3190 FRAVASHIS
Nyberg, H. S. Irans forntida religioner. Stockholm, 1937. Trans-
lated as Die Religionen des alten Iran (1938; 2d ed., Osna-
brück, 1966).
Widengren, Geo. “Leitende Ideen und Quellen der iranischen
Apokalyptik.” In Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World
and the Near East, edited by David Hellholm, pp. 77–162.
Tübingen, 1989.
Zaehner, R. C. The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. Lon-
don, 1961.
GHERARDO GNOLI (1987)
Translated from Italian by Roger DeGaris
FRAVASHIS, beneficent and protective guardian spirits
whose services must be secured by means of ritual offerings,
are an essential element of the religious structure of Zoroas-
trianism. They play an important role in the frequency of
rainfall and are responsible for guaranteeing the prosperity
and preservation of the family. As the spirits of the dead, they
are the protagonists in a great feast held on the last night of
the year. They are thought to preexist human beings and to
survive them.
The fravashis do not appear in the Gāthās. In the Avesta,
the first mention of them occurs in the Yasna Haptanhāiti,
and an entire hymn (Yashts 13) is dedicated to them.
The conception of the fravashi has all the characteristics
of an archaic, pre-Zoroastrian belief that was later absorbed
and adapted by the tradition. Examples of these characteris-
tics include their identification with the spirits of the dead
(Söderblom, 1899, pp. 229–260, 373–418) and their war-
like nature.
As the spirits of the dead the fravashis have often been
compared to the Roman manes or to the Indian pitarah: ; as
warlike beings, they have been compared with the Germanic
valkyries or to the Indian Maruts, the company of celestial
warriors. In particular, in the context of the Indo-European
tripartite ideology, the fravashis are seen as a Zoroastrian sub-
stitute for the Maruts (Dumézil, 1953); both are linked to
the concepts and ethics of the Aryan Männerbund. Most like-
ly, Zoroastrianism absorbed this ancient concept, typical of
a warrior society, through its ties to the cult of the dead and
reinterpreted the fravashis as combatants for the rule of
Ahura Mazdā. We find such a zoroastrianization in the myth
told in the third chapter of the Bundahishn (Book of primor-
dial creation), which relates that the fravashis chose to be in-
carnated in material bodies in order to fight Ahriman and
the evil powers instead of remaining peacefully in the celes-
tial world.
The etymology of the word fravashi is uncertain. Origi-
nally it may have been used to designate the spirit of a de-
ceased hero who was endowed with *vr: ti, “valor” (Bailey,
1943, pp. 107ff.); or it may have expressed the theological
concept, fundamental to Zoroastrianism, of choice, *fra-vr: ti
(Lommel, 1930, pp. 151, 159–163) or that of the profession
of faith (Hoffmann, 1979, p. 91; Schlerath, 1980,
pp. 207ff.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bailey, H. W. Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books
(1943). Reprint, Oxford, 1971.
Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques. “L’homme dans la religion iranien-
ne.” In Anthropologie religieuse, edited by C. Jouco Bleeker,
pp. 93–107. Leiden, 1955.
Dumézil, Georges. “Vís: n: u et les Marút à travers la réforme zoroas-
trienne.” Journal asiatique 241 (1953): 1–25.
Gnoli, Gherardo. “Le fravaši e l’immortalità.” In La mort, les morts
dans les sociétés anciennes, edited by Gherardo Gnoli and
Jean-Pierre Vernant, pp. 339–347. Paris, 1982.
Hoffmann, Karl. “Das Avesta in der Persis.” In Prolegomena to the
Sources of the History of Pre-Islamic Central Asia, edited by
János Harmatta, pp. 89–93. Budapest, 1979.
Kellens, Jean. “Les fravaši.” In Anges et démons, edited by Julien
Ries, pp. 99–114. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1989.
Lommel, Herman. Die Religion Zarathustras nach dem Awesta dar-
gestellt. Tübingen, 1930.
Malandra, William W. “The ‘Fravaši Yašt.’” Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, 1971.
Narten, Johanna. “Avestisch frauuasi-.” Indo-Iranian Journal 28
(1985): 35–48.
Nyberg, H. S. Irans forntida religioner. Stockholm, 1937. Trans-
lated as Die Religionen des alten Iran (1938; 2d ed., Osna-
brück, 1966).
Schlerath, Bernfried. “Indo-Iranisch *var- ‘wählen.’” Studien zur
Indologie und Iranistik (Festschrift Paul Thieme) 5–6 (1980):
199–208.
Söderblom, Nathan. “Les Fravashis: Étude sur les traces dans le
mazdéisme d’une ancienne conception sur la survivance des
morts.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 39 (1899): 229–260,
373–418.
GHERARDO GNOLI (1987)
Translated from Italian by Roger DeGaris
FRAZER, JAMES G. (1854–1941), was a British an-
thropologist and historian of religion. James George Frazer,
the eldest of four children, was born in preindustrial Glas-
gow, the son of a successful pharmacist. His parents were de-
vout members of the Free Church of Scotland, a conservative
sect that in the 1840s had broken away from the (Estab-
lished) Church of Scotland on matters of church governance.
Accordingly Frazer was raised in an atmosphere of deep
piety, which, be it noted, he later said that he did not find
oppressive.
Frazer early showed academic promise and entered the
University of Glasgow at the then not unusually early age of
fifteen. There, he writes in a genial memoir composed at the
end of his life, three important things occurred: He con-
ceived his lifelong love of the classics, he came to see that the
world is governed by a system of unvarying natural laws, and
he painlessly lost the religious faith of his childhood.
Frazer did brilliantly at Glasgow but soon realized that
although Scottish education gave him a broader background
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION