Thesis Vocab

One could argue that this was the moment when the German philologists had what was necessary to take the lead in future scholarship, but Pederson refutes the value of Bopp’s comparative grammar because it contributed nothing to the phonology of any of the languages described (257); however, whatever the Germans may have found wanting in Bopp’s work, the lack of a phonology appears to have been no lasting impediment to their advance in research.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

Specifically, the Pharisees’ post-exilic demonology, angelology and eschatology—the set of beliefs pertinent to death, judgment, reward, and punishment— appear to be highly derivative of surviving ancient Zoroastrian texts.

And if an Oxford scholar of literature was interested at some point in the Zoroastrian religion, then it seems at least as plausible that, in the study of comparative philology,3 a discipline which frequently required the study of opaque and ancient texts, a scholar like Tolkien would have found the scriptures of the ancient Zoroastrians or any texts descendent from them to be relevant, accessible, and interesting.

It is pertinent to show that the famed Christian apologist actually implied in a letter to a young reader that he had read the scriptures of the Zoroastrians.

Based on a number of published reviews of the 1950s, American scholars seemed more interested in writing about the LotR than the British, but one of the earliest critiques by any of Tolkien’s countrymen appeared in a theological journal in 1955 in a review of The Fellowship of the Ring.

1 Two deities of the ancient Persian pantheon are of primary interest to Zoroastrians.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

The Semitic Near East was now juxtaposed with a new Indo-European Orient.

University to contributeto theadvancemenotf knowledgeandresearchby making the thesisavailableto scholars.Researcbhecomems orebroadlydisseminateadndmay assistauthorsin futureendeavorsP. urdueuniversitytypicallyreceivesno monetary gainfromthereproductionanddistributionofmaster'sthesesexcepftorrecovering costsassociatewd ith suchreproductioannddistribution(e.g.,without authors' permissionm, aster'sthesesgenerallycannotbecopied,inwholeorinpart,forsuch educationapl urposesas inter-libraryl...

His book was, in fact, meant to be a tool for Christian missionaries hoping to proselytize among the Pārsi communities in India.

1 CHAPTER TWO: SCHOLARSHIP OF PERSIAN TEXTS AND TOLKIEN’S PERIOD## OF INFLUENCE .

7 CHAPTER THREE: “THE SONG OF THE AINUR” COMPARED WITH############-- ZOROASTRIAN-AND OTHER MYTHS .

The incident of the malevolent tree-killing, the specific, dichotomous description of the Two Trees, the pantheon of deities, and the duality between Melkor and Ilúvatar together are uniquely similar to the mythical beings, deities, events, and relationships found in the Pahlavi texts of the Zoroastrians, and these similarities together add support to Elizabeth Allen’s original argument.

In the second part, the focus will shift to the mythology of Middle- earth itself as gleaned from The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales, and Tolkien’s mythology, particularly the cosmogony, will be compared to the Judeo-Christian, Norse, and Finnish mythological texts as well as the translated ancient religious texts of the Zoroastrians.

Looking solely at the proper nouns in LotR, Robert Giddings and Elizabeth Holland find but scarce evidence (solely the curious name Incanus) that suggests that Tolkien could have borrowed from any of the Central American, South American, Polynesian, Melanesian, or African legends or myths (Giddings 161).

Early Zoroastrianism: The Origins, the Prophet, the Magi— Lectures Delivered at Oxford and in London, February to May 1912, on the Religious Conditions and Concepts, Prevailing in Persia before Zarathustra, on the Prophetic Activity of Zarathustra and His Doctrines Also Compared to Those of Israel and in Christianity, and on the Religious Writings of the Persians, on Parsism, the Magi and the Fravashis with Critical Notes and References, Selected Texts Translated and Annotated, and Th...

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

Fortunately for scholars hindered by the limited facts made available in the authorized biographies of any of the Inklings, new details from other sources have emerged that point to previously unseen influences on the writers as in the case of books about C.S.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

Like in many mythologies, evil and its origin are not revealed through a reductive demonology as it is in Zoroastrianism and the Abrahamic religions ultimately influenced by it.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

Drout and Wynne’s rejoinder effectively masks, whether intentionally or not, all the other Mithraic characteristics Allen explicitly mentions besides the dualities of Good versus Evil and light versus darkness.

14 As a point of historical reference, 1633 is the same year Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and forced to recant his heliocentric theory.

There certainly are malevolent deities in both of these mythologies, but none of them have the same characteristics in common as those shared by Melkor and Ahriman.

So it is certain that a book read by Tolkien and written by his mentor23 clearly mapped the Gothic language to the languages of the Zoroastrians through the taxonomy in the first page of the introduction to the grammar.

By the late 1970s, the literary criticism of deconstructionists like Edward Said renewed an interest in the French and British Orientalists who had written about the Arab world, while all of the scholars who had focused on Zoroastrianism texts, with the exception of Anquetil-Duperron, rested undisturbed in tombal obscurity.

There is also evidence that Wright had collegial relationships with scholars knowledgeable in the Zoroastrian texts, and this is found in the introduction to Wright’s Comparative Grammar of the Greek Language.

Evil, to the Zoroastrians, was coeval with Good, and Ahriman, as a master of Evil, was given an opposite role to play versus Ahura Mazda, who can be closely compared to Yahweh or Jesus.

It is pertinent to show that the famed Christian apologist actually implied in a letter to a young reader that he had read the scriptures of the Zoroastrians.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Zoroastrianism, which is the only extant religion with a recorded theology descendent from the pre-Islamic Persians, can be seen as an ancient archetypal religion for Judaism following the construction of the Second Temple and Christianity.

In the second part, the focus will shift to the mythology of Middle- earth itself as gleaned from The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales, and Tolkien’s mythology, particularly the cosmogony, will be compared to the Judeo-Christian, Norse, and Finnish mythological texts as well as the translated ancient religious texts of the Zoroastrians.

18 It is recognized here that “Orientalist” in the contexts of cultural studies and literary theory has now become a convenient catchall pejorative applicable to any Western scholar who has written about the cultures of the Middle East or the Far East.

Rather than choosing to be diplomatic with the official to safely ensure that The Hobbit would be distributed in Germany, he expressed his indignation with scholarly acuity.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8
It is ...

As Leslie Ellen Jones asserts in Myth & Middle- earth, Tolkien’s work and area of expertise by no means limited him to borrowing from the Germanic myths (174).

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8
It is ...

From the creation of Middle-earth in “The Music of the Ainur,” the first chapter of the Sil, a reader could glean many valuable clues that enable one to better determine which mythologies may have influenced the mythology of Middle-earth.

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

Specifically, his second edition of the same book, published in 1911, directly challenged Mills’ belief in a historical contiguity of the Avesta that suggested a single author (Robertson 286-87).22
It would seem that if Tolkien had never attended any of Mills’ lectures or read any of his translations, there would have been no other easy opportunity for him to learn about such an esoteric subject.

Brugmann was responsible for volumes 1-2 (Phonology and Morphology) and Berthold Delbrück contributed volumes 3-5 on syntax.

Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia: Being Lectures Delivered in Oxford Presenting the Zend Avesta as Collated with the Pre-Christian Exilic Pharisaism, Advancing the Persian Question to the Foremost in Our Biblical Research.

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

Mazdakism, which is named for its founding heresiarch, Mazdaki, also shared with the orthodox Persian religion a belief in dualism, but it also promoted a utopian religious community founded on the abolition of private property and the practice of marrying exclusively within one’s social class.

The communities of Zoroastrians remaining in Iran were vestigial in comparison to the thriving larger communities of Zoroastrian Fārsi speakers in India who
17
were more determined to preserve their religion.

As the medieval clergy recorded many of the pagan Celtic tales of the Gauls’ tribal kin in Wales and Ireland, the deliberate Christian interpolation was more frequent in a Celtic text, like the Mabinogion, than it was in a Norse text like any version of the Edda.

13 Certainly the British scholars had benefited from the plundering of equivalent artifacts from other cultures; the Rosetta Stone seized from the French in Egypt by Lord Nelson is such.

Then there are the Huorns, which are the semi-sentient beings with some ability to move.

James Darmesteter was aware of an arcane quality of ancient Persian culture and its texts that beckoned any curious erudite.

In order to describe the earliest stage of human intelligence, philologists and mythologists invented Aryans and Semites, to whom they invariably ascribed opposing, if sometimes complementary, roles (Olender 20).

The early influences of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, even though they may not have been seen by most Christians during the formative period of Christianity, were a sufficient reason for early twentieth century scholars at Oxford to be curious, if not excited, about the ancient religion, its celebrated prophet, Zoroaster, and scriptures attributed primarily to him.

Mazdakism, which is named for its founding heresiarch, Mazdaki, also shared with the orthodox Persian religion a belief in dualism, but it also promoted a utopian religious community founded on the abolition of private property and the practice of marrying exclusively within one’s social class.

For example, he understood the role of the ancient Gauls in European history and viewed them with sympathy.

Tolkien was keenly aware of the linguistic kinship between English and the Indo- Iranian languages spoken in ancient Persia as English belongs to the same language family as Old Persian (including both the Old Persian written in cuneiform and the same language written in Avestan characters.)

There are three reasons why this passage merits inclusion here.

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

Tolkien was keenly aware of the linguistic kinship between English and the Indo- Iranian languages spoken in ancient Persia as English belongs to the same language family as Old Persian (including both the Old Persian written in cuneiform and the same language written in Avestan characters.)

One could argue that this was the moment when the German philologists had what was necessary to take the lead in future scholarship, but Pederson refutes the value of Bopp’s comparative grammar because it contributed nothing to the phonology of any of the languages described (257); however, whatever the Germans may have found wanting in Bopp’s work, the lack of a phonology appears to have been no lasting impediment to their advance in research.

Mazdakism, which is named for its founding heresiarch, Mazdaki, also shared with the orthodox Persian religion a belief in dualism, but it also promoted a utopian religious community founded on the abolition of private property and the practice of marrying exclusively within one’s social class.

As Leslie Ellen Jones asserts in Myth & Middle- earth, Tolkien’s work and area of expertise by no means limited him to borrowing from the Germanic myths (174).

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Alternately, it is plausible to consider that the author sought to glean elements from an esoteric mythology rooted in an ancient religion that discreetly imparted ideas that are commonly, but mistakenly, seen as beliefs originating in Judaism or Christianity.

Both Orientalists and non-Orientalists disputed the accuracy of his translation of the Avesta; some even deemed it a canard.

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

9 Weak polytheism describes any religious tradition where believers acknowledge a plurality of deities (and not seeing one true god compared to many false gods) while being principally devoted to one of them.

Specifically, the Pharisees’ post-exilic demonology, angelology and eschatology—the set of beliefs pertinent to death, judgment, reward, and punishment— appear to be highly derivative of surviving ancient Zoroastrian texts.

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

But it is necessary to mention that no sense of northernness could have developed without an awareness of ideas originating from texts of other cultures, particularly those most prominent worldwide, which were the national epics and religious texts.4 For both Tolkien and Lewis, an education in a variety of classical texts, the Christian scriptures5 and theological writings could have provided bases of comparison for the texts of the Nordic cultures.

1 CHAPTER TWO: SCHOLARSHIP OF PERSIAN TEXTS AND TOLKIEN’S PERIOD## OF INFLUENCE .

And if an Oxford scholar of literature was interested at some point in the Zoroastrian religion, then it seems at least as plausible that, in the study of comparative philology,3 a discipline which frequently required the study of opaque and ancient texts, a scholar like Tolkien would have found the scriptures of the ancient Zoroastrians or any texts descendent from them to be relevant, accessible, and interesting.

This is not to say that there may not be parallels between Tolkien’s work and any number of sources, but if we are to avoid circular reasoning, mere parallels must not be equated with sources (Drout 107).

While both the novelist and his brother were housed and cared for by a Catholic priest who was their mentor and guardian, it is important to remember that Tolkien, as a middle-class orphan, spent several hours of every school day in a mainly Anglican enclave of upper-class English society.

Old Zand-Pahlavi Glossary.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Tolkien was keenly aware of the linguistic kinship between English and the Indo- Iranian languages spoken in ancient Persia as English belongs to the same language family as Old Persian (including both the Old Persian written in cuneiform and the same language written in Avestan characters.)

One can read a passage of William F. Kirby’s translation of the second rune song that tells about this tree.

The influence of Mithraism was beginning to conflict with the beliefs of the church hierarchy of Roman Christians during the life of St. Augustine, who is known to have been a Manichean for part of his life.

The culture of ancient Persia, from glimpses seen in the myths taken from the Zoroastrian scriptures, offered to Oxford’s scholars an archetypal culture that was analogous to England in its religion and in the history of its language yet still ancient and enticingly cryptic.

The impact of the translation of texts written in these ancient languages caused a shift in cultural affiliation of educated10 northern Europeans.

If one can look outside the Avesta to the events that occurred in the Zadspram chapter of the Pahlavi texts (not translated by Mills but by Edward William West, one of Mills’ contemporaries who also helped Darmesteter through his effort in translating all the Pahlavi texts) one can find a noteworthy passage that makes Ahriman look amazingly like Melkor:
Afterwards, [Ahriman] came to a tree, such as was of a single root, the height of which was several feet, and it was without branches and wi...

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PERSIANMYTHOLOGYIN THE SILMARILLION
C o m p l i e s w i t h U n i v e r s i t y r e g u l a t i o n a s n d m e e t s t h e s t a n d a r d o s f t h e G r a d u a t eS c h o o f l o r o r i g i n a l i t y andquality
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Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

The classicist made a reference to it when he described the antagonists (most likely the ringwraiths),
3
observing that “the Evil forces are all black, granted.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Distinct from those literary scholars who most revered the classical Greek and Latin writings, the northernnists were scholars most interested in the literature of northern Europe.

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Author AndrewO.Marotta

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

It is also clear that Lewis resented the canonization of the text, which shows the tendency of many young readers, being complacent and secretive in their appreciation, to want to hoard such arcane books.26
What is perhaps most startling about the Shāh-nāhmah is what is known about its author.

