George Waters, “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes”, inAnthropological Papers (Mostly on Parsee Subjects), ed. Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (Bombay: British India Press), 1911.
Addressing the Bombay Anthropological Society on the night of November 30, 1892, its then-president — George Waters, a British surgeon and lieutenant colonel — discussed a rather esoteric work: a Zoroastrian book known as theMarnameh. His interest in the text? Ancient perceptions of snakes.
With India then being home to the largest Zoroastrian community outside Iran, whose members were visibly active in many spheres of society and politics, Waters’ lecture likely had local interest. The surgeon — who also expounded on such subjects as the1896 plague in Bombay— first discussed attitudes toward snakes in antiquity before introducing theMarnamehand his own footnote-studded translation from the Persian.
Written sometime in the late fifteenth century, theMarnamehis a short text listing the thirty days of the Zoroastrian calendar — each, for the most part, corresponding to a Zoroastrian divinity or figure — and what the sighting of a snake on each portends. It comprises part of theRevayat of Darab Hormozdyar(“The Tale of Darab, Friend of Ahura Mazda”), which belongs to therevayat(literally “narration”) tradition. Composed between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries,revayats featured opinions on an array of mattersrelated to Zoroastrianism, and appeared in both prose and poetry. They are not, however, considered scripture, nor are they part of theAvesta,the central corpus of Zoroastrian religious teachings, which includes theGathas (“hymns”) of the prophet Zoroaster.
Aside from the odd subject matter of the text, what also makes theMarnamehfascinating is its unexpected treatment of snakes, which Zoroastrians have historically viewed with contempt. As Waters remarked:
This abhorrence toward snakes is perhaps best reflected in the story of the Arab demon-king Zahhak, who in theShahnameh— the “Book of Kings”, Iran’s national epic — terrorises people with the brain-devouring snakes growing from his shoulders. This tracks with how, in the Zoroastrian religion, snakes belong to a category of creatures known askhrafstar.In contrast togospand,the beneficent creatures of Ahura Mazda (God),khrafstar(like frogs, snakes, and scorpions) are the baneful spawn of Ahriman, thesole originof all evil. These classifications werenotedby Agathias, and, before him, Plutarch.
While theMarnamehdoes indeed contain ill omens, a good number are auspicious. “If you see a snake on the day of Sheherivar”, says one such omen, “you will (soon) find an absent friend in your arms”. Similarly, theMarnamehasserts that the sight of a snake on the day of Zamyâd will lead to the obtainment of “justice from the Creator of the world”.
How, one should rightly ask, could akhrafstarlike the snake possibly be associated with good fortune? Waters, who pointed out the un-Zoroastrian sentiment reflected in the book’s happy auguries, was of the belief that theMarnamehhad possibly been influenced by Egyptian thought. In concluding her discussion of theMarnamehas an anomaly, the Indo-Iranian philologist Martina Palladinostatesthat “serpents have not always belonged to the Ahrimanic sphere . . . despite the clear Zoroastrian hatred for these animals”, even adding that, “in pre-Zoroastrian Iran, these animals were not perceived negatively”. Could the positive associations of snakes in theMarnameh, then, be echoes of pre-Zoroastrian perceptions?
Despite its strangeness (or, perhaps, because of it), theMarnamehremains, centuries on, a largely forgotten and esoteric text. Even as a work of literature, it can “lay no claim to elegance of style or beauty of language”, toquoteWaters; yet, like the poems of Hafez and the grounds of Turkish coffee, both of which are popularly used in divination among Iranians, the more favourable omens of theMarnamehmight be a source of solace to some. After all, who wouldn’t want the “revolving heavens” to fulfill their wishes or to have their “desires . . . satisfied from all directions” — especially after stumbling upon some fork-tongued fiend?
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