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Cover -- The Bundahišn -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Middle Persian and Avestan Pronunciation Table -- Foreword: The Bundahišn Account of Creation: Myth, Speculation, and Paradox -- Shaul Shaked -- Introduction -- Prologue -- 1. On Material Creation -- 2. On the Fashioning of the Lights -- 3. On How and Why Creation Went to Battle -- 4. On How the Adversary Burrowed Through to Creation -- 5. On the Opposition of the Two Spirits: That Is, How the Demon Chiefs Came Spiritually to Oppose the Spiritual Deities -- 6. On the Stages of the Battle of Material Creation against the Evil Spirit -- 7. On the Likenesses of the Creatures -- 8. On the Nature of the Lands -- 9. On the Nature of the Mountains -- 10. On the Nature of the Seas -- 11. On the Nature of the Rivers -- 12. On the Nature of Lakes -- 13. On the Nature of the Five Forms of Animals -- 14. On the Nature of Mankind -- 15. On the Nature of the Birth of All Species -- 16. On the Nature of Plants -- 17. On the Mastery of Men, Animals, and Everything -- 18. On the Nature of Fire -- 19. On the Nature of Sleep -- 20. On Songs -- 21. On the Nature of Wind, Clouds, and Rain -- 22. On the Nature of Vermin -- 23. On the Nature of the Wolf Species -- 24. On Various Things: How They Were Created and How Their Adversaries Came -- 25. On the Religious Year -- 26. On the Great Deeds of the Spiritual Deities -- 27. On Ahriman and the Demons' Evil Deeds -- 28. On the Human Body as the Measure of the Material World -- 29. On the Mastery of the Continents -- 30. On the Činwad Bridge and the Souls of the Departed -- 31. On the Celebrated Lands of Iran and the Kayanid House -- 32. On the Glorious Kayanid Palaces, Which They Call Wonders and Marvels -- 33. On the Calamities That Have Befallen Iran, Millennium by Millennium -- 34. On Resurrection and the Final Body. ""The Bundahišn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology, and one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Touching on geography, cosmogony, anthropology, zoology, astronomy, medicine, legend, and myth, the Bundahišn can be considered a concise compendium of Zoroastrian knowledge. The Bundahišn is well known in the field as an essential primary source for the study of ancient Iranian history, religions, literature, and languages. It is one of the most important texts composed in Zoroastrian Middle Persian, also known as Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi, in the centuries after the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the invading Arab and Islamic forces in the mid seventh century. The Bundahišn provides scholars with a particularly profitable window on Zoroastrianism's intellectual and religious history at a crucial transitional moment: centuries after the composition of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred scriptures, and before the transformation of Zoroastrianism into a minority religion within Iran and adherents' dispersion throughout Central and South Asia. However, the Bundahišn is not only a scholarly tract. It is also a great work of literature in its own right, and ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod's Theogony, and others. Informed by the latest research in Iranian Studies, this translation aims to bring to the fore the aesthetic quality, literary style, and complexity of this important work.""--
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