Expelling Demons: Ritual and Exegesis of the Wīdēwdād

Expelling Demons: Ritual and Exegesis of the Wīdēwdād

a lecture by

Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo

The term Wīdēwdād, sometimes written Vendidād, is the Pahlavi adaptation of the Avestan vīdaēuua- dāta- “the Law to expel the demons.” Its original text was composed and orally transmitted in the Old Iranian language known as Avestan during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, and it is one of our most important sources for the study of Zoroastrianism in ancient and medieval times.

The recent discovery of new manuscripts of the Avestan and the Pahlavi Wīdēwdād has dramatically changed our knowledge about their written transmission and their role in the Zoroastrian ceremonies. In this talk, I will present the up to date approach of modern scholarship to the research of this largely forgotten text.