The Avesta (, Book Pahlavi: ʾp(y)stʾk' (), Persian language: اوستا ()) is the text corpus of religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Modern editions of the Avesta are based on the various manuscript traditions that have survived in India and Iran.
The individual texts of the Avesta were originally Oral tradition compositions.
Unlike the Sasanian Avesta, which was organized thematically, the surviving Avestan manuscripts correspond to the different ceremonies in which they are used. It is assumed that it was their regular use which ensured their survival to this day. The principal text is the Yasna, which takes its name from the corresponding ceremony, in which it is recited. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to Zoroaster himself. These hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the Yasna, are in the Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasna's texts are in Younger Avestan, which is not only from a later stage of the language, but also from a different geographic region.
Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Vendidad and the Visperad. The Visperad extensions consist mainly of additional invocations of the divinities ( yazatas), while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws. Even today, the Vendidad is the only liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts, which are hymns to the individual yazatas. Unlike the Yasna, Visperad and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these other lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza and various other fragments. Together, these lesser texts are conventionally called Khordeh Avesta or "Little Avesta" texts. When the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, these texts (together with some non-Avestan language prayers) became a book of common prayer for lay people.
Name
The term
Avesta originates from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Middle Persian
abestāg,
Book Pahlavi ʾp(y)stʾkʼ. In that context,
abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge and are distinguished from the
Exegesis commentaries (the
Zend) thereof. The literal meaning of the word
abestāg is uncertain; it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The widely repeated derivation from *
upa-stavaka is from Christian Bartholomae (
Altiranisches Wörterbuch, 1904), who interpreted
abestāg as a descendant of a hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian word for "praise-song" (Bartholomae:
); but this word is not actually attested in any text. In Pashayi, the westernmost Indo Aryan
Dardic languages language spoken primarily in Eastern Afghanistan, the word Avesta means ‘invitation’.
The author
Yasna
William W. Malandra, an Orientalist, states that the Yasna was not composed until long after Zoroaster's death, since the text is in the later Avestan dialect, not the Avestan-Gatans dialect spoken by Zoroaster like the one in Gathas. He says that it is not possible to determine when a text was composed, but it can be argued that the text may have been the product of an editorial project completed at a particular point in history, or a process of consolidation, where the text was gradually expanded over a long period of time.
William W. Malandra says when talking about Gathas that Yasna chapter 53 is a later addition.
Visperad
The Visperad is not considered an independent section, but rather an extension of the Yasna section. The purpose of the Visperad is to embellish the Yasna ceremonies during the five main festivals (Zoroastrian festivals). The text was completed in the middle or late
Sasanian Empire.
Yashts
Arthur Christensen believes that some parts of Yashts existed before the emergence of Zoroastrianism and some parts of Yashts were added after the emergence of Zoroastrianism, Almut Hintze comments that it is impossible to distinguish between pre-Zoroastrian and post-Zoroastrian texts, while
Ilya Gershevitch believes that Yashts existed before Zoroastrianism but was later introduced into the Avesta, Prods Oktor Skjaervo points out that the Yashts were composed by the Achaemenids in order to consolidate their power.
Vendidad
William W. Malandra stated that scholars generally agree that the author's of the Vendidad were
, in the Achaemenid era or after it.
Khordeh Avesta
It was composed in the middle and late Sassanian period.
Avesta manuscripts
The Avesta consists of 5 parts, which are,
Yasna,
Visperad,
,
Vendidad, The oldest surviving fragment of a text dates to 1323 CE
[Boyce, Mary (1984), Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, Manchester UP.] A. V. Williams Jackson says that no single manuscript contains the entire Avesta.
The earliest passage composed in the book is the Gatha, and there is a gradual general consensus in favour of placing the Gatans, around 1000 BC.
There is a now wide consensus that for most of their long history the Avesta's various texts were handed down orally and independently of one another
[Humbach, Helmut (1991), The Gathas of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts, Part I, Heidelberg: Winter.]
History
Zoroastrian tradition
The Zoroastrian history of the Avesta, lies in the realm of legend and myth. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (i.e. in the so-called "
Pahlavi books"). The legends run as follows: The twenty-one
nasks ("books") of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda and brought by
Zoroaster to his patron
Vishtaspa (
Denkard 4A, 3A). Supposedly, Vishtaspa (
Dk 3A) or another
Kayanian dynasty,
Kai Darab (
Dk 4B), then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury and the other in the royal archives (
Dk 4B, 5). Following Alexander's conquest, the Avesta was then supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks, after they had translated any scientific passages of which they could make use (
AVN 7–9,
Dk 3B, 8). Several centuries later, one of the
Parthian Empire emperors named Valaksh (one of the Vologases) supposedly then had the fragments collected, not only of those that had previously been written down, but also of those that had only been orally transmitted (
Dk 4C).
