This page contains all of the footnotes part of "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years". It will not make much sense read in isolation, so if you're starting to read at the top, you've probably started wrong. Please go back to the start page to try again. Normally, the notes on this page are best reached from that page, from the main guide where it refers to them, or for that matter from the linking text which these are, in origin, the footnotes to.
If you make much use of this page, you should probably also read the page where I explain my approach to footnoting and citation, which is not a normal academic approach.
The number for each footnote links back to that footnote in the linking text. You can usually find out why the footnote is there by looking back one or more sentences in that text from the actual footnote. Footnotes 42 through 44 appear twice; the link is in each case to their first appearance.
Note 1 is separately presented, since it is several times as long as the chapter proper. It discusses and provides references to a wide range of secondary sources on literary, religious, and general history. Where these are mentioned in the notes following, the reference looks like this: *Bernstein 1998 "Date of Zarathustra", that is, asterisk, author's surname(s), date, and abbreviated title (whatever part of the title seems most necessary for finding the work).
Based on Psalm of the Bema CCXLI, p. 43 line 25 to p. 44 line 13 in A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II. [Ed. & trans. C. R. C. Allberry.] Volume II of Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938.
Based on M5569 (T II D 79), trans. as "Mani's Death (Parthian)", text 3.4, chapter seventeen, p. 215 in Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia. Trans. & presented by Hans-Joachim Klimkeit. "Project of the Main Publication Program, UNESCO Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue". [New York]: HarperSanFrancisco, c 1993.
Based on sections 53 to 55, pp. 410-413, of "The Acts of the Disputation of Archelaus, Bishop of Caschar in Mesopotamia, with the Heresiarch Manes". Pp. 272-416 of The Works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Archelaus (alternately The Writings of..., on another title p.). Trans. Rev. S. D. F. Salmond. Volume XX. of Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 ed. Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871. Note that this translation of the Acta Archelai of (probably) Hegemonius precedes the now-standard edition of the Latin text, and their numberings do not correspond. This translation is also available online, uncredited, at <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0616.htm>, a page within "The Fathers of the Church", copyright 2000 by Kevin Knight, home URL <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/>, a part of "New Advent", copyright 2001 by Kevin Knight, home URL <http://www.newadvent.org/>.
Based on *Puech 1949 Le Manichéisme, p. 53, and notes thereto.
Based on *Puech 1949, p. 66, and notes thereto; see in particular codex p. 5 line 21 to p. 9 line 10, print pp. 11-14, of The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary. Iain Gardner. Volume XXXVII of Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, formerly Nag Hammadi Studies ed. J. M. Robinson & H. J. Klimkeit. Leiden [etc.]: E. J. Brill, 1995. But I'm still not as confident in this assertion as most scholars seem to be.
I am counting the standard five canonical books in Aramaic - see for example *Puech 1949 p. 67 or *Lieu 1985 Manichaeism p. 6 - plus the Saburagan in Middle Persian, same references, and also the "picture-book" or Ardahang (see e.g. *Lieu 1985 p. 139).
I can't really document this assertion, which is what I spent several years researching this chapter to prove or disprove, in one footnote. But for some idea of what survives of Mani's words, see in particular *Boyce 1960 Catalogue, p. 147, as well as the pages cited in note 7 above.
Going by the usual definition of Europe as having its north-eastern boundary along the Ural River and Mountains.
Computed from figures in The World Almanac® and Book of Facts 1998. [Editorial director Robert Famighetti.] [Mahwah, New Jersey]: World Almanac Books, c 1997, pp. 838 and 737-835, plus sheer guesswork as to how much of Russia is in Siberia.
Two complete translations:
"The Gâthas". Pp. 1-194 of The Yasna, Visparad, Âfrînagân, Gâhs, and Miscellaneous Fragments. Trans. L. H. Mills. Part III of The Zend-Avesta. (Note that the preceding two volumes were trans. James Darmesteter and so the whole translation is often referred to as his.) Vol. XXXI of The Sacred Books of the East ed. F. Max Müller. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1887. Often reprinted.
The Gathas of Zarathustra. S. Insler. Volume I of Textes et Mémoires. Téhéran/Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, diffusion Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975.
Two incomplete but extensive translations:
"Zarathushtra". Chapter 1 and pp. 35-44 of An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion: Readings from the Avesta and Achaemenid Inscriptions. Trans. & ed. William W. Malandra. Volume Two of Minnesota Publications in the Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c 1983.
"Verses from the Gathas". Section 2.2 and pp. 34-45 of Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism. Ed. & trans. Mary Boyce. A volume in Textual Sources for the Study of Religion [ed. John R. Hinnells?]. [Chicago]: The University of Chicago Press, c 1984.
Note that these four are also good places to start in finding out about scholarly disagreements concerning the Gathas; beyond them see also the references cited in footnote 1, s.v. Zoroastrianism.
See *Bernstein 1998 "Date of Zarathustra" for my opinions.
Most notably Mary Boyce in *Boyce 1982 A History of Zoroastrianism volume two, p. 5 ("before 1200 B.C.") and elsewhere.
This is part of Boyce's burden generally in *Boyce 1982, chapter nine ("Contacts and influences in Ionia in the Median and early Achaemenian periods", pp. 150-163) and "Religious and political propaganda on behalf of Cyrus in Babylon" (pp. 43-47) and "... in Ionia" (pp. 47-48); again in *Boyce and Grenet 1991 A History of Zoroastrianism volume three, chapter eleven ("Zoroastrian contributions to eastern Mediterranean religion and thought in Greco-Roman times", pp. 361-490). Specifically on Israeli apocalyptic thought start with Second Isaiah, *Boyce 1982: 43-47.
See chapter 1.
For the idea that this was Zoroaster's own belief, and for its originality, see *Boyce 1975 A History of Zoroastrianism volume one, esp. pp. 232-233 and 246, but generally chapter nine, "The two states and the three times", pp. 229-246.
Assume Zoroastrianism's influence on Christianity, direct or indirect through Jewish and Greek thought - which I think Boyce has adequately justified in places cited in notes 14 and 15 - and Italy and England follow. This set of connections is, of course, part of my burden in the later chapters.
As often in this chapter, I need here to prove a negative. The major sources of legends for Zoroastrianism include the Denkard and the Bundahishn, also the Selections of Zadspram. These are well known as the compilations of specific persons dated after 800: see (among many possible citations) *Boyce 1968 in Handbuch der Orientalistik p. 40 (Bundahishn late 9th century), p. 41 (Zadspram a contemporary), and p. 44 (Denkard edited early 9th century and probably early 10th), or if you're getting dubious about over-reliance on Boyce try *de Menasce 1983 in The Cambridge History of Iran, respectively pp. 1191, 1190-91, and 1170. The epics in New Persian are even more recent (obviously, given that New Persian itself is); but we do have scraps in Middle Persian from Sasanid times, on which see below note 91a.
See also on this subject the page with some more books. I trust that the claim about the land route is evident from any map of Asia. On the Rome-India sea trade see especially E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, first edition Cambridge University Press, 1928; second edition (with minor corrections and ten additional pages) London: Curzon Press / New York: Octagon Books; [1974]. However, there is no good introduction to trade in Asia in general for this period, only a set of books on the trade of specific areas, alas not including Central Asia although the "Silk Route" is prominent in more general discussions of that region. Much the least parochial of these books also offers an unusually high proportion of true statements: see "Trade", chapter III, pp. 95-176, of Early Indian Economics. Studies in the Economic Life of Northern and Western India c. 200 B.C. - 300 A.D. by G. L. Adhya, London: Asia Publishing House, c 1966, specifically the section titled "Foreign Trade" pp. 101-176. Other relevant books include
George Fadlo Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times, apparently originally volume 13 of Princeton Oriental Studies, [?Princeton]: Princeton University Press, 1951, but seen as No. 3 of Khayats Oriental Reprints, Beirut: Khayats, 1963.
Ying-shih Yü, Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. Yü consistently sees the surviving evidence as representing considerably more actual trade than do Adhya, *Raschke 1978 "New Studies", or I.
