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    Cesmag the Lie, and the Logic of Zoroastrian DemonologyB R U C E LINCOLN

    UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

    IFor all that demonology was a major part of many theological systems, the topic has re-ceivedrelatively little seriousattention.The claims made bydemonological discoursehavingbeenconclusively discredited in the EuropeanEnlightenment,it is as if the topic had beendrainedof all but antiquarian interest. While mild curiosity about the benighted beliefs ofdistantothers may still be permitted, until recently most research remained distanced, con-descending and superficial, as if reflecting residual anxiety that the foolishness of thesebeliefsmight be contagious ora less magical construction of the same dynamicthatshowingtoo much interest in such things might damage one's reputation.'

    Asthe result of suchskittishness ourunderstandingof many religions is impoverished,for some of the most serious issues of ethics, cosmology, anthropology, and soteriologywereandstill areregularly engaged via demonology. Though we may now reject thefoundational assumptions of thatdiscourse this does not force the conclusion that beliefsaboutdemons were of necessity naive, ridiculous, or infantile. As a working hypothesis, itseemspreferable to assume that the demonological components of any religion are no lessintelligent,complex, or profound than those of its other constituent parts and thus deservingofequally serious study.Asa small, but convenient example of the results to be gained from such an approach,Ipropose to consider an obscure Zoroastrian demon: Cesmag, who makes an abrupt andbewilderingentrance toward the end of a celebrated incident recounted in Book Seven of

    theDnkard,a massive Pahlavi compendium committed to wrjting in the ninth century c.E,^71, European demonology has begun to receive more serious and mor ; r, spectful attention in recent years, insuch works as Alain Boureau,Satan the Heretic: The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West(Chicago: tJniv,of Chicago Press. 2006); Armando Maggi,In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the

    Italian Renaissance(Chicago: tJniv, of Chicago Press. 2006); Nathan Johnstone,The Devil and Demonism in EarlyModern England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ, Press, 2006); Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea ofWitchcraft in Early Modem Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1997); Sophie Houdard, Les sciences du diable:Quatre discours sur la sorcellerie, XVe-XVIle sicle(Paris: ditions duCerf,1992); and lsabel Grlibel,Die Hier-archie der Teufel: Studien zum christlichen Teufelsbild und zur Allegorisierung des Bsen in Theologie. Literaturund Kunst zwischen Erhmittelalter und Gegenreformation(Munich: Tduv, 1991), The study of Iranian and othernon-Western demonologies is much less advanced at present. After sixty-plus years the standard work remainsArthur Christensen. Essai sur la dmonologie iranienne (Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard. 1941), ric Pirart.Georges Dumzil face aux demons iraniens(Paris: Harmattan, 2007) is a welcome addition, but it treats Zoroastriandemonology more as a test of Dumzil's theories than as a topic of intrinsic interest, Pierfrancesco Calliere. In theLand of the Magi: Demons and Magic in the Everyday Life of Pre-Islamic Iran, inDmons et merveilles d Orient,ed, Rika Gyselen (Bures-sur-Yvette: Groupe pour l'tude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2001), 11-36 offersa useful summary of what is known about magical practices, based on textual and archaeological evidence, but isnot particularly attentive to demonological speculation and theory,2 For a general description of theDnkard and its contents, see Jean de Menasce, Une encyclopdie maz-denne: Le Denkart(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958) or Carlo G, Cereti,La Letteratura Pahlavi: In-

    troduzione ai testi con rifermenti alta storia degti studi e alla tradizione manoscrita (Milan: Mimesis, 2001), which

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    46 Journal ofth? American Oriental Society 129.1 (2009) 'This is the episode in which Zar ithustra resists temptation by the Lie, a tale that has oftenheen compared to similar stories ahout the Buddha and Mra, Jesus and Satan, Grail-seekersand "Frau W elt."^ In E. W. W est's pioneering translation which we will have to revise insignificant waysthe text reads as follows:

