The Imperial University of Karradone's Manual for Religious Studies

Scholastic Reference

When the faculty of the history department proposed that they create a "definitive scholastic" work on the various religions found on Tarien, the administration at the University of Karradone quickly approved and funded the project. As the majority of their students at that time hailed from Eldoria's nobility, few of them understood anything about deities and faith beyond the fact that Anderi is the light and Tiras the lady of the night. After all, a life of privelage is not privilege to a life of prayer. The hope at the time was to help educate students on the basics various religions, giving them enough knowledge to be conversant at court without accidentally offending anyone.

As the University was sponsoring the work, it was also important to administrators that work remain unbiased in matters of faith. This balanced approach was perhaps more aspirational than actual in the first edition, where a different faculty member researched the myths, history, religious rituals and orders surrounding each of the nine Human deities. Chapters on Anderi and Arimathica contained vast amounts of detail, especially surrounding the good works taken up by their faithful while chapters Zardula and Mennith were terse yet littered with language that disparaged the rituals of these two faiths.

Faculty working on subsequent editions - the sixth being the most recent - have worked hard to deepen the knowledge contained in the book on these less frequently worshiped gods and applying more neutral language and style across the entire work. They have also added chapters speculating on the origin of the gods, borrowing heavily from Grenache's History Before Words. They have even added chapters on Shar’iish’ta and Jez'bali'dahn. Notes on the latter, however, have come almost entirely from Shar'iish'ta's faithful so editors have noted that a wise scholar would be careful about how much of this section she believes.

Type

Manuscript, Religious

Authoring Date

352 AC