Gherardo Gnoli

Gherardo Gnoli (6 December 1937 in Rome – 7 March 2012 in Cagli) was a historian of Italian religions and Iran expert.

Quotes

Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland, 1980

G. Gnoli. Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland: A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems by Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Universitario Orientale, Seminario di Studi Asiatici, (Series Minor VII), Naples, 1980. Also quoted in Talageri, S. The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008); quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• Zoroastrianism had its beginnings in fairly early times, no later than the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C., in the eastern part of the Iranian plateau, in the central-southern regions rather than the decidedly northern ones.
  • 11

• I gradually grew more convinced of a number of definite points. First, that the milieu of the origin of Zoroaster or, as I was then inclined to think, of the tradition that bore his name, could not be in Chorasmia, either little or great”, ie. reaching as far as Marv and Harat, but must be sought in a region further south. Secondly, that the difference between the milieu of Zoroastrian origins and the cultural, social and political reality of the Achaemenian empire were so marked that they must needs be explained by means of a process of historical evolution that was neither brief nor superficial.
  • 13

• The gaining of this information on the primitive location of Mazandaran in the eastern and southeastern regions of Iran is remarkably important in reconstructing the early history of Zoroastrianism, just as important as the recognition of the fact that Avestan geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined to the East.
  • 45

• “With Varana and Ranha, as of course with Hapta Handu, which comes between them in the Vd. I list, we find ourselves straight away in Indian territory, or, at any rate, in territory that, from the very earliest times, was certainly deeply permeated by Indo-Aryans or Proto-Indoaryans.” ...
  • 47

• Ranha after Hapta Hendu and Varuna, belongs in all likelihood to the same Indian, or Indo-Iranian frontier area... refers to peoples who had settled along the banks of a river near the country of Hapta Hendu. The geographical picture , reconstructed in this way, would agree with the Indian evidence on the river Rasa, the Vedic equivalent of Ranha, to the extent that we could deduce a real identity between the two rivers.
  • 50-52

• An hypothesis based on the comparison of Avestan and Vedic evidence appears to be much more convincing. ... There can be no doubt that in some cases the places or rivers are in effect the same.
  • 56

• namely the entirely eastern character of the countries listed in the first chapter of the Vendidad, including Zoroastrian Raya, and the historical and geographical importance of that list.
  • 59

• As a matter of fact all this is due to a persistent effort to make accounts work out at all costs according to the logic of a pre-established plan.
  • 63

• The first chapter of the Vendidad seems to give considerable support to a theory that attempts to reconstruct an active presencce of the Iranian tribes .... in territories such as eastern Iran...
  • 68

• ... for identifying the aryo sayana with the vast region that stretches southward from the Hindukus... As a matter of fact, these Avestan texts.. give a fairly uniform picture: eastern Iran, with a certain prevalence of the southern regions or the countries reaching up to the southern slopes of the Hindukus. To make an attempt, as has been done, at reconstructing... the route followed by the Iranian tribes in their migration southwards, or the expansion in the same direction of the Zoroastrian community is, I think, in any case arbitrary from a methodological viewpoint.
  • 88

• And so we may conclude that Beneviste's theory, according to which... gave proof of the identity of Airyana Vaejah and Chorasmia ... is quite unacceptable.
  • 90

• The Chorsamian hypothesis, which is still quite commonly held amongst scholars, should definitely be abandoned, as the historico—philological and archaeological arguments on which it is based are essentially groundless. The historical perspective it fits into is also distorted, as it suggests a political situation in eastern Iran, in the period immediately before Achaemenian rule which is by no means backed up by the available sources. The sources tell us quite unequivocally of political supremacy exercised by the Bactrians in the eastern part of the plateau, certainly not by the Chorasmians whose alleged hegemony over the various peoples of eastern Iran is supposed to be recognized on the basis of arguments given in favour of the aforementioned theory. As a matter of fact, the little we are able to reconstruct of the Median or pre-Achaemenian period in the eastern regions should be reconstructed as a radically different political situation. This position of superiority amongst the eastern satrapies which Bactria seems to have had in Achaemenian times was probably the heritage of an earlier situation
  • 91-92

• There are no convincing arguments, whether historical or archaeological ones, for such an hypothesis. The archaeological arguments are not at all convincing... The historico-philological arguments are not convincing either.
  • 95, about the Chorsamian hypothesis

• With regard to this region, Xwarizm, far from being a center for the spreading of such an important part of Iranian civilization as the Zoroastrian doctrine was, appears, upon an unprejudiced examination, as a remote, outlying province which never played a really central part in the political and cultural history of Iran before the Middle Ages.
  • 110

• The idea of a Turanian, or Scythian, or Chorasmian period of Zoroastrianism... should thus be definitely rejected.
  • 114

• What has been said so far about the Tuiryas... persuades us once again that ther eis no good reason for seeking the primitive location of Iranian Turan in a historico-geographical horizon that is necessarily different from the one in which the Iranian Airyas lived...
  • 120-1

• “in the denomination of Ariana, which became known to the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest of the eastern territories of the old Persian empire, there was obviously reflected a tradition that located the Aryan region in the central-southern part of eastern Iran, roughly from the Hindukus southwards, and that considered some of the Medes and the Persians in the west and some of the Bactrians and Sogdians in the north as further extensions of those people who were henceforth known by the name of Ariani. And this, to tell the truth, fits nicely into the picture we have been trying to piece so far. Here too, as in the passages of the Avesta we have studied from the Mihr Yast and the Zamyad Yast, the geographical horizon is central-eastern and southeastern; the northern lands are also completely peripheral, and Chorasmia, which is present only in the very peculiar position of which we have spoken in the Mihr Yast, is not included.” ...
  • 141

• I simply cannot understand ... how one can think that "... its original may have been the Black Sea or Caspian, as known to dwellers on the steppe-lands to the North..."... it seems evident to me that the geographical horizon ... is the one we are familiar with by now: the central-southern areas of eastern Iran, south of the Hindukus.
  • 149

• “the importance of cattle in various aspects of the Gathic doctrine can be taken as certain. This importance can be explained as a reflection in religious practice and myth of a socioeconomic set-up in which cattle-raising was a basic factor.” ...
  • 153

• ...either they construct an antagonism of an essentially ethnic character... The first of these two hypotheses is not based on any sound arguments. On the contrary...
  • 157

• There is no evidence for thinking that the Zoroastrian message was meant for the Iranians alone. On the-contrary, history suggests that the exact opposite is likely, and there are also indisputable facts … which show clearly that Zoroaster’s teaching was addressed, earlier on at least to all men ... whether they were Iranians or not, Proto-Indoaryans or otherwise…

• “The fact [is] that Avestan geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined to the east,” ...[this list is] “remarkably important in reconstructing the early history of Zoroastrianism”. ...

• [The horizon of the Avesta] “is according to Burrow, wholly eastern and therefore certainly earlier than the westward migrations of the Iranian tribes.” ...

• [the attempt to transpose the geography of the Avesta from Afghanistan to western Iran] “was doubtless due to different attempts made by the most powerful religious centres of western Iran and the influential order of the Magi to appropriate the traditions of Zoroastrianism that had flourished in the eastern territories of the plateau in far-off times. Without a doubt, the identification of Raya with Adurbadagan, more or less parallel with its identification with Ray, should be fitted into the vaster picture of the late location of Airyana Vaejah in Adarbayjan.” ...

• [the Avesta reflects] “an historical situation in which Iranian elements exist side by side with … Aryan or Proto-Indoaryan (elements)”. ...

• “we may consider that the northernmost regions where Zoroaster carried out his work were Bactria and Areia”. ...

