Three Claims in an Assembly Talk on the Ardā Wirāz Nāmag
Six students are preparing a six-minute school-assembly talk on the Ardā Wirāz Nāmag. Their draft poster has three claims: (1) 'It is a Pahlavi account of a visionary journey through heaven and hell.' (2) 'It was written by Zarathustra.' (3) 'It is one of the oldest Avestan texts.' The teacher has asked them to keep only defensible claims and to add one sentence on why the text matters for understanding Middle Persian literature. The group has 30 minutes and a school library copy of a translated anthology, but no facsimile. A classmate says, 'If it's religious, it must be Avestan.' The talk must be intelligible to a mixed audience of Years 9 and 10, and the poster can carry only 60 words.
1. Which claims should be kept, revised, or removed? Justify each.
Read the worked answer
Keep (1), with precision: it is a Middle Persian (Pahlavi) visionary or apocalyptic narrative about Wirāz's journey to the other world, heaven and hell. Remove (2): Zarathustra is associated with the Old Avestan Gathas; the Ardā Wirāz Nāmag is a much later Middle Persian text and is not presented as his autograph. Remove or revise (3): it is not Avestan; Avestan is an older Iranian liturgical language, while this text is in Middle Persian. Defensible poster wording: 'A Middle Persian visionary narrative describing a journey through heaven and hell.' The reasoning is language plus genre plus attribution, not just 'religious equals old'.
2. Write the one-sentence 'why it matters' note, making clear it is a Middle Persian text and not a scripture by Zarathustra.
Read the worked answer
The Ardā Wirāz Nāmag matters because it is a substantial Middle Persian prose narrative that preserves Zoroastrian teaching about post-mortem reward and punishment and shows how Pahlavi literature used visionary travel to explore ethics and cosmology.
3. A classmate says 'If it's religious, it must be Avestan.' How do you correct this without overclaiming?
Read the worked answer
Correct the assumption: religious content does not determine language. Zoroastrian texts survive in several languages: Old Avestan, younger Avestan, Middle Persian or Pahlavi, and later Persian. The Ardā Wirāz Nāmag is Zoroastrian in content but Middle Persian in language. Avoid saying it is 'scripture' or 'by Zarathustra'; call it a later visionary narrative. This correction is important because the exam separates literature and cultural context from language history.