davos and their respective roles. Professor Hintzer addresses the first two questions and overall she looks back at the third question. She's therefore engaging through a detailed linguistic study with some vibrant debates that are taking place in modern Zoroastrian studies. Professor Hintzer, will you now please deliver your inaugural lecture? Change and continuity in the Zoroastrian tradition. Sorry, I'm just waiting for Professor Hintzer and the director to come through. I would like to dedicate this lecture to Mehraban Sartoshti and to the memory of his brother Faridun and to that of Professor of Mary Boyce. Lord Billy Moria, Professor Webley, colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen. The Zoroastrian's love for superlatives, the first, the oldest, the best, the smallest, is not least inspired by some basic facts relating to their religion. Going back as far as the second millennium BCE and rooted in Indo-Iranian prehistory, Zoroastrianism is one of the most ancient living traditions, although its community today is microscopically small, an estimated 130,000 adherents worldwide. Most of them live in India, particularly in Mumbai and Gujarat, where they became known as Parsees because they originally came from Persia. They had started to leave Iran for India in the 7th century of the Christian era after the last Zoroastrian empire, the Sasanian state had succumbed to Arab Muslim invaders. Between 10,000 to 30,000 Sartoshti are estimated to be living in Iran today with the rest in a global diaspora, especially in the English-speaking world, the oldest centre being here in London. Characteristic of the Zoroastrian religion are two towering figures, the god Ahura Mazda, usually translated as Lord Wisdom, and the man Zarathustra, to whom Ahura Mazda revealed the Mazda worshipping or Mazda-Yasnian religion. As the name suggests, the focus of this religion is the worship of Ahura Mazda. To this day, such worship typically takes the form of priestly and lay rituals in which the performance of precisely prescribed actions accompanies the recitation of texts composed in an ancient Iranian language called Avestan. The most important ritual and the core of all the other major priestly rituals is called worship or yasna. The text we cited during the yasna ceremony consists of 72 sections, which have at their centre 17 hymns, the gatas, and a liturgy in seven sections, the yasna haptanghaiti. Since the language of this composite centre is more archaic than that of the surrounding material, scholars distinguish it from the latter as the older Avesta. The younger Avesta is not only linguistically more recent, but it is also evidence of a more advanced state of the religion's development. It is comprised of invocations, hymns and purity laws composed at different periods of the oral tradition. These younger Avestan texts reach the petrified form in which they have come down to the present day, sometime between 1500 BC. The gatas and the yasna haptanghaiti must be older. Composed probably between 1500 and 1000 BCE, they constitute the oldest extant witness, not only of the Zoroastrian religion, but also of any Iranian language. Up to the present, no other texts of the Zoroastrian tradition are held as dearly as the gatas by both priests and laypeople. Even today, most Zoroastrians will know at least some stanzas by heart in the original Avestan language, as they recite them in their daily prayers. Moreover, the gatas and the yasna haptanghaiti served as sources for many of the younger Avestan liturgical compositions and are frequently quoted verbatim to give greater authority to the later younger Avestan texts. Connection between Zarathustra and the gatas emerges from the fact that he features in them as the major human character. Moreover, on two occasions, the speaker, the I, identifies himself by name as Zarathustra. Such a connection is reinforced in the younger Avesta, which mentions the five gatas of Zarathustra and represents him as reciting them while performing the yasna ritual. Thus, not only the gatas, but also the later tradition, links these hymns with the Zarathustra. Furthermore, the younger Avesta presents Zarathustra as the individual to whom Ahura Mazda communicated the Mazda worshipping religion, the Daina Mazda yasni, so that he could pass it on to the rest of humanity. The figure of Zarathustra, thus, connects the Mazda yasni and religion with the gatas, and the letter are perceived as the earliest extant sources of the religion as illustrated in the diagram, which you can see there. According to tradition, Zarathustra composed the gatas and brought the Mazda yasni and religion to humankind, thus marking the beginning of this religion. Those who have accepted it declare themselves as Mazda yasni and Zarathustrian, and that's where the name Zarathustra comes from. Such a perception of Zarathustra's role, which the texts present from an insider's point of view, has led external observers to regard Zoroastrianism as a prophetic religion which was started by Zarathustra. This model has been described as historical, and many scholars have accepted it as providing a likely scenario for how the prehistoric beginnings of the Zoroastrian tradition could be imagined. In recent decades, however, an alternative model which has been referred to as mythological has been gaining ground amongst scholars. According to this view, Zarathustra neither composed the gatas nor was a historical person. The