RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESdifference between Magians and non-Magians. Three customs in par-
ticular-eating in ritual silence, consanguinous marriage, and exposing
the deed-were identified with Magians by non-Magians and provided
points of conflict. Magians ate silently (in biij) while only "murmuring"
(zamzama) in order to avoid polluting their food by spitting saliva on
it.^94 Consanguinous marriage (M.P. khvetodiit) between a man and
his mother, sister, or daughter was approved as a holy union that
increased affection, solidarity, and equality within a family and pre-
served the purity of descent of the upper classes. It also preserved their
social exclusiveness, concentrated their wealth, and provoked horror
at incest from non-Magians. The best example in the late Sasanian
period is the marriage of Mihriimgushnasp to his sister Hazar6e.^95
In order to avoid defiling the earth through contact with a corpse,
Magians disposed of the dead by exposing their bodies to the sun in
a high, barren spot, where they would be devoured by dogs and birds
of prey. The bones were then placed in an ossuary so rain water would
not be defiled. Although allowing rain to fall on a corpse was a source
of pollution, the Videvdiit contains the notion that a body that has
lain in a tomb for a year ought to be rained on and devoured by birds
in recoinpense for not being exposed to the sun. Not only did Magians
resent the age-old custom of inhumation practiced by Jews, Christians,
and others in Iraq, but the Magian practice was equally offensive to
those whose eschatology depended on the resurrection of the body.
Magians seem to have answered such objections with the argument
that a Creator who had made people out of nothing in the first place
should be able to do it again at the end of the world.^96
By the end of the Sasanian period Magians can be described as
forming an incipient religious community in Iraq. They were united
among themselves and differentiated from the members of other re-
ligions around them by an organized priesthood, a distinctive cult and
liturgy, a form of religious education, law, and religiously sanctioned
social customs. Althoegh Magianism was essentially a ruling-class
religion, efforts at creating a larger group identity by spreading the
Magian way of life among common Persians appear to have begun in
94 Boyce, "Biij and Dron," pp. 300-301; Tha'alibI, Ghurar, p. 259.
95 De Menasce, Denkart, p. 85-90,208; idem, "Texte syriaque," pp. 593-97, 601;
Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 95; Tha'alibI, Ghurar, pp. 259-61; Ya'qiibI, Ta'rikh,
I, 199.
96 Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems, pp. 93-94; D. Bishop, Form and Content in the
Videvdiid: A Study of Change and Continuity in the Zoroastrian Tradition (Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia Univ. 1974), pp. 76-80, 84, 109-10; Boyce, History, pp. 325-28; Prokopios,
Wars, l. xi. 35; xii. 4.