The Analysis of Jamshid’s Sinfulness in Zoroastrianism: A Cultural Semiotic Approach

Cultural Semiotics, concerned with revealing the processes of meaning formation and identifying inherent values and norms in texts, was established by Yuri Lotman (1922-1993). This approach to text analysis, by focusing on the interrelation of different semiospheres, provides a new possibility to analyze cultural events to identify the means of text production in a specific semiosphere. Mythological-theological texts appear to be significant cultural sources for such an analysis and therefore Avesta, as a mythological-theological text, was selected for the current study. This paper has focused on Jamshid and attempted to study the delegitimization process of Mithraism and legitimization process of Zoroastrianism. Jamshid was studied in the binary of Self and Other and he was viewed as a god in Mithraism who, by the depreciation of vedic ideas and the influence of Zoroastrian semiosphere, had obtained a sinful character. Sinfulness of Jamshid was explored here by analyzing his introduction to the new semiosphere, the rejection of Other and the emphasis of Self culture (Zoroastrianism).