Dr Arash Zeini is a postdoctoral researcher in the MANTRAMS project. His research centres on the transmission and interpretation of the Zoroastrian sacred texts in antiquity and late antiquity. Arash's monograph, Zoroastrian Scholasticism in Late Antiquity (2020), which received the inaugural Book Prize for Ancient Iranian Studies, drew on Cabezón's cross-cultural theory of scholasticism to shift attention from late antique Zoroastrian translation techniques to the intellectual and exegetical frameworks that shaped the understanding of authoritative texts.

Within MANTRAMS, Arash examines Zoroastrian mąϑras in their Indo-Iranian context. Broadly speaking, Arash's contribution will investigate the Iranian concept of mąϑra, tracing its development from the Avestan corpus through its elaboration in Middle Persian exegetical literature, ultimately situating it within its Vedic and Indo-Iranian roots. The project is structured around three interrelated questions, addressed in sequence: (1) how mąϑra is conceptualised in the Avestan texts, particularly the Gāϑās; (2) how its function and meaning are reinterpreted in Zoroastrian scholastic traditions; and (3) how these developments contribute to broader Indo-Iranian understandings of mantra as a medium of religious knowledge and practice.

The resulting monograph will reassess Gonda and Thieme's work on mantra. Whereas these works examine the Indian tradition with reference to Iranian material, Arash will foreground the Iranian evidence, while remaining attentive to its shared origins with the Indian tradition. The volume is tentatively titled:  ‘From Vedic Ṛṣis to Zaraϑuštra: The Evolution and Circulation of the (Indo-)Iranian mąϑra’.