Mazda worshipping religion thus has no known beginning at a certain point in time through the intervention of an individual. Instead, it is argued that it evolved organically over a long period out of the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion. In this process, the gatas gradually cohered over time in the anonymous collective mentality of the priests and eventually crystallized and petrified into the composition which have come down to the present day, while at the same time being handed down from one priestly generation to the next in the oral tradition. The figure of Zarathustra, in turn, is seen as the product of priestly cosmological speculation according to which his arrival and that of the Mazda worshipping religion marks the midpoint of cosmic history. It emerges from the summary of the two models that what is at stake here is how we should imagine the genesis of this religion. Was there really ever a religious reformer, a prophet, a person as real as you and me, as the tradition would have us believe, a human being who claimed to have received a divine revelation and initiated a new religion, or is the figure of Zarathustra an invention of that tradition, a fiction projected back into the past and produced by anonymous priestly cosmological speculation? At first, I was tempted to adopt the current terminology and refer to the former model as historical and the latter as mythological. On reflection, however, such terminology seems to be inadequate because, in fact, myth plays a major part in both. Moreover, both models draw on the notion of history, the difference being that the former allocates historical reality to both Zarathustra and the tradition, while the latter does so only to the tradition represented by the priests, the so-called poet sacrifices. It therefore seems to me that the contrast between the two models in fact consists not in history versus myth, as widely claimed, but rather in the way the growth of the Zarathustra tradition is perceived. The second model operates with the assumption of a gradual but continuous development at the point where the first postulates a break in the tradition, a fundamental and, presumably, sudden change brought about by an individual. I therefore prefer to call the first model, perhaps somewhat pointedly, revolutionary and the second evolutionary. There are parallels to both in other religions. The first revolutionary model applies to those traditions which were started off by individuals. They include Judaism with Moses, Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth and Islam, Mohammed. Examples of the second evolutionary model are harder to find, but they include Hinduism. Regardless of this difference, however, change and continuity play an important part in all religions and also in both models. The traditions just mentioned which were started off by individuals did not emerge out of nothing but are rooted in their respective historical ancestors. In some of the more recent instances such as Buddhism and Christianity, the historical ancestors are even documented and it is therefore possible to study the relationship between the older and the younger religions. In the case of Zoroastrianism, we are in the fortunate position of having the evidence of a sister belief system, the Vedic religion of ancient India. Thanks to this comparative evidence, we are able to identify features which the two traditions share in common and which are therefore likely to be archosans inherited from their common Indo-Iranian ancestor. We are thus able to know a little about the prehistoric world from which Zoroastrianism emerged. However, it is the innovations which serve, so to speak, as index fossils or isogloses for identifying features which are peculiar to Zoroastrianism. But the question remains, how did the innovations of Zoroastrianism come about? Did they evolve organically out of the Indo-Iranian ancestor or did an individual intervene? Or should we consider a combination of the two models and assume that some innovations already in process were accelerated by an individual? If you are now hoping that the ultimate answer will emerge from this lecture, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. While the notions of myth and historical reality of fiction and truth are subject to extensive and ongoing theoretical debates, the nature and age of our source material, some of which takes us into central Asia of the second millennium BCE, simply do not allow us to be certain one way or the other. Some of you might be inclined to interpret such lack of proof as revealing a weakness of our discipline, but we will do better if we turn it into a virtue and regard it as an opportunity to apply certain transferable, sought-after skills in which students of the humanities are trained. Four, in the absence of even the possibility of verifying or refuting our results, we have to examine our sources like detectives looking for clues which might enable us to argue in favour of the probability and the plausibility of one theory over against the other. Most of recent scholarship on our problem has focused on arco-isms in the Zoroastrian tradition, that is to say on features which it shares with the Vedic religion and which Govel is the evolutionary model. However, in order to find out the more probable scenario on the account for the growth of Zoroastrianism, we need to look at the innovations. Four, it is not continuity but change which