ABSTRACT
In a chapter on the Zoroastrian conception of the realm of darkness and the hosts of hell by Jackson in Die iranische Religion 2 (in Geiger and Kuhn’s Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, 2. 646-668, Strassburg, 1896-l904) there is presented a full discussion of the daēvas and drujes in Avestan and Pahlavi literature. Since that date interesting light has been thrown on the subject by the discovery, in the oasis of Turfan in Eastern Turkistan, of extensive remains of the lost Manichæan literature, written in Middle Persian (the so-called ‘Turfan Pahlavi’), in Old Turkish, and in Chinese. In these texts occur the names of numerous demons, such as Aḥarmēn, Parīgān, ‘Azdaḥāg ’ī Mazan (i.e., Mazanian), and the like, whose attributes will repay careful study, especially from a comparative point of view. The present paper deals merely with one of their number, the demon Āz, whose counterpart in Zoroastrianism, Avestan Āzi-, Pahlavi Āz, is well-known as the personification of Greed, Personal Craving, Covetousness (see Jackson, Die iranische Religion, page 660, § 13).
