The volume edited by Kioanoosh Rezania brings together seventeen
articles by Philip Kreyenbroek on the subject of Zoroastrianism. The
collection represents the author's most important short contributions on
that subject, written over a period of more than 30 years. Although the
papers are concerned with a range of different subjects, they are to
some extent interconnected, and in several cases, one may find lines of
argument emerging in one article which the author develops in subsequent
papers. The papers cover six important aspects of Zoroastrianism:
History; the Zoroastrian tradition and its oral transmission; Cosmology,
Cosmogony and Eschatology; Priesthood; and Ritual. Topics discussed
there include the history of the Zoroastrian tradition in various
periods; the mainly oral nature of the Zoroastrian religious tradition
until well into the Islamic period, and some of the implications of this
for our understanding of that tradition; Kreyenbroek's views and
hypotheses on the nature and origin of the Indo-Iranian and Zoroastrian
cosmogonies; the various developments in the structure of the
priesthood, particularly during and after the Sasanian period; and
lastly various questions concerning the Zoroastrian ritual, which are
informed by the author's extraordinary familiarity with the Zoroastrian
ritual literature.
