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The Avestan alphabet ( transliteration: , Middle Persian: transliteration: , dēn dēbīrē, ) is a writing system developed during Iran's Sasanian Empire (226–651 CE) to render the Avestan language.
As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta. In the texts of Zoroastrianism tradition, the alphabet is referred to as "the religion's script" (dēn dibīrih in Middle Persian and din dabireh in New Persian).
The enterprise, "which is indicative of a Mazdean revival and of the establishment of a strict orthodoxy closely connected with the political power, was probably caused by the desire to compete more effectively with Buddhists, Christians, and Manichaeism, whose faith was based on a revealed book". In contrast, the Zoroastrian priesthood had for centuries been accustomed to memorizing scripture—following by rote the words of a teacher-priest until they had memorized the words, cadence, inflection and intonation of the prayers. This they passed on to their pupils in turn, so preserving for many generations the correct way to recite scripture. This was necessary because the priesthood considered (and continue to consider) precise and correct enunciation and cadence a prerequisite of effective prayer. Further, the recitation of the liturgy was (and is) accompanied by ritual activity that leaves no room to attend to a written text.
The ability to correctly render Avestan did, however, have a direct benefit: By the common era, the Avestan language words had almost ceased to be understood, which led to the preparation of the Zend texts (from Avestan zainti "understanding"), commentaries on and translations of the canon. The development of the Avestan alphabet allowed these commentaries to interleave quotation of scripture with explanation thereof. The direct effect of these texts was a "standardized" interpretation of scripture that survives to the present day. For scholarship these texts are enormously interesting, since they occasionally preserve passages that have otherwise been lost.
The 9th–12th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that there was once a much larger collection of written Zoroastrian literature, but these texts—if they ever existed—have since been lost, and it is hence not known what script was used to render them. The question of the existence of a pre-Sassanid "Arsacid archetype" occupied Avestan scholars for much of the 19th century, and, "whatever may be the truth about the Arsacid Avesta, the linguistic evidence shows that even if it did exist, it can not have had any practical influence, since no linguistic form in the Vulgate can be explained with certainty as resulting from wrong transcription and the number of doubtful cases is minimal; in fact it is being steadily reduced. Though the existence of an Arsacid archetype is not impossible, it has proved to contribute nothing to Avestan philology."
In contrast, Avestan was a full alphabet, with explicit characters for vowels, and allowed for phonetic disambiguation of . The alphabet included many characters ( a, i, k, t, p, b, m, n, r, s, z, š, xv) closely resembling Book Pahlavi of the early Islamic Persia, while some ( ā, γ) are characters that only exist in the older (6th–7th c. AD) Psalter Pahlavi script (in later cursive Pahlavi γ and k have the same symbol).. Some of the vowels, such as ə appear to derive from Greek cursives. Avestan o is a special form of Pahlavi l that exists only in Aramaic signs. Some letters (e.g. ŋ́, ṇ, ẏ, v), are free inventions..
Avestan script, like Pahlavi script and Aramaic script also, is written from right to left. In Avestan script, letters are not connected, and ligatures are "rare and clearly of secondary origin".
