Three of the most fascinating exhibits in ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’, on view at the Brunei Gallery SOAS until December 15th, concern the Zoroastrian vision of heaven and hell.

The revelations of Arda Viraz (‘righteous Viraz’), or Viraf, as his name has been transcribed in Persian, were written in Pahlavi (pre-Islamic Persian) during the early Islamic period, and reflect a time of religious instability. The story is set in the reign of the founder of the Sasanian Empire, Ardashir I (r. 224-241). It describes how the Zoroastrian community selected the righteous Viraz to visit the world of the dead returning with an account of the rewards and punishments in store. Although the story did not assume its definitive form until the 9th to 10 centuries AD, it can be regarded as part of a tradition of visionary accounts, the earliest of which is found in present-day Iran in the third-century inscriptions of the Zoroastrian high priest Kirder.

Many copies of this popular story survive in both prose and verse, with versions in Persian, Gujarati, Sanskrit and even Arabic (Kargar, p.29). Several include vivid illustrations, re-enforcing the story’s underlying importance as a Zoroastrian pedagogic text.

Arda Viraz with the divinities Srosh, Mihr and Rashn, the judge, at the Chinvat bridge, which the souls of the dead must cross. Traditionally, if a soul’s good deeds outweigh the bad it is met by a beautiful woman (actually an embodiment of the deceased's life on earth), the bridge is broad and it can easily cross on its way to paradise; if not, the bridge becomes narrow, the soul encounters an ugly hag and falls into hell.
Rylands Persian MS 41, f.12r.  Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

The two manuscripts in ‘The Everlasting Flame’ are copies of a popular Persian version composed in verse in Iran at the end of the 13th century by Zartosht Bahram Pazhdu. The British Library’s manuscript (Reg.16.B.1) was copied in India and dates from the late 17th century. Although the text is in the Persian language, it was copied line by line in both Persian and Avestan (old Iranian) scripts, reflecting a tradition of transcribing Zoroastrian texts in a ‘Zoroastrian’ (i.e. Avestan) script. The manuscript was acquired for the orientalist Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) who used it as a means of deciphering the previously undeciphered Avestan script.
 

The beginning of Thomas Hyde’s copy of the Arda Viraf namah
British Library Reg.16.B.1, ff 1v-2r. 

The second copy on display (John Rylands Persian MS 41) contains 60 illustrations which vividly depict the rewards and punishments awarded after death. The scene below describes happy souls in a sweet smelling garden in paradise where birds sing, golden fishes swim and musicians perform. On enquiring how they earned such a reward, Arda Viraf is told that, while living, they killed frogs, scorpions, snakes, ants and other evil creatures (khrastar and hasharat)– one of the most meritorious actions a good Zoroastrian could perform.
 

A scene in paradise. Rylands Persian MS 41, f.26r. 
Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

In contrast, more than half of the illustrations in this manuscript depict the gruesome punishments in store for those judged deficient at the Chinvat Bridge. These were to some extent tailored to the crimes committed on earth; for example the man who had butchered believers was punished by being flayed alive, another who had overindulged and not given food to the poor was starved until forced to eat his own arms out of hunger. Punishments were meted out by demonic creatures, mostly consisting of those same evil scorpions, snakes and reptiles which good Zoroastrians were encouraged to destroy.

On the right: sinners who neglected to wear the sacred girdle (kusti) and were slack in matters of religious ritual are being eaten by demonic animals. On the left: a woman is hung upside down and tormented. Her crime was to disobey her husband and argue with him.
Rylands Persian MS 41. ff 47v-48r.  Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

This manuscript was copied in July 1789 in Navsari, Gujarat, by a Zoroastrian, Peshotan Jiv Hirji Homji. It was brought to England at the end of the 18th century by a collector Samuel Guise, a surgeon working for the East India Company at its factory in Surat. Guise’s collection caused quite a stir in the literary world, being mentioned in journals such as The Edinburgh Magazine and the British Critic (Sims-Williams, p.200). The orientalist William Ouseley reproduced the illustration of the disobedient wife in his Oriental Collections published in 1798. After Guise’s death in 1811, his collection was sold. Most of his Zoroastrian manuscripts were acquired by the East India Company Library (now at the British Library) but this manuscript was purchased by the Persian scholar, John Haddon Hindley. Eventually it was bought by Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford, from the estate of another Persian scholar, Nathaniel Bland and is now in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. It has recently been digitised and images of the entire work can be seen at https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/x263o9.
 

An 18th century facsimile of Samuel Guise’s copy  of the Arda Viraf namah, included with some of the earliest engravings of Zoroastrian manuscripts in William Ouseley’s Oriental Collections.
British Library SV 400, vol. 2 part 3, facing p. 318.