Drout and Wynne’s rejoinder effectively masks, whether intentionally or not, all the other Mithraic characteristics Allen explicitly mentions besides the dualities of Good versus Evil and light versus darkness.

The event is recalled in detail in a newspaper excerpt found as an insert in one book of Mills’ published lectures.

There were two trained Danish philologists, Erasmus Christian Rask16 and Niels Ludvig Westergaard, who are credited with having made valuable contributions in the form of a grammar and a lexicon of Avestan (Schwab 47).

Clearly Loki cannot be like Ahriman in the way he creates discord because he overwhelmingly chooses to antagonize the gods directly.

Three obvious languages Tolkien clearly borrowed from were Old Norse, Finnish, and Welsh, and the mythologies or legends corresponding to these three languages can be found in the Edda, the Kalevala, and the Mabinogion, respectively.

The publication of The Silmarillion, a book Tolkien had originally hoped to be published following The Hobbit, revealed through prose narrative the mythology Tolkien created as the basis for the events in LotR.

An intuitive rebuttal one could make against the argument that Tolkien’s mythology was influenced by the Zoroastrian scriptures is to say that Tolkien could not have been interested in something that appears at first to be so distant from both his academic discipline and his own culture.

A wise and patient creator, Ilúvatar, creates through his thought the Ainur, a group of gods and goddesses who assist him in creating Middle-earth.

8
Although there is no surviving literature left behind by the ancient Gauls dating from the classical period6 it is certain that Tolkien read at least one medieval Brittonic mythological text; however, it is likely that he found it unsuitable as a source for his own cosmogony.

The dictionaries and grammars of Avestan, though helpful for the translation of the Avesta, were not sufficient for a thorough study of Zoroastrianism since Avestan was not the only language the texts of the religion were written in.

Perhaps the history of ancient Persia allowed both Tolkien and Lewis to relate to the Persians through a sympathy for the vanquished since the Zoroastrian culture of the conquered Persians was over-run and largely displaced by the invading Arabs.

Like deities in most mythologies, the Valar are not gods and goddesses that assume roles in discrete spheres.

A wise and patient creator, Ilúvatar, creates through his thought the Ainur, a group of gods and goddesses who assist him in creating Middle-earth.

University to contributeto theadvancemenotf knowledgeandresearchby making the thesisavailableto scholars.Researcbhecomems orebroadlydisseminateadndmay assistauthorsin futureendeavorsP. urdueuniversitytypicallyreceivesno monetary gainfromthereproductionanddistributionofmaster'sthesesexcepftorrecovering costsassociatewd ith suchreproductioannddistribution(e.g.,without authors' permissionm, aster'sthesesgenerallycannotbecopied,inwholeorinpart,forsuch educationapl urposesas inter-libraryl...

New York: Touchstone, 1995.

Distinct from those literary scholars who most revered the classical Greek and Latin writings, the northernnists were scholars most interested in the literature of northern Europe.

Another fault of Drout and Wynne is in using the terms of evolutionary biology in making an analogy to illustrate possible relationships between texts:
Pointing out obvious similarities—similarities, by the way, that Shippey had already
34 Of course, dualism is more commonly recognized in Manichaeism or Zoroastrianism than in Mithraism.

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

Vedic and Classical Sanskrit and Old Persian (including the Avestan dialect), were of special interest to philologists because they are the closest descendants to P.I.E. with surviving texts.

Even when a friend offered feedback, Tolkien either ignored the suggestion or re-wrote the whole story segment beyond what was suggested based on his subsequent realization of a greater fault.

The first German scholar to work with the Avestan texts was Justus Olshausen, although his translations were not considered as important as the work of Franz Bopp, whose pivotal work, A Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages, happened to include scattered bits of Avestan grammar.

Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth that it was not arbitrary that “Tolkien gave Manwë a prominent role in the affairs of Middle-earth, since Manwë represents St. Michael” (118).

Melkor, one of the most gifted of the Ainur, decides to take his portion of the creation song and varies it, according to his own imagination, and this causes dissonance in the song.

I a u t h o r i z e P u r d u eU n i v e r s i t y t o m a i n t a i n m y t h e s i si n a n y a n d a l l f o r m a t s n o w k n o w n o r l a t e r developed.

As revealed in “Spiegel,” an article published in the web version of Encyclopædia Iranica: “Spiegel himself acknowledged that Westergaard’s edition was better than his, especially with regard to textual criticism, because it was based on a greater number of manuscripts” (Schmitt par.

In 1977, twenty-three years after the first printing of the first volume of LotR, The Fellowship of the Ring, readers were at last able to read the explicit cosmogony that was the beginning of Middle-earth’s “First Age,” the period when the primary characters in the narrative were deities or the great heroes from
5
the races of elves and men.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

Certainly the early influence of the religion upon European Christianity preceded any Western scholarly examination of Zoroastrianism as well as the movements that were both influenced by and heretical to Zoroastrianism: Mithraism, and Manicheanism, Zurvanite Zoroastrianism, and Mazdakism.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

It is pertinent to show that the famed Christian apologist actually implied in a letter to a young reader that he had read the scriptures of the Zoroastrians.

Tolkien’s novels has been guided by an assumption that the author’s fiction was influenced by Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian texts.

Once Bopp provided this tool, when the final volume was published in 1853, German scholars of Zoroastrianism could attain a rudimentary grasp of the grammar of the language without needing to construct a grammar on their own from the old manuscripts (29).

Undergraduate, and C.F.S. libraries of the university.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page ABSTRACT-.-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

The reviewer has a particular kind of text in mind when he reveals:
This is a religious book, pre-Christian, its theology that of the Zendavesta at its best: it is the original dualism of Zarathustra, in which the only true reality is goodness and light (Blair 122).

Based on a number of published reviews of the 1950s, American scholars seemed more interested in writing about the LotR than the British, but one of the earliest critiques by any of Tolkien’s countrymen appeared in a theological journal in 1955 in a review of The Fellowship of the Ring.

There is further clarification from another scholar:
41
In Yt. xii.,

It can also be shown that Wright was not only an expert in the language that is the closest sibling to Old Persian, but he appears to have known the language itself and its different dialects.

It can be shown explicitly that the author intended to reach outside of Christianity for ideas that did not stand to contradict it.

An intuitive rebuttal one could make against the argument that Tolkien’s mythology was influenced by the Zoroastrian scriptures is to say that Tolkien could not have been interested in something that appears at first to be so distant from both his academic discipline and his own culture.

Tolkien read Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language (which does not mention anything about Avestan, Pahlavi, or Zoroastrians) before his education at Oxford, and he certainly could not have left Oxford without having read Wright’s grammar, which was published one year before he entered the university.

The aforementioned problem with the Gauls is that they never developed their writing systems sufficiently to sustain a literary tradition similar to that of the Greeks and Romans.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

14 As a point of historical reference, 1633 is the same year Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and forced to recant his heliocentric theory.

Following the oral address, Mills was presented with the written address inscribed on velum with illumination and Zoroastrian symbols, all in a silver casket.

This is understandable because there are more published letters from this period, but it is a mistake to see Tolkien as a malleable writer during that time.

38 LC subject headings of three or more tiers were omitted from the count in cases where inclusion would have caused an unintended duplication of second-tier descriptors.

As one scholar observes:
It is clear that in seeing and protesting the destruction by humanity of the world it inhabits and of which it is a part, in recognizing that the natural world was an endangered enclave in need of protection against encroaching civilization...[H]is fiction seems to stand foursquare in defense of trees against their human (or orcish) predators (Flieger 147).

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

8
Although there is no surviving literature left behind by the ancient Gauls dating from the classical period6 it is certain that Tolkien read at least one medieval Brittonic mythological text; however, it is likely that he found it unsuitable as a source for his own cosmogony.

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

It is certainly known that Tolkien rued the fall of Anglo-Saxon civilization since its language and culture succumbed to the hegemony of the Normans (Curry 31).

Fortunately, there have been some scholars willing to consider the possibilities of other influences upon Tolkien’s mythology.

18 It is recognized here that “Orientalist” in the contexts of cultural studies and literary theory has now become a convenient catchall pejorative applicable to any Western scholar who has written about the cultures of the Middle East or the Far East.

The Pársí Religion: As Contained in the Zand-Avastá, and Propounded
and Defended by the Zoroastrians of India and Persia, Unfolded, Refuted, and
Contrasted with Christianity.

The Semitic Near East was now juxtaposed with a new Indo-European Orient.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

It is likely that, prior to the publication of Letters to Children, very few people had ever suspected that Lewis had an interest in any other existing religion besides Judaism or Christianity.

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

[C]onsidering Gandalf’s “Elvish” name, “Mithrandir,” and the relentless dualism of the work, it is difficult to avoid at least an echo here of another dualism—Zoroastrianism, with its Lord of Evil, Ahriman, and its Saoshyant, its Savior, Mithra, who was reincarnated as Gandalf is (606 italics retained).

It is also possible to isolate certain elements of Zoroastrianism in Tolkien’s work without focusing solely on the doctrines that can be found in the sacred Zoroastrian texts.

The prolific scholar lived until 1895, yet Mills’ volume of the translated Gāthas was published in 1887.

All the books were uniformly bound, and I was surprised to see such unlikely titbits [sic] as the Ethics of Aristotle and the works of the Persian epic poet Firdausi.

It is not careless to assume that Moulton’s death at sea likely garnered much attention from the community of Oxford, a city ultimately spared from the calamities of both World Wars but for the loss of a number of its people.

The Celtic element in Tolkien’s Middle-earth is seen more in the language, as when the elves speak the Welsh-derived Quenya language, than in the mythology.

The Philosophy of the Mazdayasnian Religion under the
Sassanids: Translated from the French with Prefatory Remarks, Notes, and a Brief Biographical Sketch of the Author.

As one present day scholar of the Middle East reveals about the languages of the Persians:
The change from Zoroastrian to Islamic Persian offers interesting parallels to the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English after the Norman Conquest of
10 Whereas some in northern Europe had previously fancied that their ancestors were Trojans or one of the tribes of Israel, the term “Aryan” quickly became misappropriated by Germans who used the word to describe themselves.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Brugmann was one of the most important Indo-European scholars of the second generation (the so-called “Young Grammarians” or “Neogrammarians”).

Lewis) highlights a historic event intriguing not only to historians but to philologists, and the disciplinary nexus joining history to philology was likely an inviting place for young Tolkien.

Although Parker’s highlighting of the name of Mithrandir by itself seems only to reveal an analogous detail, which is proffered without any evidence linking any of the languages or mythology of Persia directly to Tolkien’s choice of a name,2 Elizabeth Allen uses it only as a starting point for investigating other elements of LotR that could have been influenced by Mithraism, a religion very closely related to Zoroastrianism, in “Persian Influences in The Lord of the Rings.”

In both instances the poet-annalist harked back to themes in a national past otherwise long forgotten; both bards alike, though separated from each other in the realm of space and time, made use of material handed down from ancient days; and in each case there was something of the soul of the poet commingled with the spirit of the historian and chronicler....[I]f the British bard was chary in using words from the vocabulary of the Norman-French conquerors, the Persian rhapsodist was e...

13 Certainly the British scholars had benefited from the plundering of equivalent artifacts from other cultures; the Rosetta Stone seized from the French in Egypt by Lord Nelson is such.

Rouse, all under the title: Elements of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages: A Concise Exposition of the History of Sanskrit, Old Iranian (Avestic and Old Persian) Old Armenian, Old Greek, Latin, Umbrian-Samnitic, Old Irish, Gothic, Old High German, Lithuanian and Old Bulgarian.

The publication of The Silmarillion, a book Tolkien had originally hoped to be published following The Hobbit, revealed through prose narrative the mythology Tolkien created as the basis for the events in LotR.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

“Modern Zoroastrianism is characterized by its lack of a proselytizing impulse” (Gnoli 590) and this might have resulted in a decrease in cultural prominence of Zoroastrians corresponding to a shrinking number of practitioners.

The relevance of Sil in searching for analogues of Persian mythology is that it contains a creation myth in the first chapter “The Music of the Ainur.”

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

As one scholar observes:
It is clear that in seeing and protesting the destruction by humanity of the world it inhabits and of which it is a part, in recognizing that the natural world was an endangered enclave in need of protection against encroaching civilization...[H]is fiction seems to stand foursquare in defense of trees against their human (or orcish) predators (Flieger 147).

A skeptic of the possible Persian influence might rightly consider the possibility that a larger number of students would have spread more interest in the Orientalist scholars’ lectures, and, since fewer students attended the colleges at the time Tolkien was at Oxford, there may have been less word-of-mouth publicity for either of the scholars’ lectures or writings.

In a bibliographic essay written nearly two decades later, two authors attempted to rebuff Allen’s argument.

When he returned, he compared his manuscripts with the one in Oxford (Pederson 24-25).15 Edward William West deemed the result methodical yet “very far from giving the correct meaning of the original text in many places” (Pahlavi Texts II xxv).

Tolkien, who was mentored and educated by Father Francis Xavier Morgan in his adolescence (Grotta 26), was a practicing Catholic from early childhood until his death, while Lewis had become an agnostic before attending services again in the Anglican
13
Church, a denomination only nominally different from the Church of Ireland he attended when he was a child.

I also wish to acknowledge the help given by the librarians of the H.S.S.E.,

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

What would have been the motive for Tolkien or Lewis to study the scriptures of the ancient Persian religion or the scholarly and narrative texts alluding to them?

Prior to the publication of Sil, any assertion made about the mythology of Middle-earth was more difficult to support with evidence from a primary source since only a few of Tolkien’s friends and family members had ever read the manuscripts the book was published from.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Ilúvatar responds by introducing a new melodic movement in the composition, and then Melkor creates another clamor to rival the new movement, but at last Ilúvatar creates his most powerful music and defeats Melkor’s discord.

But again, similarity does not imply descent, and the number of mythologies in which light equals good and dark equals evil must surely number in the thousands.

