SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article provides a study of a chapter of a Zoroastrian treatise on religious education, a text entitled Hērbedestān. Chapter 5 survives in a single manuscript only. In spite of its poor transmission, however, on the basis of a detailed philological analysis of the Avestan language it is argued that the text provides valuable insight into the circumstances and mechanisms by which the Zoroastrian religion might have been disseminated by its religiously educated lay members. The latter could have been men, women or minor children. The Pahlavi version of this chapter is edited by Maria Macuch in the same volume.