Xinru Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China. Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1-600, Delhi [etc.]: Oxford University Press, [1988]. Relatively little actual material on ancient trade.
C. G. F. Simkin, The Traditional Trade of Asia, London [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 1968. Note that this is a positively bad introduction to trade in Asia in general for this period.
The best starting place for serious research is *Raschke 1978 "New Studies", which conveniently also deals with the Rome-India sea trade on pp. 663-674 (references pp. 977-1046). When I say that this trade led to relatively little "literary contact", by the way, what I mean is that, first, literary writers in the West displayed so little knowledge of India that any influence Indian ideas or stories communicated by the sea trade could have had on western literatures is untraceable (what knowledge they did display is catalogued by Warmington, pp. 69-72 and 105-110, and showed a marked uptick from about AD 50-250); while, second, Indian literatures tended to speak even less of the West, although in specific areas "Yavana" (Greek) influence was explicitly acknowledged. (See notably p. 628 of R. C. Majumdar, "India and the Western World", chapter XXIV and pp. 611-633 of The Age of Imperial Unity, ed. R. C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalker, volume II of The History and Culture of the Indian People, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1951.) I tend to take for granted that India and the West in fact did influence each other, in literature as elsewhere, but I deny that such influence can today be traced in detail. See also below note 19.
Adhya, Early Indian Economics, pp. 157-167 reviews the evidence for Indian-Chinese trade in these times, and finds evidence for southern land routes through Sichuan and through Yunnan limited, pp. 159 and 163 respectively; p. 162 notes typical products not only of India but of southeast Asia recorded in Chinese sources as Persian wares, which implies a strong bias toward the (Iranian-dominated) northern routes through Xinjiang. Sea trade (pp. 165-167) is attested as existing but very poorly documented and possibly therefore not very important. See also Yü 1967 Trade and Expansion, pp. 112-117 (Sichuan and Yunnan) and 172-182 (sea trade), with characteristically greater optimism as to the volume of trade.
See below, this chapter.
There are stories shared between the fabulists Babrius and Phædrus (in roughly the first century AD) and the Buddhist Jataka, as mentioned by Warmington 1974 Commerce (full cite note 17) p. 77, and discussed in detail in pp. 286-290 of Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, Introduction and from the Origins to the Hellenistic Age (translated by Leslie A. Ray and revised and updated by the author and Gert-Jan van Dijk from Introducción y de los orígenes a la edad helenistica, volumen I of Historia de la Fábula Greco-Latina, [Madrid?]: Editorial de la Universidad Complutense, [no date]), volume one of History of the Graeco-Latin Fable, supplementum ducentesimum primum to Mnemosyne bibliotheca classica Batava, Leiden [etc.]: Brill, 1999. But the stories are few and the relationship controversial; no recent book I consulted on any of the texts involved mentions it, and Adrados, pp. 314-315, lists a variety of alternatives to direct contact to explain it if it does exist. We do know that Persian translations from Sanskrit in the later sixth century included a book of stories which subsequently made its way all over the West; one of the earlier versions is translated by I. G. N. Keith-Falconer in Kalilah and Dimnah or The Fables of Bidpai, Cambridge: at the University Press, 1885 (to summarise an unusually interesting and confusing title page), with detailed discussion of the text's history pp. xiii-lxxxv.
On Achæmenid languages of administration see e.g. *Briant 1996 Histoire de l'empire perse pp. 523-527. The main one was Aramaic, on which see also below note 23.
For references on the lack of evidence for literary texts in Iran and Yemen see note 1 s.v. Elamite, Old Persian and Sabæan.
This is certainly true of those listed in *Oelsner 1986 Materialien zur babylonischen Gesellschaft und Kultur in hellenistischer Zeit, pp. 164-168 (Uruk: Gilgamesh, Nergal and Ereshkigal, a story about Ishtar unfamiliar to me, and a frustratingly scant fragment about Enmerkar and Adapa), 202-207 (Babylon: Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish), 226-227 (Borsippa: Enuma Elish, Lugal-E, a commentary on a theodicy); Oelsner doesn't specify the contents of the texts mentioned p. 237 from Der and I didn't seek them out. Note that I here brush over an unusual mass of historical texts (having in fact read those I could find translations of, without finding any hint of the fantastic; Oelsner provides references in the pages cited) along with two phenomena with some relevance to fantasy: the rise of scientific astrology (texts cited by Oelsner pp. 184-186, 219-221, 230; see also Amélie Kuhrt, "Berossus' Babyloniaka and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia", cited in full note 37 below, pp. 41-42) and the Dynastic Prophecy, which is definitely part of the ancestry of apocalyptic - see inter alia the remarks (pp. 20-22) by A. K. Grayson introducing his edition and translation of the work in Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, [number 3] in Toronto Semitic Texts and Studies, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, c 1975.
Well, yet another negative to prove. Note the absence of local languages in which writing began in Achæmenid times, according to footnote 1. It can be argued that the use of Hebrew to write stories in this chapter's region began in Achæmenid times, depending on your opinions about the book of Ezekiel, but this strikes me as an improbable combination of accepting the book's testimony (1:1) as to location (Iraq) but not as to date (pre-Achæmenid); at any rate Iraq already had written stories. Anyway, this footnote is mainly meant to point to stories written in Aramaic, the first attested use of Aramaic for that purpose, in the fifth century BC, and found in Egypt: the story of Ahiqar (trans. J. M. Lindenberger, pp. 494-507 of Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, volume 2 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ed. James H. Charlesworth, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1985), and the frustratingly fragmentary story known as the Bar Punes narrative (trans. A. Cowley, pp. 180-181 of Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., 1923, reprinted Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1967). Neither is, on present evidence, either fantastic or necessarily derived from this chapter's region, but since the question whether Aramaic was used to write stories is one of the great mysteries driving this chapter's mysterious state, they deserve mention.
Although this is a historical commonplace it is surprisingly difficult to pin down, because the main Greek cities under Persian rule (in Ionia and Cyprus) were routinely in revolt and sometimes free by treaty. See any of the books mentioned in footnote 1 s.v. Iran, concerning Achæmenid history.
This depends on how you define "stories", but we know that the tragedies and comedies were written no later than 420 BC (see p. 2 of Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, c 1995), if not already for their initial performances. The Homeric epics were written down no later than the Peisistratid period, 561-510 BC (see Michael Haslam on pp. 79-84 of "Homeric Papyri and Transmission of the Text", pp. 55-100 of A New Companion to Homer, ed. Ian Morris and Barry Powell, supplementum centesimum sexagesimum tertium to Mnemosyne bibliotheca classica Batava, Leiden [etc.]: Brill, 1997). As for prose stories, Herodotus and Hellanicus of Lesbos are the obvious candidates, but I've been unable to find a good reference concerning the writing of either's works. See also on this subject the page with some more books.
Ctésias, Histoires de l'Orient, traduit et commenté par Janick Auberger, who treats his life pp. 4-10; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991.
Asserting a "first" is essentially asserting a negative ("there was no earlier"), and just as hard to prove, but anyway I haven't come across anything similar that's earlier. Arguably certain inscriptions in which kings try to justify their usurpations of the throne? It is of course quite possible that the mass of early lost Greek histories included something just as lurid and "eyewitness" as Ctesias, but if so, I haven't heard of the evidence.
Auberger in Ctésias Histoires, p. 9. His account of the behaviour of Persian royalty seems unlikely to have been put in written form while he was within royal reach, as Auberger hints p. 7.
This is strictly my attack, derived from his demonstrable unreliability in for example his first three books on Assyria (see Auberger again, pp. 14 ff.), and from a personal dislike of the man as revealed by what we have of his writing (that, admittedly, usually transmitted by men who also disliked him). Most modern scholars are more temperate. But do see Plutarch, life of Artaxerxes, 13.5-7 (trans. e.g. by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, The Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, New York: The Modern Library, n.d., p. 1258) on self-promotion; also Photius, #72 and 36a, The Bibliotheca, trans. N.G. Wilson, [London]: Duckworth, [1994], p. 55, or in Ctésias Histoires p. 25, translating 688 T8, pp. 417-418, under Ktesias von Knidos, Nr. 688, in Felix Jacoby, Aegypten-Geten, Nr. 608a-708 and erster Band of Autoren ueber einzelne Laender, [part] C of Geschichte von Staedten und Voelkern (Horographie und Ethnographie), dritter Teil of Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1958.
