Braindroppings: Skjaervo

June 04, 2005

Skjaervo

In the past four days, I have been busy with a series of three lectures about Iranian Studies. The speaker was Prof. P. Oktor Skjaervo, the famous professor of Iranian studies and the chair of the NELC department at Harvard. He was talking as the featured speaker of the 6th Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series.

All of the talks, particularly the second and the third one, were extremely interesting. They concentrated on the Iranian oral tradition and their role in the development of Zoroastrianism and in particular, Zarathushtra himself. Basically, Prof. Skjaervo, as well as Prof. Jean Kellens, believes that a person named Zarathushtra, as the prophet of Zoroastrianism, did not exist and is a myth built on older oral traditions. The evidence provided were certainly sufficient and thought provoking.

I knew about the theory from before and had talked about them with other scholars of the field. I am surely not the person to judge, but I was hoping that he presents us with something more convincing. Basically, my question has always been that even if we assume the non-existence of Zarathushtra (what difference does it make anyway), still, we have 17 poems, linguistically close-bound and belonging to roughly the same era, presenting a cohesive series of ideas (the Gathas). Even if we take the person out of the picture, what are the implications of the ideas? I hope to find out someday. I am convinced that there are two sides to the story, and although I believe Zarathushtra existed (basically, I see the matter of his existence to be of no consequence, so why not just assume that he did exist?), I am willing to explore the world of Gathas, assuming he did not exist!

Beside all of these matters, the rest of the events, including having lunch and dinner with Skjaervo himself, as well as two nights of hanging out in a bar and drinking with him, were quite fun. He is a very lively person who easily gets out of his academic skin in social situations and is quite a pleasant company. He is "cool", talkative, and engaging. I enjoyed his company immensly, and I hope he enjoyed our company as well (all of the students I mean)! I wish more scholars were like him and could come out of their shells more. It was also interesting to see him get into an argument with my advisor over some matter!

He was also quite cool about answering unusual, childish questions, or questions from those who think they know everything, just because they have just finished reading "philosophy for dummies". When asked a question about the role of Zarathushtra in today's society (something that had nothing to do with his textual analysis of the Avesta), he answered with a brief: "that's not my problem, that's yours!", which cheered everyone up!

Anyway, I had a good four days, and in a very dorkish way, I had a lot of fun!

Posted by Khodadad at June 4, 2005 06:56 AM

Comments

I'm glad you had fun at the lectures. :) I do not know much about Zoroastrianism. Was Zarathushtra ever worshipped as a god or as a manifestation of something more than a man? If so, I would think that his existence would be of great consequence to believers.

Btw, I don't think there is anything dorkish about doing something you enjoy or are passionate about. :)

Posted by: David at June 5, 2005 12:29 PM

David:

Zarathushtra as a man plays no role in the religion itself. Actually, Zoroastrianism is a bad term. The religion is properly called Mazdayasnaism or "The Good Religion" (Behdini). Zarathushtra himself is not revered at all. Indeed, his name seldom appears in the religious texts prior to the 2nd century AD.

Posted by: khodadad at June 6, 2005 11:26 PM

Khodadad,
I’m always fascinated when a non-Iranian chooses to study Iran to the point of becoming a leading scholar on it. Particularly for someone raised in Europe or the US where schools teach virtually nothing about Iran other than as a precursor to the rise of their beloved Alexander. In fact, in Europe and the US, even before the revolution, I don't think Iran was viewed as a particularly special place and did not have the historical or cultural “popularity”, if you will, of India, china or Egypt. I’m curious to know if you or anyone asked Dr. Skjearvo how he ended up making Iranian culture (of all things) his life long study?

Posted by: Bahram at June 16, 2005 09:28 PM

Posted by: pharmacy at July 11, 2005 07:54 AM