requires an explanation. In this talk, I propose to focus on one particular well-known innovation which is central and distinctive of the Zoroastrian tradition, the rejection and eventual demonisation of the old Indo-Iranian gods, the divers and the concomitant elevation of Ahura Mazda as the only god to be worshipped. Indo-Iranian prehistory, the word for god was diver. The noun characterises the gods as the heavenly ones and lives on as diva in the closely related Vedic and Hindu cultures and in many other Indo-European languages such as Latin deus and the adjective divilus from which we get the English divine. In all Indo-European languages, except Iranian, diver means god. But in the Zoroastrian tradition, diver has the opposite meaning. In the Gatas, it signifies a force or a fake god while in the younger of eston in addition a demon. The divers are a major concern in the Gatas. One of the 17 hymns, Yasna 32, is virtually entirely devoted to this theme. In the opening stanza, three constituents of ancient Iranian society, namely the family, the community and the entire Aryan tribe ask Ahura Mazda for his gift of bliss or happiness. In this request they are joined by a fourth group the gods of old, the diver. The family asks for his happiness, the community together with the Aryan tribe asks for his happiness. In my manner, the fake gods ask for his happiness for the happiness of the wise lord. We want to be your messengers in order to restrain those who are hostile to you. In the first which follows, Ahura Mazda speaks and responds to the requests. First, he addresses the family, community and Aryan tribe accepting their right-mindedness, our mighty. The wise lord, uniting himself with good thought and in the good company of sun-filled truth answered them according to his rule. We choose your life-giving good right-mindedness. She shall be ours. But in the next verse he rejects the fourth group, the divers. But you, fake gods, all of you are seed from bad thought and so also is the one who greatly worships you. Seed from deceit and neglect are moreover the repeated actions by which you are known in the seventh part of the earth. These lines are perhaps the strongest expression in the entire avesta of the outright rejection first of a whole set of deities, divers, second of those who worship them and third of the ritual practices by which such deities are worshipped. Thus the gods, their followers and the associated cultic and religious practices are here declared by Ahura Mazda to originate from bad thought. To ensure that the rejection is wholesale and complete the divers are comprehensively referred to as Diva Respaung Ho, all the divers. It has long been recognized that the expression corresponds also in an inverted word order to the Vedic Vishwe Deva, all the gods, in the tradition of ancient India which shares a common heritage with the Iranian people. For example, in Rig Vida 652.7 all gods come here, listen to my call, sit down at the sacrificial straw here. In the Gothic hymn by contrast not only the old word for God, Diva has a negative meaning but the gods of old are declared to originate from bad thought. Thus in contrast to the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion where the divers are the gods in the earliest sources the Zoroastrian religion, the Gatas the divers are products of evil of bad thought. They are thus subordinate and secondary to that destructive force. The downgrading of the gods of earlier generations and their subordination to another force forms part of a system in which everything that exists is aligned either with a camp of good or with that of evil. These two distinct groups are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed to one another. At the apex of the good camp is the god Ahura Mazda by birth as the god has put it out of himself he brings out of himself spiritual qualities such as creative force spent a mine new truth, Russia, good thought Wahu Manach and right mindedness, Armaiti. In a second state of creation he makes the material world out of such spiritual qualities. Both the spiritual and the material worlds thus ultimately originate from Ahura Mazda and are therefore perfect and holy good. His material creation is called the world of truth, Asha and anyone who supports it is Asha one, truthful. Moreover, everything and everyone belonging to Ahura Mazda's world is worthy of worship, Yazata. This includes pre-Zoroastrian deities such as Mithra, Anahita and Hauma who have now been incorporated into the good camp. None of the Yazatas is a culti competitor of Ahura Mazda. Rather, the opposite is the case. The cult of any Yazata supports and strengthens Ahura Mazda. Furthermore, not only is the cult of a Yazata legitimate but Ahura Mazda demands that each of them be worshipped. For example, at the beginning of the hymn to Mithra of God Contract Ahura Mazda enjoins his cult. Ahura Mazda said to Spitha Hazarasustra When I set forth Mithra of white cattle pastures of Spitha, then I made him as much worthy of worship as much worthy of praise as myself, Ahura Mazda. The Indo-Iranian deity Mithra is aligned with a good camp and his worship legitimised by and subordinated to Ahura Mazda. Just as the divers originate from and is subordinated to bad thought so Mithra and any other Yazata originates from and is subordinated to the greatest and best of all of them, Ahura Mazda. The Yazata system thus enables the religion to absorb both old and new