Création, hiérarchisation, énumération : l’ordonnancement du monde animal dans le chapitre XIII du Bundahišn

The Late antique Zoroastrian texts have the marks of an interest in ordering the animal world. The Middle Persian text of the Bundahišn presents, in chapter XIII, a theoretical structure of order and an enumeration of animal species. The analysis of this structure, consisting of horizontal and vertical categorization lexems, such as the names of given species, invites us to think the way in which religious discourse and interest in the animal world are intertwined in the cosmogonic narrative. The formation of animal categorizations then depends on the Zoroastrian tradition and on the knowledge of the animal world in late antiquity, as well as on willingness for orderly enumeration, which is an important character of the Bundahišn.