10
Tolkien wanted to create in Middle-earth a culture that in many ways could have been the forerunner of our Christian world...In order to create a logical religious tie between Middle-earth and modern Christianity, Mithraism and Persian theology are a particularly appropriate treasure hoard for Tolkien to have drawn upon since many of their aspects dovetail neatly with Christianity (203).

8
Although there is no surviving literature left behind by the ancient Gauls dating from the classical period6 it is certain that Tolkien read at least one medieval Brittonic mythological text; however, it is likely that he found it unsuitable as a source for his own cosmogony.

9 Weak polytheism describes any religious tradition where believers acknowledge a plurality of deities (and not seeing one true god compared to many false gods) while being principally devoted to one of them.

No one can make a plausible claim that Tolkien borrowed primarily from the events in Celtic mythology for the early chapters pertinent to the cosmogony of the First Age in the Sil since there are no surviving texts of Celtic creation myths.

Eventually he went to Germany to study texts in Vedic Sanskrit and Persian under the tutelage of Rudolph von Roth.

The aforementioned problem with the Gauls is that they never developed their writing systems sufficiently to sustain a literary tradition similar to that of the Greeks and Romans.

The culture of ancient Persia, from glimpses seen in the myths taken from the Zoroastrian scriptures, offered to Oxford’s scholars an archetypal culture that was analogous to England in its religion and in the history of its language yet still ancient and enticingly cryptic.

Although Parker’s highlighting of the name of Mithrandir by itself seems only to reveal an analogous detail, which is proffered without any evidence linking any of the languages or mythology of Persia directly to Tolkien’s choice of a name,2 Elizabeth Allen uses it only as a starting point for investigating other elements of LotR that could have been influenced by Mithraism, a religion very closely related to Zoroastrianism, in “Persian Influences in The Lord of the Rings.”

In Mills’ introduction to his translation of the Gāthas of the Avesta, it says that Ahriman “has a servant, Aeshma, the impersonation of invasion and rapine, the chief scourge of the Zarathustrians (Zend-Avesta III xix).

There were two trained Danish philologists, Erasmus Christian Rask16 and Niels Ludvig Westergaard, who are credited with having made valuable contributions in the form of a grammar and a lexicon of Avestan (Schwab 47).

The Teachings of the Magi: A Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs.

This belated celebration of Mills’ accomplishments, whether it drew more attention to Mills’ capstone work or all the Avestan translation by Mills and Darmesteter together, was likely noticed by
20 Mills was certainly not the first to see the connections between the theologies of Zoroastrianism and Judaism, but he brought to the argument the perspective of a scholar who was both an American Episcopalian theologian and a philologist.

35 One must recognize that there are tribes that, inverse to ancient Persian dualism, associate evil with white and good with black.

Specifically, the Pharisees’ post-exilic demonology, angelology and eschatology—the set of beliefs pertinent to death, judgment, reward, and punishment— appear to be highly derivative of surviving ancient Zoroastrian texts.

This action, along with the previously cited passage of the Pahlavi text, resembles an event that happened when Tolkien was a child living in the hamlet of Sarehole.

Even when a friend offered feedback, Tolkien either ignored the suggestion or re-wrote the whole story segment beyond what was suggested based on his subsequent realization of a greater fault.

The second belief is that Ahura Mazda is not omnipotent or omniscient (Zaehner Dawn and Twilight 214).

The precedent interest in the living language of seventeenth-century Persia was understandable because too many of the ancient texts had already been destroyed or lost during the Arab invasion.

It seems likely that an inconsonant group of writers of such idiosyncratic religious views would have felt comfortable alternating between original ideas maintained in traditional Christianity and those of other religions.

Three obvious languages Tolkien clearly borrowed from were Old Norse, Finnish, and Welsh, and the mythologies or legends corresponding to these three languages can be found in the Edda, the Kalevala, and the Mabinogion, respectively.

The reason Lewis’s reading of the
6
Zoroastrianism scriptures is remarkable is because it reveals that a devout Christian, one who had also read the Norse myths as a child, was inclined to read about an obscure religion of non-European origin for no other reason than personal interest.

I would also like to thank my parents-in-law for
offering me a bedroom in their house in Battle Ground during my most productive period while my own place was a twelve-hour drive away from campus.

But how did European scholars, both from the continent and from Great Britain, acquire the Avesta and Pahlavi texts from such a remote culture and eventually translate them?

The problem with Mithra being compared to Manwë Súlimo is that the two deities only have in common the roles of being powerful benevolent deities.

As a generalist scholar who wrote many books about a range of topics including literary criticism, economics, and the history of religion, Robertson was prolific.

32
more accessible to a casual reader than other translated Zoroastrian texts is that the commentary is integrated with the paraphrased translation of the section of the Zadspram the cosmogony is found in.

Since it is known that Tolkien adhered to the tenets of his catechism, it is certain that he disagreed with Barfield’s interest in mysticism while still keeping rapport with him and Charles Williams as mutual friends of Lewis.

Even when a friend offered feedback, Tolkien either ignored the suggestion or re-wrote the whole story segment beyond what was suggested based on his subsequent realization of a greater fault.

Perhaps the history of ancient Persia allowed both Tolkien and Lewis to relate to the Persians through a sympathy for the vanquished since the Zoroastrian culture of the conquered Persians was over-run and largely displaced by the invading Arabs.

It is reasonable to assume that young Tolkien was frequently in the company of Anglicans and those belonging to various Nonconformist denominations while a student at Oxford.

It is also possible to isolate certain elements of Zoroastrianism in Tolkien’s work without focusing solely on the doctrines that can be found in the sacred Zoroastrian texts.

In 1977, twenty-three years after the first printing of the first volume of LotR, The Fellowship of the Ring, readers were at last able to read the explicit cosmogony that was the beginning of Middle-earth’s “First Age,” the period when the primary characters in the narrative were deities or the great heroes from
5
the races of elves and men.

Many other Mithraic characteristics Allen calls attention to in her essay are not even mentioned in Drout and Wynne’s appraisal of her argument.

One could argue that this was the moment when the German philologists had what was necessary to take the lead in future scholarship, but Pederson refutes the value of Bopp’s comparative grammar because it contributed nothing to the phonology of any of the languages described (257); however, whatever the Germans may have found wanting in Bopp’s work, the lack of a phonology appears to have been no lasting impediment to their advance in research.

And how did European scholarship of Zoroastrian scriptures develop prior to Tolkien’s period of work at Leeds, the time when he began to write the texts that would ultimately reveal the cosmogony of Middle- earth?

Many scholars have looked to Tolkien’s invented languages for clues for the different mythological bases of The Lord of the Rings.

But how did European scholars, both from the continent and from Great Britain, acquire the Avesta and Pahlavi texts from such a remote culture and eventually translate them?

In Genesis, humans, rather than either preternatural tree, are the beings intended to be felled, and the trees are useful to Lucifer for this purpose.

After all, in the passage from the Zâd-Sparam, Ahriman does not enlist the help of a giant spider to kill the trees; he does the fell deed himself (although he later commands a monstrous lizard to try to kill another great tree).

Following Wright’s eventual appointment as Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, he produced his most famous work, The English Dialect Dictionary, a product of prodigious effort that is still considered an invaluable work of scholarship.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Following the First World War, the two were the only survivors from the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, the informal social club they had started during
12
their time at prep school: “Wiseman was a staunch Methodist, but the two boys found that they could argue about religion without bitterness” (Carpenter JRRT: A Biography 41).

Ilúvatar responds by introducing a new melodic movement in the composition, and then Melkor creates another clamor to rival the new movement, but at last Ilúvatar creates his most powerful music and defeats Melkor’s discord.

Although Parker’s highlighting of the name of Mithrandir by itself seems only to reveal an analogous detail, which is proffered without any evidence linking any of the languages or mythology of Persia directly to Tolkien’s choice of a name,2 Elizabeth Allen uses it only as a starting point for investigating other elements of LotR that could have been influenced by Mithraism, a religion very closely related to Zoroastrianism, in “Persian Influences in The Lord of the Rings.”

But it is necessary to mention that no sense of northernness could have developed without an awareness of ideas originating from texts of other cultures, particularly those most prominent worldwide, which were the national epics and religious texts.4 For both Tolkien and Lewis, an education in a variety of classical texts, the Christian scriptures5 and theological writings could have provided bases of comparison for the texts of the Nordic cultures.

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

To this reader who had mentioned Zoroastrianism, Lewis replies:
Zoroastrianism is one of the finest of the Pagan religions.

It can be shown explicitly that the author intended to reach outside of Christianity for ideas that did not stand to contradict it.

So black, in fact, that they rarely emerge completely from a Zoroastrian fen-fog” (Parker 603).

As Leslie Ellen Jones asserts in Myth & Middle- earth, Tolkien’s work and area of expertise by no means limited him to borrowing from the Germanic myths (174).

Alternately, it is plausible to consider that the author sought to glean elements from an esoteric mythology rooted in an ancient religion that discreetly imparted ideas that are commonly, but mistakenly, seen as beliefs originating in Judaism or Christianity.

One might intend to build a cathedral as a near replica of another or instead build one with a combination of consciously-borrowed details and unconsciously-borrowed details from hundreds of different buildings; the latter design is still derivative even though it is, as a whole work, unprecedented for its peculiar set of characteristics.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

Since it is known that Tolkien adhered to the tenets of his catechism, it is certain that he disagreed with Barfield’s interest in mysticism while still keeping rapport with him and Charles Williams as mutual friends of Lewis.

It seems likely that an inconsonant group of writers of such idiosyncratic religious views would have felt comfortable alternating between original ideas maintained in traditional Christianity and those of other religions.

There is a very conspicuous link between the histories of Rome and Greece and the history of ancient Persia; students reading in the classics at Oxford inevitably found this link in Herodotus’s The Histories, also titled The Persian Wars, a work offering the first surviving European glimpse of the Magi priests and Zoroastrianism, and it remains the first European text that describes the Pārsi in enough detail to be useful to historians.

Distinct from those literary scholars who most revered the classical Greek and Latin writings, the northernnists were scholars most interested in the literature of northern Europe.

And if an Oxford scholar of literature was interested at some point in the Zoroastrian religion, then it seems at least as plausible that, in the study of comparative philology,3 a discipline which frequently required the study of opaque and ancient texts, a scholar like Tolkien would have found the scriptures of the ancient Zoroastrians or any texts descendent from them to be relevant, accessible, and interesting.

These have in common with the Zoroastrian trees the power to sustain and regenerate living things.

It is identified as Haoma, the ‘chief of plants’ (584)
If this interpretation of the difference between Gaokerena and Haoma were known to Tolkien, then this would seem to be a very likely source for the Two Trees, Teleperon and Laurelin.

The Valar can be seen to play four different principal roles (whether or not Tolkien intended these roles to be interpreted in this way).

While comparing Gandalf to the primary antagonist, Sauron, the reviewer referred to the ancient religion of Persia again when he made an analogy between two powerful characters and the ancient Persian deities1 they correspond to.

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

There are those who have offered evidence that might hint at a pervasive Finnish influence on Sil from the cosmogony through to the legends.

Melkor, one of the most gifted of the Ainur, decides to take his portion of the creation song and varies it, according to his own imagination, and this causes dissonance in the song.

Brugmann was responsible for volumes 1-2 (Phonology and Morphology) and Berthold Delbrück contributed volumes 3-5 on syntax.

In a bibliographic essay written nearly two decades later, two authors attempted to rebuff Allen’s argument.

It must be emphasized that, while there can be no doubt about the Christian inspiration that shaped Tolkien’s conversations, expositive writings, and his narrative texts, the information Tolkien borrowed to create the mythology of his faerie could not have been taken primarily from Christian sources.

Lewis) highlights a historic event intriguing not only to historians but to philologists, and the disciplinary nexus joining history to philology was likely an inviting place for young Tolkien.

These nomadic warrior populations may have had their bardic compositions and tales floating by oral tradition, but we have no evidence that they developed a literature, though some of them may have known Greek letters (MacLean 113)
7 Arthurian tales are more properly called legends rather than true myths.

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

In another testimonial written for Joseph Wright, James Murray gave high praise for Wright’s expertise in certain languages:
In the course of my work at the English Dictionary [the New English Dictionary on Historical Principals or the OED as it is now called], I have had innumerable occasions to confer with and consult Dr. WRIGHT on questions connected with the ulterior etymology of English words, involving points in Germanic, Latin, Greek, Iranic, and Sanskrit; the relations of thes...

The Anthropology of Evil.

The event is recalled in detail in a newspaper excerpt found as an insert in one book of Mills’ published lectures.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

Three obvious languages Tolkien clearly borrowed from were Old Norse, Finnish, and Welsh, and the mythologies or legends corresponding to these three languages can be found in the Edda, the Kalevala, and the Mabinogion, respectively.

It is also possible to isolate certain elements of Zoroastrianism in Tolkien’s work without focusing solely on the doctrines that can be found in the sacred Zoroastrian texts.

Because of the value of his work, influential Indian and English scholars at Oxford interceded to keep Mills at the university.

Tolkien
and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth.

He recounts:
There was a great tree—a huge poplar with vast limbs—though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled.

Aside from the aspects of Zoroastrian religion that made it appealing to philologists and historians, there were characteristics of Zoroastrian-influenced religious movements that made it particularly interesting to European scholars of theology, particularly the confluence of those movements with the growth of Christianity in ancient Rome.

As Gherardo Gnoli explains:
In the middle of the Vourukasha Sea is found the Tree of All Seeds, as well as another tree that is endowed with healing powers and confers immortality.

In Middle-earth as well as the real world, the destruction of trees and forests is alternately flippant and methodical.

And the sapling grew and flourished, As from earth a strawberry rises, And it forked in both directions.

Centennial ed.

In a bibliographic essay written nearly two decades later, two authors attempted to rebuff Allen’s argument.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

In Mills’ introduction to his translation of the Gāthas of the Avesta, it says that Ahriman “has a servant, Aeshma, the impersonation of invasion and rapine, the chief scourge of the Zarathustrians (Zend-Avesta III xix).

