202 | CHAPTER 7
The King of Kings Shapur [I: c. 241–72], son of Ardashir, collected
again the writings deriving from the religion concerning medicine, as-
tronomy, movement, time, space, substance, accident, becoming, decay,
transformation, logic, and other crafts and skills, which were dispersed
among the Indians and the Greeks and other lands, and he caused them
to fit the Avesta. Every correct copy he ordered to be deposited in the
treasury of the (royal) quarters, and considered establishing every prov-
ince (?) upon (the principles of ) the Mazdean religion.^20
This grandiose project, aimed at gathering universal wisdom under the
aegis of Zarathushtra, rests on the belief that Alexander the Macedonian had
brutally disrupted the Iranian learned tradition and dispersed it to the four
winds, and that all Greek wisdom was really Iranian. It also reflects the open,
invigorating atmosphere of the sixth- century Sasanian court, known for its
philosophical including Aristotelian culture. (There are indeed signs of both
Indian and Greek influences in the surviving books of the Avesta, as well as
in other Iranian literature of the period.^21 ) yet after the Arab conquest and
with the beginning of Islamization, the core Avestan tradition will have
seemed still more in need of exegesis than it had in Sasanid times. Even the
compilers of the Denkard seem to have worked from the Middle Persian
translation.^22 Examining the whole of the Denkard in all its haphazard vari-
ety, we see how much of it consists of summaries, glosses, and commentaries
designed to illuminate the obscurity of the Mazdean scriptures. We also find
the legend of Zarathushtra, an abundance of moral stories and precepts con-
veying the essence of the religion in digestible form, and a good deal of theol-
og y and law (but not ritual law^23 ) alongside other sections on science and
medicine. The Denkard often takes a rational or philosophical approach, and
is polemical in its treatment of other religions, especially Judaism and Mani-
cheism. At the same time, it seeks to save and make sense of the Avestan reli-
gion, at a time when it was under attack from Muslims for its alleged
dualism.
We saw how the crystallization of Muslim theolog y and philosophy pro-
voked in mature and dynamic Christian patristics a restatement of some of
its themes in the new language of Arabic theologizing. In Judaism it trig-
gered philosophical debate, and even made some impact in rabbinic circles
(Saadia). In Mazdaism, though, the Muslim challenge stimulated a much
more thoroughgoing reappraisal, an attempt to save what could be saved
20 Denkard [ed. D. M. Madan, The complete text of the Pahlavi Dinkard (Bombay 1911)] 4, 412–15
[tr. Shaked, Dualism [3:15] 100–101; limited divergences in Cantera, Studien [7:12] 109]; cf. Gutas,
Greek thought [5:92] 34–45.
21 Shaked, Dualism [3:15] 104–6.
22 Cantera, Studien [7:12] 15–16.
23 Secunda [6:56], in Bakhos and Shayegan (eds), Talmud in its Iranian context [4:64] 152.