See the testimonies on pp. 25-26 of Ctésias Histoires, 688 T11, p. 418, in Jacoby.
Again my slant, but the reference to his having seen gifts from the Indian king to the Persian (which I take as tribute from a satrapy in Pakistan) is in Photius, #72 and 49a/b, The Bibliotheca p. 74, or in Ctésias Histoires p. 116, #45 (47), 688 F45a47, p. 509, in Jacoby.
Unicorns: Photius, #72 and 48b, The Bibliotheca p. 73, or Aelian, IV.52, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Schofield, vol. I, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press/London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1958, a volume in The Loeb Classical Library, pp. 272-277, or Ctésias Histoires pp. 114-115 and 126-28, 688 F45a45 and 45q, pp. 505-507, in Jacoby. Manticores: Photius, #72 and 45b/46a, The Bibliotheca p. 69, or Aelian, IV.21, On the Characteristics vol. I pp. 232-237, or Ctésias Histoires pp. 108 and 118-120, 688 F45a15 and 45d, pp. 489-491, in Jacoby. Firstness: Well, this is something of a monsterological commonplace, but see Ctésias Histoires p. XVII (uncredited).
Again historical commonplaces, but among the many summaries I can recommend *Boyce and Grenet 1991 History of Zoroastrianism pp. 4-22 as relatively closely concerned with the topic of this chapter.
The best documented case of old destruction involves Khwarizmian manuscripts lost in the events of AD 712, as recounted by P. G. Bulgakov on p. 230 of "Al-Biruni on Khwarizm", Part Two, pp. 222-231, of "Khwarizm" by E. E. Nerazik and P. G. Bulgakov, chapter 9, pp. 207-231, of *Litvinsky et alii 1996 History of Civilizations of Central Asia. However, this is surprisingly poorly documented: al-Biruni lived several centuries after the events and may not have received correct information concerning just what was destroyed, that is, whether physical books were burnt or rather people transmitting an oral tradition were killed. The latter case is usually (but not always) what is said to have happened to the Avesta thanks to Alexander; see pp. 147-149 of Almut Hintze, "The Avesta in the Parthian Period", full reference below note 42. As for modern losses, see Johannes Quasten on the De incarnatione of Theodore of Mopsuestia, found in Seert in 1905 and lost in World War I, p. 410 of The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature: From the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Chalcedon, volume 3 of Patrology, Utrecht/Antwerp: Spectrum Publishers / Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press; 1960. And more to this chapter's purpose (although Theodore of Mopsuestia has in fact been important to the church in Iraq), the entire canonical book of Mani's Letters was apparently found in Egypt and lost in World War II; see, for one reference, p. 7 and note 44 p. 271 of *Lieu 1985 Manichaeism.
Would be a historical commonplace if people thought about it enough to make it one. I'll just instance Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars (Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, perhaps Herodotus, and others) and Rome during the wars of the late Republic (Cicero, Catullus, Lucretius, Cæsar!, ...).
I don't really have documentation for this yet (it's the kind of thing These Survive is meant to allow); see note 1, s.v. Greek.
This is a kind of wimpy compromise between
pp. 55-56 of Amélie Kuhrt, "Berossus' Babyloniaka and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia", chapter two and pp. 32-56 of Hellenism in the East. The interaction of Greek and non-Greek civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander ed. Amélie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White, [London]: Duckworth, [1987];
pp. 5-8 of Stanley Mayer Burstein, the babyloniaca of berossus, volume 1, fascicle 5 of sources and monographs, sources from the ancient near east [alternatively, Sources and Monographs on the Ancient Near East, ed. Giorgio Buccellati, Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, and Piotr Michalowski], malibu: undena publication, 1978 [all sic!];
and
pp. 26-27 of Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated. Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, c 1996.
None of the three agree with anyone about much.
On Berossus's relative reliability see Kuhrt, "Berossus' Babyloniaka", p. 46; Burstein, the babyloniaca, passim; Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, pp. 16-24 and 70-83.
On Berossus's failure see Kuhrt, "Berossus' Babyloniaka", p. 33; Burstein, the babyloniaca, pp. 8-10; and in great detail, Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, pp. 27-34; I cite the other two mainly to show that this is something they actually do all agree on.
These historical commonplaces are vaguely worded in a probably futile attempt not to contradict pp. 84-90, 107-111, and 223-225 of *Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993 From Samarkhand to Sardis; contrast *Koshelenko and Pilipko 1994 History of Civilizations of Central Asia pp. 131-132 for a more typical version.
Although for Iraq specifically I don't have references to hand, the statement does follow from the more copious existence of Akkadian records for all earlier periods (see e.g. *Everling 2000 "Chronological List") and from the existence of Syriac records native to Iraq beginning a century after the dynasty's downfall (see *Baumstark 1922 Geschichte der syrischen Literatur pp. 31, 56). But see, for "Iran" (understood as the empire as a whole), G. Widengren, "Sources of Parthian and Sasanian History", chapter 37, pp. 1261-1283, of *Yarshater 1983b Cambridge History of Iran, on p. 1261; although Widengren in fact fails to mention what Akkadian does survive from the period.
Almut Hintze, "The Avesta in the Parthian Period", pp. 147-161 of Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse. The Arsacid Empire: Sources and Documentation. Beiträge des internationalen Colloquiums. Eutin (27. - 30. Juni 1996) hg. Josef Wiesehöfer, Heft 122 of Einzelschriften, herausgegeben von Mortimer Chambers, Heinz Heinen, François Paschoud, Hildegard Temporini, and Gerold Walser, of Historia. Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte. Revue d'histoire ancienne. Journal of Ancient History. Rivista di storia antica, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998.
*Stemberger 1996 Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash pp. 31-43 (with great detail and caution).
This is generally taken for granted, from what I've found, in such works as *Skilton 1994 Concise History (see esp. p. 101) and *Robinson et alii 1997 Buddhist Religion (e.g. p. 82), and also in specialised scholarly works (as on pp. 24 and 26 of Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism, 1980 - see note 77 below for the full reference). There is slightly more detail, and reference to primary sources, on pp. 90-92 of Sukumar Dutt, The Buddha and Five After-Centuries, London: Luzac & Company Limited, 1957. But if anyone has yet done a full study of writing and the Buddhist canon, comparable to Stemberger's treatment noted above, I haven't found it.
Again, see *Everling 2000 "Chronological List", or, for the latest datable texts, *Oelsner 1986 Materialien zur babylonischen Gesellschaft und Kultur pp. 43 and 218 with *Wiesehöfer 1996 Ancient Persia p. 122.
See *Boyce 1983a Cambridge History of Iran, p. 1155, and followed by several pages on what the minstrels presumably sang. This is based largely on her own article, "The Parthian gosan and Iranian minstrel tradition", pp. 10-45 of part 1, April 1957, of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1957.
I shouldn't exaggerate this lack of writing, though. Besides what cuneiform texts there are, we have two entire works, albeit short, that were handed down by recopying of manuscripts, which by the standards usual for ancient literatures makes them thoroughly literary. Neither is fantasy, but see, if you wish: 1) Parthian Stations by Isidore of Charax. An Account of the Overland Trade Route between the Levant and India in the First Century B.C. The Greek Text, with a Translation and Commentary by Wilfred H. Schoff, with an appendix by Barclay V. Head, London: Commercial Museum, 1914, reprinted Chicago: Ares Publishers Inc., 1976. 2) "The Fable of the Babylonian Tree" by Christopher J. Brunner, pp. 191-202 of volume 39 number 3 and 291-302 of volume 39 number 4, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1980. Isidore is, alas, almost entirely functional (though he mentions an island where "was the treasure of Phraates, who cut the throats of his concubines, when Tiridates who was exiled, invaded"), and the fable, alas, is entirely didactic (first the tree and then a goat recite drearily what humans use them for; then it ends).