    [And Aharmazd spoke thus]: "Even unto thee, O Zara tit A Fiend will rush, a female,golden-bodied an d full-bosomed (so that she wears a bodice), and she rushes to request com-panionship from thee; a female, golden bodied artd full-bosomed, to request conversation fromthee,to request co-operation from thee.Butthou shouldst not grant her com panionship, nor coti-versation, nor shalt thou prescribe an y conduct for her; afterwards, to revert her downwards,thou shalt utter aloud that triumphant saying the Yath-ahu-vairy."Zarat5t proceeded to the habitableand friendly world, for the purpose of fully observing thatbeaten track (khpi.sno) of the embodied existence; then that fiend came forward when he sat inthe vicinity of a garmentthat garment which, when Vohman wasconveyinghimto the con-ference, wasdeposited by hima female, golden-bodiedand full-bosomed, and companionship,conversation, and co-operation were requested by her from him; she also whined (dandtdo): "Iam Spendanna."And Zarat.t spoke thus: "She who is Spendarmad was fully observed by me in the light ofa cloudless day, and that Spendarmarf appeared to me fine behind and fine before and fine allaround (that is, in all positions she was handsome); do thou turn thyback, an d Ishall know ifthou art Spendarmad."And the fiend spoke to him thus: O Zarat^t of the Sptmas where we are, those who arefemales are hand some in front, but frightfully hideous behind;sodo not make a demand for myback." After she ha d protested a third time, the fiend turned he r back, and she was seen byZaratst behind in the groin; and when m atter was exuded,it was full of serpents, toads, lizards,centipedes, and frogs.

    And that triumphant saying, the Yath-ah-vairy, was uttered aloud by Zaratjt; then thatfiendwasannihilated, and iTshmak the Karap rushed forth."*abar-iz to Zarduxst druz b dwred m dag-kirb zarrn-*pusnkpestnbn dard.ud ham-

    hgih l az td *zayd ud dward mdag-kirb zarrn-pusn hampursagih az t zayd ud hamkar-drlh az td zayd u-s ma hamh glh dah ud ma hamp ursagih ud ma

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    LINCOLN:Cesmag and Zoroastrian Demonology 47u-sjyidka az ham Spandarmad.guft-as Zarduxst ku be-m an rtigerd *k *Spandannad andaran rsn r zI xwbar ud anman sahist*Spandarmad hu-drn udhu-parrn udhu-tarist khamg gygnk bd. pasihfrdward snsom agartd h Spandarmad.u-s ydruzguft k:ZarduxstlSpitmnk awsn am hmk mdagn *nekg az ps nmag ud duszist az pasihma man pasih framyen. paz azsidlgar pahikrd druz dpasih frodwast. u-s ydid Zarduxstpasandarag haxt ka ahrftestadpurr gazud^xkarag ud karbunag ud pazg udwazag. u-sani przgar gwisnfrz guft ZarduxstYat-Ah-Weryg.g an druz be *nst ud Csmag-klp(NB:this word is ambiguous, as we shall see. West interpreted it askarap [=karbin modem orthog-raphy],but it can also be read askirb,which makes a very important difference)/razdwarid.^Subsequent translators, most notably Marijan Mole, have improved on West's rendering inseveral details and there is room for further improvem ent, but to date no one has reconsideredthe mysterious Cesm ag, who is our prime point of interest.^ Nor have studies of Zoroastriandemonology added to the little that West adduced.' Cesmag remains an enigma.

    With regard to Cesmag, West provided a note directing the reader to Denkard 7.2.44-45,which recounts certain events that transpired when Ahreman sought to forestall Zarathu stra'sbirth. The story is rather comp lex, and the preceding narrative details how all the W iseLord's good creation contributed to the prophet's conception. Thus, what it describes as Zarathustra's elemental body-substance (an Zarduxst tan gohr)^ i W from the sky withrain, entered the earth, then entered plants that were eaten by two cows who, as a result,began to produce a miraculously pure milk that Poui usspa and Duydow would ultimatelydrink before conceiving their son. ^Hoping to forestall the birth that would threaten his power, the Evil Spirit called anassembly, which is described in the passage West cited. West's translation, however, is suf-ficiently fiawed that it is useful to cite two other versions (given in tabular form on p. 48).Interestingly, the passage never identifies Cesmag as an evil priest (Pahlavi karb [=karapin the older orthograph y]), only as Cesm ag, who was unw ise (CesmagIdusdng). A bitlater, however, the text does m ake reference to the one hun dred fifty demo ns led by C esmag ,using terms that West, Mole, and others understood to confirm the testimony of Dnkard7.4.61 . Accordingly, they transcribed the Pahlavi phrase 3 SK YA- n Y ^cysmk klp n as