Certainly the debate about possible Persian sources does not need to end with Drout and Wynne’s hasty dismissal of Allen’s argument since there are other texts, Tolkien’s fiction as well as the primary and secondary texts related to the Zoroastrian mythology of the Persians, worth mining to attempt to determine if the elements resembling their counterparts in Persian mythology revealed by Allen are truly descendant from the mythology or merely covergent with it.

32
more accessible to a casual reader than other translated Zoroastrian texts is that the commentary is integrated with the paraphrased translation of the section of the Zadspram the cosmogony is found in.

An examination of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholarship of Zoroastrianism and the primary sacred texts of the religion reveals compelling similarities that make the texts a more substantial basis for comparison to the cosmogonic first chapter of the The Silmarillion than any other text.

Leaving the university in 1894, he accepted an appointment as New Testament tutor at
21 Of course, Robertson’s argument against the historicity of Christ may have been less incendiary at the time it was published as Bruno Bauer had already made the same claim in the nineteenth century.

If all scholars are expected to follow Drout and Wynne’s prescription to follow Shippey’s example of using “detailed similarities of nomenclature” (106) as evidence for
39 The credit for being the first to identify Persian similarities in names must not be given to Shippey.

As Tolkien remains the most acclaimed fantasy author of the twentieth century writing for an adult audience, it is not uncommon to hear praise for his originality, yet what readers call originality or creativity is but the talent of highly pluralistic synthesis.

This revelation is worth considering not because it suggests that Lewis might have made some remarks to Tolkien about Zoroastrianism that could have been responsible for the religion shaping the mythological narrative of Middle-earth found in Sil—Tolkien had already begun writing the manuscripts that would eventually become the first chapters of the Sil years before Tolkien and Lewis had ever met.

Commercially-produced facsimiles of these three titles are still available today.

Furthermore, just to drum it home, his creation story is directly based on the Kalevala, which expresses the idea of creation through song (Giddings 313)
As this segment of argument is brief, it would seem that the two authors have offered evidence about the naming of characters but without any evidence for the influence of Kalevalan cosmogony on “The Song of the Ainur.”

They are Ahura Mazda, the one they worship, and Ahriman, the one responsible for the origin of evil and suffering.

If the impact of the work of these two scholars were to be discounted altogether, there would still remain yet another person as a possible Persian influence.

9 Weak polytheism describes any religious tradition where believers acknowledge a plurality of deities (and not seeing one true god compared to many false gods) while being principally devoted to one of them.

The early influences of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, even though they may not have been seen by most Christians during the formative period of Christianity, were a sufficient reason for early twentieth century scholars at Oxford to be curious, if not excited, about the ancient religion, its celebrated prophet, Zoroaster, and scriptures attributed primarily to him.

A precarious morale might have deterred any conversation about religion among the soldiers, and the miserable conditions of life in or near the trenches might have made soldiers perennially irritable and more susceptible to fighting over the added conflict of religious differences.

The fictional incidents of tree-killing occur not only in the mythology of Middle-earth but also later in LotR when the trees near Isengard are all destroyed more systematically, yet still needlessly, simply because Saruman and his orcs hate them.

In Pharisaic Judaism and by consequence in Christianity, many Zoroastrian beliefs were absorbed.

A great obstacle that likely hindered the octogenarian Tolkien from finishing Sil was a waning ability to grasp the designs of the younger writer who had begun the work.

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One might also assume that it would have been unlikely that both English authors could have developed an interest in something so specific, yet Lewis’s letter reveals that a scholar of literature at Oxford was not limited solely to reading texts from his or her area of expertise.

The Legendary Past.

The first German scholar to work with the Avestan texts was Justus Olshausen, although his translations were not considered as important as the work of Franz Bopp, whose pivotal work, A Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages, happened to include scattered bits of Avestan grammar.

This ability is achieved and enhanced by much reading of a wide variety of texts and the fallibility of an expanded and diluted memory.

“The tale illustrates several of Óðin’s unattractive attributes: his low cunning and self-seeking, his ability to change his shape, his propensity for
38
disguises and false names, [and] his recourse to treachery” (Paige 39).

It is apparent that the Zoroastrians who fled Persia found greater tolerance in India, a country with a legacy of religious heterogeneity.12
Contrary to what might be believed, the absorption of India into the British Empire as a protectorate appears to have had little to do with the acquisition of the manuscript used for the first successful translation of the Avesta by any European; however, one unusable manuscript of the Avesta, the Vendidad Sadah, which was brought to England in 1...

On April 9, 1917, a German submarine attack upon the ship SS City of Paris during his inbound passage to Marseilles forced him and other survivors to board a lifeboat where he died from exhaustion and exposure after three days of rowing.

A notable fact about Anquetil-Duperron is that he was both the first to translate the Avesta into French and the first scholar to use a second manuscript of the Avesta to better determine the accuracy of his work with the first manuscript.

In 1916, the padre of Tolkien’s battalion was Anglican and not amenable to Catholicism, and Tolkien attended a Catholic Mass led by a different chaplain at least once with a battalion of Irish soldiers (Garth 157).

Referring to the LotR, Tolkien clarifies:
I do not feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief (Letters of JRRT 355).

In both instances the poet-annalist harked back to themes in a national past otherwise long forgotten; both bards alike, though separated from each other in the realm of space and time, made use of material handed down from ancient days; and in each case there was something of the soul of the poet commingled with the spirit of the historian and chronicler....[I]f the British bard was chary in using words from the vocabulary of the Norman-French conquerors, the Persian rhapsodist was e...

Once Bopp provided this tool, when the final volume was published in 1853, German scholars of Zoroastrianism could attain a rudimentary grasp of the grammar of the language without needing to construct a grammar on their own from the old manuscripts (29).

C. S. Lewis, for one, did not limit himself to seeking to understand only those cultures that produced the most esteemed texts in the Western literary canon.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

Although Anthroposophy encouraged writers like Barfield to develop an appreciation for myths from a great range of cultures including even those with animist beliefs, fewer cultures seem to have presented to Tolkien and Lewis any appealing mythologies to borrow ideas from for writing their novels.

Here they counter:
Elizabeth M. Allen’s [chapter] builds an elaborate argument upon the idea that in Persian mythology, light is associated with good, and dark with evil.

“Modern Zoroastrianism is characterized by its lack of a proselytizing impulse” (Gnoli 590) and this might have resulted in a decrease in cultural prominence of Zoroastrians corresponding to a shrinking number of practitioners.

The most notable exception to this pattern of behavior is the incident where Loki dupes Höðr into unknowingly murdering Baldur, and there is no equivalent to this tragic god-killing in Tolkien’s myth.

According to Carpenter, “Williams was a devout member of the Church of England, but he was also interested in magic” (The Inklings 80).

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

Although Anthroposophy encouraged writers like Barfield to develop an appreciation for myths from a great range of cultures including even those with animist beliefs, fewer cultures seem to have presented to Tolkien and Lewis any appealing mythologies to borrow ideas from for writing their novels.

One might also assume that it would have been unlikely that both English authors could have developed an interest in something so specific, yet Lewis’s letter reveals that a scholar of literature at Oxford was not limited solely to reading texts from his or her area of expertise.

It is certainly known that Tolkien rued the fall of Anglo-Saxon civilization since its language and culture succumbed to the hegemony of the Normans (Curry 31).

One might also assume that it would have been unlikely that both English authors could have developed an interest in something so specific, yet Lewis’s letter reveals that a scholar of literature at Oxford was not limited solely to reading texts from his or her area of expertise.

Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered,
45
And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves in air expanded, In their course the clouds it hindered, And the driving clouds impeded, And it hid the shining sunlight, And the gleaming of the moonlight, Then the aged Väinämöinen, Pondered deeply and reflected, “Is there none to fell the oak-tree, And o’erthrow the tree majestic?

“The tale illustrates several of Óðin’s unattractive attributes: his low cunning and self-seeking, his ability to change his shape, his propensity for
38
disguises and false names, [and] his recourse to treachery” (Paige 39).

He is single-minded and merciless in his efforts to obtain it, and one consequence of this is that he murders nine thralls (Sturluson 95).

Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered,
45
And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves in air expanded, In their course the clouds it hindered, And the driving clouds impeded, And it hid the shining sunlight, And the gleaming of the moonlight, Then the aged Väinämöinen, Pondered deeply and reflected, “Is there none to fell the oak-tree, And o’erthrow the tree majestic?

As Tolkien remains the most acclaimed fantasy author of the twentieth century writing for an adult audience, it is not uncommon to hear praise for his originality, yet what readers call originality or creativity is but the talent of highly pluralistic synthesis.

He spites Ilúvatar by constantly bringing suffering to elves and to the mortal races.

Of course, one can point out the number of dissimilar details in both passages.

It is not practical for a biographer determined to publish his or her work to include all the digressive details, for these are difficult to incorporate into an uninterrupted narrative fit for commercial publication.

The impact of the translation of texts written in these ancient languages caused a shift in cultural affiliation of educated10 northern Europeans.

Tolkien’s own words attest that he was seeking to borrow from one or more ancient mythologies that simply offered something to fit the constraints of his narrative but were also inoffensive to his general religious views.

As it was revealed in a letter of recommendation (a “testimonial”) by an Indo-Aryan philologist who wrote the index volume for The Sacred Books of the East series, Moriz Winternitz:
Dr. WRIGHT, has not only a clear knowledge of the relations between Sanskrit and the other branches of Indo-European speech, he has not only a general knowledge of the principles of the language, which, until recently, has been considered the most important for the student of Comparative Philology; but he ...

One step up from these are the Ents, which are fully sentient beings with the ability to speak, to travel great distances, and the spectacular ability to buffet creatures with their bough-limbs and destroy stone fortifications by swelling their root- fingertips inside the stones’ crevices.

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Certainly the debate about possible Persian sources does not need to end with Drout and Wynne’s hasty dismissal of Allen’s argument since there are other texts, Tolkien’s fiction as well as the primary and secondary texts related to the Zoroastrian mythology of the Persians, worth mining to attempt to determine if the elements resembling their counterparts in Persian mythology revealed by Allen are truly descendant from the mythology or merely covergent with it.

As Tolkien remains the most acclaimed fantasy author of the twentieth century writing for an adult audience, it is not uncommon to hear praise for his originality, yet what readers call originality or creativity is but the talent of highly pluralistic synthesis.

Contrary to the impressions of some of Tolkien’s earliest readers, the author tried not to borrow from the events, characters, or talismans of the Arthurian tales,7 unlike Charles Williams, who freely used these elements.

4 In the context of discussing duality in religion, one Orientalist made an assertion that just as relevant here: “[W]ithout the recognition of difference no consciousness can exist” (Mills Our Own Religion 101).

Many scholars have looked to Tolkien’s invented languages for clues for the different mythological bases of The Lord of the Rings.

As Tolkien remains the most acclaimed fantasy author of the twentieth century writing for an adult audience, it is not uncommon to hear praise for his originality, yet what readers call originality or creativity is but the talent of highly pluralistic synthesis.

Another fault of Drout and Wynne is in using the terms of evolutionary biology in making an analogy to illustrate possible relationships between texts:
Pointing out obvious similarities—similarities, by the way, that Shippey had already
34 Of course, dualism is more commonly recognized in Manichaeism or Zoroastrianism than in Mithraism.

To acknowledge Zurvan as a prominent deity provokes argument with orthodox Zoroastrians who believe that Zurvan is merely an element or a force alluded to in the Gāthas and not a deity.

It is understandable that both casual readers and critics were from the start reaching for evidence of Nordic and Christian sources because the explicit mythology, as Tolkien had written it on the (then) unpublished manuscripts, was only accessible to the Inklings, Tolkien’s publisher, and members of his family.

Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered,
45
And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves in air expanded, In their course the clouds it hindered, And the driving clouds impeded, And it hid the shining sunlight, And the gleaming of the moonlight, Then the aged Väinämöinen, Pondered deeply and reflected, “Is there none to fell the oak-tree, And o’erthrow the tree majestic?

Lewis acknowledged, Tolkien was generally refractory when anyone suggested that he make changes to his stories.

One step up from these are the Ents, which are fully sentient beings with the ability to speak, to travel great distances, and the spectacular ability to buffet creatures with their bough-limbs and destroy stone fortifications by swelling their root- fingertips inside the stones’ crevices.

While biographical sources affirm that Tolkien read at least part of Kirby’s translation of the Kalevala,33 it is a mistake to suggest that this is the source for either of the Two Trees.

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I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

The criticism of Orientalist scholarship that began with Said’s Orientalism was a long-delayed reactionary movement within the field of literary criticism, and the texts he critiqued were a small number in comparison to the entire number of Orientalist texts that had been written or the Middle Eastern texts that had been translated; his references to the Zend- Avesta (17, 42, 51, 76-77, 98, 120) were made with very little description of the texts or the scholars who translated them.

An Avestan Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit: Part I—Phonology, Inflection, Word-Formation with an Introduction on the Avesta.

The most accessible clues to be gleaned are from the biographical information pertinent to the period of Tolkien’s life after he began lecturing at Oxford.

Changing the word, “similarities,” (as it is found a page earlier) to “similarity” employs a mass noun as a weasel word that leads one to believe that there is only one similar detail rather than many, thus
48
leading the reader away from the manifold similarities.

3 Because philologists relied on etymology, a method considered more speculative than empirical, and because they never produced a working universal grammar, philology is disparaged by present-day linguists of the transformational-generative school.

Avesta Eschatology Compared with the Books of Daniel and Revelations Being Supplementary to Zarathustra, Philo, the Achaemenids and Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

Looking solely at the proper nouns in LotR, Robert Giddings and Elizabeth Holland find but scarce evidence (solely the curious name Incanus) that suggests that Tolkien could have borrowed from any of the Central American, South American, Polynesian, Melanesian, or African legends or myths (Giddings 161).

