Why don't people acknowledge the heavy Zoroastrian influence in Dark Souls? Dark Souls 1 and 3 have plenty of Zoroastrian symbology. Each household during Sassanian times had a sacred fire maintained believing it to ward Ahriman's encroaching darkness. This kinda resembles how in Dark Souls the First Flame wards off the Abyss' darkness. OFC, Dark Souls is more of an inversion of Zoroastrian symbology by making the point that the Abyss/Ahriman isn't entirely bad, and also, Ahura Mazda's light, which is manifested as fire, can make one go mad and annihilate identity due to bid for power.
Worshiping fire is cool.
Note, Iran literally means Aryan, and it's been called that since Sassanian times.
>>Note, Iran literally means Aryan, and it's been called that since Sassanian times. what was called Aryan? the land or the people?
Kayden Garcia
Sassanids referred to the country as "Iranshahr", also spelled as "Eranshahr" (same pronunciation), which roughly translates to "Country of Aryans" in modern Persian.
Jayden Rogers
neat i've always found the whole "aryan" thing to be interesting. the devas and asuras in hinduism are pretty much the exact opposite in zoroastrianism both have the aryan/indo-aryan mystery, and then there is the whole nazi obsession with swastikas (prevalent in hinduism) and fire (central to zoroastrianism) you read any good books about this stuff?
Blake Morris
Dark Souls is a pastiche of various Western literary and artistic tropes, deracinated from the Western historical contexts that made them sensible and meaningful to begin with, and deployed by Japanese people who don't really understand them in the first place even before their deracination, because they are themselves deracinated cultureless medieval peasants living in a top-down imposed post-colonial capitalist nightmare society.
Dark Souls throws together some gothic themes, some fantasy themes derived from romantic literature and its synthesis by figures like T.H. White and Tolkien, and Deviantart amateur artists' pictures of nonsensical megalithic architecture, and then weds these to a pointless non sequitur story that superficially appears, to retards anyway, to be deep and mysterious (a Japanese specialty!). Very similar to Japanese practice in other plotless, narratively disjointed heaps of miscellaneous tropes, like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira. Then it takes the gameplay of a mediocre ARPG like Diablo, baroquely complicates it without attempting to balance it, and glues the whole thing together into a mess merely large and intricate enough to confuse manchildren into thinking it is a coherent artistic expression.
These manchildren typically don't notice that they're fighting the same boss mechanics twenty times in a row, or that some of the biggest setpiece bosses are pushovers due to a failed implementation of some mechanic or an extremely simple moveset. But it doesn't matter. The manchild's brain can only process "LOTS OF THINGS ARE HAPPENING.. THIS GAME IS A BIG THING! I'M IMMERSED" and has no ability to abstract and judge the creation as a whole.
So basically you're looking for a stretched-out passionless paste made from rehashed, reheated tropes, and stuck together by the sheer will of a capitalist trying to trick you into thinking it's something new and dupe you into giving him your money.
Charles Bell
The reality is less romantic than that. Indo-Iranians were just steppe nomads who invaded India after the fall of the Indus Valley Civilization. They were descendants of Sintashta and Andronovo cultures.
Isaiah Parker
Kingdom of Aryans*
Chase Wood
And the swastika is older than them. The oldest one was found in Ukraine, but it's possible that it was just a decorative pattern. Vinca script from Serbia definitely used swastika as a symbol. Indus Valley civilization also used swastika.
Colton Evans
>Indo-Iranians were just steppe nomads who invaded India after the fall of the Indus Valley Civilization. which group wrote the vedas?
Isaiah Ward
First off, isn't creativity about taking themes from other works and then mixing into one's own? Think of how Hume argues all ideas have root in explicit memory, which is true. Dark Souls has many influences from Norse, Persian, and more myths, but it applies such themes in its own unique manner. Thus, your criticism of deracination seems moot, since some degree of deracination seems necessary for artistic creations. Consider this, if you see a dragon in a game, but it is shown in a unique way, would you dismiss such portrayal as uninspired, due to how other cultures would also create art on dragons?
I disagree that Dark Souls is a non sequitur story. Its themes are pretty damn clear. The main theme is about how "constantly linking the fire" or "trying to keep it kindled within the cycles of birth and death" leads to madness. Dark Souls 1 and 3 are pretty clear how there is an annihilating aspect to excessively embracing the fire and one needs to balance it with the darkness, which is not wholly evil. This is a common Japanese theme. It's trying to say there should be limits placed on chivalry and the fixation with power. Otherwise, things break down, and you are left with a situation of 'going hollow' whilst going through motions of keeping the flame lit.