Pp. 473-474 of Ehsan Yarshater, "Iranian National History", chapter 10(b), pp. 359-477, of *Yarshater 1983a Cambridge History of Iran (bibliography *Yarshater 1983b same, pp. 1304-1308).
A bibliographic commonplace but I'm derned if anyone seems to have documented it in detail. Aside from the obvious reference to the fate of the universe - and cosmology can hardly be relied upon as a proof given the uncertainties on that very topic - there is an immense literature on preserving books, but very little that I can find on what books that are not preserved can expect. And W. J. Barrow, p. 4 of Manuscripts and Documents: Their Deterioration and Restoration, 1955, [second edition] Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, [1972], seems in fact to urge that books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are permanent things!
This is an oft-repeated statement which I have yet to see justified; for an example, see *Boyce 1982 History of Zoroastrianism p. 178.
It should be obvious that Islam, the dominant religion in nearly the entire region, is later than AD 525. Tibetan Buddhism, dominant (still?) in Mongolia, did not begin to develop until around the same time as Islam (*Skilton 1994 Concise History of Buddhism p. 184). This leaves Orthodoxy. Strictly speaking, it can be argued that the Christianity of Iraq at least until sometime in the 6th century was Orthodox. But this ignores the gulf between the Syriac tradition of Iraq's Christianity and the Greek tradition of Orthodoxy, which, for practical purposes, in this chapter's regard, means that those Russian Christians who moved into Siberia in the millennium just ended did not generally transmit Iraqi Christian texts.
While I would think this another commonplace, I'll note anyway that this is a standard explanation for the upsurge of writing in the Zoroastrian faith in the 9th and later centuries, as Islam took hold in Zoroastrian areas and Zoroastrian leaders began to see that they needed to take steps to preserve the faith. (See *de Menasce 1975 Cambridge History of Iran pp. 543-544, or Jamsheed K. Choksy, p. 99 of Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society, New York: Columbia University Press, c 1997) While this may seem to imply that religious turnover actually increases the chances of survival of the old faith's writings, keep in mind that the vast majority of literary activity in formerly Zoroastrian lands at this time was in Arabic and by Muslims (see on this *Frye 1975 Cambridge History of Iran pp. 378-480 and 566-594).
Historical commonplace; see e.g. *Frye 1984 The History of Ancient Iran, pp. 206-207.
At least according to *Koshelenko and Pilipko 1994 History of Civilizations of Central Asia, p. 134. Note more substantially *Zadneprovskiy 1994 book cit. pp. 457-458. The point I am trying to make here is not that there was some sort of general upsurge of nomadism in Arsacid times - I am in fact about to state the opposite in the text and note 58 below - but rather that the elites of the day, who might have supported writing, often instead cherished what they could get of a nomadic way of life.
Oh, dear; another negative to prove. Um, look: this time, you prove me the positive, OK?
As I understand it, the elite of the original Türk empire were nomads, and we have longish inscriptions of theirs; see note 1 s.v. Turkish, or p. 327 of D. Sinor, "The First Türk Empire (553-682)", Part One, pp. 327-335, of D. Sinor and S. G. Klyashtorny, "The Türk Empire", chapter 14, pp. 327-347, of *Litvinsky et alii 1996 History of Civilizations of Central Asia (bibliography pp. 537-539), also pp. 343-344 of S. G. Klyashtorny, "The Second Türk Empire (682-745)", Part Two, pp. 335-347, of the same article.
*Ishjamts 1994 History of Civilizations of Central Asia, pp. 165-167, referring to the Hsiung-nu and Hsien-pi empires.
I can't cite any one source, and there certainly are exceptions, but on the whole, it's true. For such burgeoning, see:
Yemen - Implied by the extension of political dominance to outlying regions, but not explicitly stated, *Müller 1989: 561 and *Beeston 1993: 664 The Encyclopaedia of Islam;
Assyria in northern Iraq - *Goossens 1952 «L'Assyrie" pp. 95-96;
Babylonia in southern Iraq - *Christensen 1993 The Decline of Iranshahr pp. 63-65;
tentatively Khuzistan in southwestern Iran - *Christensen 1993: 107;
the Iranian plateau generally (though with many gaps) - *Christensen 1993: 139-140;
Seistan in Iran and Afghanistan - *Christensen 1993: 227;
Khwarizm, Bactria, Sughd, Ferghana and Chach (see note 1) - *Mukhamedjanov 1994 History of Civilizations of Central Asia pp. 265-273;
Xinjiang - *Ma and Sun 1994 book cit. p. 242 (which I find more dubious);
perhaps eastern Siberia - *Okladnikov 1956 Ancient Population of Siberia p. 61.
For counter-examples of decline, see:
a specific area in Yemen - *Müller 1989 Encyclopaedia p. 561;
Mongolia - *Kyzlasov 1996 History of Civilizations of Central Asia pp. 318-319 (but only after about AD 150).
For a counter-example of stasis, see:
Kumis in northeastern Iran - *Christensen 1993: 160.
There are also many areas for which I have found no information - e.g., many in Iran and Afghanistan; Kazakhstan; the Arabian peninsula outside Yemen - or only vague comments to the effect that there was agriculture before the period and there was also agriculture after the period - e.g., most of Siberia; Usrushana (see note 1).
In many areas, the increase continued, in some cases to a spectacular extent, during the subsequent Sasanid centuries:
*Christensen 1993 as follows:
Babylonia - pp. 67-73 esp. 73;
Khuzistan - pp. 107-112 esp. 107;
north-central Iran - pp. 143, 145, and for Isfahan pp. 146-147, for Kazwin p. 152, for Yazd p. 154, for Kirmanshah p. 157, for Gurgan pp. 160-161;
southwestern Iran - pp. 163, 165-166, and 176, and for the Nayriz basin pp. 166 and 168, for Firuzabad pp. 170-171, for Veh-Shapur p. 173, for Arradjan pp. 173-174, for Siraf and vicinity p. 174;
southeastern Iran - pp. 179 and 181-182;
Nishapur - pp. 193-194.
*Litvinsky et alii 1996 History of Civilizations of Central Asia as follows:
Sughd - *Marshak 1996 p. 234;
Chach and Ilak - *Negmatov 1996 p. 279;
Turfan in Xinjiang - *Zhang 1996b p. 308 but this looks very dubious to me.
But there are also more counter-examples of stasis:
northwestern Iran - *Christensen 1993 pp. 207-208;
east-central Iran and west-central Afghanistan - Christensen 1993 pp. 229 and 231
and decline:
Bactria - E. V. Zeimal on pp. 126-127 of *Litvinsky et alii 1996;
Khwarizm - *Nerazik 1996 book cit. p. 209;
Yemen - *Müller 1989: 563-564.
The quote is from p. 248 of *Christensen 1993.
On Mani's dates see *Puech 1949 Le Manichéisme pp. 19-20 and 52-53.
A date much controverted within narrow limits, but see *Frye 1984 History of Ancient Iran pp. 291-292 among other possible sources.
It remains controversial when exactly the Mandæans arrived near Babylon, or for that matter whether they ever really lived anywhere else. But they were certainly in that part of southern Iraq by AD 525, because amulets in Mandaic, inscribed with spells, and dated variously between the third and fifth centuries, have been found there, notably at Babylon and at Nippur. See esp. *Rudolph 1976 Die mandäische Literatur, pp. 162-163.
*Lieu 1985 Manichaeism pp. 22-24.
