scripture has ritual uses aimed at giving religion meaning in daily life. in zoroastrianism, the niya¯yišns, ‘invocations of praise’, and the yašts, ‘devotional poems’ have played fundamental roles in connecting doctrine and theology to praxis and conviction whereby faith and rites have been transmitted and augmented across many generations. this article discusses some of the contents and traditions of each niya¯yišn and yašt plus the functions those religious texts have fulfilled and continue to serve for zoroastrians from ancient through modern times.
The word bāj (older wāj) has been an important part of Zoroastrian religious vocabulary from at least Sasanian times; and the act of ‘taking the bāj ‘is so general and significant that in a Jewish-Persian text the Zoroastrians are distinguished thereby from those of other faiths: gabragān abā bāj-stānš ān ‘the Zoroastrians with their taking the bāj ‘.1 Down the centuries the word has acquired additional meanings; but the range of its usages in older times was already so wide that E. W. West, working on the Pahlavi texts, applied for an interpretation of them to Tehmuras D. Anklesaria. This Anklesaria admirably provided, in a letter which he himself subsequently published among the appendixes to the Gujarati translation of the first part of the Dādestdn ī dīnīg, made by him in collaboration with S. D. Bharucha.2 This was the pioneer treatment of the term.
In the first part of this study ‘framing’ bāj have been considered in connexion with religious rituals celebrated in the fire-temples, and with acts for achieving or maintaining ritual purity, mostly by pāw-mahal priests. Here it is proposed to consider such bāj as are needed and used in daily life.
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