# Gherardo Gnoli

Gherardo Gnoli (6 December 1937 in Rome – 7 March 2012 in Cagli) was a historian of Italian religions and Iran expert.

## Quotes

* Given its very Oriental horizon, this list must be pre-Achaemenid; on the other hand, the remarkable extendedness of the territories concerned recommends situating them in a period much later than the Zoroastrian origins. (…) one or several centuries later than Zarathuštra’s preaching.
** Gnoli, Gherarda, 1985: De Zoroastre à Mani, Paris, Institut d’Etudes Iraniennes, Sorbonne. (page 25), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. About the list of 16 countries in the first chapter of the Vendidād.
** about the list of sixteen countries in The first chapter of the Vendidād

### Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland

    G. Gnoli. Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland: A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems by Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Universitario Orientale, Seminario di Studi Asiatici, (Series Minor VII), Naples, 1980. Also quoted in Talageri, S. The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008); quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
* There is no evidence for thinking that the Zoroastrian message was meant for the Iranians alone. On the-contrary, history suggests that the exact opposite is likely, and there are also indisputable facts … which show clearly that Zoroaster’s teaching was addressed, earlier on at least to all men ... whether they were Iranians or not, Proto-Indoaryans or otherwise…
* “The fact [is] that Avestan geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined to the east,” ...[this list is] “remarkably important in reconstructing the early history of Zoroastrianism”. ...
* [The horizon of the Avesta] “is according to Burrow, wholly eastern and therefore certainly earlier than the westward migrations of the Iranian tribes.” ...
* [the attempt to transpose the geography of the Avesta from Afghanistan to western Iran] “was doubtless due to different attempts made by the most powerful religious centres of western Iran and the influential order of the Magi to appropriate the traditions of Zoroastrianism that had flourished in the eastern territories of the plateau in far-off times. Without a doubt, the identification of Raya with Adurbadagan, more or less parallel with its identification with Ray, should be fitted into the vaster picture of the late location of Airyana Vaejah in Adarbayjan.” ...
* “With Varana and Ranha, as of course with Hapta Handu, which comes between them in the Vd. I list, we find ourselves straight away in Indian territory, or, at any rate, in territory that, from the very earliest times, was certainly deeply permeated by Indo-Aryans or Proto-Indoaryans.” ...
* [the Avesta reflects] “an historical situation in which Iranian elements exist side by side with … Aryan or Proto-Indoaryan (elements)”. ...
* “in the denomination of Ariana, which became known to the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest of the eastern territories of the old Persian empire, there was obviously reflected a tradition that located the Aryan region in the central-southern part of eastern Iran, roughly from the Hindukus southwards, and that considered some of the Medes and the Persians in the west and some of the Bactrians and Sogdians in the north as further extensions of those people who were henceforth known by the name of Ariani. And this, to tell the truth, fits nicely into the picture we have been trying to piece so far. Here too, as in the passages of the Avesta we have studied from the Mihr Yast and the Zamyad Yast, the geographical horizon is central-eastern and southeastern; the northern lands are also completely peripheral, and Chorasmia, which is present only in the very peculiar position of which we have spoken in the Mihr Yast, is not included.” ...
* “we may consider that the northernmost regions where Zoroaster carried out his work were Bactria and Areia”. ...
* [the airyo-Sayana refers to] “the vast region that stretches southward from the Hindukus,” ... “from the southern slopes of the great mountain chains towards the valleys of the rivers that flow south, like the Hilmand…” “there is a substantial uniformity in the geographical horizon between Yt.XIX and Yt.X ... and the same can be said for Vd.I … these Avestan texts which contain in different forms, and for different purposes, items of information that are useful for historical geography give a fairly uniform picture: eastern Iran, with a certain prevalence of the countries reaching upto the southern slopes of the Hindukus.” ...
* [Likewise, in later Greek tradition, Ariane] “is the Greek name which doubtless reflects an older Iranian tradition that designated with an equivalent form the regions of eastern Iran lying mostly south, and not north, of the Hindukus. It is clear how important this information is in our research as a whole.” ...
* The Hilmand region and the Hamun-i Hilmand are beyond all doubt the most minutely described countries in Avestan geography. ...
* [This region is subject to] “a process of spiritualization of Avestan geography … in the famous celebration of the Hilmand in the Zamyad Yast…”, and “this pre-eminent position of Sistan in Iranian religious history and especially in the Zoroastrian tradition is a very archaic one that most likely marks the first stages of the new religion … the sacredness of the Hamun-i Hilmand goes back to pre-Zoroastrian times…” ...
* “the importance of cattle in various aspects of the Gathic doctrine can be taken as certain. This importance can be explained as a reflection in religious practice and myth of a socioeconomic set-up in which cattle-raising was a basic factor.” ...
* [In the Avestan descriptions of Varana (in the Vendidad), Gnoli sees] “a country, where the ‘Airyas’ (Iranians) were not rulers and where there was probably a hegemony of Indo-Aryan or proto-Indoaryan peoples.”
* [Airyana Vaējah... ]"the country is characterized, in the Vd.I context, by an advanced state of mythicization".
* [Gnoli identifies the sixteenth land, Raηhā, as an ―] eastern mountainous area, Indian or Indo-Iranian, hit by intense cold in winter.

### The Idea of Iran

    Gnoli, G. (1989). The Idea of Iran: An essay on its origin. Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente.
* The only possible identification of Airyana Vaejah must point to the great Hindukus mountain range.
** 42
* The main obstacle to a reconstruction that closely links the western Aryas to the Avestan Airyas is, in my opinion, the one arising from the theories that the Medes and the Persians emigrated from the North rather than from the East, that is to say, for instance, from south-east Russia (some scholars connect them with the so-called Andronovo culture) to the region lying North or North-West of the Caspian and across the Caucasus to the Urmia Lake region and, lastly, in an easterly and southeasterly direction towards the Zagros mountains.
** 71-2
* Now, the obstacle that arises from the theory of the Medes and the Persians having emigrated from the North ... on the basis of a highly conjectural interpretation of the archaeological evidence, is now removed by the archaeologists themselves. A body of evidence... orients us in quite a different direction, namely towards that of a migratory movement, probably a slow, progressive one, from East to West, along the great Khorasan Road.....
** 72
* A much more convincing theory than that of the western Iranians having emigrated from North to South across the Caucasus is that of a slow, progressive East-West emigration, a gradual penetration as it were, over the centuries, from the end of the 2nd millennium to the first half of the 1st millennium B.C. ...
** 74
* Having done away with the obstacle provided by the theory of the trans-Caucasian migration..., we can see both these peoples as western branches of those same Airyas that in the Younger Avesta are described as being settled in such a large part of the eastern Iranian world....
** 76
* When we speak of Medes and Persians, we must not lose sight of a historical perspective. In all likelihood, the ethnic groups of the Medes and the Persians that were settling the historical lands in the 8th century B.C. must already have been the result of processes of assimilation of heterogeneous ethnic, linguistic and cultural elements.
** Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran , page 76.
* The foregoing leads us to believe that the answer which we gave earlier, at the beginning of this chapter, to the question as to whether we ought to see a sort of continuity and a close link between the western Aryas, the Medes and the Persians and the Airyas of the Avestan people, is a well grounded one. We can reply that the Aryas who became part of the ethnic groups of the Medes and the Persians were none other than western branches of the Avestan Airyas who, in their westward migrations, had taken with them the name Aryan and so had extended, in a way, the boundaries of Ariana proper.
** 79-80
* These Aryas doubtless took with them their religious traditions as well, and this explains in what terms we must speak of the Achaemenians’ belonging to the airya tradition, i.e. to a religious and cultural heritage from a country further east. Afterwards Mazdeism grew up amongst them, and we do not know of any Mazdeism that could be defined for a certainty as non—Zoroastrian, nor, as I have tried to show elsewhere, have we any real reason, even if we take into account the name as—sa-ra ‘ma-za—as in the Assyrian tablets, to maintain that the very conception of a god such as Ahura Mazda was not the work of Zarathustra, in spite of the opinion of some leading scholars to the contrary and a hypothesis put forward recently by F.B.J. Kuiper. On the contrary, we might suppose that it was the decisive and most original feature of the message of the great prophet of ancient Iran’.
** 80