deities and perpetuate their cultic worship without threatening the supremacy of Ahura Mazda. Indeed, the more Yazatas there are, the better as they all strengthen Ahura Mazda and simultaneously weaken the evil camp. The genesis and structure of the evil camp is formulated in parallel but negative terms. At its apex is the destructive force Angra Mainu. From a systematic point of view however Angra Mainu constitutes the negation not of Ahura Mazda himself and does not have a negative counterpart but of his creative force Spenta Mainu. Angra Mainu produces out of himself bad qualities such as deceit bad thought and arrogance terror mighty. Evil forces are described as unworthy of worship and those who associate themselves with them are deceitful in addition the divers are associated with the bad camp and they include some gods inherited from Indo-Iranian times such as Indra. They are the product of Angra Mainu who is the diver of the divers. There is no evidence in the Zoroastrian tradition that the destructive force Angra Mainu was ever a cultic competitor of Ahura Mazda. He is but an enemy who counteracts everything Ahura Mazda does and who needs to be destroyed. Furthermore, already in the Gartars the divers are described as obnoxious creatures as rafstras and the tendency to downgrade and belittle them as nasty and distestable demons whom no sensible person would ever consider worshipping continues in the Yunga Avesta in the Pachlawi literature. Yet, the downgrading of the old Indo-Iranian gods as products of that destructive force could be interpreted as a device to weaken and incapacitate Ahura Mazda's real competitors namely the old Indo-Iranian gods, the divers. For our sources provide evidence that the divers were indeed serious cultic competitors for Ahura Mazda not only at the time of the Gartars but also later on in the history of the Zoroastrian tradition. In addition to the two camps Diva and Yazata the Avesta are also distinguishes between two groups of people those whose yasna is for the divers the diver yasna and those whose yasna is for Mazda the Mazda yasna is a cognate of Vedic Yajna sacrifice worship the Avestan word yasna is also inherited from Indo-Iranian the same is true of the compound Diva yasna and the corresponding Vedic Diva yasna Avestan Diva yasna is an adjective and describes a person as someone whose sacrifice is for the false gods The compound Mazda yasna however has no equivalent to Vedic being characteristic of the Zoroastrian tradition it is a more recent formation and was probably formed on the model of the older Diva yasna Both Diva yasna and Mazda yasna perform cultic worship but the yasna of the former group is directed towards the old gods the divers while that of the latter is for Mazda it is not the yasna as such but it's recipient that constitutes the distinctive and contrasting feature of the two groups there is one Avestan hyn that to anahita in which the deity is recipient of sacrifices not only of Mazda yasnas but on four occasions also of Diva yasnas for example the Mazda yasna offers to anahita sacrifices of a hundred stallions a thousand bulls ten thousand sheep just like his arch enemy the Diva yasna Arjad Aspa the tradition tells us that the Mazda yasna Vistaspa accepted Zarasushitwa's teachings became his royal patron and provided decisive support for the new religion by fighting and winning battles against the enemies by contrast Arjad Aspa and other Diva yasnas try to obstruct the spreading of the new religion Vistaspa implores the deity to grant him success in his battles against the Diva yasnas and in particular victory over Arjad Aspa and other enemies while Arjad Aspa in turn as he sacrifices to the same deity in the same manner wishes to defeat Vistaspa and smite the Aryan people of course the goddess does not grant any of the wishes of the bad ones but does grant those of Vistaspa the two sacrifices are carried out in exactly the same way and some of the words of the sacrifices prayers are even identical but the former is successful and the latter is not success is determined neither by the form and manner in which the sacrifice is performed nor by the recipient but by the purpose of the ritual here as in the other three unsuccessful attempts in this hymn the suppliant's wishes are directed against Ahura Mazda's plan to establish the Daina Mazda ysni in this world for the three enemies of Vistaspa are identified by their attribute as belonging to the bad camp Tathriavant of bad belief and Pashana whose worship is of the divers and deceitful Arjad Aspa the avestan word for belief religion Daina literally means perception or vision although the verb di corresponds to Vedic dihi and both mean to see in one's mind to see with an inner eye the noun Daina from which we get new person Dean religion is confined to Iranian like Mazda ysni it is a Zoroastrian technical term and denotes the way a person interprets the meaning and purpose of his or her life there is a good and a bad Daina worshipers of Mazda are who Daina of good belief and their Daina is Mazda ysni the belief which belongs to a person who worships Mazda the expression entails an individual by contrast anonymous group an anonymous group is implied by the equivalent negative term the Daina of those who worship the divers the Daina Diva Ysnanon it applies to people like Arjad Aspa who are therefore Dujd Daina of bad belief they are evil and deceitful and that is driven because of their Daina in