The impact of the translation of texts written in these ancient languages caused a shift in cultural affiliation of educated10 northern Europeans.

37 There will likely never be agreement among all scholars upon the exact number of mythologies that have existed; however, it is possible to use English, the a language with the greatest number of words, to count the formal descriptors of a highly-inclusive cataloguing system to identify those mythologies found in published books.

It is apparent that the Zoroastrians who fled Persia found greater tolerance in India, a country with a legacy of religious heterogeneity.12
Contrary to what might be believed, the absorption of India into the British Empire as a protectorate appears to have had little to do with the acquisition of the manuscript used for the first successful translation of the Avesta by any European; however, one unusable manuscript of the Avesta, the Vendidad Sadah, which was brought to England in 1723 by ...

Undergraduate, and C.F.S. libraries of the university.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page ABSTRACT-.-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

Although Parker’s highlighting of the name of Mithrandir by itself seems only to reveal an analogous detail, which is proffered without any evidence linking any of the languages or mythology of Persia directly to Tolkien’s choice of a name,2 Elizabeth Allen uses it only as a starting point for investigating other elements of LotR that could have been influenced by Mithraism, a religion very closely related to Zoroastrianism, in “Persian Influences in The Lord of the Rings.”

These consist of both translations of the original Avesta as well as the commentary (called āzainti in Avestan and zand in Pahlavi) written about the Avesta.

Beyond the period of its conflict with Christianity, Manicheanism appears to have lost its mass appeal: “It is probable that by the sixth century the force of [the Manicheans’] impetus was spent” (Runciman 17) even though similar dualistic beliefs persisted inside and outside Christianity after the demise of the Manicheans.

It is difficult to clarify the roles of these three important deities without mentioning the Zurvanite heresy of Zoroastrianism.

He was Tolkien’s tutor and mentor, Joseph Wright, and his influence in Tolkien’s education was indisputably important.

The Avesta and the Veda are two echoes of one and the same voice, the reflex of one and the same thought: the Vedas, therefore, are both the best lexicon and the best commentary to the Avesta (Zend-Avesta I xxvi).

His main contribution to Oxford, two volumes of the Sacred Books of the East series published in 1880 and 1883, includes a translation of all parts of the Avesta except for the Gāthas, which are the texts of the hymns of the Zoroastrians.

The precedent interest in the living language of seventeenth-century Persia was understandable because too many of the ancient texts had already been destroyed or lost during the Arab invasion.

Second, the tree is vulnerable.

Drout and Wynne’s rejoinder effectively masks, whether intentionally or not, all the other Mithraic characteristics Allen explicitly mentions besides the dualities of Good versus Evil and light versus darkness.

Occasionally these two ways of searching for motives and influences coincide within the same piece of criticism, as in Brenda Partridge’s “No Sex Please—We’re Hobbits: The Construction of Female Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings.”

One must recognize that biology in the present day mainly concerns itself with phylogenetic relationships, which pertain to kinship linking species through reproduction.

Since Embla and Askr become the first woman and man, their existence as trees (if there are two instead of only one) is only transitory.

In both instances the poet-annalist harked back to themes in a national past otherwise long forgotten; both bards alike, though separated from each other in the realm of space and time, made use of material handed down from ancient days; and in each case there was something of the soul of the poet commingled with the spirit of the historian and chronicler....[I]f the British bard was chary in using words from the vocabulary of the Norman-French conquerors, the Persian rhapsodist was e...

In another testimonial written for Joseph Wright, James Murray gave high praise for Wright’s expertise in certain languages:
In the course of my work at the English Dictionary [the New English Dictionary on Historical Principals or the OED as it is now called], I have had innumerable occasions to confer with and consult Dr. WRIGHT on questions connected with the ulterior etymology of English words, involving points in Germanic, Latin, Greek, Iranic, and Sanskrit; the relations of thes...

The Transcendent Adventure.

Each of these deities has a role of varying importance to the conflicts that take place in Ëa (“Being”), the name the Ainur use for Middle-earth.

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

One step up from these are the Ents, which are fully sentient beings with the ability to speak, to travel great distances, and the spectacular ability to buffet creatures with their bough-limbs and destroy stone fortifications by swelling their root- fingertips inside the stones’ crevices.

This speculation does not consider the varying accessibility of all the world’s mythologies with the same dualism as seen in Mithraism34 as could be found in a book by a student at Oxford during the earliest decades of the twentieth century.

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

He recounts:
There was a great tree—a huge poplar with vast limbs—though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled.

Whether or not Wright ever taught Tolkien about any of the archaic languages of the East, it is clear that Tolkien learned something about Indo-Iranian languages at some point in his life.

The culture of ancient Persia, from glimpses seen in the myths taken from the Zoroastrian scriptures, offered to Oxford’s scholars an archetypal culture that was analogous to England in its religion and in the history of its language yet still ancient and enticingly cryptic.

One must also consider the similarities in writing style, as both writers seemed adept at annalistic narrative interrupted sporadically by poetic verse.

This is not to say that there may not be parallels between Tolkien’s work and any number of sources, but if we are to avoid circular reasoning, mere parallels must not be equated with sources (Drout 107).

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

It is also clear that Lewis resented the canonization of the text, which shows the tendency of many young readers, being complacent and secretive in their appreciation, to want to hoard such arcane books.26
What is perhaps most startling about the Shāh-nāhmah is what is known about its author.

32
more accessible to a casual reader than other translated Zoroastrian texts is that the commentary is integrated with the paraphrased translation of the section of the Zadspram the cosmogony is found in.

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

“The tale illustrates several of Óðin’s unattractive attributes: his low cunning and self-seeking, his ability to change his shape, his propensity for
38
disguises and false names, [and] his recourse to treachery” (Paige 39).

So black, in fact, that they rarely emerge completely from a Zoroastrian fen-fog” (Parker 603).

This role was imparted from the particular rules Zoroastrians were expected to follow:
The rapid development in post-exilic times of ritualistic and ceremonial regulations, that so characterized later Judaism, we must attribute in part to the rigorous observance by the Persians of more stringent laws and rights (Carter 91).

I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani [Hindi], Persian, Gypsy [Romani], or any related dialects (Letters of JRRT 37 italics retained)
Of course, this quote merely reveals that Tolkien knew something about the languages24 spoken in India and Iran; nothing is revealed in the letter about his knowledge of the Zoroastrian texts or the scholarship derived from them.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

But it is necessary to mention that no sense of northernness could have developed without an awareness of ideas originating from texts of other cultures, particularly those most prominent worldwide, which were the national epics and religious texts.4 For both Tolkien and Lewis, an education in a variety of classical texts, the Christian scriptures5 and theological writings could have provided bases of comparison for the texts of the Nordic cultures.

Evidence of this is found in a letter written to a German official working for a board of censors during the 1930s.

And if an Oxford scholar of literature was interested at some point in the Zoroastrian religion, then it seems at least as plausible that, in the study of comparative philology,3 a discipline which frequently required the study of opaque and ancient texts, a scholar like Tolkien would have found the scriptures of the ancient Zoroastrians or any texts descendent from them to be relevant, accessible, and interesting.

One could argue that this was the moment when the German philologists had what was necessary to take the lead in future scholarship, but Pederson refutes the value of Bopp’s comparative grammar because it contributed nothing to the phonology of any of the languages described (257); however, whatever the Germans may have found wanting in Bopp’s work, the lack of a phonology appears to have been no lasting impediment to their advance in research.

Here the authors rely on a rhetorical trick that can only deceive those who have not read or remembered Allen’s whole essay.

The British Sanskritist, William Jones, who had written a grammar for modern Persian, denounced the translation, declaring it fraudulent: “Although [Anquetil-Duperron] had his defenders, the adverse critics continued to hold the upper hand until [his] death in 1805, and for a score of years afterward” (Pederson 25).

The concept of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman as brothers is also abhorrent to orthodox Zoroastrians.

And while one could speculate that Murray may have exaggerated Wright’s expertise in Persian in the interest of seeing his friend win the appointment, other evidence outside the testimonials makes it clear that Wright had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Avesta.

It should be noted that Bopp’s work made a connection between Gothic and Old Persian (as Zand) beyond just the title, which by itself could have given Tolkien a reason to read more about the Persian sacred texts.

Askr and Embla, whether in the state of being sessile and pre-human or animate and human, are never under threat at all.

The second belief is that Ahura Mazda is not omnipotent or omniscient (Zaehner Dawn and Twilight 214).

When the Jews returned following the building of the Second Temple (a work sanctioned by Cyrus the Great, a Zoroastrian king) their beliefs began to change: “After the exile the Jews awoke to a realization of the spiritual, antagonistic powers of evil, as they had not known them before” (Carter 53).

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

In a letter Tolkien wrote to his publisher in 1951 to explain his reasons for wanting to complete Sil and have it published, he explains his intent not to borrow from any of the Arthurian tales:
For one thing [the Arthurian] ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive.

Fortunately for scholars hindered by the limited facts made available in the authorized biographies of any of the Inklings, new details from other sources have emerged that point to previously unseen influences on the writers as in the case of books about C.S.

One Saturday Morning [in November 1911] a small but representative number of Parsis journeyed from Paddington to Oxford to pay tribute to the venerable Professor Mills for his inestimable services to the Zoroastrian faith, on behalf of the Parsis of Great Britain, and through them of the Indian Parsis generally....The day had begun dull and cold, but by the time Oxford was reached the sun was breaking through the clouds and it had become a delightful day of late autumn.

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

No well-read author was ever limited to borrowing ideas from texts written by a single author or a single pair of authors; the same can be said for writers influenced by genres.

Since it is known that Tolkien adhered to the tenets of his catechism, it is certain that he disagreed with Barfield’s interest in mysticism while still keeping rapport with him and Charles Williams as mutual friends of Lewis.

Strong polytheism, in contrast, is the belief in many gods with no requirement for all believers to be devoted to the same god of that pantheon.

Scholarship related to Persian mythology and the Zoroastrian religion, as well as the English translations of the sacred and secular texts the mythology is found in, will be probed as possible sources for Tolkien’s own mythology as found in his narrative.

A precarious morale might have deterred any conversation about religion among the soldiers, and the miserable conditions of life in or near the trenches might have made soldiers perennially irritable and more susceptible to fighting over the added conflict of religious differences.

One of the most controversial arguments made in any of his books about religion was that there was no reliable historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth had ever existed.21 The main argument he made in the first edition of Pagan Christs in 1903 was that many religious traditions had the equivalent of a Jesus in their mythologies and that the authors of books of the New Testament created Jesus as influenced by one or more of those traditions.

(C. S. Lewis Collected Letters 581 capitals and punctuation retained)
This observation reveals about Lewis that he had an interest in an epic that would today be considered esoteric.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

Writing permits a deliberate process of creation and is not solely shaped by the immediate environment; furthermore, no text’s survival depends on its fitness to the environment of the period of its conception to be accessible to a reader at a later period (the equivalent to survival in the biological sense).

It is also clear in the text that Ahriman derives sustenance from killing the tree.

This belated celebration of Mills’ accomplishments, whether it drew more attention to Mills’ capstone work or all the Avestan translation by Mills and Darmesteter together, was likely noticed by
20 Mills was certainly not the first to see the connections between the theologies of Zoroastrianism and Judaism, but he brought to the argument the perspective of a scholar who was both an American Episcopalian theologian and a philologist.

This detail invites further examination, but weighing the merit of this single bit of evidence alone within the critique, it seems that Parker is guided by an intuitive interpretation of the text not supported by any revealed biographical facts or any cited readings of Zoroastrian texts.

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

One can see that Blair made one of the earliest attempts to find analogues from Persian mythology in Tolkien’s fiction and use them to address certain inconsistencies between the relationships of deities found in Christian theology and the relationships between deities in Sil and LotR.

But Ungoliant sucked it up, and going then from Tree to Tree she set her black beak to their wounds, till they were drained; and the pain of Death that was in her went into their tissues and withered them, root, branch, and leaf; and they died (Sil 76 italics mine)
40
There seem to be at least a few elements of this part of the Zâd-Sparam that Tolkien could have borrowed from.

Neither are they objects sought to be destroyed by the most destructive deity, Loki, who seems more determined to vex the gods directly rather than their creatures.

It might seem like there is no sufficient evidence connecting Mills’ lectures and Tolkien’s early chapters of Sil; however, there was at least one other scholar who lectured on the subject of Zoroastrianism during Tolkien’s years as an undergraduate.

Addressing human contempt for the greater trees in the real world, Tolkien asserted: “Too often the hate is irrational, a fear of anything large and alive, and not easily tamed or destroyed, though it may clothe itself in pseudo-rational terms” (Letters of JRRT 321).

An intuitive rebuttal one could make against the argument that Tolkien’s mythology was influenced by the Zoroastrian scriptures is to say that Tolkien could not have been interested in something that appears at first to be so distant from both his academic discipline and his own culture.

There remains, however, the task of looking at “the old sources” Lewis referred to.

As one example, the book makes a direct phonological comparison between five words in Gothic and
15 The beginning of Anquetil-Duperron’s research preceded his actual publication of the translation of the Avesta by ten years.

The battle of Nahavand meant to Iran, in the realm of letters, much the same thing as the battle of Hastings meant to Britain.

In a letter Tolkien wrote to his publisher in 1951 to explain his reasons for wanting to complete Sil and have it published, he explains his intent not to borrow from any of the Arthurian tales:
For one thing [the Arthurian] ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive.

This observation of the role of trees and their treatment by humans (or orcs) in the the LotR invites a comparison of this adversarial relationship to the conflicts between trees and other entities in Sil.

In order to describe the earliest stage of human intelligence, philologists and mythologists invented Aryans and Semites, to whom they invariably ascribed opposing, if sometimes complementary, roles (Olender 20).

I appreciate their flexibility, their encouragement, and their valuable time.

There is also the role of the fighting gods, and this group includes the goddess, Varda, whose alternate name, Elbereth, is terrifying to the servants of Evil (as the scenario of the ringwraiths surrounding Frodo on Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring demonstrates).