In regards to your criticism of gameplay, I disagree. Sure, all bosses come down to understanding patterns and exploiting them. However, such a criticism is applicable to most games. Many bosses have amazing animations, voice acting, design, and much more. Fighting them can be exhilarating, but I suppose it boils down to personal preference.
Finally, addressing your criticism of Dark Souls fanbase, I disagree that most of the fans are philistines. I have frequented a "weird fiction" board where fans of Machen, Blackwood, Lovecraft, Ligotti, Aickman, and more discuss their favorite literature. Many found Hidetaki Miyazaki's vision sophisticated. Therefore, I disagree with your rude manchild criticism.
Colton Jackson
>stop liking things i don't like
Brandon Scott
>you read any good books about this stuff? Yes, many. Richard Foltz's Religions of Iran: From Prehistory to the Present had good chapters on Indo-Iranian religions, Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism plus its various movements like Mazdakism. I also liked the Chapter 7 of Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism edited by Michael Stausberg, which talked about the influences Zoroastrianism had on Abrahamic faiths.
They were written much later. Indo-Iranians didn't have writing system. The origin of Rig Veda is obviously Indo-Iranian, though. But according to David Anthony Proto-Indo-Iranian emerged after steppe nomads from Andronovo conquered or assimilated sedentary farmers from Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex.
>It has become increasingly clear that if one wishes to argue for Indo-Iranian migrations from the steppe lands south into the historical seats of the Iranians and Indo-Aryans that these steppe cultures were transformed as they passed through a membrane of Central Asian urbanism. The fact that typical steppe wares are found on BMAC sites and that intrusive BMAC material is subsequently found further to the south in Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, India and Pakistan, may suggest then the subsequent movement of Indo-Iranian-speakers after they had adopted the culture of the BMAC.[20]
>Terms borrowed from an otherwise unknown language include those relating to cereal-growing and breadmaking (bread, ploughshare, seed, sheaf, yeast), waterworks (canal, well), architecture (brick, house, pillar, wooden peg), tools or weapons (axe, club), textiles and garments (cloak, cloth, coarse garment, hem, needle) and plants (hemp, mustard, soma plant).[3]
We don't know who the BMAC people were.
Brandon Richardson
thanks, i'll check them out
Jackson Kelly
so sanskrit (or the proto-sanskrit language depending on the time i guess) was the language of the steppe-nomads and it was brought down to where to india is after IVC had already collapsed?
Benjamin Torres
The Indo-Aryans. Complex poetry and religious ideas developed before the split though, with definite influence of substrate cultures (BMAC, local areal Indic, etc.).
Linguist who has worked on Indo-Iranic before here. AMA.
They really aren't that much of an "opposite", but it's clear that there was some split there. Remember, Zoroastrianism =/= Iranic religion. It's a reformed movement, and became more reformed and distant from Vedic religion over time.
Bentley Perez
The deva/asura in hinduism/zoroastrainism are some of the awesome things about history. Both sides tell a story that fits together in a grand scheme.
There was a war involving ancient Persia/India where Persia lost. The loss is due to flooding of some river. The Persians blamed it on Indra (the god of storm/lightning/rain) and Indians praised Indra for the victory.
Noah Martin
Actually the Soul's series is in it's visual aesthetic, very heavily derived from Caspar David Friedrichs paintings, and it's storytelling is derivative of the Eddas. You need to understand that all resource expensive forms(movies, video games) are almost always extremely derivative, only novels and paintings are ever truly innovative and original since once you start committing to using something other than paint and paper to create something, it's only feasible to use material that has already been established as desirable by the public.
Dylan Green
Also Devas(Indian)/Daevas(Persian) mean good gods/false gods (respectively). Asura(war gods)/Ahura(mighty gods) is the other.
Also to add on the proto-indo-aryan migration. There were several different migrations to different directions. To india/europe/persia/east asia. Just because they all came from same root, doesn't mean they were friends and families. Most as the ancient pre-historic battle/war suggests, the Persians/Indians fought with the Persians being the aggressors and the Indians defending it successfully.
Jack Scott
I don't see how you can criticize DS as a bland pastiche at the same time Bloodborne exists.
Ethan Williams
>hundreds articles about DNA from Russian shitholes >not a single from Harappa or Gonur
Wyatt Bell
>believing in Indian mythology >implying Kurukshetra War ever happened
Justin Diaz
The split of the Indo-Iranians into Iranic and Indo-Aryan happened sometime between their interaction with BMAC, and the settling of the Indo-Aryans in India. They probably had limited contact with the IVC before this though.
The Indo-Aryans, prior to settling in India, were pretty much indistinguishable from the early Avestan speakers. They spoke some intermediate between Vedic Sanskrit, Old Avestan, and Proto-Indo-Iranian. After they settle, we get Vedic Sanskrit, which already has IVC and/or Indic influences. I don't think we can call their language before they settled, as "Sanskrit", though it was obviously very close.
No, the correct is "Eran", not "Iran", the latter is a clear and late corruption. We start with Proto-Indo-Iranian *arya. In Avestan, there is a phenomenon of pre-palatization, which gave late Avestan pronunciations as Airya. Just like in Sanskrit, Avestan ablaut of *i is *ai, which regularly becomes ē. Hence, in the Eastern Iranic phonology, it should be Ēran. Middle Persian actually borrowed this form instead of the western iranic (Old Persian) ariya, probably due to the influence of Avestan in the priesthood.
There is literally no way for it to become "Iran" with the sound changes until Middle Persian. It became this only in New Persian.
Jeremiah Russell
I disagree. Dark Souls' story is not derivative of only* the Eddas. There is a lot of Norse mythological influence, true, but there is also more than just that. For example, I claim we can see some Zoroastrian influence too.
Granted, the biggest undeniable influence is Miura's Berserk, of course.
Andrew Bell
>Linguist who has worked on Indo-Iranic before here. AMA. suggest books and/or youtube videos to watch pls, i want to stop being so entry level in this topic
Sebastian Carter
The pronunciation among modern Iranians still remains Ēran. It's just the English spelling for that phonetics can be either Ēran or Iran.
Jaxson Johnson
>Implying DS isn't Aztec mythology obscured by an European medieval aesthetic >The Fading Fire >The perpetual sacrifices to keep it alive >Emphasis on death and the underworld
Sebastian Lee
>Persians being the aggressors and the Indians defending it successfully. This isn't clear at all. The Iranians obviously lost, and ended up having to live in comparatively worse lands. But the Vedic and post-Vedic literature generally thinks decently of the Iranic peoples, at least compared to the other peoples they talk about. We'll probably never know exactly what happened, though.
Do you mean, on history? Or linguistics? The latter is rather specialized, though if you have a linguistics background I can give some technical resources on Indo-Iranian.
According to wiktionary, this isn't the case. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ایران#Persian The first vowel has stayed intact in Dari and Tajik. That said, I have heard classical persian and they do pronounce it correctly as ē. I guess it's just the Tehrani dialect fucking things up as usual. Btw even then, the "a", corresponding to the ablauting "a" in Proto-Iranic, has changed a ton in modern Persian dialects, namely, all of them round the vowel. In Middle Persian, the "a" was back unrounded. I'm not an expert on the post-Islamic sound changes, but they are quite substantial and interesting.
Jace White
The whole idea of an eternal flame standing in opposition to an abyssal darkness is a Zoroastrian idea. Dark Souls is an amalgam of many different mythologies. There's probably some Aztec stuff too, sure.
Colton Rivera
>Do you mean, on history? Or linguistics? The latter is rather specialized, though if you have a linguistics background I can give some technical resources on Indo-Iranian. both? i don't have a linguistics background but it's still interesting to me
Jayden Allen
Can you give an audio clip of the pronunciation in Dari or Tajik?
Cameron Morris
Not him, but Benjamin Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture is pretty accessible to non-linguists and has sections on Indo-Iranian.
Remember though, it's tough without knowledge of the theory of modern linguistics, but you can learn this while learning ancient persian languages no problem. As for history, what region are you interested in?
The pronunciation is literally on the wiktionary in IPA....
>The pronunciation is literally on the wiktionary in IPA.... My parents are from Tehran, and they pronounce Iran in the same way as the one in Wikitionary.
Charles Price
>Benjamin Fortson Yeah this book is a good intro to IE languages in general, definitely readable. If user wants to really know about this stuff, he does need to learn IE linguistics at a broad level like that. But if he's just interested in Indo-Iranian, I don't think it's needed. It's definitely a good book though. A great book on Indo-Iranian in particular, is "An Avesta Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit" by Jackson.
Encyclopedia Irania is by far, the most well-written resource for Iranic culture and history, especially if you're willing to read the sources it uses. The Cambridge history series on Iran is also fantastic. If you can read the scripts, this is really cool: avesta-archive.com
>vocaroo.com/i/s1GWandkfubu Okay, so it's like Ei-Ruune? Yeah, my dad sometimes says that, probably because he has a lot of Afghan friends, but you're right most Tehranis don't really pronounce it like that.
Do you speak Persian natively? I'm not an Iranian myself. Hope the references given above are of help.
Joseph Sanchez
Hmm, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing it middle Persian because linguistics really isn't my forte. I understand the Dari "Ei-rɒn", but the Middle Persian "Ei-rɐn" is harder to imagine.
Luke Diaz
In Dari/Tajik, the lips are rounded. In Classical, they are not. In Middle Persian (and earlier), the place where the sound is made was further to the front of the mouth. It's not really that different from the Classical one I posted, just a little less guttural.
By the way, the word ērān, originally does not designate a place, but rather, a people. In Middle Persian, the suffix -ān designated the plural. So
Arya --> Ērya --> Ēr
This means "Aryan". Ērān hence means "The Aryans", and as mentioned earlier in the thread, Šahr means "kingdom".
Interesting to think about, in Sanskrit, the exact transliteration should be Aryakšatram. In Avestan, Airyaxšaθrəm. The two languages are pretty much mutually intelligible, but they both have a couple of features the other doesn't - and together tell us so much about their history.
Colton Cook
The classical one is basically what modern Iranians in Tehran say on average.
Connor Cox
Yeah, it's a very "typical" sound for me when I think of a Persian accent (that vowel "a"). Earlier language in Persia had a much more open "a" sound.
The reason for this shift, is probably the introduction of the vowel in نه, which is more frontal, so the original "a" went further back.
Got any more questions on Iranian stuff? I wish more people were interested in Iranian history on this board, desu.
Do you mostly deal with just linguistics or other types of Iranian history?
In that vein, is there anywhere where I can read about present-stem verb autism and how it developed? It seems to run deep in the Iranian languages, with even Ossetian showing the same types of present-stem irregularities as Persian.
Liam Butler
the Indian government is actively burying the results from Harappan samples
Zachary Flores
Do you agree with the way I broke down these Zoroastrian sects?
The way I interpret the dialectic of Zoroastrian religions, which includes Zurvanism, traditional Mazdayasna, Manichaeism, Mazdakism, and Reformed Zoroastrianism are they begin their metaphysics by establishing two basic principles: good and evil. I believe before Reformed Zoroastrianism that most sects were dualists, though the Zurvanites were nondualists.
They speak in metaphor about their relation:
Zurvanism: good and evil ultimately do not exist in Zurvan; but in our relative plain of this realm, we are completely dominated by the dualism of Ohrmazd and Ahriman
Mazdaysna: good and evil have absolute distinction and do not intermix; life is a struggle between good and evil plus a progressive movement towards final renovation where light prevails (Frashokereti)
Manichaeism: good and evil intermix and one should liberate the good, minimize the evil VIA asceticism
Mazdakism: good and evil intermix and one should liberate the good, minimize the evil VIA social activism
Reformed Zoroastrianism (due to interactions with Islam -- the only purely monotheistic strand): evil is not ultimately real/existent, but is only the absence of the Good or monotheistic Ohrmazd
Julian King
>Manichaeism >a Zarathustrian sect
barely
William Sanders
I'm currently a researcher in formal languages, but I did my MA research on Proto-Indo-Iranian. Obviously this is pretty intimately tied to history and archaeology. We can only reconstruct most of these languages from historical accounts - and not even from just Iranian peoples. I'm pretty interested in Iranic (but more Central Asia than Persia) history, especially anthropology and such. I know pretty much zero about say, the history of compound bows though lol. Again though, Encyclopedia Iranica is amazing for pretty much anything.
> present-stem verb autism Do you mean, the system in New and Middle Persian of past and present stems (-tan/-dan)? Ossetian does not have this, and it's grammar is completely different. It's actually much closer to Old Iranian languages in grammar. The transition from Old Persian/Avestan to Middle Persian / Middle E. Iranic ended up dropping all the cases (well, Pashto has 4) and inflections and stuff. This is just the typical phenomenon of languages transitioning away from an inflection-based system. Compare Hindi to Sanskrit, or Italian to Latin. In the case of Middle Persian, the "regular" stem system is actually mostly an effort to "regularize" this transition, and it's actually a very elegant system.
