Henning W.B., Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-doctor? (Ratanbai Katrak Lecture, 1949)

Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-doctor? (Ratanbai Katrak Lecture, 1949).Oxford University Press, 1951, 51 p.Under this intriguing title, Prof. Henning gives us, in a most enjoyable form, his three Ratanbai Katrak lectures of 1949. His portraits of the prophet, as seen alternately through Herzfeld's or Nyberg's spectacles, are full of wit and humour. He may, however, have shot beyond the mark when (p. 32 sq.), in criticising the hypothesis of Zoroaster's ' shamanism ', he goes so far as to deny the existence of hemp-intoxication in ancient Iran. For how would he then account for the Iranian loan-word in vogul panx, ostyak ponx 'Agaricus muscarius' (as a means of intoxica- tion apparently a substitute for hemp), etc. ? (Cf. Bernh. Munkacsi, ' " Pilz " u. " Rausch " ', Keletw Szemte, 1907, pp. 343-4, already alleged by Wikander, apud Mircea Eliade, Le Chamanisme, Paris, 1951.) Henning has dealt especially in the masterly fashion which is his in all matters historical or philological-with the questions of the date and place of Zarathustra. On the basis of Taqizades and Hildegarde Lewy's researches he show3 with perfect clarity that the latest (Nyberg's) attempt at disproving the traditional date of ' 258 years before Alexander is no more valid than all the previous arguments to the same purpose.