• [the airyo-Sayana refers to] “the vast region that stretches southward from the Hindukus,” ... “from the southern slopes of the great mountain chains towards the valleys of the rivers that flow south, like the Hilmand…” “there is a substantial uniformity in the geographical horizon between Yt.XIX and Yt.X ... and the same can be said for Vd.I … these Avestan texts which contain in different forms, and for different purposes, items of information that are useful for historical geography give a fairly uniform picture: eastern Iran, with a certain prevalence of the countries reaching upto the southern slopes of the Hindukus.” ...

• [Likewise, in later Greek tradition, Ariane] “is the Greek name which doubtless reflects an older Iranian tradition that designated with an equivalent form the regions of eastern Iran lying mostly south, and not north, of the Hindukus. It is clear how important this information is in our research as a whole.” ...

• The Hilmand region and the Hamun-i Hilmand are beyond all doubt the most minutely described countries in Avestan geography. ...

• [This region is subject to] “a process of spiritualization of Avestan geography … in the famous celebration of the Hilmand in the Zamyad Yast…”, and “this pre-eminent position of Sistan in Iranian religious history and especially in the Zoroastrian tradition is a very archaic one that most likely marks the first stages of the new religion … the sacredness of the Hamun-i Hilmand goes back to pre-Zoroastrian times…” ...

• [In the Avestan descriptions of Varana (in the Vendidad), Gnoli sees] “a country, where the ‘Airyas’ (Iranians) were not rulers and where there was probably a hegemony of Indo-Aryan or proto-Indoaryan peoples.”

• [Airyana Vaējah... ]"the country is characterized, in the Vd.I context, by an advanced state of mythicization".

• [Gnoli identifies the sixteenth land, Raηhā, as an ―] eastern mountainous area, Indian or Indo-Iranian, hit by intense cold in winter.

De Zoroastre à Mani, 1985

Gnoli, Gherarda, 1985: De Zoroastre à Mani, Paris, Institut d’Etudes Iraniennes, Sorbonne.

• We can therefore attribute to an essentially mythical geography certain common Indo-Iranian conceptions: the conception of Mount Hara in the Avesta or Mount Meru or Sumeru in India; that of the seven regions of the earth: the Iranian kesvar or the Indian dvipa; that of a central region: Xanirata or Jambudvipa respectively in Iran and India; that of the Tree of all seeds in the Vourukasa sea south of Mount Hara in Iran, and of the Jambu tree south of Mount Meru in India, etc.
  • 16-17

• If to these reasons we add archaeological considerations that demonstrate the entirely peripheral situation of Chorasmia in relation to the Iranian world of the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, we can exclude this northeastern region from the geographic horizon of Zoroastrian origins. Chorasmia retained this peripheral position throughout the entire 1st millennium BCE... No valid argument can make us think that it was ever decisively larger than present-day Khwarezm and that it extended to much more southern territories.
  • 19

• It is farther south than in Chorasmia that we must strive to reconstruct the historical environment where the Iranian prophet lived and acted. A set of data from different sources... leads... to shifting our focus toward the areas around the Hindu Kush and toward the lands south of these mountains...in short, between ancient Bactria and the ancient Drangiana and Arachosia.
  • 20

• Muza recalls the Sanskrit Mujavant, to be located in a region between the Hindu Kush and the Pamir.
  • 22

• Mount Hara, which in Iranian cosmography is the counterpart of Mount Meru in Indian cosmography, is clearly identifiable in the Mihr Yast with Paropamisos, Para-uparisaina.
  • 23

• The geographical framework of Vd. I is entirely that of eastern Iran.
  • 25

• This list... in my opinion, has the same meaning as the lists of the sixteen Great Territories, sodasa mahājanapada, subjected to the Aryan element according to Buddhist, Jain, and epic sources of 6th-century BCE India. The first fargard of the Vendidad – I do not know if this parallelism has ever been observed – is a Zoroastrian list of the sixteen Great Territories in which the Aryan element spread, albeit unevenly.
  • 25

