The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2753 page)

(11th cent. BCE).
Israelite
priest
. Zadok was a descendant of
Aaron
and together with Abiathar was King
David's
chief priest. At David's behest, he anointed
Solomon
the next king of Israel, and Solomon appointed Zadok's son as the
high priest
of the
Temple
. From then on, the high priesthood remained in the Zadokite family until the
Maccabean
era.

 
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(Heb., ‘Benei Zadok’, ‘Sons of Zadok’). Members of the ascetic community at
Qumran
. According to the
Dead Sea Scrolls
, ‘the sons of Zadok are the elect of
Israel
, called by name, who arise in the latter days’.

 
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(1913–74).
Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford from 1953. Although a specialist in Persian, from 1953 he became absorbed in the textual traditions of India. He expounded and criticized the Hindu classics ‘from inside’ and correlated them with the Catholicism to which he had been converted in 1936. His major works are
Mysticism
,
Sacred and Profane
(1957),
At Sundry Times
(1958),
Hindu and Muslim Mysticism
(1960),
Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism
(1961),
Hinduism
(1962),
The Bhagavad-G
t
(1969),
Concordant Discord
(1970). Towards the end of his life, he became increasingly preoccupied with the problems of rationality and unreason, good and evil, the latter given full rein in his last book
Our Savage God
(1974).

 
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(Pers., ‘epistle of victory’). Guru
Gobind Si
gh's
reply to
Aura
gzeb
c.
1705, included in the
Dasam Granth
.
Gobind Singh
wrote the Zafarn
m
in D
n
, S. Pañj
b, after leaving
Ana
pur
and suffering defeat.