The Denkard also records another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In this story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sasanian-era priest Tansar (mobad under Ardashir I, r. 224–242 CE, and Shapur I, 240/242–272 CE), who had the scattered works collected – of which he approved only a part as authoritative ( Dk 3C, 4D, 4E). Tansar's work was then supposedly completed by Adurbad Mahraspandan (high priest of Shapur II, r. 309–379 CE) who made a general revision of the canon and continued to ensure its orthodoxy ( Dk 4F, AVN 1.12–1.16). A final revision was supposedly undertaken in the 6th century CE under Khosrow I ( Dk 4G).
Early Western scholarship
Texts of the Avesta became available to European scholarship comparatively late, thus the study of
Zoroastrianism in Western countries dates back to only the 18th century. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron travelled to
India in 1755, and discovered the texts among Indian Zoroastrian (
Parsi) communities. He published a set of French translations in 1771, based on translations provided by a Parsi priest. Anquetil-Duperron's translations were at first dismissed as a forgery in poor
Sanskrit, but he was vindicated in the 1820s following
Rasmus Rask's examination of the Avestan language (
A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language, Bombay, 1821). Rask also established that Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts were a fragment of a much larger literature of sacred texts. Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts are at the italic=no ('P'-series manuscripts), while Rask's collection now lies in the Royal Library, Denmark ('K'-series). Other large Avestan language manuscript collections are those of the
British Museum ('L'-series), the K. R. Cama Oriental Library in
Mumbai, the Meherji Rana library in
Navsari, and at various university and national libraries in Europe.
In the early 20th century, the legend of the Parthian empire collation engendered a search for a 'Parthian archetype' of the Avesta. According to the theory of Friedrich Carl Andreas (1902), the archaic nature of the Avestan texts was assumed to be due to preservation via written transmission, and unusual or unexpected spellings in the surviving texts were assumed to be reflections of errors introduced by Sasanian-era transcription from the Aramaic alphabet-derived Pahlavi scripts. The search for the 'Arsacid archetype' was increasingly criticized in the 1940s and was eventually abandoned in the 1950s after Karl Hoffmann demonstrated that the inconsistencies noted by Andreas were actually due to unconscious alterations introduced by oral transmission. Hoffmann identifies these changes to be due, in part, to modifications introduced through recitation; in part to influences from other Iranian languages picked up on the route of transmission from somewhere in eastern Iran (i.e. Central Asia) via Arachosia and Sistan through to Persia; and in part due to the influence of phonetic developments in the Avestan language itself.
Modern scholarhip
The notion of an Arsacid-era collation and recension is generally rejected by modern scholarship. Instead, there is now a wide consensus that for most of their long history the Avesta's various texts were handed down orally and independently of one another. Based on linguistic aspects, scholars like
Jean Kellens, Skjærvø and Hoffman have also identified a number of distinct phases, during which different parts of the Avestan corpus were composed, transmitted in either fluid or fixed form, as well as edited and redacted.
Oral transmission
The first phase comprises the creation of the Old Avestan texts, like the Gathas. Today, scholars consider a time frame between 1500 and 900 BCE to be possible, with a date close to 1000 BCE being considered likely by many. They must have crystallized early on, meaning their transmission became unchanged. During their long history, the Gathic texts seem to have been transmitted with the highest accuracy.
second phase comprises the creation of the Young Avestan texts. These texts, which form the majority of the extant Avesta, originated in a later stage of the Avestan period separated from the Old Avestan time by several centuries. Scholars nowadays assume that this phase corresponds to a time frame from ca. 900–400 BCE. Due to a number of geographical references, there is a wide consensus that they were composed in the eastern portion of Greater Iran. While the Old Avestan material was handed down as a fixed Sacred language, the Young Avestan texts appear to have been transmitted during this time in an oral tradition which was still fluid. This means they were composed partly afresh with each generation of poet-priests, sometimes with the addition of new material.
At some time, however, this fluid phase must have stopped as well and the process of transmission of the Young Avestan texts became fixed similar to the Old Avestan material. This second crystallization must have taken place during the Old Iranian period, as Young Avestan does not show any characteristics of Middle Iranian. The subsequent transmission took largely place in Western Iran as evidenced by alterations introduced by native Persian speakers. Scholars like Skjærvø and Kreyenbroek correlate this second crystallization with the adoption of Zoroastrianism by the Achaemenids. As a result, Old Persian- and Median language-speaking Magi would have become the primary group to transmit these texts. Having no longer an active command of Avestan, they would have decided to preserve both Old and Young Avestan text as faithfully as possible. Some Young Avestan texts, like the Vendidad, show non-Avestan influence and are therefore considered to have been redacted or otherwise altered by non-Avestan speakers after the main corpus became fixed. Regardless of such changes and redactions, the main Avestan corpus was now transmitted by people for whom Avestan was no longer a native but a purely Sacred language.