Mani's Book of the Giants is known to have dealt with the myth, and obviously sounds like fun, but the surviving fragments give little to the reader; see W. B. Henning, "The Book of the Giants", pp. 52-73 of volume XI of Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 1943-1946. Mani's summary of his doctrine in Persian for the Sasanid King Shapur offers more connected narrative; see D. N. MacKenzie, "Mani's Sabuhragan", pp. 500-534 of Vol. XLII, Part 3, of the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1979, and "Mani's Sabuhragan - II", pp. 288-310 of Vol. XLIII, Part 2, of the same Bulletin, 1980. There are two summaries in parts so far translated of the Coptic psalm-book, pp. 9-11 and 203-205 of A Manichaean Psalm-Book. Part II, [ed. & trans. C. R. C. Allberry], volume II of Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938; note that the latter summary introduces a strange and beautiful collection of poems by Mani's disciple Thomas, pp. 203-227. There is also "The Manichaean Myth", chapter XI., pp. 113-142, of Manichaean Literature. Representative Texts Chiefly from Middle Persian and Parthian Writings. Selected, introduced, and partly translated by Jes P. Asmussen, No. 22 of Persian Heritage Series, general ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, part of UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, Delmar, New York: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1975. (Note that this is in fact the first edition despite the publisher's name.) And "Prose Texts on Cosmogony and Cosmology", chapter eighteen, pp. 223-239, among other parts of Gnosis on the Silk Road by Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, 1993, for whose full citation at tedious length see above note 3; this volume also includes several pages of material from the Sabuhragan and a little from the Book of the Giants.
Asmussen's account in Manichaean Literature (see note 63) is as much a synthesis as a collection of translations. *Lieu 1985 Manichaeism, pp. 8-22, is a summary of the myth; most discussions of Manichæism that are longer than a page or two include such summaries.
The main collections, besides the one mentioned in note 66 below, are
Werner Sundermann, Ein manichäisch-soghdisches Parabelbuch, mit einem Anhang von Friedmar Geissler, a volume in Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients, Berliner Turfantexte XV, from the Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR Zentralinstitut für alte Geschichte und Archäologie, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985. Most of the fragments are translated into English in Klimkeit Gnosis (see note 3), pp. 178-183.
Werner Sundermann, Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer, mit einigen Bemerkungen... von Friedmar Geissler, Schriften zur Geschichte und Kulture des alten Orients 8, Berliner Turfantexte IV, from the Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR Zentralinstitut für alte Geschichte und Archäologie, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973. Some of these fragments are translated in Klimkeit Gnosis pp. 187-194.
A collection I did not seek out, which is the basis for Klimkeit's pp. 183-187: Iris Colditz, Bruchstücke manichäisch-parthischer Parabelsammlungen, pp. 274-313 of Heft 2 of Band 14 of Altorientalische Forschungen, 1987.
W. B. Henning, "Sogdian Tales", pp. 465-487 of volume XI of Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 1943-1946. Three of the stories are retranslated in Asmussen Manichaean pp. 40-43 (see note 63 for the full cite), and one of those also in Klimkeit Gnosis pp. 194-196 (see note 3), but several good fragments are available only in the original article, including "The Kar Fish" (pp. 483-484), "The Caesar and the Thieves" (pp. 478-479), and the "Beauty and the Beast" analogue, "The Merchant and the Spirit" (p. 472).
*Gündüz 1994 The Knowledge of Life, pp. 55-60. Note that the parts of the Ginza dating from before Islam are known to include books two and three of the Ginza Left, but are not known to be limited to these; following *Rudolph 1976 Die mandäische Literatur p. 158 n. 23, I consulted Kurt Rudolph, Theogonie, Kosmogonie und Anthropogonie in den mandäischen Schriften. Eine literarkritische und traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung, 88. Heft of Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testamentes herausgegeben von Ernst Käsemann und Ernst Würthwein, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965. However, in what time I spent on this book, I found nothing to indicate that Rudolph attempted to show that any other parts of the Ginza were equally early in their present form.
See p. 31 to about p. 39 of The Haran Gawaita and The Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa. The Mandaic Text Reproduced Together with Translation, Notes and Commentary by E. S. Drower. Studi e testi 176. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1953. Note also, pp. 84-92, the painful story by the nineteenth-century copyist of the community's then-recent troubles, which isn't fantasy at all but is worth reading. There are two Mandaic lines in the title which I have not attempted to reproduce and which most library catalogues omit as well.
Ginza. Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer. Übersetzt und erklärt von Mark Lidzbarski, Band 13 (and part of Gruppe 4) of Quellen der Religionsgeschichte herausgegeben im Auftrage der Religionsgeschichtlichen Kommission bei der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1925. The hymns that are known to be this early are in the books 2 and 3 of the "Linker Teil", on pp. 453-596. Those in book 2 follow a stereotyped format, nearly always narrative in the strictest sense but hardly ever eventful; the long fifteenth hymn pp. 479-482 is something of an exception. The hymns in book 3 are more diverse, but again most of those which are strictly narrative lack complexity; ones which offer some promise of interest include the fourteenth pp. 529-532 and the nineteenth pp. 539-543.
Richard Raabe, introducing Die Geschichte des Dominus Mari, eines Apostels des Orients. Aus dem Syrischen übersetzt und untersucht, Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1893, on p. 10 proposes to emend the text in a way that shows it to be post-Islamic. In context, this emendation appears to be necessary, but on first reading I thought it fishy, and concocted an alternative interpretation (inconsistent with context, as it turns out) that would allow the work to be pre-Islamic. At this point, using Raabe's description and his demonstration that the work must be later than the fourth century, I proceeded to conclude that it dated to the sixth century because of similarities to Byzantine apocryphal works of that time. Should you wish to seek out Raabe's book, note that it is very rare, and also some libraries misspell the title as Die Geschichte des Dominius Mari (with two i's in Dominus).
Apart from the instances given in notes 72 and 73 below, there is a detailed, comprehensive and considerably harsher attack on this phenomenon with respect to the romance Joseph and Aseneth (which probably does not come from the region and is not especially fantastic) in Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered, New York/Ofxord: Oxford University Press, 1998. See pp. 226-228 and 238 on dating this work, 245-246 and 272-274 on its religious identity, and 286-292 on its place of origin, with a summation on pp. 303-305; there and on pp. 251-252 Kraemer explicitly points out that the issues she raises involve more works than Joseph and Aseneth.
This is easiest to demonstrate in the two volumes of James H. Charlesworth, editor, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company). In Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, volume 1, 1983, see for example:
B. M. Metzger on "4 Ezra", p. 520: "the obviously Semitic coloration of the work rather suggests Palestine [not Rome] as the place of writing and publication of the Hebrew original" (but Metzger has just indicated that the original could also be Aramaic...);
J. Priest on "The Testament of Moses", p. 921: "A few have proposed a Western, probably Roman origin, but most assume a Palestinian locale. Though specific evidence is lacking, the latter proposal is probably correct."
Also in that volume, there is a much more responsibly cautious discussion of "The Testaments of Abraham" by E. P. Sanders which still uses parallels in a way very similar to how gravity works (pp. 875-876).
In Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, volume 2, 1985, see for example:
P. W. van der Horst on "The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides", p. 568: "As far as we know, it was only in Alexandria that human anatomy was studied by applying dissection." (therefore this work, which explicitly bans dissection, must come from Alexandria);
J. Z. Smith on "The Prayer of Joseph", p. 700: "If the Greco-Egyptian Jewish and Christian parallels are stressed, Alexandria would appear most likely. If the Aramaic parallels are stressed, a Palestinian provenance seems more likely.";
H. Attridge on "On Jerusalem", p. 781: "a center of Greek culture such as Alexandria";
J. J. Collins on Artapanus's Peri Ioudaion, p. 891: "All the narratives are set in Egypt. Even the fragment on Abraham deals only with his sojourn in Egypt. Consequently the Egyptian provenance of the work is unquestioned." (The difficulty regarding this example is that we know Artapanus's work only from quotations which later writers made, not from Peri Ioudaion itself, but from excerpts used by an intermediary, Alexander Polyhistor. In fairness to Collins, though, I should note that he goes on to argue against assuming, on the basis of gravity more or less, that Artapanus actually wrote in Alexandria rather than elsewhere in Egypt.)
The two in question are Targum Onqelos (translating the Pentateuch) and Targum Jonathan (translating some or all of the Prophets, a Jewish category which includes Judges, Samuel and Kings but not Daniel nor Lamentations). Bernard Grossfeld translated Onqelos for the series The Aramaic Bible: The Targums, directed by Martin McNamara (all published Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier). In volume 6, The Targum Onqelos to Genesis ([1988]), pp. 30-35, he discusses its date and provenance and concludes that it originated in Palestine and was only redacted in Babylonia. Daniel J. Harrington writes of a similar process for Targum Jonathan on pp. 13-14 of his and Anthony S. Saldarini's volume 10, Targum Jonathan of the Former Prophets ([1987]). Similarly Robert Hayward on p. 38 of volume 12, The Targum of Jeremiah ([1987]). A cautionary note is however present in pp. 12-14 of Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon, volume 14, The Targum of the Minor Prophets ([1989]).
