“A Survey on Representation of Binary Oppositions  in the Arda Viraf Namah of Peshotan”

 
 
 
This article titled “A Survey on Representation of Binary Oppositions in the Ardaviraf Nameh of Peshotan" is written by Dr. Sadreddin Taheri[1], assistant professor at the Art University of Isfahan, and Afifeh ShahPir[2], M.A. graduate of Art Studies at the Art University of Isfahan.
Religions have always played a special role in human societies. Iran's civilization, as one of the oldest human civilizations, is no exception. Religion can be considered as a set of collectively accepted beliefs that define concepts such as the soul, God, life, the world after death, and heaven and hell. The after-death world is one of the things that have been emphasized in both Semitic and non-Semitic religions. In Pahlavi texts related to the Zoroastrian religion, the world after death, heaven, and hell have been mentioned many times. One of the most important Zoroastrian sources related to the world after death is called Ardaviraf Nameh. According to this text, during the time of Alexander the Macedonian, the texts of Avesta and Zand were burned, religion was forgotten and people became corrupt. So the Mobeds (Monks) decided to choose the most pious man and send him to after world in search of the truth. After consuming Mei and Meng (Drugs) for seven days and nights, Ardaviraf went to visit the afterlife and there he met with Ahura Mazda and Amesha Sepandan. He, along with Azar and Soroush, witnessed the reward and punishment of people in heaven and hell. One of the illustrated copies of this text is preserved in the Manchester University Library, which is known by the name of its Zoroastrian copyist, Peshotan Jiv Hirji Homji. Despite the importance of Ardaviraf Nameh as one of the Pahlavi sources in ancient Iranian literature and also the place of these folios among Zoroastrian paintings, so far, no detailed research has been done on this visual version.
The purpose of this research is to understand how the literary text is transliterated into a visual text in the Peshotan manuscript of the Ardaviraf Nameh and to examine the way the painter uses Binary Oppositions - as defined by Levi-Strauss - to convey the inner concepts of the narrative.
The investigation of Binary opposition in this article is based on the ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi Strauss is a Belgian structuralist anthropologist who started his analysis from content because he believes that in structural analysis, content and form are not separate entities, but complementary elements that are considered necessary for a deep understanding of the subject. In semiotic analysis, Levi-Strauss does not seek to discover the way of human thinking in myths, but to understand how myths work in people's minds. One of his prominent works is called Raw and Cooked, and in this book, he deals with dual confrontations. Binary opposition is a system of language or thought by which two theoretical opposites are placed against each other. Binary opposition is an important concept in structuralism, which considers such distinctions as fundamental to all languages and thoughts. Saussure believed that in language, the meaning of each word is understood in contrast with another word or opposite words. In this book, Levi-Strauss considered the contrasts arising from the daily experience of human communication with the more primitive types of these dualisms like fresh vs old or wet vs dry. In his view, primitive man could understand the meaning of life events by resorting to contrasts and differences. In the discussion of Binary opposition, the main theme that can be seen in most myths is the transition from nature to culture. Levi-Strauss considers one of the examples of passing from nature to culture through cooking and turning raw into cooked.
By comparing the way of depicting hell and heaven, the current article aims to find an answer to this question: How did the artist represent the narrative text and the distinction between heaven and hell in the illustrations of the Peshotan manuscript of Ardaviraf Nameh by relying on the Binary opposition? This research is a case study with an analytical-interpretive approach, and its data has been collected qualitatively.
After the comparison between two selected groups of Peshotan manuscript paintings that mutually represent related concepts in heaven and hell, it becomes clear that the artist has consciously used binary oppositions to convey the goals of the religious narrative to the readers. To increase the dignity of the figures represented in heaven, he has used features such as: being welcomed by a young and beautiful maidservant, wearing a full dress, happiness and dancing, freedom and security, sitting in peace in a group, surrounded by flowers and plants, presence of golden fish and singing birds, and sitting on the bed under the shade. On the contrary, in hell, the soul is welcomed by an ugly, dark, demon-like, and disturbed beast with long nails. The sinner is depicted naked, tortured, frightened, bound, hanged, grieving, wounded, and lying on the ground, and he/she is surrounded by demons and snakes and accepts her/his punishment alone.
The main text of Ardaviraf Nameh and its poetic version is written in a verbal system of signs (literature) that allows the writer or poet to give a general description of the events and leaves an important part of the understanding of the event to the reader's imagination, while the painter has had the facilities of a visual system of signs (painting) which he has consciously used to represent what is absent in the text. For example, the painter has depicted heaven with a bright and shining background, low contrast, gentle shading, static and calm composition, and detailed decoration with delicate motifs to double its spiritual values in the eyes of the viewer. On the other hand, the background of hell is painted flat and neutral. Curved lines are used to induce movement and tension, and some images have a circular composition and diagonal lines that evoke tension and unrest in the environment. Colors have also helped the painter to create the atmosphere of hell and heaven. A wide range of warm colors have been used for pictures associated with heaven, while hell is mainly represented with neutral, cold, and dark colors. The good side of the scales is painted in gold and the bad side in black. The artist also has been aware of visual elements and spatial values. He draws the heavenly people standing on the right side and the hellish people on the left side of the picture. The good side of the scales is on the right and the bad side is on the left. Also, the heavenly people are shown upright and standing, while the hellish ones are fallen, hanging, or twisted.