The Pahlavi Yasna of the Gathas and Yasna Haptanghaiti is a critical edition of the Pahlavi text, with citations of parallel passages in the Denkard, accompanied by a complete glossary and an introductory text-critical treatment of the text. Also provided is a parallel Avestan and Pahlavi text designed to portray the near word-by-word dependence of the gloss on the original Avestan. Owing to the very nature of the Pahlavi gloss, which itself is not a translation, no English translation is attempted.

Extending from the dawn of Creation to the twenty-first century, Ashavid by author Eric Dryden, presents both an iconoclastic religious manifesto and an inspired out-of-the-box scholarly narrative. Dryden focuses on the ancient race of Nordic Indo-Europeans, the Prophet Zarathustra's divine revelation, and the corruptions of both. Ashavid discusses: The crucial role of Spitama Zarathustra of the Second Millennium BCE-the first to proclaim the one Creator God and to reveal the spiritual and ethical path leading to both the good earthly life and eternal life. Ancient West Asia's ethnic and cultural transformations including the multiple corruptions of Zarathustra's Ashavid doctrine. The Indo-Europeans' gradual genetic and cultural adulterations and partial extinctions resulting from their imperialistic and economic-driven migrations into alien spheres of the earth.

Traces the history and beliefs of Zoroastrianism and its followers determination through centuries of persecution and hardship into the present day. The Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian communities in which the religion has thrived without missionary efforts or vast numb numbers of believers is also explored.

"The sources and history of the world's religions, from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism, to regional studies in Africa, China and Japan; their teaching, practices and popular traditions; diaspora religions in the Western world, in the USA, Canada, Australia and Britain, including a new section on these religious migrations in a comparative international perspective; gender and spirituality and the Black African diaspora; developments that have taken place in the twentieth century; recent scholarship, including new material on China; and public festivals and private devotions." "With charts and diagrams to illustrate and clarify the text, The New Handbook of Living Religions is the definitive guide to understanding the belief systems of the world today."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This encyclopedia presents alphabetically arranged scholarly articles "on topics of archeological, geographic, ethnographic, historical, artistic, literary, religious, linguistic, philosophical, scientific, and folkloric interest. ... The time span covered ... extends from prehistory to the present; however, biographies of living persons are excluded." -- Introduction.