See *Stemberger 1996 Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash pp. 205-207 on the contributions of saboraim and later writers to the Talmud.
Translated by David J. Halperin, pp. 264-268 of The Faces of the Chariot. Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision, number 16 of Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum, herausgegeben von Martin Hengel und Peter Schäfer, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1988.
Tanna Debe Eliyyahu. The Lore of the School of Elijah. Translated by William G. (Gershon Zev) Braude and Israel J. Kapstein. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 5741 / 1981.
Since it was an extremely circuitous chore to locate sutras ostensibly written in Central Asia, here's a list. For each writing, I include at least one title, a Pfandt number if I can find one, references to my sources for thinking the work conceivably Central Asian, and reference to any translation(s) I know of. Editions of the actual texts can generally be located by reference to Pfandt or to the other references I give, and since such editions are usually in Chinese or Japanese, it's better that you rely on the references' information than on my intermediation. By the way, the standard way to note just which sacred Mahayana text one is talking about is to cite its place in the Taisho edition of the Chinese canon, for references to which see *Wilkinson 1998 Chinese History, pp. 591-592 with notes 31-32. The references I provide usually give Taisho citations; I am not at all sure that I know enough about the Taisho edition to repeat those citations here reliably, so I don't.
Pfandt, by the way, is Peter Pfandt, Mahayana Texts Translated into Western Languages. A Bibliographical Guide, on behalf of the Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar der Universität Bonn, revised edition with supplement, in Kommission bei E. J. Brill, Köln, 1986.
Another useful bibliography is Frank E. Reynolds with John Holt and John Strong [and others], Guide to Buddhist Religion, a volume in The Asian Philosophies and Religions Resource Guides, Boston, Mass.: G.K.Hall & Co., c 1981.
I further recommend (and cite below) Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism. A Survey with Bibliographical Notes, volume one of Buddhist Traditions edited by Alex Wayman, first published by the Kansai University of Foreign Studies in 1980 but accessible to me as Delhi [etc.]: Motilal Banarsidass, [1987]. This book incorporates material dating back at least as far as 1964 (see the preface p. vii, but also #9 below).
Finally, note that the great majority of serious work on Buddhism is done in Japanese. For detailed information about this work, as well as a good guide to the field in many other languages (among them English), see a book I learned of too late to make much use of it myself: Yasuhiro Sueki, Bibliographical Sources for Buddhist Studies from the viewpoint of Buddhist Philology, III of Bibliographica Indica et Buddhica, Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies of The International College for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1998.
Pfandt #219, Nakamura 1980 pp. 202-207. ?Central Asian: Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, Boulder: Shambhala, 1979, pp. 36-38; Nakamura 1980 p. 205. Translation: "The Land of Utmost Bliss" in pp. 339-359 of A Treasury of Mahayana Sutras. Selections from the Maharatnakuta Sutra, trans. The Buddhist Association of the United States, Garma C. C. Chang, general ed., University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983, and also affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions series. There are numerous other translations; beyond the few that Pfandt lists, see (for one translation, and lists of others) Hisao Inagaki (in collaboration with Harold Stewart), The Three Pure Land Sutras: A Study and Translation from Chinese, Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 1995. (Do not confuse this with the edition not subtitled, from the Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research in Berkeley; that is much shorter, and my guess would be that it contains the translations but not the extensive other materials, which would probably include the list of earlier translations.)
Not in Pfandt. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum pp. 37-38. Not translated to my knowledge.
Not in Pfandt. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum pp. 37-38. Not translated to my knowledge.
Not in Pfandt. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum pp. 37-38. Not translated to my knowledge.
Not in Pfandt. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum p. 37-38. Not translated to my knowledge.
Pfandt # 28. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum pp. 36-38. Translation: "Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Contemplation of the Two Bodhisattvas, King of Healing and Supreme Healer". Birnbaum pp. 115-144.
Pfandt #28; Nakamura 1980 p. 181. ?Central Asian: Birnbaum p. 60. Translation: "Sutra on the Merits of the Fundamental Vows of the Master of Healing, The Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata". Birnbaum pp. 151-170.
Pfandt #101. ?Central Asian: *Skilton 1994 Concise History p. 107; *Robinson et alii 1997 Buddhist Religion pp. 115, 168; Nakamura p. 217. Translation (with extensive interlinear commentary): Sutra of the Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva: The Collected Lectures of Tripitaka Master Hsüan Hua, translated by American Bhiksu Heng Ching, revised by American Bhiksuni Heng Ch'ih, polished by American Bhiksu Heng Kuan, and certified by Gold Mountain Sramana Dhyana Master Hsüan Hua, New York: Buddhist Text Translation Society, The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions, c 1974.
Pfandt #270. Central Asian (specifically Khotan): see Nakamura Hajime, "A Critical Survey of Mahayana and Esoteric Buddhism Chiefly based on Japanese Studies", in volume 6 pp. 57-88 and volume 7 pp. 36-94 of Acta Asiatica, 1964, who in vol. 7, p. 48, note 4, credits botanical evidence for this attribution to Waku in Bukkyo-Kenkyu III/1: 92f. (This reference is duplicated on p. 210 with note 7 of Nakamura 1980.) Translation: "The Prophecy of Bodhisattva Fearless Virtue's Attainment of Buddhahood" in pp. 115-132 of A Treasury (#1 above, p. 12).
Beyond these there are collections which may have been compiled in Central Asia, although the materials in them were largely of Indian origin:
Pfandt #24, Nakamura 1980 pp. 194-197. ?Central Asian: *Litvinsky 1999 Die Geschichte p. 41; Nakamura 1980 p. 197. Translation: The Flower Ornament Scripture. A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra by Thomas Cleary, Boston & London: Shambhala, 1993; previously in three volumes of which the second was published 1986 and the third (titled Entry into the Realm of Reality) 1987. I should add that I spent very little time with this enormous collection.
Pfandt #122, Nakamura 1980 pp. 210-211. ?Central Asian: Skilton p. 107; K. Priscilla Pedersen, "Notes on the Ratnakuta Collection", pp. 60-65 of Volume 3, Number 2 of The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 1980, p. 64 (*Litvinsky 1999 Die Geschichte p.41 seems to disagree). Incomplete translation: A Treasury (#1 above, p. 12) translates about half; for other translations see Pfandt.
Apparently several chapters of the Mahasamnipata Sutra (Pfandt #123) including specifically the Suryagarbha (Pfandt #225) and Candragarbha (Pfandt #50)derive from Central Asia (see p. 216 of Nakamura 1980). It is not obvious to me whether these have been translated into English, but you might try (if you can find a copy) A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, ed., Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature Found in East Turkestan, volume 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916; reprinted St. Leonards: Ad Orientem, 1970.
Finally,
there are repeated claims that the Prajñaparamita Sutras must have been expanded in Central Asia over time, because as centuries passed the versions available for translation into Chinese lengthened. I did nothing with these claims because, until I'd reached the stage of final formatting, I couldn't find a copy of the standard guide to the works, The Prajñaparamita Literature by Edward Conze (volume VI of Indo-Iranian Monographs ed. J. W. deJong and F. B. J. Kuiper, 's-Gravenhage: Mouton & Co., 1960; second edition, revised and enlarged, I of Bibliographica Philologica Buddhica, Series Maior, the Reiyukai Library, Tokyo: The Reiyukai, 1978). Nakamura 1980 pp. 159-166 is a fairly detailed guide in brief, however.
See Victor H. Mair and Maxine Belmont Weinstein, "Tun-huang wen-hsüeh", pp. 829-832 of *Nienhauser 1988 Indiana Companion, pp. 829-830.