    5. Dnkard 1.4.55-61 (Madan ed. 635.14 -636 .15; missing in Dresden ed.).6. Marijan Mole,La legende de Zoroastre selon tes texts pehlevis (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1967),52-53 .7. Cf. A . V. Williams Jack son 's brief discussion in Grundriss der iranischen Philologie,vol. II, ed. WilhelmGeiger and Ernest Kuhn (Strassburg: Karl J. Trbner, 1895-1904), 660; idem, Zoroastrian Studies (New York;Columbia Univ. Press, 1928), 93; Louis H. Gray, The Foundations of the Iranian Religions (Bombay; D. B. Tara-polevala, 1930), 204; Christensen,Essai sur la dmonologie iranienne (above, n. 1),50; and Carsten Colpe , ltereund jng ere Dm onologie, in his IranierAramer Hebrer Hellenen: Iranische Religionen und ihre West-

    beziehungen (Tbingen; Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 471-72.8. West, Pahlavi T exts, 5:63. The note says only See Chap. II, 44, 45.9. The phrase recurs in variant forms;gdhr I tanatDnkard 7.2.37,ghr I Zartuxst four times between 7.2.38and 42. In all of these, it denotes the quintessential b odily matter that will, upon gestation, deve lop into the person .Its usage in this passage may involve a bit of wordplay between Pahlavi gohr, the 'substance' or 'essence' thatpasses from the cows (Pahlavi g w

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    48 Joum alofthe Am erican Oriental Society 129.1 (2009)West Mole Lincoln Pahlavi text

    Onemarvel is this which II est rv l, au sujet des This is revealed ek ed andar kosisn iis manifested in the efforts de l'Adve rsaire conc erning the struggle petyarag abarstruggle of the adversary pour faire disparatre ce of the Adversary to apaydgnidan udfor conc ealing and lait et le render ma ke that milk invisible agrndan I an ptnspoiling that milk, inefficace, and to render it paydghist

    powerless.just as revelation Ainsi que le dit la As the religion says : At ciyn dn gdwd k gmentions thus: Religion: Vers ce temps- that time when the abar pad an zamnThereupo n, at that time, l les dev tinrent une demo ns gathered in dwn hanjamannd.the demon s formed assemble. Le dev des assembly, the demon of u-sjdyid dwn dew k:themselves into an dev hurla: demo ns snarled at them:assembly, and the demonof demons growled thus:"You demons becomequite unobservant:

    "Vous allez disparatre, "Dem ons, you are being be *wany hawed dew tar dev, jus qu ' la lie defeated. ul-iz.

    that food is really La prpara tion (la Th at food is created so an xwarisn dad k sxt)supplied fresh, so that confection ) de cette that when it is placed in b nihd k t andar anthe formation is settled nourriture a com men c, that man (Pourusaspa), it rrmrd bawd k ahlawwhich will extend as far afin que cet hom me, le will becom e he who is Zarduxst.as to that man who will juste Zoroastre, y soit Truthful Zarathustra.be the righteous conu.Zaratst;Which of you willundertake hisdestruction, all the while n'y a pas d'ho m m e enthat he exists for elle (la paralys er plusmankind, so as to make facilement)?"him more contemptiblyimpotent?"/iishmak, astute in evil, Ce sm ak l ' imbcilegrowled thus: "I will hurla: "J'acc epte de leunde rtake his faire prir."destruction."Astute in evil, he rushed L'im bcile se rua enaway with thrice fiftyof comp agnie de 150 dev,the demons who are karap de Ce sm ak,Karaps ofi

    Qui parmi vous accepte Which of you accepts to k az asma an padiredde la dtruire, tant qu 'il destroy him, so that mumjnidan ham t kawhen ever that good man an ast humardm , kmay exist, that doer of *hukardar agr kardan?good, he is renderedpowerless?"

    Cesmag, who wasunwise, snarled at him:"I accept to destroyhim."That unwise onestormed out with 150demons, who wereforms of Cesmag.

    joy Id-is Cesmag Idusdng k: man anpadlrom mumjnidan.

    an dusdng be dwrldabg 150 dwn ICesmag kirbn [canalso be read karbn].

    And that village was renversa et dmolit lepartly uproo ted and village, dtruisit le boispartly destroyed by him , et la coup e . . .'^fellow-workers wereruined .. . '^

    Together with him, they u-s an wis ham-iz kanddestroyed that village, ham-iz wast ud ham dartogether they returned, skast...'''and together theyshattered the trees . . .