One can see that Blair made one of the earliest attempts to find analogues from Persian mythology in Tolkien’s fiction and use them to address certain inconsistencies between the relationships of deities found in Christian theology and the relationships between deities in Sil and LotR.

From his theological education in the United States as well as his training in philology in Germany, Mills was able to use his rare dual perspective to support the argument for the influence of Zoroastrian beliefs on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.20
At the time Tolkien attended Exeter College as a first year student during the Michaelmas term of 1911, an event took place in which Prof. Lawrence Heyworth Mills formally received recognition from the Fārsi-speaking community for...

Carpenter has been honest enough in his scholarship to admit that the book of Tolkien’s letters he helped Christopher Tolkien to edit is incomplete; his biography of Tolkien is substantially shorter than the book of letters.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

The publication of The Silmarillion, a book Tolkien had originally hoped to be published following The Hobbit, revealed through prose narrative the mythology Tolkien created as the basis for the events in LotR.

9
“it was a strong Christian faith that inspired and informed the writer’s imagination” (Bruner and Ware x italics mine).

By the late 1970s, the literary criticism of deconstructionists like Edward Said renewed an interest in the French and British Orientalists who had written about the Arab world, while all of the scholars who had focused on Zoroastrianism texts, with the exception of Anquetil-Duperron, rested undisturbed in tombal obscurity.

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

23
a number of students and dons at Oxford, and it is conceivable that Tolkien may have attended some of Mills’ University lectures.

The Celtic element in Tolkien’s Middle-earth is seen more in the language, as when the elves speak the Welsh-derived Quenya language, than in the mythology.

This ability is achieved and enhanced by much reading of a wide variety of texts and the fallibility of an expanded and diluted memory.

But it is necessary to mention that no sense of northernness could have developed without an awareness of ideas originating from texts of other cultures, particularly those most prominent worldwide, which were the national epics and religious texts.4 For both Tolkien and Lewis, an education in a variety of classical texts, the Christian scriptures5 and theological writings could have provided bases of comparison for the texts of the Nordic cultures.

The ‘Tree of Remedies’ or ‘of All Seeds’ has acquired a very great importance, it has been placed by the side of the first tree in order to obtain the symmetry so dear to the Eranians.

Prior to winning his scholarship at Exeter College, he attended the Anglican- affiliated King Edward VI’s preparatory school in Birmingham (Grotta 24), and discussing religion with any Protestant other than Christopher Wiseman might have only added to the tension arising from class differences.

Tolkien’s own words attest that he was seeking to borrow from one or more ancient mythologies that simply offered something to fit the constraints of his narrative but were also inoffensive to his general religious views.

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

Following the First World War, the two were the only survivors from the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, the informal social club they had started during
12
their time at prep school: “Wiseman was a staunch Methodist, but the two boys found that they could argue about religion without bitterness” (Carpenter JRRT: A Biography 41).

Perhaps the loss of interest in the scholarship related to Zoroastrian texts reflects the decline in the number of Zoroastrians worldwide.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

Since it is known that Tolkien adhered to the tenets of his catechism, it is certain that he disagreed with Barfield’s interest in mysticism while still keeping rapport with him and Charles Williams as mutual friends of Lewis.

And while one could speculate that Murray may have exaggerated Wright’s expertise in Persian in the interest of seeing his friend win the appointment, other evidence outside the testimonials makes it clear that Wright had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Avesta.

As it was revealed in a letter of recommendation (a “testimonial”) by an Indo-Aryan philologist who wrote the index volume for The Sacred Books of the East series, Moriz Winternitz:
Dr. WRIGHT, has not only a clear knowledge of the relations between Sanskrit and the other branches of Indo-European speech, he has not only a general knowledge of the principles of the language, which, until recently, has been considered the most important for the student of Comparative Philology; but he is also...

This detail invites further examination, but weighing the merit of this single bit of evidence alone within the critique, it seems that Parker is guided by an intuitive interpretation of the text not supported by any revealed biographical facts or any cited readings of Zoroastrian texts.

All the books were uniformly bound, and I was surprised to see such unlikely titbits [sic] as the Ethics of Aristotle and the works of the Persian epic poet Firdausi.

Although Parker’s highlighting of the name of Mithrandir by itself seems only to reveal an analogous detail, which is proffered without any evidence linking any of the languages or mythology of Persia directly to Tolkien’s choice of a name,2 Elizabeth Allen uses it only as a starting point for investigating other elements of LotR that could have been influenced by Mithraism, a religion very closely related to Zoroastrianism, in “Persian Influences in The Lord of the Rings.”

Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered,
45
And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves in air expanded, In their course the clouds it hindered, And the driving clouds impeded, And it hid the shining sunlight, And the gleaming of the moonlight, Then the aged Väinämöinen, Pondered deeply and reflected, “Is there none to fell the oak-tree, And o’erthrow the tree majestic?

Satan is an alternating opposite to Yahweh as well as an opposite to Christ in the books of the New Testament as “a secondary dualism” (Taylor 35) and occasionally an opposite to Yahweh in the books of the Old Testament.29
Satan shares in common with Melkor some culpability in tainting creation through his cunning; however, it must be emphasized that the depiction of Satan more comparable to Melkor is the one from the post-exhilic scriptures of the Hebrews and the New Testament.

His last book, The Treasure of the Magi, a book about contemporary Zoroastrianism, was posthumously published in the same year, and the most reliable information about the circumstances of his death comes from Rendel Harris (qtd. in Farquhar xi-xii), the author of a letter inserted in the foreward of the same book.

The event is recalled in detail in a newspaper excerpt found as an insert in one book of Mills’ published lectures.

He appears to have heeded F. Max Mueller’s words: “I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar’ (qtd. in Chaudhuri 313)
30
Persia, Shāh-nāhmah (“Book of Kings”), was available in translated portions then, and among those who were drawn to the text were students of history, poetry, and philology.25 In describing the appeal of the Persian poem to English-speaking readers, A.V.

It is apparent that the Zoroastrians who fled Persia found greater tolerance in India, a country with a legacy of religious heterogeneity.12
Contrary to what might be believed, the absorption of India into the British Empire as a protectorate appears to have had little to do with the acquisition of the manuscript used for the first successful translation of the Avesta by any European; however, one unusable manuscript of the Avesta, the Vendidad Sadah, which was brought to England in 1...

Beyond the period of its conflict with Christianity, Manicheanism appears to have lost its mass appeal: “It is probable that by the sixth century the force of [the Manicheans’] impetus was spent” (Runciman 17) even though similar dualistic beliefs persisted inside and outside Christianity after the demise of the Manicheans.

10
Tolkien wanted to create in Middle-earth a culture that in many ways could have been the forerunner of our Christian world...In order to create a logical religious tie between Middle-earth and modern Christianity, Mithraism and Persian theology are a particularly appropriate treasure hoard for Tolkien to have drawn upon since many of their aspects dovetail neatly with Christianity (203).

On April 9, 1917, a German submarine attack upon the ship SS City of Paris during his inbound passage to Marseilles forced him and other survivors to board a lifeboat where he died from exhaustion and exposure after three days of rowing.

The aforementioned problem with the Gauls is that they never developed their writing systems sufficiently to sustain a literary tradition similar to that of the Greeks and Romans.

Prior to the war, the biographical information revealed by Grotta and Carpenter does not provide enough facts to show how Tolkien chose to deal with obstacles in his friendships during his youth that likely arose due to his belonging to a conspicuous religious minority.

The British Sanskritist, William Jones, who had written a grammar for modern Persian, denounced the translation, declaring it fraudulent: “Although [Anquetil-Duperron] had his defenders, the adverse critics continued to hold the upper hand until [his] death in 1805, and for a score of years afterward” (Pederson 25).

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

One must also test the authors’ clause of counterargument that states that “the number of mythologies in which light equals good and dark equals evil must surely number in the thousands.”

D.C.L., a Candidate for the Corpus Christi Professorship of Comparative Philology in the University of Oxford.

This encounter between Iranian religion and Jewish religion was of far-reaching significance in world history.

A precarious morale might have deterred any conversation about religion among the soldiers, and the miserable conditions of life in or near the trenches might have made soldiers perennially irritable and more susceptible to fighting over the added conflict of religious differences.

Although this statement by itself cannot be refuted, it seems irrelevant since biology of the present day, as an atheous40 system of inquiry, ignores the role of any author.

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered,
45
And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves in air expanded, In their course the clouds it hindered, And the driving clouds impeded, And it hid the shining sunlight, And the gleaming of the moonlight, Then the aged Väinämöinen, Pondered deeply and reflected, “Is there none to fell the oak-tree, And o’erthrow the tree majestic?

Like Mills, this visiting lecturer also had theological training.

Ilúvatar responds by introducing a new melodic movement in the composition, and then Melkor creates another clamor to rival the new movement, but at last Ilúvatar creates his most powerful music and defeats Melkor’s discord.

This revelation is worth considering not because it suggests that Lewis might have made some remarks to Tolkien about Zoroastrianism that could have been responsible for the religion shaping the mythological narrative of Middle-earth found in Sil—Tolkien had already begun writing the manuscripts that would eventually become the first chapters of the Sil years before Tolkien and Lewis had ever met.

32
more accessible to a casual reader than other translated Zoroastrian texts is that the commentary is integrated with the paraphrased translation of the section of the Zadspram the cosmogony is found in.

Since it is known that Tolkien adhered to the tenets of his catechism, it is certain that he disagreed with Barfield’s interest in mysticism while still keeping rapport with him and Charles Williams as mutual friends of Lewis.

Indeed there was more written about the Celts and Gauls (in Greek and Latin) than by them during the classical period since much of the lore they shared through oral tradition was never recorded:
At this day only a few inscriptions remain in Gaulish language of Cæsar’s time and later, but nothing earlier.

If one were indulgent enough to suppose that Embla and Askr are both trees, as Jakob Grimm supposed (560) when he referred to them as “Two Trees,” there would still remain other doubts about their similarities to Laurelin and Telepiron in Sil.

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

Scholarship during the early twentieth century showed these developments explicitly, and the traditional view of Judaism as a religion averse to borrowing fundamentally different beliefs from other religions was challenged.

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

As one present day scholar of the Middle East reveals about the languages of the Persians:
The change from Zoroastrian to Islamic Persian offers interesting parallels to the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English after the Norman Conquest of
10 Whereas some in northern Europe had previously fancied that their ancestors were Trojans or one of the tribes of Israel, the term “Aryan” quickly became misappropriated by Germans who used the word to describe themselves.

Complaining about a place where he lodged, Lewis describes:
I have not yet exhausted the horrors of the place: I was glad to see a book case in the lounge.

Farvardyn: An Illustrated Reference Portal about Ancient Persia.

Following Cyrus’s edict in 538 BCE that ended the Babylonian Captivity (Armstrong 62), the Hebrews returned to the kingdom of Judah having adapted a more dangerous Satan into their beliefs.

In 1916, the padre of Tolkien’s battalion was Anglican and not amenable to Catholicism, and Tolkien attended a Catholic Mass led by a different chaplain at least once with a battalion of Irish soldiers (Garth 157).

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

Ents and Entwives are also regarded as sages in the story as they are ancient creatures who have gathered thousands of years of lore including other languages.

16 Referring to Rask’s work in the introduction to his comparative grammar, his scholarly achievement (likely the German translation, Über das Alter und die Echtheit der Zend-Sprache und des Zend-Avesta und Herstellung des Zend) was declared thus: “the first contribution to the knowledge of this language that can be relied on” (Bopp trans. by Edward Eastwick x).

Scholars like Mills and Moulton were referred to as Indologists, and the languages they studied included Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, Old Persian (including the Old Persian written in Avestan script), Middle Persian (Pahlavi and other dialects), and other languages believed to have originated in or near Persia and India.

Scholarship during the early twentieth century showed these developments explicitly, and the traditional view of Judaism as a religion averse to borrowing fundamentally different beliefs from other religions was challenged.

Lewis, Clive Staples.

Perhaps the history of ancient Persia allowed both Tolkien and Lewis to relate to the Persians through a sympathy for the vanquished since the Zoroastrian culture of the conquered Persians was over-run and largely displaced by the invading Arabs.

Later in his life, in a letter he wrote to another young reader, Lewis expressed his personal affinity with the Gauls if he were given the choice of siding with the Gallic tribes or their Roman conquerors in ancient times (Letters to Children 89).

Latin would never have become French, but for the brutality with which it was mangled by Franks and other barbarians.

Perhaps the history of ancient Persia allowed both Tolkien and Lewis to relate to the Persians through a sympathy for the vanquished since the Zoroastrian culture of the conquered Persians was over-run and largely displaced by the invading Arabs.

Both Orientalists and non-Orientalists disputed the accuracy of his translation of the Avesta; some even deemed it a canard.

As revealed in “Spiegel,” an article published in the web version of Encyclopædia Iranica: “Spiegel himself acknowledged that Westergaard’s edition was better than his, especially with regard to textual criticism, because it was based on a greater number of manuscripts” (Schmitt par.

39
potential and the actual, and they do not recognize Tulkas as the most dynamic god.

As one scholar observes:
It is clear that in seeing and protesting the destruction by humanity of the world it inhabits and of which it is a part, in recognizing that the natural world was an endangered enclave in need of protection against encroaching civilization...[H]is fiction seems to stand foursquare in defense of trees against their human (or orcish) predators (Flieger 147).

But at the time of which we are speaking the systematizing spirit of the Eranians [sic] has distinguished two kinds of Haôma,--one the yellow and terrestrial one, the other the white and supernatural one, and this latter is identified with the Gôkart (Gaôkerena).

As the medieval clergy recorded many of the pagan Celtic tales of the Gauls’ tribal kin in Wales and Ireland, the deliberate Christian interpolation was more frequent in a Celtic text, like the Mabinogion, than it was in a Norse text like any version of the Edda.

One step up from these are the Ents, which are fully sentient beings with the ability to speak, to travel great distances, and the spectacular ability to buffet creatures with their bough-limbs and destroy stone fortifications by swelling their root- fingertips inside the stones’ crevices.