addition to Diva ysni at Mazda ysni offering up competing sacrifices to the same deity with diametrically opposed requests the texts also present the two groups as living in close proximity to one another in the younger of eston rules for keeping away the divers they read if that Saraswstwa asks Ahura Mazda whether Mazda worshipers aspiring to become surgeons should test their surgical skills first on Mazda or on Diva worshipers the answer is then said Ahura Mazda let them first try out their skills on Diva worshipers rather than on Mazda worshipers if for the first time he operates on a Diva worshipper and he dies because of that if for the second time he operates on a Diva worshipper and he dies because of that if for the third time he operates on a Diva worshipper and he dies because of that then as a result such a person will be unfit forever and ever texts then goes on and states that if in spite of having failed the three tests .. trying in allu tystiad, the aspiring surgeon still operates on Mazda worshippers. And harms his patient, then such a person is liable for delivery bodily injury. If three Diva worshippers survive the operation, may the candidate operate on Mazda worshippers. If for the first time he operates on a Diva worshipper and he survives, If, for the second time, he operates on a diver worshipper and he survives, if for the third time he operates on a diver worshipper and he survives, then, as a result of this, he will be fit forever and ever. At will shall they subsequently attend as physicians to Mazda worshippers? At will let them operate on Mazda worshippers? At will let them heal by means of the knife? As it shows that the life of a diver worshipper is considered to be of little value and serves at best for experiments. Moreover, physically harming another person is prosecuted only if the victim is one who worships Mazda rather than divers. The teaching is given divine authority by means of the literary form in which all the Avesta is couched, that is, the question and answer mode of dialogue between Zarasustra and his god Ahura Mazda. Evidence for conflict and competition between Mazda and diver worshippers is found not only throughout the Avesta, but also in a non-religious source from the early 5th century BCE, the so-called diver inscription by the Achaemenid king Xerxes I, who ruled the Persian Empire from 486 to 465 BC. The inscription exists in three versions, Babylonian, Elomite and Old Persian. It was found at Persepolis in 1935 and is a major witness for the diver cult in Zoroastrian Iran, independent of the Avesta. In this inscription, Xerxes proudly records that he destroyed divers places of worship in the lands which were part of his vast empire and that he replaced their worship with that of Ahura Mazda. Among those countries, there were some where formerly the divers had been worshipped. Afterwards, by the will of Ahura Mazda, I destroyed that place of the divers and I gave orders that divers shall not be worshipped any longer. Wherever formerly the divers had been worshipped, there I worshipped Ahura Mazda in accord with truth at the sacrificial straw. The experts amongst you will notice that I have here returned to the old interpretation of Brazmania in line 41 as sacrificial straw. The expression ertacha brazmania occurs three times in this text. If the first part ertacha represents as widely assumed ertacha hacha in accord with truth with Avestan rather than Persian word order, then one would expect an Avestan connection also for the second part. Such connection is supported by the fact that the Babylonian and Elamite versions do not translate but simply transliterate the old Persian form. Also the Elamite transcription favours the reading Brazmania rather than Barzmania. Avestan liturgical formulae show that the sacrificial straw of Avestan Barzman is not a minor detail of the cult, as has been claimed, but plays a major part in the Ysna ritual. For example in Ysna 22, at this libation and sacrificial straw I bring here with worship Ahura Mazda, the truthful model of truth. Moreover Mazda Yasnians are described as worshipping their yazatas with Barzman in their hands. For example in Ysht 5, around whom, that is Anahita, the Mazda worshippers took position with Barzman in their hands. The Huwva's worshipped her, the Naotairia's worshipped her, etc. And a gold plaque from the Achaemenic period represents a presumably Zoroastrian priest holding Barzman twigs in his right hand. At any rate, as in the Avesta, in the Diva inscription, the divers are Ahura Mazda's direct cultic competitors. Xerxes presents himself as the royal defender of Ahura Mazda's cult just as Vistaspa does in the Avesta. So far we have seen that even at the time when Zoroastrianism was well established in Iranian lands, the divers were not merely vile demons but also real gods who received cultic worship. We have found traces of the old meaning in the Avestan expression Diva Yasna, which is inherited from Indo-Iranian. And it is very unlikely that a Diva Yasna should worship an evil being such as Angramainu or any of his creatures. Rather, it denotes a person who worshiped the old gods, the divers. The four episodes in Yst 5 in which Diva Yasna sacrifice unsuccessfully to the Yazata Anahita suggests that Anahita is, like Mithra, a prezoroastrian goddess who came to be incorporated into the Yazata camp. The episodes illustrate that the success of the ritual is determined by the sacrifices dinar, the