A brilliant scholarly study of the rival Zoroastrian cosmologies, with particular attention to the Zervanite sect. The author shows that their supreme god, Zurvän, was tetramorphous, and appeared as either Time, Space, Wisdom, or Power. The latter part of the book is devoted to texts, notes, and translations of a great body of relevant material from various sources.--D. R.

A brilliant scholarly study of the rival Zoroastrian cosmologies, with particular attention to the Zervanite sect. The author shows that their supreme god, Zurvän, was tetramorphous, and appeared as either Time, Space, Wisdom, or Power. The latter part of the book is devoted to texts, notes, and translations of a great body of relevant material from various sources.--D. R.

Zurvanism was an ancient variant of Zoroastrianism. According to Zurvanism, the great powers of good and evil, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, were the sons of a greater god Zurvan, associated with time. According to Eudemus of Rhodes, some Persian thinkers, presumably Zurvanists, took there to be three great principles underlying the world: light, darkness, and greatest of all time (or perhaps, according to Eudemus, space). This paper explores what metaphysics might underlie these doctrines, and what contemporary options (...) we have for making sense of a metaphysics where time is the ultimate principle. Among the options explored is the option that despite appearance many of the entities of the concrete world are identical to stretches of time, or are somehow aspects of stretches of time; that they include times as parts, or are included in times as parts; that they are somehow properties of time; or hylomorphic compounds of which time is the matter; that the world is somehow a mixture of time, light, and dark; or that somehow the ends or teloi of everyday objects and processes are to be found among good, evil, and time. (shrink)

From Abhidharma to Zurvan, this important new resource identifies and defines the principal concepts and individuals in Asian philosophy throughout the world. The comprehensive geographic coverage encompasses China, Japan, India, the Middle East, the United States and Australasia, with an emphasis on contemporary developments and movements. Featuring 650 signed A-Z entries, the Encyclopedia emphasises the present-day vitality of Asian philosophy, and provides extensive coverage of trends such as the reciprocal exchange of theories between East and West, and new schools of (...) thought such as orientalism. Entries include: * Confucius and Confucianism * karma * shamanism * no-self * Madhyamaka School of Buddhism * hungry ghosts * orientalism * Ramanuja * simplicity * Yi Yulgok * Wantokism * Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi * tantra * harmony * Sufism * Yin-Yang * Mulla Sadra * Zen * and much more. Cross-references; bibliographies and annotated suggestions for further reading; variants provided for all foreign terms (e.g. Pali/Sanskrit, Arabic/Persian). (shrink)

The concept of time is an integral part of any religious and philosophical system. It creates a universal cognitive strategy: seeing the world in its change and development, finding temporary relationships and order in everything. In Iranian mythology, where the cult of time was highly developed, time was personified by the higher deity Zurvan, who initially was imagined as an endless time, eternity, existing at the beginning of the universe, and then, in the latter part of the "Avesta" takes an (...) image of the final, natural, world time, who forecasts not only its beginning, but the end, death. Zurvan Akarana in Zoroastrianism - is unlimited Time or Eternity; one of the two primary forces that are mentioned in "Avesta" and "Yasna". Zurvan - is the Сreator who did not make a creation. He is only the foundation, the idea that gives impulse, like an explosion. It is similar to the concept of "dharma" in the Indian tradition, the "Logos" of Heraclites, the law by which the universe exists. Helps to the time, the main essence of space is the duration, the matter has the opportunity to come into effect. Late Avesta makes a distinction between endless time and time, which has a long duration, but finite. Later theologians interpreted endless time as eternity of being, and a long time was regarded as the duration of the world, which was created and will have an end. These ideas can be correlated with ideas that later we can find in Christianity, that person has a freedom of choice, and even later - in Islam, that person's fate is determined in advance. But Zoroastrianism is talking about the same thing, the fate of this material world in which evil is present is determined in advance, but in the world of Ahura Mazda person has the right to choose and there will get whatever deserves. The unconditional departure from mythological beliefs is also the idea of the linearity of time that we meet in Zoroastrianism and which later gets its continuation in Christianity. But in Zoroastrianism time is endless, and therefore is reversible and linear, and therefore simultaneously is irreversible. (shrink)