Basically all the Middle/New Persian suffixes come from Old Persian grammar in some way, but are really just relics. Old Iranian languages on the other hand, have the deep inflectional system of PIE (though Proto-Indo-Iranian did change a few things). Learning it is pretty tough if you aren't familiar with inflecting nouns, but if you know any of the three (Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian), the other 3 are pretty much the exact same.
I'll answer the religion one in a sec.
Nathaniel Sanders
Manichaeism was pretty much all-inclusive. Mani was fine with people viewing Manichaeism as a Zarathustrian sect, and he frequently used Zoroastrian symbology in Cologne Mani Codex and Shabuhragan. He considered his religion as being the final renovation and encompassing Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.
In this sense, one can consider Manichaeism a kinda Zarathustrian sect.
John Garcia
Yeah, be sure to respond to my edited version:
Juan Clark
>Then it takes the gameplay of a mediocre ARPG like Diablo Diablo and Dark Souls aren't even the same genre, you peasant.
Jason Ortiz
> Zurvanism Yes I think this is correct, though they were dualists, in what sense do you mean they weren't? > Mazdaysna > good and evil have absolute distinction and do not intermix I think this is more of the Sassanian-era viewpoint. The rest I agree. > Manichaeism As you mention, it was compatible with Gnostics and Buddhists. There was a definite clear distinction between good and evil here though, it's just that they are allowed to co-exist within people. > Mazdakism I think they also had a pretty clear good vs evil distinction, but comparatively little is known (sadly) about the details of this religion. > Reformed Zoroastrianism (due to interactions with Islam -- the only purely monotheistic strand): evil is not ultimately real/existent I actually have no idea about this one. Is this, say, the interpretation current Zoroastrians give? Does it matter if they are in Iran or India?
> In this sense, one can consider Manichaeism a kinda Zarathustrian sect. Eh, theologically it's definitely a gnostic movement. It pretty much rejects most of Zoroastrianism besides being compatible/equivalent in it's fundamental views on good and evil. That said, the Zoroastrians saw it as a threat, probably because it was close enough in it's language and symbolism to attract Zoroastrians, but was fundamentally different theologically. They had very little issue with say, Buddhists. But then again even the definition of "Zoroastrian" is pretty dependent on what time. Early Zoroastrianism was pretty different from the Sassanian stuff.
I'm talking about how present term kardan becomes -kon, and how didan becomes -bin, for example. Any explanation for how this came about?
Oliver Williams
Ahh, you meant specifically the irregular stems. There's a multitude of sources of them, it's nothing deep, just typical mess you get when you drop inflections.
Old Iranic (and Old Indic) have lots of irregular roots - some of the entries on the inflection table will just be totally different. Some of this is due to replacement of otherwise regular inflections with some other word early enough that it became popular and nobody remembers when it was regular. Some of it is due to some bizzare irregular sound change. But a lof of them we just don't know why. Most which are irregular in Sanskrit, are also irregular in Iranic. In Middle Persian, when all the inflections dropped, these irregular roots obviously transferred into irregular stems.
But there's an additional source of irregularity - in Old Persian, you have a root, which is something like say, kar. This actually has 3 forms: kr, kar, kār - see "indo-european ablaut" on wiki for information. These different forms get conjugated by adding a suffix, to get the verb in it's final form.
So you'd think, well maybe in Middle Persian, they should take the same form for all the roots, to get their two stems for their new grammar system. You'd be right, they probably should have. But that didn't happen. Instead, literally any form of the root, shortened, lengthened, normal, or even fucking already conjugated, got turned into a Middle Persian stem. There's no pattern or relation at all. For most of these, they forced some regularity into it, but not for all stems.
TLDR: It could have been worse. The irregularities are due to lack of regularity in how they picked out roots, as well as holdovers from irregularities in Old Persian that only Anāhitā knows of.
I'm glad you're enjoying yourself :^)
Robert Reyes
Awesome, thanks for the info!
I'd ask for more information or means to contact you, but I'm not necessarily going to ask for this information over Veeky Forums. Do you use discord?
Sebastian Jones
Eh I'd rather you ask on Veeky Forums so the average quality of this board is increased, if not incrementally. If you really have to contact me, yeah sure Discord is fine. Server link?
