9 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Did Emperor Ashoka really exist?
Our idea of religion is not a culturally specific that travels pretty well between Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Baha’i, etc, but the further we get away from those, the worse it works. Realizing that puts into question a lot of old assumptions about what Buddhism was in Asoka’s time, so I was wondering what the current state of this was. This reunderstanding of religion globally started in the 80’s, but really picked up in the 90’s and 2000’s.
Recent work on Zoroastrianism has focused a lot more on syncretism, actuallly, taking a step away from Mary Boyce's notion of "orthodoxy" and "heresy" (which lead to reactions where people implicitly accepted this framework leading to a situation where suddenly nobody was a Zoroastrian anymore because they weren't "orthodox" enough...) and focusing more on notions of orthopraxy (which Boyce also developed a lot). While *Masdayasni daena* is often translated as "the Mazda-worshipping religion", the actual meaning is "the Mazda-worshipping *way of life*".
So in this more modern view there is a basic framework of orthopraxy combined with a pretty large space of Zoroastiran orthodoxy that allows for syncretism and diversity in e.g. cosmogony to a certain extent, as long as it stays within certain bounds. Much of this is thanks to increased focus on e.g. Sogdian records, which show clear aspects of what we would think of as "orthodoxy" (like the classic snippets of doctrine in the form of conversations between Zoroaster and Ahura Mazda) but also worship of various other deities, presumably identified with *yazata*.
Comment by yodatsracist at 08/04/2020 at 12:55 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Super interesting. Do any works come to mind?
Also, since you seem up on the literature, what the hell do scholars say about “Zurvanism” now?