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Mario Vitalone: The Persian revāyat ‘I thoter’:

Zoroastrian rituals in the eighteenth century.
(Istituto Universitario Orientale. Dipartimento di
studi Asiatici. Series Minor, Vol. xlix.) 301 PP.
Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1996.

Albert de Jong

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 61 / Issue 02 / June 1998, pp
350 - 350
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00014087, Published online: 05 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00014087

How to cite this article:

Albert de Jong (1998). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 61, pp
350-350 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00014087

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350 REVIEWS
first time since its prohibition in 1944' (p. 79)
is not strictly correct. Edegey: Tatarsky narodny
epos was published, in a Russian translation
by Semena Lipkina (Kazan: Tatar Book
Publishing House, 1990). The plates cannot
compare with the superb photographs which
grace Kazan: zacharovannaya stolitza, (London:
Flint River Press Ltd, 1995), printed in Russian
only, but in many ways the most attractive
book on the Volga Tatars ever to appear in
the West.
Professor Deliomeroglu's book is far from
idiomatic. The English is occasionally obscure
and minor printing errors abound. None the
less, the book is indexed and it is supplied with
a variety of statistics which are concerned with
industry, produce and, overall, with the general
economic structure and the demography of
Tatarstan.
H. T. NORR1S
MARIO VITALONE: The Persian revayat
'Ithoter': Zoroastrian rituals in the
eighteenth century. (Istituto Uni-
versitario Orientale. Dipartimento
di studi Asiatici. Series Minor,
Vol. XLIX.) 301pp. Napoli: Istituto
Universitario Orientale, 1996.
The subtitle of this important book may require
some explanation: the text here edited is not
about Zoroastrian rituals specifically. It is,
rather, an assorted collection of opinions on
various matters, ritual, doctrinal as well as
social. In this sense, the Ithoter clearly belongs
to the revayat genre and the fact that it was left
out of the collective publication of Zoroastrian
Persian revayats (best known in B. N. Dhabhar's
The Persian rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz and
others, Bombay, 1932, based on M. J. Unvala's
Persian edition of these texts) is mainly due to
the late date of its composition.
The Ithoter is the last of the great revayats,
and consists of 78 (Gujarati ithoter) questions
asked by Qadimi Parsi Zoroastrians and the
answers to them by Iranian priests. The history
of the division of the Parsi Zoroastrian commun-
ity into Qadimis (those who accepted an Iranian
version of the calendar and rescheduled their
calendar accordingly) and ' Shahanshahis'
(those who kept to the inherited Parsi tradition
concerning the calendar) is partly also a matter
of emancipation of the Parsi community:
whereas the Qadimis continued (for a while) to
acknowledge the superiority of Iranian
Zoroastrians over the Parsi community, the
' Shahanshahis' asserted their independence earl-
ier and more robustly. The Ithoter also reflects
this process of emancipation, by being the last
of the great revayats and unashamedly Qadimi.
All this is outlined by the editor of this
important text. The book is divided as follows:
after a brief introduction and a bibliography,
the Persian text of the Ithoter (based on two
manuscripts) is given, followed by a critical
apparatus. This is followed by a translation
and a detailed, well-organized commentary. A
glossary of technical terms (with a Persian key
to it) concludes the volume.
Any edition of this text would make an
important contribution to the history of
Zoroastrianism, by putting one of the many
unpublished materials relevant to the later
history of Zoroastrianism at the disposal of a
wider audience of scholars and those interested
in Zoroastrian history. But the importance of
the edition as we have it now is much greater
than that. In the commentary and in the
glossary all technical terms and rituals are fully
explained, with references to further literature.
This is a real blessing, because texts such as
these excel in phrases like ' The mobedzade who
has become nov/zud and who has consecrated
and recited the yast-e vesferad can, according
to the religion, act as rasfiduring the juddivddd'
(6.2). Such phrases may be wholly understand-
able for the (few) specialists in the field, but
they need to be constantly explained to ensure
the publication of such a text a wider audience.
More importantly, Vitalone maintains a
careful balance in his choice of sources used
for the interpretation of the text. Basically, one
can choose between two approaches: relying
on the modern ritual practice or relying on the
Pahlavi and Persian Zoroastrian ritual sources.
Only by carefully combining and comparing
both, and by trying to fit the information from
the Ithoter in the picture that thus emerges,
can one do justice to the text. Vitalone
admirably combines historical and contempor-
ary evidence in his commentary and thus by
and large avoids the danger of anachronistic
interpretations (by reading later developments
or abandoned medieval customs into this
eighteenth-century text).
The Ithoter may strike one as a text of minor
importance. Most of the subjects dealt with are
well known from other sources and the text
will therefore probably not alter perceptions of
Zoroastrianism, its rituals, or its history. The
present publication, however, is of great impor-
tance mainly for two reasons. The publication
of an eighteenth-century Zoroastrian text (and
there are more) showing Zoroastrianism as a
living tradition, maintained by its lay and
priestly followers through a strong emphasis
on orthopraxy combined with interest in and
knowledge of the meaning and background of
the rituals discussed, deals yet another blow to
the common image of Zoroastrianism in the
early nineteenth century as a wholly fossilized,
moribund tradition without much content,
waiting to be attacked by Christian missionar-
ies. This perception of the history of
Zoroastrianism, commonly encountered in the
works of scholars who wish to study earlier
periods of Zoroastrian history without having
to take into account the presence of
Zoroastrianism as a living faith in the modern
world, is not only a very simplistic way of
dealing with the history of Zoroastrianism, but
also contradicted by a mass of evidence, to
which the Ithoter can now be added. By its
lack of pretension and its consistently high
scholarly standards, as well as its accessibility
for scholars who do not specialize in later
Zoroastrian history, moreover, Vitalone's book
should serve as a model for the much needed
future work on Persian Zoroastrian literature.
ALBERT DE JONG