• Given its very Oriental horizon, this list must be pre-Achaemenid; on the other hand, the remarkable extendedness of the territories concerned recommends situating them in a period much later than the Zoroastrian origins. (…) one or several centuries later than Zarathuštra’s preaching.
  • Gnoli, Gherarda, 1985: De Zoroastre à Mani, Paris, Institut d’Etudes Iraniennes, Sorbonne. (page 25), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. About the list of 16 countries in the first chapter of the Vendidād.
  • about the list of sixteen countries in The first chapter of the Vendidād
  • 25

• The case of Vakereta was resolved by S. Lévi, who linked it to the name of the yakṣa of Gandhāra, Vaikr̥tika, in the list of the Mahāmāyūrī. This identification is solid and widely accepted, as evidenced by the consensus it has gathered.
  • 26

• Varena was identified by Henning with Buner, the Varnu of the Mahāmāyūrī.
  • 28

• For Ranha, finally, as for Vakereta, Varena, and Hapta Hendu, I believe that the comparison with Vedic or ancient Indian geography is valid: just as for these three countries we consider the comparison with Vaikrta, Varnu, and Sapta Sindhavah significant, so too for the country on the waters of the Ranha we can consider the comparison with the Vedic river Rasa no less significant, which is sometimes mentioned together with Kubha (the Kabul) and Krumu (the Kurram), as in RV V, 53, 9.
  • 29

• This suggests to us a conclusion which, in my view, is historically important: the northern steppes, the Aral region, the lands beyond the Syr Darya and probably also those beyond the Amu Darya, remain outside the reconstructed horizon... This means that Zoroastrianism... was born in an area of the Iranian or Iranianized world where, for centuries, cultural, social, and economic processes developed...
  • 31

• In the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, groups of states were present on the western and southern margins of this territory, while Chorasmia was inhabited by populations living mainly by subsistence economy.
  • 32

• The discoveries made by Soviet archaeologists in Margiana and Bactria uncovered settlements and constructions of such complexity that they leave us little doubt about the special importance of these regions in the cultural geography of Central Asia and eastern Iran until the threshold of the 1st millennium BCE... one can conjecture, in the pre-Achaemenid period, the existence of an extensive geopolitical entity: research conducted on the ground would suggest attributing it either to Bactria alone or to a larger geopolitical entity that also included Margiana and Sogdiana, a parallel technique, even prior to the rise of the Achaemenids, but in which neither the Persians nor the Medes seem to have been much involved.
  • 32

• On the contrary, it was certainly not before the Achaemenid period that areas with greater agricultural potential like Sogdiana and Chorasmia were widely populated and exploited. In light of archaeological research results, this delay is attributed less to their intrinsic geographical characteristics than to the distance separating these areas from those that, in the 3rd millennium BCE, saw the first state formations in eastern Iran. This marginality will disappear when they become demographically saturated and fully exploitable.
  • 33

• This is one of the regions in our geographical horizon that probably witnessed the origins of Zoroastrianism: Sistan, and more precisely, the basin of the Hamun-i Helmand.
  • 33

• Zoroastrianism was born on a cultural and religious ground that is several centuries, even millennia old...
  • 34

• This suggests a long and complex prehistory, largely documented by archaeological evidence... which allows us to reconstruct a sort of ideological detachment process related to the bovine, an animal that was certainly at the base of the economy of the Indus Valley and the Iranian plateau.
  • 34

• The only Ariana we know is Strabo's Ariana, whose Geography describes its limits precisely: to the east the Indus, to the south the Arabian Sea, and to the west an irregular line...
  • 42

• Zoroaster probably lived at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, within the vast region known to the Greeks... The Central Asian steppes or Chorasmia are again excluded from this geographical horizon.
  • 43

• All this gives Sistan a central role regarding the origins of Zoroastrianism, as it is almost presented to us as the Zoroastrian land par excellence.
  • 45

• This would probably be the first known case of transposition from east to west of a sacred place in the Zoroastrian tradition...
  • 46

• Such religious thought was formed... in the central and southern zones of the eastern Iranian world...
  • 52

The Idea of Iran, 1989

Gnoli, G. (1989). The Idea of Iran: An essay on its origin. Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente.