Further reading:

S. Stewart (ed), The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Special discounted paperback edition available only from the SOAS bookshop
Articles: “Ardā Wīrāz”  by Ph. Gignoux,  “Činwad puhl” by A. Tafazzoli and “Kartir”  by P. O. Skjærvø in Encyclopædia Iranica (http://www.iranicaonline.org/).
D. Kargar, Arday-Viraf Nama: Iranian conceptions of the other world. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2009.
H. Jamaspji Asa, M. Haug, and E.W. West, The Book of Arda Viraf: The Pahlavi Text Prepared by Destur Hoshangji Jamaspji Asa. Bombay: Govt. Central Book Depot, 1872.
J.A. Pope (tr.), The Ardai Viraf Nameh; or, the Revelations of Ardai Viraf. London: Black, Parbury & Allen, 1816.
W. Ouseley, The Oriental Collections. London: Printed by Cooper and Graham, 1797-1800.
U. Sims-Williams,  “The strange story of Samuel Guise: an 18th-century collection of Zorostrian manuscripts,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 19, 2005 (2009), pp. 199-209.

 

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

The British Library has recently acquired two Javanese palm leaf manuscripts of the Carita Yusup, the story of the Prophet Joseph (Or. 16913 & Or. 16914).  According to Ben Arps (1990: 36), to judge from the hundreds of manuscripts of this text that have survived, originating not only from Java but also from the neighbouring islands of Madura and Lombok, the Carita Yusup was once probably the single most popular traditional Javanese poem.  Arps has described attending an all-night recitation of one such manuscript in Banyuwangi in East Java in 1989, when a group of 15 men took turns to sing the story of the life of Joseph, from the age of twelve when he dreamt of the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down for him, until he became ruler of Egypt after interpreting the Pharaoh’s dream.


Javanese palm leaf manuscript of the Carita Yusup, the Story of Joseph, probably 19th c.  British Library, Or.16913.

The manuscripts were generously donated to the British Library by John Johnson, in memory of his father Alfred Johnson.  Last month I had the pleasure of meeting John, and hearing about his family background in Java, when he brought the manuscripts down to London from his home near Stockport.  In 1941 Alfred Johnson was sent out from the UK to Java by the Calico Printers Association to manage the Nebritex factory in Pleret, Pasuruan, near Surabaya.  During the Japanese occupation both Alfred and his wife Ada were interned: Ada in Java, while Alfred was first sent to Changi Jail in Singapore and then on to work on the ‘death railway’ near Pekanbaru in Sumatra.  After the war Alfred Johnson returned to Java, and John was born at St. Carolus hospital in Jakarta (then Batavia), in 1947.  The family returned to England in 1953, but Alfred sadly died in Manchester soon after, in  July 1954.

As recalled in the affectionate obituary of Alfred Johnson in the staff magazine CPA Star written by Mr Khoe Tiong Djian, who had served as Private Secretary to Alfred throughout his time at Nebritex, Alfred had played a symbolic role in the early economic history of the Republic of Indonesia:  ‘Mr Johnson was the first civilian Englishman to enter the Republican territory as guest of the Republican Government.  He went with a view to negotiating with the Government for the return of our factory and on March 19th, 1947, Reuter Cable Service flashed the news around the world to the effect that [Nebritex] was the first European-owned concern to be transferred back to its owners.  The official handing over, however, took place on June 13th, 1947, between Mr Johnson, representing the Calico Printers’ Association, Ltd., Manchester, and Dr A.K. Gani, representing the Republic of Indonesia as Minister of Foreign Affairs.’

Identification papers issued to Alfred Johnson at the start of the Japanese occupation of Java, shortly before he was interned, dated 2062 (1942).  Reproduced courtesy of John Johnson.  

   
One of John Johnson’s most treasured possesions: a tiny (7 x 3.7 cm) Christmas card made for his father in 1944 by Dutch officers in the Lipat Kain prison camp in Riau, Sumatra. Reproduced courtesy of John Johnson.  

John Johnson did not have any information as to how his family had come into the two Javanese manuscripts.  They are both quite large, and both have covers of wooden boards originally stained red.  Or.16913 has 140 folios, with a fine decorated initial leaf, while Or.16914, with 141 folios, has many old repairs to the leaves, using tiny splints sewn across the cracks.  They join four other Javanese palm leaf manuscripts of the Carita Yusup in the British Library (Or. 14606-14609), given by Michael Goodwin from Leeds in 1990, and together constitute a good corpus for further investigation of the material form of this ever-popular tale.

Part of the first leaf of Or.16913, showing the opening lines in Javanese language and script, with unusual incised decorative diamond-shaped frames.  The first leaf is a double leaf, with intricate ‘button-hole’ stitching through the holes.  British Library, Or.16913, f.1r (detail). 

Detail of the first two leaves of the second manuscript of Carita Yusup, showing old repairs to the second folio using tiny wooden splints to patch up a crack in the leaf.  British Library, Or.16914, ff.1-2 (detail). 

Further reading

Bernard Arps, ‘Singing the life of Joseph: an all-night reading of the lontar Yusup in Banyuwangi, East Java’, Indonesia Circle, 1990, 19 (53): 35-58.
Bernard Arps, Tembang in two traditions: performance and interpretation of Javanese literature. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992.
George Duffy, ‘Life and Death on the Death Railway through the jungle of Sumatra’, published online on 4.7.2000.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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