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Paper abstract:

This paper will explore two Christian martyrs acts that center around queens who are martyred by the orders of their Zoroastrian husbands. The Martyrdom of Candida (c. 4th or 5th cen. CE) takes place in the Sasanian Persian Empire, and discusses the death of a Roman woman who was married to the Persian king, and martyred for maintaining Christian beliefs and denying her husband’s Zoroastrian faith. The Vita of Shushanik (c. 5th cen. CE) follows a similar path, and details the life of Shushanik, an Armenian woman married to the leader of a powerful family in Kartli (modern east Georgia), who was tortured and killed by her husband for professing Christianity. These two martyr acts stand out against the myriad of Christian martyr acts of the Sasanian Era* since other female martyr acts of this time and geographical area generally focus on unmarried virginal martyrs. While the virginal martyr acts are generally considered a specific trope in martyr literature, martyrdom acts revolving around married women have not been giving this level of analysis thus far. This paper will argue that in addition to the virginal martyr genre, there must have been a budding trope of the “queen martyr” in this period. Furthermore, I will argue that the trope of queen martyr, as shown through Candida and Shushanik, accomplishes three things for their authors: 1) they attempt to show that the Zoroastrian leaders are unfit for leadership, 2) they attempt to convince their readers of the immorality, especially in marriage, of Zoroastrian men, and 3) they attempt to invert gender norms by showing the strength (male power) of these Christian women in opposition to the weakness (femininity) of their Zoroastrian husbands. Thus, these authors use the trope of queen martyrs as an inversion of gender and religious norms in order to explicate the Sasanian persecution of Christians as indicative of Zoroastrian weakness.

*We can include the Vita of Shushanik as part of the history of Christianity of the Sasanian Era since her husband was from a Persian family, and converted to Zoroastrianism to obtain support from the Sasanian kings. See Margit Biro, “Shushanik’s Georgian Vita,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 38, no. 1/2 (1984): 187–200

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Among the earliest examples of Buddha images are copper coins, bronze and gold caskets, and stone sculptures made during the reign of King Kanishka I (127 to 150 CE) of the Kushan empire in Gandhara and Mathura. In China, studies of early Buddha images have centered around those attached to the bronze money trees and pottery jars as decorative elements discovered along the Yangtze River region. Recently, the discovery of two Buddhist statues in a tomb at an Eastern Han family cemetery, dated to around 158 CE, in Xianyang in 2021 has provided new evidence for the earliest free-standing Buddha statues in China and the early transmission of Buddha image from Gandhara to Chang’an. This paper aims to discuss the archaeological context and chronology of the two statues, possible identity of the tomb occupant, and cross-border traveling activities of both people and portable metal objects which enabled the early transmission of Buddha images, and adaptation of Gandhara style to the local taste, and new way of acting introduced by the two portable free-standing Buddha statues.

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This paper is going to make a historical analysis by comparing different religions in order to examine the topic of ‘Ten Kings of the Hell’ from both Buddhism and Manichaeism during the period in and after Tang Dynasty. The names and conceptions of the ‘Ten Kings’ and their kingships are very same according to the manuscripts from Dunhuang and Xiapu. It is probably inferred that there is relationship between them. Since there is a discussion about how and whether the topic of ‘Ten Kings’ came from Buddhism and influenced Manichaeism or oppositely in China, and there is another more original description about the conception of hell in Manichaeism in Sasanid, I am going to argue three points: first, the ‘Ten Kings’ in Manichaeism is influenced by Buddhism and there is a development of the topic about ‘thrones in hell’ within Manichaeism from Sasanid to China, which shows a change of; second, there are different understandings to think of the change about the conception and description of ‘Hell’ in Manichaeism, from which it can point to different comments about the Manichaeism in China; third, there are different schools of Buddhism and the one which influenced Manichaeism most with the topic of ’Ten Kings of the Hell’ should be the School of Three Stages. The paper will be based on the murals of the Mogao Caves, the manuscripts from Turpan, Dunhuang and Xiapu, Books of Manichaeism and Buddhism. I will focus on the comparison between Buddhism and Manichaeism, Sasanian Manichaeism and Chinese Manichaeism, and different schools in Buddhism and make historical research. My argument should be relevant with the interaction between Buddhism and Manichaeism, the development of Manichaeism in the Mid-age, the interaction between China and the foreign religions coming in, and the cross-culture research about the world after death.

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Paper abstract:

Although our knowledge of the non-Sassanian/non-Persian Iranian religion(s) is incomplete due to the paucity of surviving (Zoroastrian) theological works of the various Eastern Iranian peoples, aspects can be recovered from archeological and numismatic evidence (e.g. Grenet 2006). But even this kind of data naturally only displays the beliefs of, e.g., the Bactrian and Sogdian elites who ordered coins to be minted and statues to be erected.

It is difficult to gather meaningful data about the pre-Islamic religions of those Eastern Iranians who have left no written traces in pre-Islamic Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it is possible to uncover a few specific features of the local pantheons by means of linguistic data.

In ancient ethno-religious communities, the everyday name of a natural concept was often also the name of the deity associated with it. For example, the Roman Luna, the Greek Σελήνη, the Egyptian jˁḥ, but also the Sogdian mʾx and Middle Persian mʾh stand for both the divine being and the moon as such.

In this respect, we can assume some Eastern Iranians worshipped a female moon deity, and not the male mʾx/mʾh, Avestan mā̊. The words for ‘moon’ in some contemporary languages are (at least originally) feminine: Munji yúmag/γo, yumáγika, Sanglechi wulmék, Wakhi ẓ̌əmak can be linked to Bactrian ϸομογο˚ and Sogdian ʾxšwm˚, both part of theophoric names (Sims-Williams 2010: no. 558). The words in question ultimately derive from an epithet *uxšma-(kā-/-kī-) ‘waxing, growing’, clearly referring to the moon. I argue that this epithet originally referred to a goddess *māsti- f., cf Khotanese māstä- f. ‘moon; month’, Pashto myāšt f. ‘month; (dialectal) moon’, Shughni mêst ‘moon’.

Pashto ẓ̌o, today an outdated exclamation used in oaths, derives from *zr̥wā ‘Zurvan’ (Morgenstierne 2003: 29), and suggests an important position of this deity among the pre-Islamic Pashto speakers.

These and other lexical vestiges provide us with a picture of the Iranian religion(s) in the Hindukush towards the end of the 1st millennium CE, on which I would like to elaborate in my talk.

References

Grenet, Frantz. 2006. “Iranian Gods in Hindu Garb: The Zoroastrian Pantheon of the Bactrians and Sogdians,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute, new series, vol. 20, pp. 87-99.

Morgenstierne, Georg. 2003. A New Etymological Dictionary of Pashto. Ed. by J. Elfenbein, D.N. MacKenzie, N. Sims-Williams. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reicher Verlag.

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2010. Bactrian Personal Names. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.