• The only possible identification of Airyana Vaejah must point to the great Hindukus mountain range.
  • 42

• The main obstacle to a reconstruction that closely links the western Aryas to the Avestan Airyas is, in my opinion, the one arising from the theories that the Medes and the Persians emigrated from the North rather than from the East, that is to say, for instance, from south-east Russia (some scholars connect them with the so-called Andronovo culture) to the region lying North or North-West of the Caspian and across the Caucasus to the Urmia Lake region and, lastly, in an easterly and southeasterly direction towards the Zagros mountains.
  • 71-2

• Now, the obstacle that arises from the theory of the Medes and the Persians having emigrated from the North ... on the basis of a highly conjectural interpretation of the archaeological evidence, is now removed by the archaeologists themselves. A body of evidence... orients us in quite a different direction, namely towards that of a migratory movement, probably a slow, progressive one, from East to West, along the great Khorasan Road.....
  • 72

• A much more convincing theory than that of the western Iranians having emigrated from North to South across the Caucasus is that of a slow, progressive East-West emigration, a gradual penetration as it were, over the centuries, from the end of the 2nd millennium to the first half of the 1st millennium B.C. ...
  • 74

• Having done away with the obstacle provided by the theory of the trans-Caucasian migration..., we can see both these peoples as western branches of those same Airyas that in the Younger Avesta are described as being settled in such a large part of the eastern Iranian world....
  • 76

• When we speak of Medes and Persians, we must not lose sight of a historical perspective. In all likelihood, the ethnic groups of the Medes and the Persians that were settling the historical lands in the 8th century B.C. must already have been the result of processes of assimilation of heterogeneous ethnic, linguistic and cultural elements.
  • Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran , page 76.

• The foregoing leads us to believe that the answer which we gave earlier, at the beginning of this chapter, to the question as to whether we ought to see a sort of continuity and a close link between the western Aryas, the Medes and the Persians and the Airyas of the Avestan people, is a well grounded one. We can reply that the Aryas who became part of the ethnic groups of the Medes and the Persians were none other than western branches of the Avestan Airyas who, in their westward migrations, had taken with them the name Aryan and so had extended, in a way, the boundaries of Ariana proper.
  • 79-80

• These Aryas doubtless took with them their religious traditions as well, and this explains in what terms we must speak of the Achaemenians’ belonging to the airya tradition, i.e. to a religious and cultural heritage from a country further east. Afterwards Mazdeism grew up amongst them, and we do not know of any Mazdeism that could be defined for a certainty as non—Zoroastrian, nor, as I have tried to show elsewhere, have we any real reason, even if we take into account the name as—sa-ra ‘ma-za—as in the Assyrian tablets, to maintain that the very conception of a god such as Ahura Mazda was not the work of Zarathustra, in spite of the opinion of some leading scholars to the contrary and a hypothesis put forward recently by F.B.J. Kuiper. On the contrary, we might suppose that it was the decisive and most original feature of the message of the great prophet of ancient Iran’.
  • 80

• Thus Airyana Vaéjah was the new Zoroastrian name for the country that was considered the centre of the main karSvarq where the Iranian ‘Meru’ stood and through which there flowed the “Aryan” reach of the river that was renamed Vanuhi Daitya,

• We do not know for certain which river of the traditional cosmology it corresponded to, although the one that naturally comes to mind is the river Arodvi Brzi. Likewise we are unsure of its identification with this or that river of actual geography, although in this case, too, it does not seem that we have a great many rivers to choose from. For a number of reasons that we cannot go into here, as it would lead us too far astray the only rivers we can seriously take into consideration are those such as the Oxus and the Helmand... I have already collected on several occasions evidence and arguments in favour of the latter river in particular...
  • Gherardo Gnoli The Idea of Iran , 52-3