August 5, 2004 * Sekandar, Iran and Aryans Dear Mr. Davis, Interestingly in this film about two Freemasons who pledge to seek fortune and glory in a remote region of Afghanistan known as Kafirestan discover a tribe which hopes for the return of "Sikander", whose identity is unwillingly usurped by one of the leading characters played by Sean Connery. My question is whether "Sikandar" or "Sekandar" is the Indian equivalent of the Persian name " Eskandar" for Alexander and if so why doesn't Ferdowsi use the Persian pronounciation ? Also Kiplings short tale and Hustons film suggest that the order of Free Masons may very well date back to the Times of Alexander. In the film interestingly the followers of Sikander obey blindly to a group of Priests who speak "ordu" and wear complete white suits very much like the Zoroastrian priests or Parsis in India. Does the Shahnameh or any other Persian litterary work refer to anything that could hint that the Freemasonery has Zoroastrian origins ? It should be noted that Kipling was a free mason himself ... My last question is on the name Iran, which I believe the Shahnameh has one verse " Choh Iran nabashad taneh man mabad" aka " If Iran was to dissapear so should my body and soul". Given some debate on the fact that the name Persia was changed to Iran in 1935 as "The Land of the Aryans", I wanted to know whether this is just a linguistic modification (of the name Persia to Iran ) in Latin or from a european perspective or was the name "Iran" refered to in Farsi as "Pars" or another name by Ferdowsi ? My personal understanding is that the word "Iran" was used by Persians in Farsi even before 1935 to designate their country without any ideological connotation (particularily not a Nazi or anti semitic connotation) just as Germans would say "Deutchland" ( without the ' Uber Alles ') and not "Allemagne" as the French, or "Germany" as the British or Americans. I also wanted to ask you whether the word "Aryan" refers to a race or linguistic entity? You mentioned that The word Iran originally referred to the inhabitants of the country, yet as you know the Iranian plateau was and is composed of different ethnical groups which even at the times of the Aechemenid Kings was composed of Persians and Medes. As you may know French linguist George Dumezil (1898-1986) a member of the Academie Francaise, was Professor of Indo-European Civilization in the College de France and philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss both worked on Indo European languages and Myths. Dumezil in particular claims that the term "Aryan" is a linguistic entity and not a race which explains why Medes and Persians as well as other indo-european tribes like the Caucasian Ossets (For the anecdote Joseph Stalins mother I believe was an Osset and therefore spoke a persian dialect) spoke derivatives of the Aryan/Iranian language and shared common beliefs transcripted in their Mythology. Thus Interestingly some Europen languages like Corsican, German or English have Indo-European roots here are a few examples: "Koenig" (German for King), and "King" in English would derive from the Persian word "Kia" meaning "Crown". Similarily the word "Daughter" is "Tochter" in German and "Dokhtar" in Farsi/Parsi. In addition Dumezil in his essay "Mitra-Varuna:
An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty" I
quote: "Dumezile demonstrates that every Indo-European religious
and social system was structured according to three primary functions:
sovereignty, war, and fertility. "Mitra-Varuna, a penetrating
inquiry into the first of these functions - religious and political
sovereignty. Dumezil shows how, from Vedic India to Ireland from Caucasia
to Rome, and from Iran to Old Germany, the sovereign gods and heroes
always appear in couples: the creative but violent legislator and his
counterpart, the conservative guarantor of world order." I wanted to know based on your knowledge of the Shahnameh whether Ferdowsi's
Epic Poem responds to similar theories? [See reply: Iran in Shahnameh] |
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