belief that is to say whether the worshipper believes in the divers or in Mazda. The episode which we discussed of Diva Yasna's serving as guinea pigs for aspiring Mazda Yasnian surgeons suggests that Diva Yasna's and Mazda Yasna's lived in close proximity to one another. It also illustrates the Mazda Yasnian perception that the value of a Diva Yasna's life is negligible. Such an estimation is based on the view that Diva Yasna's support the evil camp. Furthermore, in Xerxes's inscription we have seen evidence for the divers as culti competitors of Aghura Mazda even in historical times the fifth century BCE. The existence of Diva establishments, Diva Danas which Xerxes raised to the ground indicates that the worship of the prezoroastrian gods continued in the Aryan lands. The evidence of the Diva inscription is particularly valuable in the religious history of Iran because it is a historical monument from outside the religious tradition of the Avesta. Its mindset, however, and even some of its wording as we have seen is fully in line with the Avesta. Evidence for the old meaning of Diva as God also survives in some Soctian personal names. Such names must have been formed at a time when Diva meant God and God at least for those who formed them. The people who did so could have been what the Avesta calls Diva Yasna's who lived as we have seen alongside Mazda Yasna's. Of particular interest is the name Vave Ash Teach given to a king who ruled at Samarkand in the 8th century of the Christian era and whose archives of legal and economic documents were found at the castle of Mug east of Samarkand. That the meaning of the name had become opaque to the Soctian speakers of the 8th century of the Christian era from which the documents date and probably long before emerges from its non-onomastic function in the form of the adjective Vave Ash Teach for the adjectives meaning has undergone demonisation. It means devilish, ahrimanian and functions as the antonym of Ahurmas Teach Ahura Mazdian. While curses and Kave Vistaspa appear from our sources as those who fight with Diva worshipers and defend the cult of Mazda against that of the divers Sarasustra is the one who takes on the divers directly. In the Sarasustra myth the divers are presented as being hostile to Ahura Mazda's creation. They have always been around and being the issue of Ahura mind you they have always been bad. The Gatas relate that in primordial times the divers were given the choice between the life giving and the destructive force and they chose the latter. Between these two forces the fake gods, the divers indeed failed to discriminate rightly because as they were deliberating with one another deception came over them so that they chose the worst thought. Thereupon they rushed into violence by which they sickened the existence of the mortal. Before Sarasustra was born there was no way of keeping the divers under control they went about unrestrained and violently attacked human beings. One particular aspect which the Avesta highlights and which is also found in later representations of the divs for example in manuscripts of the Shahnameh of the Safavid period is their lascivious behaviour with one another. Moreover they assaulted and raped women. Before his time, that's before Sarasustra's time, the demons used to rush about visibly. Their pleasures of lust used to take place visibly. Visibly they used to drag the women away from their men and the demons used to subject to violence those crying and lamenting women. A single Ahunavairia prayer which Trusful Sarasustra recited divided four times into sections. The last section with louder recitation drove under the earth all demons which are unworthy of worship unworthy of praise. Here and elsewhere Sarasustra's weapon against the divers is the Ahunavairia prayer. The latter in fact constitutes the first stanza of the first garter. Thus here too the garters are connected with the figure of Sarasustra. In the course of the tradition this prayer came to be regarded as the holiest of all the Rastian prayers. It is believed to encapsulate in a nutshell all the knowledge of the Avesta of the Dainar Maastayasni. The texts tell us that Sarasustra was born, the son of Porusaspa, and that the divers dreaded him. They realised their defeat at the moment of his birth since they say, born indeed is Trusful Sarasustra of the house of Porusaspa. How shall we procure his destruction? He is the weapon against the divers. He is the antagonist of the divers. He is the deceit free one against deceit. Vanished are the diver worshipers. Vanished is the decay made by the divers. Vanished is the full speaking lie. Sarasustra is thus the arch enemy of the divers because he carps their unrestrained rule. It is with his birth that the divers withdraw, run away, hide under the earth. The weapon by which he drives the divers underground is the Dainar Maastayasni in the form of the Ahunaviria prayer. The internal perception as expressed in the Sarasustra myth divides the time continuum into period before and one after Sarasustra. His birth constitutes a watershed which marks the turning point in cosmic history. The divers have always been bad and their badness constitutes an unchanging continuum. But they were powerful only at the time before Sarasustra. They lost their power when Sarasustra brought the weapon in the form of the Mazda worshipping religion for fighting them successfully. The change here consists in the divers