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    LINCOLN; Cesmag and Zoroastrian Demonology 49150 dwn i Cesmag karbn as 150 demons, who are Karaps of C esmag . '^ The crucialword is open to question, however, given the inadequacies and ambiguities of the Pahlaviwriting system, where short vowels regularly go unrepresented. Accordingly, what is writtenas kip can be transliterated as either karb 'a priest hostile to Zoroaster' (from Avestankarapan-y^ orkirb 'the external, visible form of living beings' (from Avestan k9hrp- .'^ Ifthe latter is correct,pace West et al.), then the dem ons are all forms of Cesm ag and notpriests in his retinue. Correspondingly, in Dnkard 7.4.61 it is not Cesmag the Karap{Cesmag karb , who suddenly appears in place of the seductive Lie when Zarathustra hashested the latter, but rather the form of Ce sm ag {Cesmag kirb . Such an interpretation isparticularly attractive here, since the immediately preceding text uses the grapheme kip inunambiguous fashion, when statingthree separate timesthat before Cesmag entered thestory, the Lie appeared to Zarathustra in the form of a wo ma n {mdag-kirb .'^This philological detail is important for several reasons, as we will gradually see. Interalia, it permits one to understand that the narrative portrays the Lie as an entity that has noproper form of its own , form (Pahlavi kirb being an aspect of material existence. As aresult, when attempting to seduce Zarathustra, the Lie is forced to adopt the bodily formof a beautiful woman {mdag-kirb . And when that fails, it shifts to the form of Cesmag{Csmag-kirb .

    I l lThat West wanted to make Cesmag akarapan is perfectly understandable. After all, theOlder Avestan texts consistently den ounce the practices of these priests as antithetical to theGood Religion, and Pahlavi literature goes further still, providing stories of how o ne of their

    number murdered Zarathustra. Given that Cesmag and his assistant demons show similarhostility to the as-yet-unborn prophet, it was reasonable enough to imagine they shared thisevil-priestly identity. Still, there is nothing in either of the two passages in question that

    15. Dnkard 7.2.45 (Madan ed. 608.12-13; Dresden ed. 483.13). The translation is that of West,Pahlavi Texts5:29, who provided neither transcription no r transliteration of the Pahlavi text. M ole,La legende de Zoroastre, 22,transliterated the phrase as 150 dvn i C esmak karapan (using the older orthography).16. Henrik Samuel Nyberg, A Manual of Pahlavi, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964), 112 (citedunderkarap ;D. N. MacKenzie, A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), 49; cf. Chris-tian Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wrterbuch (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1904; rpt., 1961), cols. 454-55.17. Nyberg, Manual of Pahlavi 2: 113 (cited under karp and MacKenzie, Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, 51(who offers a simpler translation: 'body, form'). Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wrterbuch,cols. 467-68, provided anuanced discussion of the term's Avestan antecedent: das sichtbare ussere jedes W esens und Ding s, ussere Er-scheinung, sichtbare Ge stal t. . . insbesonder von lebenden W esen; auch vom gestalteten Stoff selbst 'Leib , Krper,'von Menschen und Gttern . . . und Tieren. See also the brief discussions of Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the

    Ninth-Century Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1943), 91 and 118. The homography of karb and kirb is noted byNyberg,Manual of Pahlavi 1: 170 and MacKenzie, Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, 176.18. Twice atDnkard 7.4.55 (Madan ed., 635.15 and 16) and once at 7.4.57 (Madan ed., 636.2).19. Older Avestan references to thekarapans include asna32.12, 44.20,46.11, 48.10, and 51.14. Occurrencesin the Younger Avesta are more formulaic, but always hostile. Pahlavi accounts of Zarathustra's death at the handsof akarb includeZand Vohuman asn 3.3,Ddestn i Dnig 72.8,Dnkard 5.2.3, Pahlavi Rivyat accompanying

    ihe, Ddestn I Dnig36.6 and47.23, Selections of Zdspram 9.0-10.20 and 12.1-10. This tradition was discussedby Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran (above n. 3), 124-32, and a good deal more critically by MaryBoyce, Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour (Costa Mesa, Cal.: Mazda, 1992), 14-16. On the kara-pans in general, see the differing interpretations advanced by Herman Lommel, Die Religion Zarathustras nach

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    50 Journal ofth American Oriental Society 129,1 (2009)requires such an inference and the fact that Cesmag and his cohort all are demons {dwnis more than enough to explain their hostility. What might it possibly mean, then, to speakof the form (or forms ) of Cesm ag? To the best of my know ledge, there is only oneother passage in Pahlavi literature where this demon appears, and it is there that we get ourfullest description. This isGreater Bundahisn 27.29 (= Indian Bundahisn 28,24), to whichWest alerted his rea ders.^'' It states:

    Cesmag is that one who makes earthquakes and makes the whirlwind also and goes forth in op-position to the clouds,Cesmag an k wizandag kund ud wad-girdag-iz kund ud d petyragh I abrsawd.^^Once again, there is no suggestion that Cesmag was a karapan and it is difficult to imag inehow the dem onic force manifested in natu ral disasters (i,e,, those phenom ena we theorizeas such) might assume a priestly identity. The information provided by the Bundahisn is

    fully consistent, however, with the kinds of destruction wrought by Cesmag & Co, accord-ing toDnkard7.2.42. Thus, in the latter we were told that after Cesmag agreed to kill theunborn prophet, he rushed to attack Pourusaspa's village. To describe this, the text uses thedaevic verbdw ristn,which would also be appropriate for the flight of a whirlwind, since itdenotes motion that is distressingly erratic, un predictable, m enacing, abrupt, and/or violent, ^Joining their leader, the demons proceed to level the village and shatter its trees, and onecomes to understand that if Cesmag represents the power manifest in storms, whirlwinds, andearthquakes, the others represent the manifold forms and specific instances in which thispower appears.However destructive such power may be, Zoroastrian scriptures make clear that the de-

    monic can never prevail in any absolute or final sense. Thus, in the case at hand, Cesmag'sforces devastate the village, but fail to destroy the cows, the milk, or Pourusaspa and Duy-dow. On the contrary, once the storm abates, husband and wife drink the milk (mixed withhaoma), make love for the first time, and thereby conceive Zarathustra,^'*IV

    Other stories follow, in which other demons try to accomplish what Cesmag could not: thedestruction of Zarathustra. The story with which we began is one of those many stories, andin order to appreciate som e of its complex ities it is necessary to improve on West's translation.[The Wise Lord said to Zarathustra]: In the form of a woman, with gold on her breast, sheslinks up to you, Zarathustra, to ask friendship from you, to ask consultation from you, to ask

    20 , West, Pahlavi Texts5: 28 , n, 1,21 , Although West {Pahlavi Texts 1: 110) properly transliterated wzndk as wizandag (his vazandak , which

    means 'quaking, earthquake' (MacKenzie, p, 92), he apparently confused it with wizend (written wznd or, moreproperly, wzynd , 'hurt, harm, injury' (MacKenzie, p, 93), Clearly, the earthquake was meant to parallel the whirl-wind, as was recognized by Behramgore Tehmuras Ahklesaria, Zand Aksih: Iranian or Greater Bunda hisn(Bombay, 1956), who treated the term correctly at pp, 238-39,

    22 , Dnkard7.2A5 (Madan ed, 608,12-13; Dresden ed, 483,12-13): an dusdanag be dwrSd abg ISOdwni Cesmag kirbn. On the semantics of dwristn, see MacKenzie, Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, 29, and Nyberg, AManual of Pahlavi2: 69,

    23 , Dnkard 7,2,45 (Madan ed, 608,13-14; Dresden ed, 483,14): u-s an wis ham-iz kand ham-iz wastan udham darSkast.N ote that the associative particleh amis repeated three times (tw ice with the em phatic suffix -z), each

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    LINCOLN: Cesmag and Zoroastrian Dem onology 51collaboration from you. Do not give her friendship, nor consultation, nor collaboration. Order herto turn her rear to the front and recite that victorious act of speech, the Ahuna Vairiia prayer.Zarathustra wenttothe inhabited, friendly world in order to see to the conversion of corporealbeings. There he met the Lie when he sat close to a funerary platform (the funerary platform towhich Good Mind led him for an exchange of questions and answers. He placed him there).Female in form, with gold on her breast, she asked him for friendship, consultation, and co-operation. And she snarled at him: I am Spandarmad.Zarathustra said to her: I have seen Spandarmad in the clear light of afin day and it seemsto me that Spandarmad is fair in front, fair in back, fair all around, beautiful in every place. Turnyour rear to the front and I will recognize if you are Spandarmad.And the Lie said, to him: Spitama Zarathustra, we who are women are beautiful from thefront and hideous from the rear. Do not order me to show my rear.The Lie resisted three times, then turned her rear. And then Zarathustra saw that between herraised haunches, she was full of snakes, hedgehogs, lizards, worms, and frogs. Zarathustra recitedthat victorious act of speech, the Ahuna Vairiia formula. Then that Lie did not exist and the formof Cesmag stormed forth. ^^The text is careful to situate this incident at precisely that moment when Zarathustra firstproclaimed the Good Religion and began making converts of those who would help vanquishthe powers of evil. ^ Perceiving this threat, the Evil Spirit responded by dispatching the Lie

