Xwedodah ( ; Avestan: ) is a type of consanguine marriage historically practiced in Zoroastrianism before the Muslim conquest of Persia.
This form of direct familial incest marriage allowed Zoroastrians to marry their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and their own mothers to take as wives.
Etymology
While the Avestan term is still of ambiguous meaning and function in the Young Avestan texts, it is only later in Middle Persian that the term becomes used in its current form.
The earliest use of the word Xwedodah is in Middle Persian in the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht inscription at
Naqsh-e Rostam.
The nineteenth-century qaêtvadatha style (with q instead of Avesta x) and similar writings reappear in modern literature.
The first part of the compound seems to be a "family" (or similar) of Khito (xᵛaētu), which is generally thought to derive from the "self" (xᵛaē-) with the suffix -you (-tu-), although this is not entirely straightforward. The second part, vadaθa, is nowadays generally regarded as a derivative of the verb (From * Wad-) 'resulting in marriage', related to other and Indo-European languages which refer to marriage or marriage partner (compare with ancient Indik). "Wife" Av. Vaδū; Pahlavi wayūg (Pers. Bayu) "bride"; Avestan vaδut "one who has reached the age of marriage"; Pahlavi wayūdag "bride's room".
This etymology was suggested by Carl Goldner, and accepted by Émile Benveniste and Christian Bartholomae, and became a popular opinion among Western scholars. However, there is no * vadha- to Vedic or * vada- root in the Avesta of the vadh root; in Avesta the vāδaya and upa.vāδaiia- 'lead (to marry)' and uzuuāδaiia are 'leaving the father's house'. vadh-Vedic, vad-Avestan should not be confused with vah-Avestan "to take", vaz-Avestan with the uhyá-unknown form.
Sanctification of Xwedodah
In order to legitimize the marriage of Xwedodah, stories were made up that Zurvan and Ahura Mazda their relatives, in some
Zurvanism narratives, it is mentioned that Zurvan had a wife and had children with Ahura Mazda and
Ahriman, later, Ahura Mazda married his mother and had children with her, including the sun, dogs, pigs, donkeys, and cattle.
But in other Zoroastrian traditions outside the Zurvanism narratives, it is said that Ahura Mazda married his daughter Spenta Armaiti and she gave birth to Keyumars, and later she gave birth to Mashya and Mashyana. These traditions are considered to be that Keyumars was born to the same mother as Mashya and Mashyana, and not that Mashya and Mashyana are the children of Keyumars.
Zoroastrian religious sources
Most of Pahlavi's texts are self-contained by Edward William West's comments. Brief evaluations and references include Friedrich Spiegel and standard books on Zoroastrianism, such as Boyce.
Avestan
In the
Old Avestan texts known as the
Gathas, believed to have been written by the founder of the faith
Zoroaster, Armaiti of the
Amesha Spenta is referred to as the "daughter" of
Ahura Mazda, the highest deity within Zoroastrianism.
The
Younger Avestan texts of the
, in particular the Frawardin Yasht, mention that the relationship is less a literally familial one and instead one of unity of essence and nature with Ahura Mazda as "father and commander" of the group.
In the youngest Avestan text, the
Vendidad, the urine of sheep, oxen, and those who marry next-of-kin are viewed as being particularly pure and devoid of corruption by
Ahriman and therefore able to be used by corpse-bearers to wash and purify themselves.
This was done because when coming into contact with corpses, the ammonia content in the urine acts as a disinfectant and antiseptic, removing physical and metaphysical contamination.
Pahlavi
Xwedodah became a more solidified doctrine in the Pahlavi/Middle Persian literature of post-Sassanian Zoroastrianism.
In Zoroastrian cosmogony as explained by the
Pahlavi scripts text
Bundahishn, Ahura Mazda is said to not have sired the other divine creations but rather to have fashioned or set them in their proper places and is referred to as both "mother", through spiritual nurturing, and "father", through material development, of all existence. The
Denkard, which includes passages encouraging the action, and the
Dadestan-i Denig both claim that not only was the world created through xwedodah, but humanity from the Consanguine marriage of Mashya and Mashyana, who were born from the spiritually-incestuous relationship of
Keyumars (produced from xwedodah with Armaiti) and Spenta Armaiti, also developed from it to the pleasure of Ahura Mazda.
[Skjærvø "Next-of-Kin Marriage"; Williams (ed.), The Pahlavi Rivayat, ii, 132–133, n. 4.] In the third book of the Denkard, which consists of a collection of Wisdom literature that can at times contradict itself, regarding an inquiry whether it was appropriate to marry a
Hebrews, xwedodah is referred to not as consanguine marriage but rather as marriage within the faith which is viewed as providing honor and strength to those who engage in it and can include incestuous relationships of various kinds.