The most detailed discussion I've found is Biswanath Bhattacharya, Asvaghosa. A Critical Study of his Authentic Kavyas, and the Apocryphal Works [...], Santiniketan: [Santiniketan Press?], 1976, pp. 178-191. One will often still see casual references to the Sutralamkara as Asvaghosa's, which makes Bhattacharya's approach particularly helpful.
*Puri 1987 Buddhism in Central Asia p. 105 with note 58.
Well, if you insist: Açvaghosa, Sûtrâlamkâra: traduit en français sur la version chinoise de Kumârajîva par Édouard Huber. Publié sous les auspices de la Société asiatique. Paris: Ernest Leroux, éditeur, 1908. No, there is no English version.
For references in general, see *Baumstark 1922 Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, pp. 55-57, and then trace the topics forward through the bibliographies in note 1 s.v. Syriac. The translations known to me include:
Les Actes des martyrs d'Orient. Traduits pour la première fois en français sur la traduction latine des manuscrits syriaques de Étienne-Évode Assémani par M. l'Abbé F. Lagrange. Nouvelle édition. Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, éditeurs, 1879. First edition apparently 1852. Note that the few libraries that have this are under the misapprehension that Assémani is the author. This translation is normally not mentioned by Baumstark, who does mention other French translations, so I wonder if it has a bad reputation; where it overlaps with #3 below, they tend to differ a good deal, but this could easily be due to different manuscript sources. This book is available on the Web, at <http://www.univie.ac.at/liturgiewissenschaft/pages/archiv/lagrange/>.
Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer. Übersetzt und durch Untersuchungen zur historischen Topographie erläutert von Georg Hoffman. No. 3, VII. Band, of Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes herausgegeben von der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Leipzig: 1880. Reprinted Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1966. Note that in many cases Hoffman's translations are sharply edited, as implied by his title.
Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer. Mit einem Anhang: Ostsyrisches Mönchsleben. Aus dem syrischen übersetzt von Oskar Braun. Band 22 of Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Eine Auswahl patristischer Werke in deutscher Übersetzung herausgegeben von O. Bardenhewer, Th. Schermann, and K. Weyman. Kempten & Muenchen: Verlag der Jos Köselschen Buchhandlung, 1915. Braun also edits out a fair amount.
"Persian Martyrs". Chapter 3, pp. 63-99 (bibliography and sources pp. 187-190), of Holy Women of the Syrian Orient. Introduced and Translated by Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey. Updated edition. Berkeley [etc.]: University of California Press, [1998].
There are also isolated accounts in journals, of which I have read only "A Martyr at the Sasanid Court under Vahran II: Candida" by Sebastian Brock, pp. 167-181 of tome 96 of Analecta Bollandiana. Revue critique d'hagiographie, 1978, and in other sources, for one of which see note 86 below.
Trans. Lagrange (cited in note 81, #1), pp. 65-73.
Trans. Hoffman (cited in note 81, #2), pp. 43-60. Note that in this case Hoffman's translation appears to be complete or nearly so. This is a good thing since although Braun (cited in note 81, #3) also deals with the work, pp. 179-187, he only translates about a third of it (Hoffman's pp. 52-58). Brock & Harvey (cited in note 81, #4) translate a small amount pp. 77-78. Where I refer to miracles I mean mainly those of `Aqballaha, Hoffman p. 49.
English translation: The Book of the Cave of Treasures. A History of the Patriarchs and the Kings Their Successors from the Creation to the Crucifixion of Christ. Translated from the Syriac Text of the British Museum MS. Add. 25875 by E. A. Wallis Budge. London [etc.?]: The Religious Tract Society, 1927. Edition: La Caverne des trésors. Les deux recensions syriaques éditées par Su-Min Ri. Tomus 207 of Scriptores Syri, vol. 486 of Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Lovanii: in aedibus E. Peeters, 1987. French translation: La Caverne des trésors. Les deux recensions syriaques traduites par Su-Min Ri. Tomus 208 of Scriptores Syri, vol. 487 of Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Lovanii: in aedibus E. Peeters, 1987.
The Pethion cycle has not been completely translated, to my knowledge; not only is there no complete translation into any one modern language but as far as I can tell there are pages that haven't been translated into any modern language. It also exists in two versions, one west Syriac and one east Syriac. You can find pieces of it in three places.
Anahid's martyrdom, from the East Syriac version, is translated in full in Brock & Harvey (cited in note 82, #4, above) pp. 82-99. This is not very hard to find and will fully repay the trouble.
There are large but random selections translated in full by Nicholas Sims-Williams in pp. 31-50 of The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C2, Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients, Berliner Turfantexte XII, Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR Zentralinstitut für alte Geschichte und Archäologie, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985. What Sims-Williams does is translate from either Syriac version so as to fill in gaps between the fragments of Sogdian; for pages that he has no fragments of in Sogdian, he translates no Syriac. This is moderately hard to find but includes the other miracles I know of that aren't in Anahid's story.
There is a summary in Hoffman (cited in note 82, #2, above), pp. 61-68. It is not a summary of all of whichever version it follows, and offers little you can't get from Sims-Williams or Brock & Harvey, but it is the only other thing I can point you to.
The Persians try to kill Pethion first by fire and then by water. (See Sims-Williams pp. 43-46 or Hoffman pp. 63-64.) Since devout Zoroastrians revere both fire and water (a fact constantly and derogatorily stressed by the other martyrdoms; for details see *Boyce 1975 History of Zoroastrianism pp. 296-297), this amounts to profaning their religion in defense of it, and the obvious conclusion is that the author was not familiar with Zoroastrianism, therefore didn't live in the Sasanid empire. However, a martyr at Kirkuk also gets burnt (Hoffman p. 54; Braun, full cite p. 14 above note 82 #3, p. 183), and the chronicle of Kirkuk is taken seriously by many scholars as potentially deriving from the Sasanid period, so this is not a strong argument. (The final turn to this argument is that if both the Pethion cycle and the chronicle of Kirkuk are later, there is no obvious parallel to the miracles of Miles in contemporary Syriac literature, so those may after all be understood as exceptional.) There is no early manuscript known of either version of the Pethion cycle (Sims-Williams pp. 31 and 137 note 5; *Baumstark 1922 Geschichte p. 57 note 16). So although I haven't seen the cycle's date argued, I would guess that the main argument for thinking at least its core early is that the west Syriac and east Syriac versions belong to different religious traditions that separated over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries.
The dates of the early poets are hardly well determined, but a second-generation one, Imra'alqais, is supposed to come from a generation that would have died by AD 550 (*Sezgin 1975 Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums II: 123). A list of the authors whose works seem likely to belong mostly or entirely to the period follows. For each, I give Sezgin's working version of the author's name and Sezgin's page numbers, and reference to any translations I could find, except for translations included in the second volume of the Mufaddaliyat translated by Charles Lyall, for which I failed to take adequate notes and which I could not consult again after finding that I wanted them. (As best I can reconstruct from library catalogues, that book is The Mufaddaliyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes, volume II, which may be number 3 of the new series of "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial" Series, Oxford: Clarendon Press, circa 1921.)
P. 146; not the famous Zuhair, and I found nothing translated.
Pp. 148-149; fully translated in Diwans of `Alqama al Fahl, al Muhalhil ibn Rabi'a, `Amr ibn Kulthum, al Harith ibn Hilliya, and al Muraqqish the younger, with irritating commentary, by Arthur Wormhoudt, [?]: William Penn College, 1979; poems translated in The Mute Immortals Speak. Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, a volume in Myth and Poetics ed. Gregory Nagy, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, [1993], pp. 212-213, 216-218, 225, 230, 234-235.
Pp. 153-154; one poem translated p. 97 in Classical Arabic Poetry. 162 Poems from Imrulkais to Ma`arri by Charles Greville Tuetey, London [etc.]: KPI, [1985]; another pp. 245-246/105-112 (with text and commentary) of Select Odes, volume two of Early Arabic Poetry by Alan Jones, No. 15 of Oxford Oriental Institute Monographs, Reading: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1996.
P. 155; nothing.
Pp. 167-169; little or nothing.