losing their power. Contrary to what the Sarasustra myth would have us believe, from the external perspective the divers cannot always have been bad for on the basis of the comparative evidence we know that in Indo-Iranian diver must at one stage have meant God. From the external point of view we observe that the divers were gods in Indo-Iranian but were rejected and demonised in Iranian. Because of the positive meaning of diver in all non-Iranian languages, their demonisation must have happened after the Indo-Iranians had split into two separate peoples. A process which archaeological evidence and relative chronology indicate to have happened around 1000 BCE. The external perspective therefore postulates a semantic redefinition of the meaning of diver at some point after the breaking up of the Indo-Iranian community. While both perspectives envisage a change for the worse affecting the divers they define its substance differently. From the inside perspective the change consists in the divers losing power. While from the outside point of view diver changes its meaning from God to false God or demon. The divers lose prestige. As to the question how the change came about the inside perspective attributes it to Zarasustra and also offers a reason why it happened. It was due to the arrival of the new religion, the worship of Mazda. From the external perspective we have to account for how and why the meaning of diver changed from God to demon, to false God and demon. The explanation of how such a semantic redefinition came about is the bone of contention between the revolutionary and the evolutionary models presented at the beginning of this lecture. The revolutionary model attributes the change to Zarasustra and explains it by the introduction of the new religion thus appropriating answers to the questions how and why from the inside perspective. By contrast the evolutionary model assumes that the meaning of diver gradually changed from God to demon. Instead of a sudden change a gradual one is thus assumed but no attempt is made to account for such a leisurely development. Also diver has a negative denotations throughout virtually the whole of the Iranian speaking world. The assumption of a gradual change of diver from God to demon could be supported by reference to its occasional positive meaning in Sogdian onomastics together with the personal evidence that the cult of the divers continued in Iran and competed with that of Mazda well into historical times. Moreover the Avesta attests to the gradual spreading of the Mazda Yasmian religion among the Iranian people and to mission reactivity of the Mazda worshippers. However not only the fact that the gods of old are rejected but especially the vehement way in which this is done and the uncompromising attitude which does not tolerate the divers points to a major indeed a violent break in the religious history of the Iranian people. The rejection and demonization of the divers and their cult in the Avesta has all the features which characterise a monotheistic movement whereby the elevation of one deity in our case Ahura Mazda is concomitant with the rejection of all the other gods. The internal perspective tries to deal with the fact that once upon a time the divers were God by representing them as having always been bad and by making them the products of bad thought. That this was a struggle emerges from the way that we have seen in which diver worshippers are represented in the Avesta and in the Xerxes inscription. From the outside perspective therefore a repudiation of the former gods and the accompanying exaltation of Ahura Mazda make a sudden and deliberate rather than a gradual and organic change more probable. Proponents of the evolutionary model criticised adherence of the revolutionary one for borrowing the figure of Zarathustra as religious innovator from the inside perspective. But it is true that the Zarathustra myth is unavailable as a source for the outside perspective as long as myth is defined as pure fiction as a set of unexamined assumptions as soon as one allows for the possibility that factual material may over time acquire elements of fiction and be gradually transformed into myth then myth may in fact encapsulate historical reality and experience and truth. The Zarathustra myth then acquire explanatory force for the outside perspective of how and why the divers were demonised and the figure of Zarathustra becomes pivotal again. We have thus finally arrived at Zarathustra and with him at the older Avesta, the Gatas in particular. Recent research has revealed the sophisticated poetic devices and compositional structure of the Gatas their personal character and tone and evidence for an individual speaking with religious authority and charisma all of which is without parallel in the Rigveda just listen to this. I shall proclaim the principle of this life, the formulation which the knowing one, the wise lord has told me those of you who do not put into practice formulation here as I shall think and speak it to them woe will be the conclusion of life. Further study of old Avestan poetry on the one hand and on the other of myth and historical reality in relation to the Zarathustra legend could throw further light on the origins of the Zoroastrian tradition but this will be the topic of another lecture. Tonight I have deliberately steered away from the figure of Zarathustra and focused not on this contested figure but on the substance of the most