    (druz) to do what Cesmag and others had failed to accomplish, for it was through falsehoodthat he would thwart the nascent power of truth. The place of encounter is also significant,for they meet at a funerary platform {daxmag Avestan daxma-),^^ a contradictory spacewhere life and death, purity and pollution, matter and spirit come into the closest and mostanxiety-ridden contact, thereby establishing the possibility for a similar confrontation be-tween male and female, the best of humans and the m ost dangerous dem on, truth and the lie.That the Lie is personified as female surely reflects a certain patriarchal misogyn y, butis also motivated by an older Avestan tradition, where the corresponding noun (druj-) isfeminine in gender.^^ More striking than the simple fact of female identity in the presentpassage is the precise kind of woman the Lie is made out to be, for she is not only sensuou s,seductive, and beautifully adorned, but also duplicitous, and thatfittingly enoughin twodifferent fashions. F irst, she is not who she claims to be, for she calls herself Spen darm ad,i.e., the divine being who is conventionally identified with the earth and is also regarded asthe most beautiful, most fertile, most sustaining of females.^' Second, in the most literal

    25. Dnkard 1 .A.55-6\ (Madan ed. 635 .14-63 6.15 ; missing in Dresden ed.). The text was given above.26. Dnkard7.4.57 (Madan ed. 635 .20 -22 ; missing in Dresden ed.): Zarathutra went to the inhabited, friendlyworld in order to see to the conversion of eorporeal beings {be raft ZarduxSt 5 an i *mnisn5mand *dstdmandghn an hzisn axw l astmand be nigerisnh ry).27. Dnkard 7.4.57 (Madan ed. 635 .22 -63 6.1 ; missing in Dresden ed.): There he met the Lie when he satclose to a funerary platform (g druzfrz mad ka *pad nazdiklh I daxmag nisst an daxmag). Where I trans-literate dhmk and transcribe daxmag. West, Pahlavi Texts 5: 62 read ^jmag (ymak in the older orthography)'clothing, garment', and Mole,La legende de Zoroastre (above, no. 6),5 2 - 5 3 ,read jmag {ymak) 'vessel, goblet'('rcip ient '). All three terms are homographie and the readings are all possible, but from the Avesta onward, the fu-neral platform was identified as a site where demons congregated, while clothing and goblets have no associationsthat are particularly app ropriate to the characters and narrative in question. See, inter alia, Vidvdad7.53-57, wherethe Wise Lord responds to Zarathustra's question Wh ere is the dem on? {kuua asti dauu)by pointing him to thedaxma and saying Truly, this is the support of the demon s {aS zi asti dauuanam rapak).

    28. Female personifications of the Lie appear already in the Avesta, as at Yast19.95 and Vidvdad 18.30-59.

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    52 Journal of the Am erican Oriental Society 129.1 (2009)fashion, she is shown to be two-sided: gorgeous from the front, hideous from the back, andshe systematically hides her unattractive rear (which harbors all manner of verminous crea-tures [Pahlavixrafstarn]), until Zarathustracoached by the Wise Lordputs a stop to herdeception.

    Zarathustra's insistence that she turn around thus produces a first act of disclosure, re-vealing that the female in question was not simplex and lovely, but duplex in form; notSpendarmad, but the Lie orto put it differentlythe bodily form of a woman, distorted(literally de-formed) by the demonic presence inside it. Having accomplished this unveiling,the prophet then compounded his victory by reciting the most powerful, most perfect, andmost profoundly truth-filled utterance known to the Zoroastrian tradition: the Ahuna Vairiiaformula, which constitutes the opening verse of the Gths, i.e., the oldest, most sacredsection of the Avesta. With this act of truth, he produced a second revelation. As the textstates:

    Zarathustra recited that victorious act of speech, the Ahuna Vairiia formula. Then that Lie didnot exist and the form of Cesmag stormed forth. ^^u-s an iprzgar gwisnfrz guft Zarduxst Y at-Ah-Weryg. g an druz be ^nst ud Csmag-kirbfrz dwrid.That Cesmag appears in this climactic moment makes a certain amount of sense. First,we are reminded of this same demon's attempt to preempt the birth of the prophet, in lightof which we understand the current episode as a continuation of the ongoingbut alwaysunsuccessfulbattle the forces of evil wage against Zarathustra and the truth he introduces.Second, insofar as Cesmag is the demonic force that manifests itself in violent disruptionsof the natural order, we remember that Ahreman's original attack on the earth took theform of an earthquake that disfigured the previously level, tranquil, perfect plain created byOhrm azd.- W hicb is to say, having claime d to be the Earth (- Spendarmad), the Lie showsherself to be the Ea rth's arch-enemy. Not only is she not what she appears and claims to be,she is its very antithesis.