This ability is achieved and enhanced by much reading of a wide variety of texts and the fallibility of an expanded and diluted memory.

In Mills’ introduction to his translation of the Gāthas of the Avesta, it says that Ahriman “has a servant, Aeshma, the impersonation of invasion and rapine, the chief scourge of the Zarathustrians (Zend-Avesta III xix).

49
identified39—does not show descent (both birds and bats have wings; that does not mean that bats are descended from birds) and furthermore, at a high enough level of abstraction, nearly any two stories can be made to appear similar (106-07).

In each case there was born a poet-genius of world-wide fame three centuries after the clash of arms had ceased....A closer parallel in the domain of epic composition, and yet one vastly to the advantage of the Persian rhapsodist, might easily be drawn between Firdausi’s Shāh-nāhmah and the rhymed chronicle of Layamon’s Brut, which recorded in measured verse the History of the Early Kings of Britain.

Zoroastrianism, which is the only extant religion with a recorded theology descendent from the pre-Islamic Persians, can be seen as an ancient archetypal religion for Judaism following the construction of the Second Temple and Christianity.

Mr. Khory made timely reference to this happy omen when he pointed out to Dr. Mills that Mithra had burst through the clouds as if to honour one who had helped Europe to understand the spiritual significance of the Zoroastrian reverence for the sun (Mills Our Own Religion 146-47).

But again, similarity does not imply descent, and the number of mythologies in which light equals good and dark equals evil must surely number in the thousands.

Following Cyrus’s edict in 538 BCE that ended the Babylonian Captivity (Armstrong 62), the Hebrews returned to the kingdom of Judah having adapted a more dangerous Satan into their beliefs.

The last reason is that the work might have appealed to someone like Tolkien because the epic appeals to readers who prefer a narrative style purposely shunning the use of the words of the language of invaders.

16 Referring to Rask’s work in the introduction to his comparative grammar, his scholarly achievement (likely the German translation, Über das Alter und die Echtheit der Zend-Sprache und des Zend-Avesta und Herstellung des Zend) was declared thus: “the first contribution to the knowledge of this language that can be relied on” (Bopp trans. by Edward Eastwick x).

The communities of Zoroastrians remaining in Iran were vestigial in comparison to the thriving larger communities of Zoroastrian Fārsi speakers in India who
17
were more determined to preserve their religion.

Scholarship related to Persian mythology and the Zoroastrian religion, as well as the English translations of the sacred and secular texts the mythology is found in, will be probed as possible sources for Tolkien’s own mythology as found in his narrative.

One Saturday Morning [in November 1911] a small but representative number of Parsis journeyed from Paddington to Oxford to pay tribute to the venerable Professor Mills for his inestimable services to the Zoroastrian faith, on behalf of the Parsis of Great Britain, and through them of the Indian Parsis generally....The day had begun dull and cold, but by the time Oxford was reached the sun was breaking through the clouds and it had become a delightful day of late autumn.

As the medieval clergy recorded many of the pagan Celtic tales of the Gauls’ tribal kin in Wales and Ireland, the deliberate Christian interpolation was more frequent in a Celtic text, like the Mabinogion, than it was in a Norse text like any version of the Edda.

Instead of focusing solely on the Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian mythological texts, this investigation seeks to reveal the analogues of Persian mythology found in Tolkien’s fiction while also considering the possibility of Persian sources shaping
2
the mythology of The Silmarillion.

Writing permits a deliberate process of creation and is not solely shaped by the immediate environment; furthermore, no text’s survival depends on its fitness to the environment of the period of its conception to be accessible to a reader at a later period (the equivalent to survival in the biological sense).

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

Undergraduate, and C.F.S. libraries of the university.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page ABSTRACT-.-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

Scholars there, who were more experienced in comparative philology, needed to travel to Paris, Copenhagen, London or Oxford to examine or make copies of the manuscripts since no other manuscripts worth using
17 The first piece of British scholarship on Zoroastrianism was written by a Scottish missionary with no direct connection to Oxford.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

A precarious morale might have deterred any conversation about religion among the soldiers, and the miserable conditions of life in or near the trenches might have made soldiers perennially irritable and more susceptible to fighting over the added conflict of religious differences.

The possible influence of one or both of these two scholars is, of course, difficult to ascertain without more evidence.

The great oak tree in the Kalevala is not even beneficent; in fact, it is responsible for a dangerous problem in creation.

Once Bopp provided this tool, when the final volume was published in 1853, German scholars of Zoroastrianism could attain a rudimentary grasp of the grammar of the language without needing to construct a grammar on their own from the old manuscripts (29).

Allen reveals:
The trees, seven stars, crescent moon, radiate crown, circles of the world, lembas, hvarenō, the trials undergone by the Fellowship, the eruption of Mount Doom, fire, air, and water, rings, Sauron and his Ringwraiths, Gandalf and the Fellowship, December 25, March 25, the sun, moon, stars, dawn, light, and dark—practically all the important symbols and many of the characters of The Lord of the Rings—trace their ancestry through the Mithraic communities of the Roman Empi...

But Ungoliant sucked it up, and going then from Tree to Tree she set her black beak to their wounds, till they were drained; and the pain of Death that was in her went into their tissues and withered them, root, branch, and leaf; and they died (Sil 76 italics mine)
40
There seem to be at least a few elements of this part of the Zâd-Sparam that Tolkien could have borrowed from.

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

If all scholars are expected to follow Drout and Wynne’s prescription to follow Shippey’s example of using “detailed similarities of nomenclature” (106) as evidence for
39 The credit for being the first to identify Persian similarities in names must not be given to Shippey.

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

Being from Yorkshire, as could be perceived from his accent, he was considered a devoted tireless man who was thoroughly qualified for his position at Oxford.

Then the Unlight of Ungoliant rose up even to the roots of the Trees, and Melkor sprang upon the mound; and with his black spear he smote each Tree to its core, wounded them deep, and their sap poured forth as it were their blood, and was spilled upon the ground.

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

Following Wright’s eventual appointment as Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, he produced his most famous work, The English Dialect Dictionary, a product of prodigious effort that is still considered an invaluable work of scholarship.

Following the oral address, Mills was presented with the written address inscribed on velum with illumination and Zoroastrian symbols, all in a silver casket.

Changing the word, “similarities,” (as it is found a page earlier) to “similarity” employs a mass noun as a weasel word that leads one to believe that there is only one similar detail rather than many, thus
48
leading the reader away from the manifold similarities.

One step up from these are the Ents, which are fully sentient beings with the ability to speak, to travel great distances, and the spectacular ability to buffet creatures with their bough-limbs and destroy stone fortifications by swelling their root- fingertips inside the stones’ crevices.

University to contributeto theadvancemenotf knowledgeandresearchby making the thesisavailableto scholars.Researcbhecomems orebroadlydisseminateadndmay assistauthorsin futureendeavorsP. urdueuniversitytypicallyreceivesno monetary gainfromthereproductionanddistributionofmaster'sthesesexcepftorrecovering costsassociatewd ith suchreproductioannddistribution(e.g.,without authors' permissionm, aster'sthesesgenerallycannotbecopied,inwholeorinpart,forsuch educationapl urposesas inter-libraryl...

It is also possible to isolate certain elements of Zoroastrianism in Tolkien’s work without focusing solely on the doctrines that can be found in the sacred Zoroastrian texts.

Tolkien’s fiction has sought to reveal the influences on his writing ranging from the nebulous, as seen in the criticism that responds to the author’s work based on enthusiasm and anachronistic criteria, to the salient where critics have worked seriously with archival and other relevant material including biographical texts.

As one scholar observes:
It is clear that in seeing and protesting the destruction by humanity of the world it inhabits and of which it is a part, in recognizing that the natural world was an endangered enclave in need of protection against encroaching civilization...[H]is fiction seems to stand foursquare in defense of trees against their human (or orcish) predators (Flieger 147).

In both instances the poet-annalist harked back to themes in a national past otherwise long forgotten; both bards alike, though separated from each other in the realm of space and time, made use of material handed down from ancient days; and in each case there was something of the soul of the poet commingled with the spirit of the historian and chronicler....[I]f the British bard was chary in using words from the vocabulary of the Norman-French conquerors, the Persian rhapsodist was e...

The reason Lewis’s reading of the
6
Zoroastrianism scriptures is remarkable is because it reveals that a devout Christian, one who had also read the Norse myths as a child, was inclined to read about an obscure religion of non-European origin for no other reason than personal interest.

Likewise, Tolkien and Firdausi were both pious and held contemporary monotheistic beliefs, yet they were still steadfast in keeping and revering all the lore that remained from a polytheistic past.

As for the author producing the first successful translation of the Avesta, a historian of the Zoroastrians reveals:
The birth of Zoroastrian studies in Europe occurred in 1771 when the great French Orientalist and traveler, [Abraham Hyacinthe] Anquetil-Duperron, published the Avesta, a copy which he had brought back with him from his Indian travels (Zaehner Dawn and Twilight 343).

The conception of texts, on the other hand, can point to far more than two parents imparting their characteristics in the same work, and this allows for far more possibilities for sources.

Beyond the period of its conflict with Christianity, Manicheanism appears to have lost its mass appeal: “It is probable that by the sixth century the force of [the Manicheans’] impetus was spent” (Runciman 17) even though similar dualistic beliefs persisted inside and outside Christianity after the demise of the Manicheans.

(Kalevala Runo II, Verses 78-96, I: 12)
As a reader might predict, the hero of the epic (with the help of a another mythical being) fells the great oak because its canopy blocks all light from the stars, moon, and the sun.

In the second part, the focus will shift to the mythology of Middle- earth itself as gleaned from The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales, and Tolkien’s mythology, particularly the cosmogony, will be compared to the Judeo-Christian, Norse, and Finnish mythological texts as well as the translated ancient religious texts of the Zoroastrians.

He declared in the introduction to his translation: “As the Parsis [living mainly outside Iran in the 1890s] are the ruins of a people,11 so are their sacred books the ruins of a religion” (Zend-Avesta I xi- xii).

23
a number of students and dons at Oxford, and it is conceivable that Tolkien may have attended some of Mills’ University lectures.

Having been educated at New York University and in the Theological Seminary at Fairfax, Virginia, Mills was eventually given the position of Rector at an American Episcopal church in Florence (Carus 505).

If both of them are trees, then they are only raw material for the gods to shape, whereas in Zoroastrian mythology and in Tolkien’s cosmogony, the trees are created to last and to serve a specific purpose indefinitely.

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

The event began with an epideictic address commending Mills for the immense value of his scholarship.

33 CHAPTER FOUR:-CONCLUSION .

Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking.

Of course, this warning would only need to be heeded by someone with no knowledge of any related language.

Mazdakism, which is named for its founding heresiarch, Mazdaki, also shared with the orthodox Persian religion a belief in dualism, but it also promoted a utopian religious community founded on the abolition of private property and the practice of marrying exclusively within one’s social class.

9 Weak polytheism describes any religious tradition where believers acknowledge a plurality of deities (and not seeing one true god compared to many false gods) while being principally devoted to one of them.

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

But it is necessary to mention that no sense of northernness could have developed without an awareness of ideas originating from texts of other cultures, particularly those most prominent worldwide, which were the national epics and religious texts.4 For both Tolkien and Lewis, an education in a variety of classical texts, the Christian scriptures5 and theological writings could have provided bases of comparison for the texts of the Nordic cultures.

Since the First World War had lured a large number of Oxford students away from school to become officers, the result was that the student body was much smaller than usual, while the number of faculty
25
never decreased proportionately.

These trees, which have no ability to do harm or even to defend themselves, are killed and drained of their life essence in an act of lustful cruelty.

40 This adjective, ‘atheous,’ is here chosen as an alternative to ‘atheist’ as the former term strictly refers to ignoring the role of any deity without rejecting the possibility of the existence of any deity.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

There was likely no other available passage of mythological text but the aforementioned Zoroastrian source that could have reflected Tolkien’s own personal feelings about the wanton killing of trees.

Tolkien had already written most of the mythology of Middle-earth well before he made friends with the famous literary figures he is grouped with, so it is necessary to look further back in his life to attempt to understand how he may have talked about his Catholic beliefs and how he may have negotiated the differences between his own views and those of the majority of English people.

As the medieval clergy recorded many of the pagan Celtic tales of the Gauls’ tribal kin in Wales and Ireland, the deliberate Christian interpolation was more frequent in a Celtic text, like the Mabinogion, than it was in a Norse text like any version of the Edda.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

Other countries besides Britain also acquired manuscripts for their own universities eventually, and this led to scholarship that gradually diminished the eminence of the French.

Prior to the war, the biographical information revealed by Grotta and Carpenter does not provide enough facts to show how Tolkien chose to deal with obstacles in his friendships during his youth that likely arose due to his belonging to a conspicuous religious minority.

Early Zoroastrianism: The Origins, the Prophet, the Magi— Lectures Delivered at Oxford and in London, February to May 1912, on the Religious Conditions and Concepts, Prevailing in Persia before Zarathustra, on the Prophetic Activity of Zarathustra and His Doctrines Also Compared to Those of Israel and in Christianity, and on the Religious Writings of the Persians, on Parsism, the Magi and the Fravashis with Critical Notes and References, Selected Texts Translated and Annotated, and Th...

During the early 1900s, many families of England’s Catholic gentry had been resolved to sending their children to wealthy Anglican schools.

The evidence shows that translating the living language spoken by Persians was accomplished much sooner than any attempts to understand the religion of the Persians’ ancestors.

In a letter Tolkien wrote to his publisher in 1951 to explain his reasons for wanting to complete Sil and have it published, he explains his intent not to borrow from any of the Arthurian tales:
For one thing [the Arthurian] ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive.

10
Tolkien wanted to create in Middle-earth a culture that in many ways could have been the forerunner of our Christian world...In order to create a logical religious tie between Middle-earth and modern Christianity, Mithraism and Persian theology are a particularly appropriate treasure hoard for Tolkien to have drawn upon since many of their aspects dovetail neatly with Christianity (203).

