Picturing Paradise: An Introduction to the Art of the Zoroastrian Book

SSPIZS is pleased to announce the next Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry Memorial Lecture, with the key address given by Professor Daniel Sheffield.

For nearly two hundred and fifty years, Zoroastrians in Iran and India devoted considerable efforts to produce lavishly illustrated manuscripts of well-known stories. Today, more than a dozen illuminated Zoroastrian manuscripts survive in collections across the globe, providing a glimpse into the way in which early modern Zoroastrian communities visualised their history and their place in the cosmos.

In this talk, I will for the first time present a stylistic typology of Zoroastrian miniature painting as it relates to neighbouring artistic traditions. Further, I will present some tentative arguments drawn from colophons of illustrated manuscripts about the relationship of patrons, scribes, and artists. Finally, I will argue that these traditions of Zoroastrian manuscript art played a significant role in shaping lithographic print illustration pioneered by Parsi printers in nineteenth-century Bombay.

Speaker biography

Daniel Sheffield is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where he teaches the history of Medieval and Early Modern Iran and South Asia. He is a specialist in Zoroastrian New Persian and Gujarati literature. His monograph, Cosmopolitan Zarathustras: Translating Zoroastrianism in Iran and India will be published next year. He is currently pursuing research for a book about The School of Doctrines (Dabistān-i Maẕāhib), a Persian-language encyclopedia about the religions of India written in 1650.

Booking

No need to register for in-person attendance. However, for those attending online, please register via Zoom.

Image: Two portraits from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. Zend 105, copied in Surat on 28 Shahrivar 1178 AY / 17 March, 1809 CE. The figure on the left is identified as Pestanji Kuverji Ranji, the patron of the manuscript.