    One last interpretation might be advanced, if only tentatively, since it rests on a textualemendation of the phrase that reads ADYN ZK dlwc BRA w [or: n] kst. The first four ofthese words are unproblematic and can be confidently transcribed as g an druz be ( Thenthat Lie . . . ).^ W here one expects the verb, however, one finds w kst (or: n kst), which

    identifies the Wise Lord 's six original material creations with the divine beings known as Beneficent Imm ortals(Amasa Spantas), see two articles of Herman Lommel that are conveniently collected in Zarathustra, ed. BemfriedSchlerath (Darmstadt: Wissensc haftliche Gesellschaft, 1970): Sym bolik der Eleme nte in der zoroastrische n Re-ligion, 25 3-6 9, and Die Elemente im Verhltnis zu den Amaa Spantas, 37 7-9 6.

    30 . Dnkard 7.4.61 (Madan ed. 636.13-15; missing in Dresden ed.).31 . Greater Bundah isn 6C .0-1 (TD^ MS 65.1 2-1 4): The third battle was waged by the earth. When the Evil

    One stormed in, the earth trembled and the sub stance of moun tains was created in the earth. At the same time as thequaking of the earth, the mountains were set in motion (sidigar ardig zamig kard.ciyon ganng andar dwristzamlg b .wOzandid. an ghr l kfl andar zamlg ddestd. pad wizandisn zamlg ham zamn kf l rawisn estd).Cf. Selections of Zdspram 2.5 and 3.28. I have discussed this motif in Discourse and the Construction of Society

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    LINCOLN: Cesmag and Zoroastrian Demonology 53makes no sense and is best explained as a scribal error. Attempting to resolve this problem,H. S. Nyberg elim inated the space and transliterated-^wkst,which he transcribed as vikast,for which he reconstructed a verb *vikastan 'to disappear', while labeling the attempt uncertain. 33 Conceivably, West reached similar conclusions, since he translated the verb was destroyed, with no supporting explanation.^^ For his part. M ole also collapsed theletters into one word, but took the ambiguous initial letter as n,rather than w (perfectly pos-sible, since the same grapheme does service for both phonemes) and read the next ligatureas sy ,rather than ks (also possible, given the formal resemblance of the letters involved).Accordingly, he transcribed -^nsyt, transliterated ^nasit, and posited a verb *nasltan 't operish' , whichlike Nyberg's *vikastanis unlisted in the standard dictionaries andattested in no other text.^^ Preferable, in my opinion, is to transcribe nyst (understandingthe -k- of the manuscript as a not uncommon scribal error for -y-) and transliterate ^nst,i.e., the regular negative copula.^The sentence then reads g an druz be *nst Then thatLie did not exist.

    Dnkard 7.4.61 thus reports two events that follow on the pronouncement of the AhunaVairiia, correlating the two via the conjunction 'and ' (Pahlavi ud). The first of these is farthe starker and more sweeping of the two: Then that Lie did not exist {g an druz be-^nst). Use of the negative copula (Pahlavi nest) rather than the verb budan ( ' to become')suggests that what is described is a state of being or, more precisely, a state of non-b eingand not a transformative process. Perhaps we are meant to understand that Zarathustra'sspeech-act was so powerful that it utterly annihilated the Lie. Alternatively, following linesadvanced by Shaul Shaked, Jes Asmussen, and Hanns-Peter Schmidt, the phrase might sug-gest not that the Lie ceased to be, but that it never was.^'' In that case, Zarathustra's act oftruth did not destroy something extant; rather, it dispelled an illusion through which some-thing non-extant conjured up the simulacrum of being or, more precisely, it exorcised ademonic force from the bodily form {kirb) it temporarily inhabited. This is consistent withthe tendency of Pahlavi sources to theorize Ahreman, the Lie, and the demons as spiritual{mng) entities or forces of an evil sort, whose non-being {nstlh) amounted to the fact

    33 . Nyberg, Manual of Pahlavi 2: 212. Ny berg 's analysis refleets his uneertainty: It could be

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    54 Journal of the American Oriental Society 129.1 (2009)that they had no material substance {gtig) of their own.^^ As a result, when they sought totake physical action, they were obliged to penetrate, a ppropriate, or colonize the bodies andforms of the Wise Lo rd's creatures, who by virtue of his good acts of creation possessedboth mng andgtg existence.^'

    The second event of the Dnkard passage confirms this interpretation and holds keen in-terest of its own: and the form of Cesm ag stormed forth {ud Cesmag kirb frz dwrld).Cesmag, as we have seen, . . . is that one who makes earthquakes and makes the whirlwindalso and goes forth in opposition to the clouds. '* This translation, however, is somew hatdistorted by the dem ands of English, and the phrase rendered that one w ho (Pahlavi ank )could be either personal or imperson al. With equal justice , one can translate . . . is thatwhich makes earthquakes, etc.

