Sasanian Persia articulated a generational-trauma argument against striking children in the fourth century CE.

Evidence

Pus i man, andar man-ot dārišn-iz did, niyāz-iz nabaš, ka mardōm xwēš-ravāgīhā ud xwēš-rāmišnīhā. Pus i man, kē-iz pidar-iš zad, awēšān-iz pus xwēš-rāmišnīhā nabawēd. … My son, the man whose own self is at peace, whose own self is at rest — that man does not need to strike. My son, those whose father struck them — they themselves cannot find the rest of their own selves. … This is — and the Pahlavi terminology is dense, but the moral is direct — Adurbad, son of Mahraspand, fourth-century-CE Sasanian high priest, writing to his own son, in a paternal advice text intended to be passed down through subsequent Persian generations, the direct claim that the father who has been at peace within himself does not need to strike his children. And the children of fathers who did strike them cannot themselves find inner peace. This is — operationally — a generational-trauma argument. Articulated seventeen hundred years ago. In Pahlavi. By the chief priest of an empire most modern Western readers cannot place on a map. — , The Rod and the Child, 1117

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how a 4th-century Persian high priest anticipated modern attachment theory’s generational-trauma framework by seventeen centuries — the non-Western priority of a ‘modern’ psychological idea.
• XREF: Builds on the season’s larger argument across Sumer, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, India, China — the repeated articulation of anti-rod cases.