In this colloquium, two doctoral researchers will provide insights into their ongoing dissertation projects.
The Cosmology of Animal Sacrifice in Ancient India and Iran (Elia Weber)
Vedic ritual practice has been described as a re-enactment of mythological actions first performed by divine beings. A famous example is constituted by the myth of the creation of the world through the primordial human sacrifice, which the Vedic tradition ultimately regards as the origin of the animal sacrifice. Similar ideas have been applied to the difficult-to-reconstruct mythology of the Avesta and its implication for the rituals performed in the Avestan language, above all by representatives of the so-called “ritual school” in Avestan studies. Amir Ahmadi, on the other hand, has recently argued against the notion of a cosmogonic sacrifice for the ancient Zoroastrian religion. He doubts that the Avesta provides direct evidence for this hypothesis, and points out the scarcity of supporting data in the Middle Persian corpus. Against the backdrop of these two alternative hypotheses, the presentation will review the available Middle Persian evidence for animal sacrifice as a cosmogonic ritual, and seek to answer the question whether a picture similar to the one given by the Indian sources emerges from the Avestan mythology of the cow.
Materielle Dimension des Kultur- und Religionskontaktes am Bespiel der Sammlung der Afrikamissionare (Belinda Peters)