(C. S. Lewis Collected Letters 581 capitals and punctuation retained)
This observation reveals about Lewis that he had an interest in an epic that would today be considered esoteric.

Born into the working class, he was a mill worker who attended evening classes in the Mechanics’ Institute at Bradford before leaving Britain to attend Heidelberg University.

The British Sanskritist, William Jones, who had written a grammar for modern Persian, denounced the translation, declaring it fraudulent: “Although [Anquetil-Duperron] had his defenders, the adverse critics continued to hold the upper hand until [his] death in 1805, and for a score of years afterward” (Pederson 25).

In each case there was born a poet-genius of world-wide fame three centuries after the clash of arms had ceased....A closer parallel in the domain of epic composition, and yet one vastly to the advantage of the Persian rhapsodist, might easily be drawn between Firdausi’s Shāh-nāhmah and the rhymed chronicle of Layamon’s Brut, which recorded in measured verse the History of the Early Kings of Britain.

Ultimately, the most accessible biographical sources yield no details related to Tolkien’s possible knowledge of Persian mythology, and the next remaining place to look for evidence of possible Persian mythological influences is in Tolkien’s fiction.

Frequently the result was that critics were only guided by inference to construct Tolkien’s mythology of Middle-earth as a rude patchwork.

The deities that most directly participate in the conflicts within creation are the deities they created.

Three obvious languages Tolkien clearly borrowed from were Old Norse, Finnish, and Welsh, and the mythologies or legends corresponding to these three languages can be found in the Edda, the Kalevala, and the Mabinogion, respectively.

The research done by Germans after 1858 related to the versions of
20
the Avesta written in Avestan and Pahlavi, as well as the aforementioned āzainti and zand texts written in Avestan and Pahlavi, is too extensive to include here, so the investigation must now focus only on those scholars of the texts of the Zoroastrian religion whose careers led them to Oxford.17
Of the major scholarship written in English related to the Zoroastrian scriptures, the greater volume of work was done in Britai...

There is also the role of the fighting gods, and this group includes the goddess, Varda, whose alternate name, Elbereth, is terrifying to the servants of Evil (as the scenario of the ringwraiths surrounding Frodo on Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring demonstrates).

A precarious morale might have deterred any conversation about religion among the soldiers, and the miserable conditions of life in or near the trenches might have made soldiers perennially irritable and more susceptible to fighting over the added conflict of religious differences.

Indeed the Ents (and to some extent, the Huorns) have a human individuality although they do work in groups when necessary.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

He appears to have heeded F. Max Mueller’s words: “I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar’ (qtd. in Chaudhuri 313)
30
Persia, Shāh-nāhmah (“Book of Kings”), was available in translated portions then, and among those who were drawn to the text were students of history, poetry, and philology.25 In describing the appeal of the Persian poem to English-speaking readers, A.V.

Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs.

Author's Signature
_ O c , 8/ r , ^ : I Date
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SILMARILLION
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Andrew Oliver Marotta
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
December 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
ii
I dedicate this thesis to my wife.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the order of those reading, I would like to thank my thesis committee members: Profs. Shaun Hughes, Tony Silva, and Kristina Bross.

“The tale illustrates several of Óðin’s unattractive attributes: his low cunning and self-seeking, his ability to change his shape, his propensity for
38
disguises and false names, [and] his recourse to treachery” (Paige 39).

In both instances the poet-annalist harked back to themes in a national past otherwise long forgotten; both bards alike, though separated from each other in the realm of space and time, made use of material handed down from ancient days; and in each case there was something of the soul of the poet commingled with the spirit of the historian and chronicler....[I]f the British bard was chary in using words from the vocabulary of the Norman-French conquerors, the Persian rhapsodist was equally ...

And so Middle- earth comes into being following the pattern of the Ilúvatar and Melkor’s music.

The most notable exception to this pattern of behavior is the incident where Loki dupes Höðr into unknowingly murdering Baldur, and there is no equivalent to this tragic god-killing in Tolkien’s myth.

Evil, to the Zoroastrians, was coeval with Good, and Ahriman, as a master of Evil, was given an opposite role to play versus Ahura Mazda, who can be closely compared to Yahweh or Jesus.

The conclusion will return to the matter of the Drout and Wynne’s reaction to Allen’s chapter and will show that her work merited a more thorough reading and serious consideration.

One might intend to build a cathedral as a near replica of another or instead build one with a combination of consciously-borrowed details and unconsciously-borrowed details from hundreds of different buildings; the latter design is still derivative even though it is, as a whole work, unprecedented for its peculiar set of characteristics.

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

This encounter between Iranian religion and Jewish religion was of far-reaching significance in world history.

Tolkien’s novels has been guided by an assumption that the author’s fiction was influenced by Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo-Christian texts.

In each case there was born a poet-genius of world-wide fame three centuries after the clash of arms had ceased....A closer parallel in the domain of epic composition, and yet one vastly to the advantage of the Persian rhapsodist, might easily be drawn between Firdausi’s Shāh-nāhmah and the rhymed chronicle of Layamon’s Brut, which recorded in measured verse the History of the Early Kings of Britain.

“The tale illustrates several of Óðin’s unattractive attributes: his low cunning and self-seeking, his ability to change his shape, his propensity for
38
disguises and false names, [and] his recourse to treachery” (Paige 39).

Tolkien graduated from Oxford at a time when its enrollment was reduced to 1,000 students from its peak of 3,000 before the outbreak of the war (Grotta 46).

Tolkien’s defenders have been able to parry this assertion with evidence that the author sought to include women in intellectual discourse, yet the more difficult task for scholars has been challenging the common perception that Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Judeo- Christian sources were the main texts that continuously informed Tolkien’s narrative.

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

The earliest critics of LotR did not have the choice of reading Sil before or after the LotR since it was not published until two decades later although some of its contents were excerpted in the appendices to volume three of LotR.

In Finding God in The Lord of the Rings it is argued that
6 The Celts and Gauls can be seen as part of an intermediate culture positioned between the Norse and the Greco-Roman cultures.

He declared in the introduction to his translation: “As the Parsis [living mainly outside Iran in the 1890s] are the ruins of a people,11 so are their sacred books the ruins of a religion” (Zend-Avesta I xi- xii).

There is also the role of the fighting gods, and this group includes the goddess, Varda, whose alternate name, Elbereth, is terrifying to the servants of Evil (as the scenario of the ringwraiths surrounding Frodo on Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring demonstrates).

As the medieval clergy recorded many of the pagan Celtic tales of the Gauls’ tribal kin in Wales and Ireland, the deliberate Christian interpolation was more frequent in a Celtic text, like the Mabinogion, than it was in a Norse text like any version of the Edda.

One can see that mankind’s imperative in the natural world is proclaimed in the Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1:28, KJV).

Rather than choosing to be diplomatic with the official to safely ensure that The Hobbit would be distributed in Germany, he expressed his indignation with scholarly acuity.

50
source study, it seems that they are also expected to disregard a contradiction since, within the same paragraph, Drout and Wynne discount any serious consideration of similarities.

In order to describe the earliest stage of human intelligence, philologists and mythologists invented Aryans and Semites, to whom they invariably ascribed opposing, if sometimes complementary, roles (Olender 20).

One of the most controversial arguments made in any of his books about religion was that there was no reliable historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth had ever existed.21 The main argument he made in the first edition of Pagan Christs in 1903 was that many religious traditions had the equivalent of a Jesus in their mythologies and that the authors of books of the New Testament created Jesus as influenced by one or more of those traditions.

The evil spirit has formed therein, among those which enter as opponents, a lizard as an opponent in that deep water, so that it may injure the Hôm (Zend-Avesta II Bundahis 18:1 (p.

Then the Unlight of Ungoliant rose up even to the roots of the Trees, and Melkor sprang upon the mound; and with his black spear he smote each Tree to its core, wounded them deep, and their sap poured forth as it were their blood, and was spilled upon the ground.

We can discern unmistakable traces of Persian influence, both intellectual and material, on the development of post-exilic Jewry, and therefore also of Christendom, and corresponding influence in the late Greco-Roman and Byzantine world, and therefore ultimately in Europe (B. Lewis “Iran in History” 7).

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

Freudian criticism is used in Partridge’s critique when she delves for hints about the author’s sexuality and gender bias in LotR, but she also uses commonly cited facts from Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien.

For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion (Letters of JRRT 144)
If Tolkien can be deemed trustworthy in revealing the influences on his own fiction, then his words seems to thwart a number of claims, some of which have been reasserted since the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of the LotR, that hold that the story is directly shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

This denial is made on the basis of limited facts revealed in Carpenter’s frequently cited biography.

On April 9, 1917, a German submarine attack upon the ship SS City of Paris during his inbound passage to Marseilles forced him and other survivors to board a lifeboat where he died from exhaustion and exposure after three days of rowing.

University to contributeto theadvancemenotf knowledgeandresearchby making the thesisavailableto scholars.Researcbhecomems orebroadlydisseminateadndmay assistauthorsin futureendeavorsP. urdueuniversitytypicallyreceivesno monetary gainfromthereproductionanddistributionofmaster'sthesesexcepftorrecovering costsassociatewd ith suchreproductioannddistribution(e.g.,without authors' permissionm, aster'sthesesgenerallycannotbecopied,inwholeorinpart,forsuch educationapl urposesas inter-libraryl...

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

There were two trained Danish philologists, Erasmus Christian Rask16 and Niels Ludvig Westergaard, who are credited with having made valuable contributions in the form of a grammar and a lexicon of Avestan (Schwab 47).

The other characteristic that makes Ilúvatar comparable to Zurvan is that he is an eminent deity rather than an imminent one.

If one can look outside the Avesta to the events that occurred in the Zadspram chapter of the Pahlavi texts (not translated by Mills but by Edward William West, one of Mills’ contemporaries who also helped Darmesteter through his effort in translating all the Pahlavi texts) one can find a noteworthy passage that makes Ahriman look amazingly like Melkor:
Afterwards, [Ahriman] came to a tree, such as was of a single root, the height of which was several feet, and it was without branches...

In addressing the matter of the comparatively smaller number of women characters in LotR, Partridge asserts:
[I]ndeed the ancient, Norse and Christian mythologies in which he was immersed reinforced Tolkien’s refusal (and that of countless generations) to accept the full and active participation of women in every area of life (Partridge 194).

The authors do not pretend to have written anything other than an extended meditation, and it would be unfair to make an evaluative comparison of the whole book to analytical critiques written mainly for an audience of scholars; however, the book’s aforementioned statement provides a prominent example of a popular belief in a Christian influence seen in perceived allegories in Tolkien’s fiction shared by many readers, including some literary scholars who have done much credible work.8...

While both the novelist and his brother were housed and cared for by a Catholic priest who was their mentor and guardian, it is important to remember that Tolkien, as a middle-class orphan, spent several hours of every school day in a mainly Anglican enclave of upper-class English society.

And the sapling grew and flourished, As from earth a strawberry rises, And it forked in both directions.

Perhaps the loss of interest in the scholarship related to Zoroastrian texts reflects the decline in the number of Zoroastrians worldwide.

The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the
East, 1680-1880.

It is apparent that the Zoroastrians who fled Persia found greater tolerance in India, a country with a legacy of religious heterogeneity.12
Contrary to what might be believed, the absorption of India into the British Empire as a protectorate appears to have had little to do with the acquisition of the manuscript used for the first successful translation of the Avesta by any European; however, one unusable manuscript of the Avesta, the Vendidad Sadah, which was brought to England in 1...

In 1916, the padre of Tolkien’s battalion was Anglican and not amenable to Catholicism, and Tolkien attended a Catholic Mass led by a different chaplain at least once with a battalion of Irish soldiers (Garth 157).

But Ungoliant sucked it up, and going then from Tree to Tree she set her black beak to their wounds, till they were drained; and the pain of Death that was in her went into their tissues and withered them, root, branch, and leaf; and they died (Sil 76 italics mine)
40
There seem to be at least a few elements of this part of the Zâd-Sparam that Tolkien could have borrowed from.

Following Wright’s eventual appointment as Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, he produced his most famous work, The English Dialect Dictionary, a product of prodigious effort that is still considered an invaluable work of scholarship.

Specimen selections of the second manuscript were circulated, and it was one of these copies that inspired Anquetil-Duperron to go to India for seven years to study with the Pārsis.

Yet no biography, regardless of the intent of the author to be thorough or the credibility and variety of the sources used, can ever be considered truly complete.

Evidence suggests that Tolkien also developed an erudite interest in Persian mythology as a student at Oxford possibly from these events: having attended lectures on Zoroastrianism presented by James Moulton or Lawrence Heyworth Mills; his required readings of Herodotus; a familiarity with ancient texts written in Indo-Iranian languages gained from his mentor, Joseph Wright; readings of translations of Pahlavi texts and scholarly commentary upon the same; and reading the Persian epic ...

Despite the fact that Great Britain possessed manuscripts of the Avesta, it seems that there were an inadequate number of native scholars properly trained to work with the texts; it was a problem complementary to the situation in Germany.

There are the fourteen other Ainur, the good deities, who are referred to as the Valar: Manwë, the second most powerful of the Ainur who has control over air and wind; Varda the goddess of light and stars who is wed to Manwë; Yavanna, the goddess of plant life; Aulë, the mate of Yavanna and the craftsman of the gods; Irmo, master of visions and dreams; Estë, the goddess of rest and healing who is the spouse of Irmo; Vairë, the goddess who is the weaver of tapestries and the historian of all ...

Rouse, all under the title: Elements of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages: A Concise Exposition of the History of Sanskrit, Old Iranian (Avestic and Old Persian) Old Armenian, Old Greek, Latin, Umbrian-Samnitic, Old Irish, Gothic, Old High German, Lithuanian and Old Bulgarian.

The name Zurvan simply means ‘Time’ and establishes a shared kinship between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman as the children of time.