Ardā Wirāz Nāmag or the Book of the Righteous Wirāz is an outstanding example of Iranian apocalyptic literature. It is in the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) language and was written probably during the later period of the Sasanian dynasty (AD 226-650). The Zoroastrian priests chose a man called Wirāz, the most righteous among them, to go to the spiritual realm to discover the truth of the religion. This book, first published in 1986, contains the observations of Wirāz’ divine journey and his description of heaven and hell. The basic MS. is K20 (Royal Library of Copenhagen) which is carefully compared with other MSS. The MS. is printed in facsimile, followed by transliteration and transcription following the MS. closely line by line. A full translation is given, and a commentary is included together with a glossary, bibliography and index.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

"A collection of four texts describing the nature of hell in the Zoroastrian religious tradition; includes selections from A Book of Scriptures (Hadhokht Nask), The Book of Ardâ Vîrâf (Arda Viraf Namak), Religious Judgments (Dadestan-i Denig) by Manuschihr, Book of the Judgments of the Spirit of Wisdom (Mainyo-I-Khard) "--Provided by publisher.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Oct. 11-Dec. 14, 2013.