, dating from the 1400s as a series of clerical communications, further solidify this broader view of xwedodah while encouraging the incestuous nature of it also noting that the practice had not been extant in centuries and the
Shahnameh has it mentioned in passing.
According to the revayats, the marriage between a mother and her son is the most superior type of xwedodah, followed by that of father and daughter, which is followed by that of brother and sister. The xwedodah becomes even more superior if the mother/daughter is also the half-sister of her son/father.
Non-Zoroastrian sources
There are 60 outside sources referencing Zoroastrian Persian brother-sister incest marriages come from the Greeks, Romans, Armenians, Arabians, Indians, Tibetans, and Chinese, ranging from the 5th century BC into the 15th century AD, roughly 2000 years.
To maintain stability over a multicultural empire, the
allowed newly conquered territory to keep their customs and practices as long as they submitted and paid their taxes.
Thus Zoroastrian brother-sister incest continued to persist and exist well into the Middle Ages.
Greco-Roman
Greek sources such as Xanthus of Lydia and Ctesias of Cnidus mentioned that the
Magi priesthood have sexual and matrimonial relationships with their relatives while
Herodotus states that before
Cambyses I this was not a Persian practice. Roman poets
Catullus and
Ovid both included references to consanginous relationships in the Persian Empire and Quintus Curtius Rufus states in his histories that the
governor Sisimithres sired two sons with his own mother.
Jewish
Babylonian Jews formulated a legal-theoretical interpretation in the Babylonian Talmud on sexual relationships between siblings, forbidden to Jews and permissible to
(non-Jews), in light of the Zoroastrian doctrine of xwedodah.
related that the products of a high-born incestuous relationship were themselves considered exaltation and noble, while the Babylonian Talmud notes cases in which situations comparable to xwedodah are both allowed and punishable but without direct mention of Zoroastrianism in the texts.
Islamic
Al-Tha'alibi writes that Zoroaster must have legalized marriage and made them
Halal between brothers and sisters and fathers and daughters because Adam had married his sons to his daughters.
Al-Masudi reported that
Ardashir I told his people to marry close relatives to strengthen family ties. Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī declared the historical practice depraved, feebleminded, and deceptive in comparison to
Arabs practices and noted that it resulted in birth defects and was incorrectly declared a practice not done even by animals.
states in his Talbis al-Iblis that Zoroaster did preach these commandments which was then common between the parsis.
Ferdowsi mentions incest between Bahman and his sister Homa.
Christian
Eusebius cites the
Gnosticism theologian
Bardaisan who stated that the Persians brought the practice with them wherever they went and that the Magi priesthood still practiced it by his time while
Pseudo-Clement and Basil of Caesarea both commented on the unlawfulness of such practices in comparison to Christian doctrine. Eznik of Kolb accused Zoroaster of having developed the doctrine due to his own desires to see it propagated among his people and
Jerome attached the Persians amongst Ethiopians,
Medes, and
Indian people as those who had intercourses with the female members of their families. The Synod of Beth Lapat had proclamations against Christians who imitated the practice of xwedodah with Patriarch
Aba I, a convert from Zoroastrianism, championing the cause against the practice.
The most comprehensive reports come from Eastern Christians who lived under Persian rule, they wrote down that these were not just fictitious stories of far away people, but were indeed very real and widely practiced. Iso'bokht, the Nestorian patriarch of the Persis writes many books on this topic urging Christians and other peoples to not practice this custom.
Greek
The common feature of non-Iranian sources is that they rarely mention the Iranians themselves, even if they do occasionally mention the
majus clerics. Numerous classical sources and later authors point to the practice of incest in the Achaemenid monarchies of the
Parthian Empire and
Sasanian Empire dynasties. Some of the earliest Greek references to non-royal incest are those by Xanthus in his book Magica, which Clement of Alexandria quoted as saying that
Magi had sex with their mothers, daughters and sisters, and that
Ctesias had mentioned a brother-sister marriage.
Herodotus mentions that
Cambyses II lived with his sister.
Chinese
According to the Chinese traveller
Du Huan (fl. 751–762), the religious law of
Xun-xun, which refers to a non-Abrahamic religion in the middle east, likely
Manichaeism, allowed clan members to intermarry. A reference can be found in the Pahlavi-Chinese bilingual tomb inscriptions in Xi'an, in which the deceased woman, from the Surin family princes, is read in Chinese as "wife" but in Pahlavi's "daughter".
See also
Bibliography
External links
