ABSTRACT
IT HAS been partly our aim in these discussions to point out the considerable diversity of faith and doctrine that existed in the Sasanian religion, and more specifically in Sasanian Zoroastrianism. We have dealt previously chiefly with cases where different schools of interpretation were in action, and where no claim could be made that a hierarchically significant difference existed between those views. These distinctions may be called ‘horizontal’. The distinctions we shall examine in the present chapter are capable of creating, if my interpretation is correct, a hierarchical layering of the community, and may therefore be called ‘vertical’.