Written transmission
It was not until around the 5th or 6th century CE that Avestan corpus was committed to written form, which lead to the creation of the
Sasanian Avesta. This is seen as a turning point in the Avestan tradition since it separates the purely oral from the written transmission. The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today, derive from a single master copy produced by that collation. That master copy, now lost, is known as the 'Sassanian archetype'. The oldest surviving manuscript (
K1) of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE.
The post-Sasanian phase saw a pronounced deterioration of the Avestan corpus. Summaries in the texts of the Zoroastrian tradition from the 9th/10th century indicate that the Sasanian Avesta was much larger than the Avesta that exists today. Only about one-quarter of the Avestan sentences or verses referred to by the 9th/10th century commentators can be found in the surviving texts. This suggests that an indeterminable number of juridical, historical and legendary texts have been lost since then. On the other hand, it appears that the most valuable portions of the canon, including all of the oldest texts, have survived. The likely reason for this is that the surviving materials represent those portions of the Avesta that were in regular liturgical use and therefore known by heart by the priests and not dependent for their preservation on the survival of particular manuscripts.
Structure and content
In its present form, the Avesta is a compilation from various sources, and its different parts date from different periods and vary widely in character. Both its extant as well as historical manuscripts seem to have consisted of the Avestan text jointly with translations, commentaries, glosses and instructions in
Middle Persian. The term Avesta, however, only refers to the Avestan text itself, whereas the Middle Persian additions are referred to as
Zend.
The Sasanian Avesta
According to the
Denkard, the
Sasanian Avesta was organized into 21
nasks (volumes). This division was to mirror the structure of the 21-word-long
Ahuna Vairya prayer: each of the three lines of the prayer consists of seven words. Correspondingly, the
nasks are divided into three groups, of seven volumes per group. Originally, each volume had a word of the prayer as its name, which so marked a volume's position relative to the other volumes.
The first group of the nasks was the Gathic group. It contained the Gathas as well as long commentaries on them. It comprised the Staota Yesnya, the Sudgar nask, the Warshtmansr nask, the Bag nask, the Waštag, the Hadoxt nask and the Spand nask. Of these nasks, the Stod-yasn is extant in the Staota Yesnya, which forms the central portion of the High Liturgies like the Yasna and Visperad (see below). However, the other nasks only survive as fragments or are lost.
The second group was the manthric group. Its content has been interpreted as connecting the first and third group. It comprised the Damdad nask, the Nāxtar, the Pāzag the Raθβištāiti, the Barish nask, the Kaškaysraw and the Wištāsp-sāst nask. Only the Wištāsp-sāst nask may be extant in the Vishtasp yasht manuscripts, which are part of several fragments collections (see below). All the other nasks are considered lost.
The third was the legal group, meaning its content covered topics of Zoroastrian jurisprudence. It comprised the Nikatum nask, the Duzd-sar-nizad, the Husparam nask, the Sakatum nask, the Vendidad, the Chihrdad and the Bagan yasht. The Bagān Yašt contained most of the Yashts of the extant Avesta (see below), whereas the Huspāram nask contained the Herbedestan and Nirangestan texts, which are extant in the fragments collections (see below). The Juddēwdād nask ist the only nask of the Sasanian Avesta which has survived intact as the Vendidad manuscripts (see below), meaning that both its Avestan and Middle Persian content as well as their arrangement have remained the same. Of the other nasks, only fragments may have survived.
The extant Avesta
The extant Avesta does no longer follow the division into nasks as described for the Sasanian Avesta. Instead, it is divided ritually (even though the organization of the
nasks was not), but these are not fixed or canonical. Some scholars prefer to place the categories in two groups, one liturgical, and the other general. The following categorization is as described by Jean Kellens (see bibliography, below).
The Yasna
The
Yasna (from
yazišn "worship, oblations", cognate with Sanskrit
yajna), is the primary liturgical collection, named after the ceremony at which it is recited. It consists of 72 sections called the
Ha-iti or
Ha. The 72 threads of lamb's wool in the
Kushti, the sacred thread worn by Zoroastrians, represent these sections. The central portion of the Yasna is the
Gathas, the oldest and most sacred portion of the Avesta, believed to have been composed by
Zoroaster himself. The
Gathas are structurally interrupted by the
Yasna Haptanghaiti ("seven-chapter
Yasna"), which makes up chapters 35–42 of the
Yasna and is almost as old as the
Gathas, consists of prayers and hymns in honor of Ahura Mazda, the
Yazatas, the
Fravashi, Fire, Water, and Earth. The younger
Yasna, though handed down in prose, may once have been metrical, as the
Gathas still are.