important change which separates the Zoroastrian tradition from its Indo-Iranian ancestor. That is the demonization of the old gods and the elevation of the Buddha master as the only god to be worshipped. I thank you for your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends it is an honour and a heartfelt pleasure to present a short synopsis of the main aspects of Professor Hinz's lecture especially since the subject matter of her elaborate discussion is of eminent importance for a common field of Iranian studies. She poses a fundamental question regarding the genesis of the Zoroastrian or Mastayasnian religion which has been the subject of famine controversies in recent research. Was there a historical person called Zarathustra a religious reformer or prophet responsible for the beginning of a new tradition associated with his name or is the figure of Zarathustra a fiction of this tradition invented by priests and projected back into the past. She does not aspire to offer an ultimate answer to this difficult problem but proposes to examine the text in minute detail in search of the most probable and plausible interpretation. According to Iranian sources Zarathustra is the one individual who after having received a divine revelation by the god Ahura Mazda leads humankind to the Mazda worshipping religion by the means of the Gathas, the oldest hymns of the ritual composed by the prophet himself. Due to his decisive part in establishing the tradition observers from outside this tradition have accepted him as a historical person and as the initiator of the religion known by his name. In recent decades this model labeled as historical has been questioned by scholars who neither accept Zarathustra as the composer of the Gathas nor as a historical person. According to a second model referred to as mythological, the Mazda worshipping religion evolved over a long period of time out of the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion. The priests, the so-called poet sacrifices, were the anonymous composers of the Gathas and also invented the figure of Zarathustra within the framework of cosmological speculations. Amutinsa questions the current terms used to designate the two models. The contrast between them is not that between history versus mythology since both models include myths and draw on the notion of history. But rather the contrast consists in the manner the growth of the Zarathustra tradition is perceived. She describes the second model as evolutionary since it assumes a continuous and gradual development from the common Indo-Iranian religious tradition to the Iranian one. The first model on the other hand is revolutionary since it postulates a break in this process, a sudden important change caused by an individual. Arguing that not continuity but change requires an explanation Professor Hinzef focuses her discussion on one of the most prominent features of Zoroastrianism. The rejection of the gods of the Indo-Iranian pantheon called the divers. In contrast to the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion in which the divers are gods, the earliest Zoroastrian sources, the Gathas, present them as products of evil and reject not the whole set of societies but also those who worship them and their ritual practices. These gods are downgraded and the term diver takes on the meaning of false or fake god in the Gathas and demon in the younger Avesta and later sources. Professor Hinzef provides evidence that the divers were in fact serious competitors of Ahura Mazda at the time of the Gathas and also later on in the history of the Zoroastrian tradition. The sources also allow the conclusion that worshipers of Mazda and the divers lived in close proximity. In the Zoroastrian myth it is Sarathustra himself who takes on the struggle with the divers by using the weapon of the Ahunaviria prayer which constitutes the first stanza of the first Gatha, thus connecting the Gathas to the figure of Sarathustra. There is a discrepancy in how the divers are perceived in the Zoroastrian myth on the one hand and the scholarly discussion on the other. From the inside point a few of Zoroastrian texts the divers have always been evil but their rule is ended by Sarathustra and the advent of the Mastayasnian religion. Time is clearly divided into periods before and after Sarathustra. He marks the turning point in history by introducing the Mastay worshiping religion as the means of fighting the divers successfully. The scholarly or outside perspective by contrast postulates that the divers were rejected and demonised after breaking up of the Indo-Iranian community. However both the revolutionary and the evolutionary models still have to explain how and why the meaning of the word changed from God to false God and demon. Whereas the revolutionary model follows the inside perspective and attributes the change to Sarathustra and his introduction of the new religion the evolutionary model assumes that a gradual change of the words meaning took place but is not able to explain why. Professor Hinzer concludes that although there is evidence for the continuing cult of the divers in Iran the vehement manner in which these gods are rejected in the Gathas points to a sudden break in the religious history of the Iranians rather than an unexplained gradual change of perspective. I would like to thank Almud for allowing us to partake in her meticulous research and for innovative comprehensive and convincing lecture.