Polemical Tools in the Zoroastrian Treatise Škand Gumānīg Wizār (9th-10th c.)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Alberto Cantera Glera
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532765934

The present project aims at describing in detail the polemical tools used in the 9th-10th c. polemical Zoroastrian treatise Škand Gumānīg Wizār (The doubt-dispelling solutions; henceforth ŠGW). Its main target is to circumscribe this work to the wider genre of polemical literature, currently circulating during Late Antiquity and the early Muslim Middle Ages, by pointing out common patterns as well as very specific features. Over the last decades, a growing interest was given to the question of polemical encounters (as historical phenomena), the religious literary genre of polemics, and polemical tools. It is time to integrate Zoroastrianism to this scientific forum for the sake of a mutual benefit: on the one hand, for what this religious tradition brings as original, and on the other hand, in order to show how recent discoveries may challenge our understanding of texts and facts already established. Previous scholarship on the ŠGW has not yet considered this treatise as a whole. It is in this holistic approach that one finds both the novelty and the necessity of the present project. Its objective is to identify the various forms (rhetorical, logical) of the polemical tools used in the ŠGW. This is a new paradigm of research within Zoroastrian studies in general. The outcome of the project is a monograph. In the first step, the project proposes the analysis of the apparently apologetical chapters, namely ŠGW 2, 3, 4 and ŠGW 7, 8, 9, where the author sets up the conceptual foundation of a dualistic system of thought. In a second step, the project will focus on a selection of chapters polemically addressed against other religious communities, namely: the dahriyya (ŠGW 6), the Muslims (ŠGW 12), the Christians (ŠGW 15) and the Manichaeans (ŠGW 16). The polemical tools used in these chapters will first be identified and described in their own context. Subsequently, they will be compared with two categories of sources: 1. (internal) primarily the Dk 3; 2. (external) polemical writings of Late Antiquity (for the cases of Christianity and Manichaeism) and the first centuries after the Arab conquest (including Islamic and Arabic Christian works). The method of the project is divided into three parts, according to the main tasks.: 1. Historical; 2. Comparative; 3. Philological. Scholarship on the polemical techniques has underlined that despite the periods (Late Antiquity or the first centuries after the Arab conquest), the samples of polemical literature extant in various religious areas share common features. Christians, Jews or Muslims may use the same techniques in targeting each other. It is time to show in detail to what extent Zoroastrianism may confirm this paradigm as well. This project could eventually provide better parameters (vocabulary, concepts) for answers to the question of the possibility of various hands or schools behind the single name of “Mardānfarrox”, the known author of the ŠGW treatise.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants