Arabic-L:LING:xodA usage in Persian

[Dilworth Parkinson]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Wed 20 Mar 2002
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message to listserv at byu.edu with first line
reading:
           unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject:xodA usage in Persian

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date:  20 Mar 2002
From:Robert Langer <rlanger at ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject:xodA usage in Persian

A little late but I did not see any answers yet to the question of xodA
usage.
As was already mentioned Iranians use alongside with the - in an Iranian
context - purely Islamic "allAh" the Persian word "xodA" for "God".
(BTW: A
little bit like "Allah / TanrI" in Turkish usage.)
As for the religious minorities in Iran I can speak for the Zoroastrian
usage. I conducted fieldwork in Iran last year amongst and with the help
of
Zoroastrians in connection with my research project on shrines (esp.
Zoroastrian in TehrAn and Central Iran).
Zoroastrians prefer the word xodA but use allAh in expressions like
enshA'allAh without any problem in daily talk. In modern inscriptions on
Zoroastrian buildings you would read e. g. "be-nAm-e xodA" but of course
not
the basmalla and nothing else put together with "allAh".
In more recent inscriptions (20 c) one reads more often "be-nAm-e ahurA
mazdA" or "be-yAr-e ahurA mazdA [... this or that was repaired, rebuild]
than some expression with "xodA" but I did not encounter "ahurA mazdA" in
everyday's talk.
Hope that helps,
Robert
P. S.: I also would be interested in the usage of esp. Iranian Jews. Was
there something on the list already I missed?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L:  20 Mar 2002