The Visperad
The
Visperad (from
vîspe ratavo, "(prayer to) all patrons") is a collection of supplements to the
Yasna. The
Visparad is subdivided into 23 or 24
kardo (sections) that are interleaved into the Yasna during a Visperad service (which is an extended Yasna service). The
Visperad collection has no unity of its own, and is never recited separately from the Yasna.
The Vendidad
The
Vendidad (or
Vidēvdāt, a corruption of Avestan
Vī-Daēvō-Dāta, "Given Against the Demons") is an enumeration of various manifestations of evil spirits, and ways to confound them. The
Vendidad includes all of the Juddēwdād
nask, which is the only
nask of the Sasanian Avesta that has survived in its entirety. The text consists of 22
Fargards, fragments arranged as discussions between
Ahura Mazda and Zoroaster. The first
fargard is a dualistic
creation myth, followed by the description of a destructive winter (compare
Fimbulvetr) on the lines of the
Flood myth. The second
fargard recounts the legend of
Jamshid. The remaining
fargards deal primarily with hygiene (care of the dead in particular)
fargard as well as disease and spells to fight it 7,.
Fargards 4 and 15 discuss the dignity of wealth and charity, of marriage and of physical effort and the indignity of unacceptable social behaviour such as assault and breach of contract, and specify the penances required to atone for violations thereof. The
Vendidad is an ecclesiastical code, not a liturgical manual, and there is a degree of
moral relativism apparent in the codes of conduct. The
Vendidads different parts vary widely in character and in age. Some parts may be comparatively recent in origin although the greater part is very old.
The Vendidad originally was one of the legal nasks of the Sasanian Avesta and therefore, unlike the Yasna and the Visparad, is a text dealing with laws rather than the record of a liturgical ceremony. However, the text is used within the so called Videvdat ceremony, in which the Yasna is recited with all the chapters of both the Visparad and the Vendidad inserted at appropriate points. This ceremony is only performed at night.
The Yashts
The
Yashts (from
yešti, "worship by praise") are a collection of 21 hymns, each dedicated to a particular divinity or divine concept. Three hymns of the Yasna liturgy that "worship by praise" are—in tradition—also nominally called
yashts, but are not counted among the
Yasht collection since the three are a part of the primary liturgy. The
Yashts vary greatly in style, quality and extent. In their present form, they are all in prose but analysis suggests that they may at one time have been in verse.
The Sih-rozag
The
Sih-rozag ("thirty days") is an enumeration and invocation of the 30 divinities presiding over the days of the month. (cf. Zoroastrian calendar). The
Sih-rozag exists in two forms, the shorter ("little
Sih-rozag") is a brief enumeration of the divinities with their epithets in the genitive. The longer ("great
Sih-rozag") has complete sentences and sections, with the
yazatas being addressed in the accusative.
The Sih-rozag is never recited as a whole, but is a source for individual sentences devoted to particular divinities, to be inserted at appropriate points in the liturgy depending on the day and the month.
The Nyayeshes
The five
Niyayishnes, abbreviated
Ny., are prayers for regular recitation by both priests and laity. They are addressed to the
Hvare-khshaeta and
Mithra (recited together thrice a day), to the
Mah (recited thrice a month), and to
Aban and to
Atar. The
Nyayeshes are composite texts containing selections from the Gathas and the Yashts, as well as later material.
The Gahs
The five
gāhs are invocations to the five divinities that watch over the five divisions (
gāhs) of the
day.
Gāhs are similar in structure and content to the five
Nyayeshes.
The Afrinagans
The
Afrinagans are four "blessing" texts recited on a particular occasion: the first in honor of the dead, the second on the five epagomenal days that end the year, the third is recited at the six seasonal feasts, and the fourth at the beginning and end of summer.
Fragments
All material in the
Avesta that is not already present in one of the other categories is placed in a "fragments" category, which – as the name suggests – includes incomplete texts. There are altogether more than 20 fragment collections, many of which have no name (and are then named after their owner/collator) or only a Middle Persian name. The more important of the fragment collections are the
Nirangistan fragments (18 of which constitute the
Ehrbadistan); the
Vishtasp yasht (see Sasanian Avesta), the
Pursishniha "questions," also known as "Fragments
Tahmuras"; and the
Hadoxt nask "volume of the scriptures" with two fragments of eschatological significance.
See also
-
Avestan, the language of the Avesta
-
Avestan geography, the geographial horizon of the Avesta
-
Avestan period, the time period of the Avesta
-
Zoroastrian literature
Notes
Citations
Works cited
Further reading
-
Alberto Cantera & Céline Redard. Avestan Manual: A Handbook for Teaching and Self-Learning. Trans. Richard Tahmaseb Nirouman. Otto Harrassowitz, 2023.
External links