I also sought works by a second tier of authors whose relationship with the AD 525 limit seems more ambiguous:
Pp. 122-126; much is translated in Imrulkais of Kinda, Poet circa A.D. 500-535. The Poems - the Life. The Background by Charles Greville Tuetey. London: Diploma Press, [1977]. Individual poems, one in particular, are also often translated in anthologies, as for example Stetkevych pp. 249-257 and 280; Tuetey's Classical Arabic Poetry pp. 93-96; Jones's Select Odes pp. 239-243/55-86 (with text and commentary); and Charles James Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, Chiefly Pre-Islamic (sometimes spelt "Prae-Islamic" in library catalogues), London: Williams & Norgate Ltd, 1930, reprinted Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1969, poem XLIX pp. 103-104.
Pp. 152-153; fully translated by Charles Lyall in The Poems of `Amr son of Qami'ah of the Clan of Qais son of Tha`labah, a Branch of the Tribe of Bakr son of Wa'il, Cambridge: University Press, 1919, one of these translations reprinted in Lyall's Translations 1930, poem XXXI p. 62.
P. 155; nothing.
P. 209; nothing.
Pp. 133-137; one poem translated in Tuetey's Classical Arabic Poetry pp. 106-107; another translated in Lyall's Translations 1930, poem XLV pp. 81-82; poems translated in Stetkevych pp. 128, 129, 132-136, 143-150; two poems translated in Marathi and Su`luk poems, volume one of Early Arabic Poetry by Alan Jones, No. 14 of Oxford Oriental Institute Monographs, Reading: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1992, pp. 260-264/142-184 (with text and commentary) and 264-266/188-204.
Pp. 137-139; one poem translated in Tuetey's Classical Arabic Poetry pp. 108-109; three poems translated in Lyall's Translations 1930, poems VIII pp. 14-15, IX p. 16, and XXIV pp. 48-49; poems translated in Stetkevych pp. 58-60, 90-91, 96, 101-102, 105-107; three poems translated in Jones's Marathi and Su`luk poems, pp. 266-268/207-222 (with text and commentary), 268/224-228, 268-270/231-242 (with two German translations, one by Goethe, pp. 242-247).
P. 156; one poem translated in Lyall's Translations 1930 as poem III p. 5.
P. 159; nothing.
Pp. 169-171; fully translated by Charles Lyall in The Diwans of `Abid ibn al-Abras, of Asad, and `Amir ibn at-Tufail, of `Amir ibn Sa`sa`ah, 21 of "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial" Series, Leyden: E. J. Brill / London: Luzac & Co.; 1913.
Pp. 284-285; nothing.
Pp. 302-303; nothing translated, although much survives.
Both are translated by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, pp. 96 and 101-102 of her The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual, a volume of Myth and Poetics ed. Gregory Nagy, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, [1993]. The shorter one is also translated by Alan Jones, p. 268 (with Arabic text on a subsequent page and text, translation and commentary on pp. 224-228) of his Marathi and Su`luk poems, volume one of his Early Arabic Poetry, No. 14 of Oxford Oriental Institute Monographs, Reading: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1992.
Chosen at random: *Wiesehöfer 1996 Ancient Persia p. 95 ("probably in the fourth century A.D."); *Boyce and Grenet 1991 History of Zoroastrianism p. 16 ("probably in the fifth-sixth centuries A.C."), with a valuable list of the testimonies of the actual Zoroastrian texts, which also contradict each other, in note 70; Almut Hintze, p. 157 of "The Avesta in the Parthian Period", full reference in note 42 above (agnostic).
See note 11 above, p. 2, #1. The rest of the Avesta is trans. in The Vendîdâd, trans. James Darmesteter, part I of The Zend-Avesta and vol. IV of The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1880; and The Sîrôzahs, Yasts, and Nyâyis, trans. James Darmesteter, part II and vol. XXIII, Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1883. The following passages contain narratives, none of which are either long or fantastic in apparent intent. Yasts: V. Âbân Yast, pp. 53-84, IX. Gôs Yast , pp. 110-118, XV. Râm Yast 2-41, pp. 250-258, XVII. Ashi Yast 24-52, pp. 275-280 (several long series of brief narratives about sacrifices by various gods and heroes); VIII. Tîr Yast 15-34, pp. 96-102 (a myth of rain bringing); XIII. Farvardîn Yast 85-145, pp. 200-227 (a catalogue, mostly terse, of gods and heroes); and most interestingly XIX. Zamyâd Yast 9-96, pp. 289-308 (telling, occasionally with detail, the story of who had royal Glory when). Vendîdâd: Fargard I, pp. 4-10 (a creation story); Fargard II, pp. 11-21 (the story of the first mortal, Yima, who is not only Adam but Noah in Zoroastrian myth and whose ark is a utopia); Fargard XIX 1-10, pp. 204-207 (a story about Zarathustra); Fargard XXII, pp. 230-235 (a myth teaching that diseases should be healed by sacrifices).
I know of essentially seven narrative works in Pahlavi.
Two of these, "Khusrau ud Redag" or "Chosroes and the Page", and "Chatrang i Wizarisn" or "Madigan i Chitrang", involve as a major character the Sasanid emperor Chosroes (Khusrau) I, whose reign began in AD 531.
"Yavist i Fryan" is the subject of the next footnote and the associated sentence in the text.
"Arda Viraf Nama" includes a reference to a prominent official of Chosroes I's court, but may be still later; see p. 11 of Fereydun Vahman, Arda Wiraz Namag: The Iranian 'Divina Commedia', No 53 of Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, [London/Malmo]: Curzon Press, [1986].
"Karnamag i Ardashir i Papakan" refers to titles introduced by Chosroes I and to an astronomical situation datable to AD 631; see p. 162 (part of an English summary) of O. M. Chunakova, Kniga deianii Ardashira sina Papaka: transkriptsiia teksta, perevod so srednepersidskogo, wedenie, kommentarii i glossarii, LXXVIII of Pamiatniki pis'mennosti Vostoka, Moskva: Izd-vo "Nauka", Glav. Red. vostochnoi lit-ry, 1987.
The present form of the "Zand i Vahman Yast" dates, on linguistic grounds, to a time as late as the 9th century AD - see pp. 15-27 (especially 15 and 26) of Carlo G. Cereti, The Zand i Wahman Yasn: A Zoroastrian Apocalypse, vol. LXXV of Serie Orientale Roma (alternatively, Rome Oriental Series), Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, diretta da Gherardo Gnoli, Roma: Istitute italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1995.
Finally, the "Ayadgar i Zareran" is the most difficult case. Its most recent edition omits any discussion of its date (among other omissions; see the review by D. N. MacKenzie, pp. 155-163 of volume 27 of Indo-Iranian Journal, 1984). I've been unable to consult older editions or translations. A friend read the most recent journal article I know of (no copy being accessible to me), and from his e-mailed summary and other sources (especially the bibliography of the edition I'm maligning) I found much of the literature on the work. It appears that until roughly World War II, the text was assumed to be Sasanid, probably 6th century; later discussions (as well as general works such as *Boyce 1968a: 56 and *de Menasce 1983: 1157), much concerned with the text's sources, assume a post-Islamic date for the surviving version. I have, however, seen no attempt to justify either assumption, longer than a sentence or two. The article my friend cited is "Observations on the Ayadgar i Zareran" by Mansour Shaki, volume 54, no. 3 of Archiv Orientalni, pp. 257-271.
"The tale of Gôsht-i Fryânô". Trans. by E. W. West, pp. 247-266 of Haug, Martin, and Edward William West. 1872. The Book of Arda Viraf. Pahlavi text prepared by Destur Hoshangji Jamaspi Asa, revised and collated with further manuscripts, with an English translation. Bombay: Government Central Book Depot / London: Trübner / Stuttgart: Carl Grüninger; 1872. Reprinted Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1971. Note the assertion that there is pre-Sasanid content on p. LXXVI; there is no attempt to date the actual text, however.
Translated pp. 56-58 of "The Sogdian Fragments of the British Library" by Nicholas Sims-Williams, pp. 43-82 of Nos. 1/2 of volume XVIII of Indo-Iranian Journal, June/July 1976.
New York [etc.]: Doubleday, 1991.
New York: Tor, 1998.
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