    Given our own cultural p redilections, we are inclined to see Cesm ag as a fully personifieddemonic being responsible for whirlwinds, earthquakes, and the like. The Bundahisn, how-ever, is equally disposed to theorize it as a sinister impersonal force: a disembodied, intan-gible, but eminently destructive energy. It is not the earthquake or whirlwind per se, but themotion that ripples through air and soil, causing them to wreak havoc or, more abstract still,the negative intention that unleashes such violent energies.

    If the test of existence is materiality and concretion of substance, then Cesmag like theLie, also like deathdoes not exist in precisely this sense, for even the whirlwind lacksmateriaUty of this sort (not to speak of the whirlwind's cause or source). Yet the effects offorces like these are real, material, and palpable enough. Mulling over these ambiguous textsand elusive issues, one begins to realize that Zoroastrian demonology is not an incoherentjumble of ignorant superstition and puerile fears. Rather, demonological speculation anddiscourse possessed intellectual seriousness, existential depth, and philosophical originality.The category of the demonic was constituted as that spiritual (i.e., non-material) force thatmanifests itself in material destruction, while specific demons like Cesmag, Zarman (oldage,decrepitude), Astwihad and W zars (the onset of death), Nas (post-mortem decay, bodilycorruption), Niyz (need, want, scarcity), Az (greed, appetite), Waran (desire, lust), and

    38 . On the opposed categories rrin g ('spiritual') and gtlg ('material') in Zoroastrian thought, see ShaulShaked, The Notionsmng andgtgin the Pahlavi Texts and Their Relation to E schatology, Acta Orientalia 33(1971); 59-107, reprinted in From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam, and Michael Stausberg, Die Religion Zarathushtras:GeschichteGegenwartRituale, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2002), 33 3-3 8.

    39. Num erous examp les are provided in the articles of Sh aked, Asmu ssen, and Schmidt cited in n. 37, to whichone might add the following passages.

    Ddestn i Dnig36 51 :The Wise Lord's creation is spiritual and also material mng ud gtig-iz). That ofthe Lie is not material {nest gtig). The Lie joins (its) bad spiritual being to the material being (of the WiseLord's good creations).

    dam i Ohrmazd mng ud gtig-iz. y druz nst gtig be wad mnglh abyzd gtig.Dnkard 5.7.2 (Madan ed. 440.6-8): [Self-protection obliges one] to recognize the deceit and delusion-pro-

    duction of the Evil Spirit and demons as the process of their subtly mixing them selves into good creations; theirconcealment of the right path and way; their false-guiding of being into non-being ast pad nst). . .

    be snxtan frftSrih ud wiybngarih i Ahreman ud dwn ciyn gumxtagih i-sn brikih andar weh-dahisnn nihuftrih i-snrh i ristag i rast ud zr-nimdrih i-snast pad nst. . .

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    LINCOLN:Cesmag and Zoroastrian Demonology 55oth ers' represent those aspects of non-being that can and periodically do reach aggres-sively into the realm of being with profoundly disruptive conseq uence s. At such times, theythreaten to drag something that is (or, viewing things from the opposite perspective, thatwas) into the land of the empty and dead. Behind even the most cursory depiction of demons(as in certain vignettes from the Arda Wirz Nmag for instance) stood much more sophis-ticated theories, in which the category of the dem onic sum marized the threat of dissolutionthat non-being ever poses to humanity and to the rest of God's creation. Within such an optic,these demons assume a new, and in fact more terrifying importance, apparent even to themost jaded mod em, as we come to recognize them as something quite literally like the blackholes of a pre-modern cosmology, where physics, metaphysics, and ethics remain inextri-cably intertwined.

    4 1 , Similar are those demon s who represent negative states of speech, thoug ht, or emotion, i,e,, non-materialentities that pose threats to the equilibrium, happiness, and ultimately the life of living creatures. These would in-clude demons like Akoman (evil thought), Mihxt (evil speech, falsehood), Frftr (deceit), Spazg (slander), Xesm(wrath), Aresk (envy, jealousy ), Bussp (sloth). Wadag (w ickedness), etc. The dem ons associated with diseases (Tab[fever], Kapasti [infection], Yask [sick ness]. Dard [pain] , A [evil eye ], etc ) are similar, representing non-materialforces that invade, afflict, and distort the person. The site of their activity is the body, however, and not the mind.

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