| + Avestan alphabet | ||||
| a | a | U+10B00: AVESTAN LETTER A | ||
| ā | ā | U+10B01: AVESTAN LETTER AA | ||
| å | — | U+10B02: AVESTAN LETTER AO | ||
| ā̊ | å | U+10B03: AVESTAN LETTER AAO | ||
| ą | ą | U+10B04: AVESTAN LETTER AN | ||
| ą̇ | — | U+10B05: AVESTAN LETTER AAN | ||
| ə | ə | U+10B06: AVESTAN LETTER AE | ||
| ə̄ | ə̄ | U+10B07: AVESTAN LETTER AEE | ||
| e | e | U+10B08: AVESTAN LETTER E | ||
| ē | ē | U+10B09: AVESTAN LETTER EE | ||
| o | o | U+10B0A: AVESTAN LETTER O | ||
| ō | ō | U+10B0B: AVESTAN LETTER OO | ||
| i | i | U+10B0C: AVESTAN LETTER I | ||
| ī | ī | U+10B0D: AVESTAN LETTER II | ||
| u | u | U+10B0E: AVESTAN LETTER U | ||
| ū | ū | U+10B0F: AVESTAN LETTER UU | ||
| k | k | U+10B10: AVESTAN LETTER KE | ||
| x | x | U+10B11: AVESTAN LETTER XE | ||
| x́ | ḣ | , | U+10B12: AVESTAN LETTER XYE | |
| xᵛ | xᵛ | U+10B13: AVESTAN LETTER XVE | ||
| g | g | U+10B14: AVESTAN LETTER GE | ||
| ġ | — | , | U+10B15: AVESTAN LETTER GGE | |
| γ | γ | U+10B16: AVESTAN LETTER GHE | ||
| c | č | U+10B17: AVESTAN LETTER CE | ||
| j | ǰ | U+10B18: AVESTAN LETTER JE | ||
| t | t | U+10B19: AVESTAN LETTER TE | ||
| ϑ | ϑ | U+10B1A: AVESTAN LETTER THE | ||
| d | d | U+10B1B: AVESTAN LETTER DE | ||
| δ | δ | U+10B1C: AVESTAN LETTER DHE | ||
| t̰ | t̰ | U+10B1D: AVESTAN LETTER TTE | ||
| p | p | U+10B1E: AVESTAN LETTER PE | ||
| f | f | U+10B1F: AVESTAN LETTER FE | ||
| b | b | U+10B20: AVESTAN LETTER BE | ||
| β | w | U+10B21: AVESTAN LETTER BHE | ||
| ŋ | ŋ | U+10B22: AVESTAN LETTER NGE | ||
| ŋ́ | ŋ́ | U+10B23: AVESTAN LETTER NGYE | ||
| ŋᵛ | — | U+10B24: AVESTAN LETTER NGVE | ||
| n | n | U+10B25: AVESTAN LETTER NE | ||
| ń | — | U+10B26: AVESTAN LETTER NYE | ||
| ṇ | n, m | U+10B27: AVESTAN LETTER NNE | ||
| m | m | U+10B28: AVESTAN LETTER ME | ||
| m̨ | — | Hoffmann, Karl; Forssman, Bernhard (2004), Avestische Laut- und Flexionslehre (in German), 2nd ed. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, p. 45 | U+10B29: AVESTAN LETTER HME | |
| ẏ | y | U+10B2A: AVESTAN LETTER YYE | ||
| y | U+10B2B: AVESTAN LETTER YE | |||
| ii | U+10B0C: AVESTAN LETTER I (doubled) | |||
| v | v | U+10B2C: AVESTAN LETTER VE | ||
| uu | U+10B0E: AVESTAN LETTER U (doubled) | |||
| r | r | U+10B2D: AVESTAN LETTER RE | ||
| l | l | U+10B2E: AVESTAN LETTER LE | ||
| s | s | U+10B2F: AVESTAN LETTER SE | ||
| z | z | U+10B30: AVESTAN LETTER ZE | ||
| š | š | U+10B31: AVESTAN LETTER SHE | ||
| ž | ž | U+10B32: AVESTAN LETTER ZHE | ||
| š́ | š | U+10B33: AVESTAN LETTER SHYE | ||
| ṣ̌ | U+10B34: AVESTAN LETTER SSHE | |||
| h | h | U+10B35: AVESTAN LETTER HE | ||
Later, when writing Middle Persian in the script (i.e. Pazend), another consonant was added to represent the phoneme that didn't exist in the Avestan language (PIE * l in Avestan merged with /r/ in all positions).
U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER can be used to prevent ligatures if desired. For example, compare (U+10B31 10B00) with (U+10B31 200C 10B00).
Fossey. lists 16 ligatures, but most are formed by the interaction of swash tails.
The characters are encoded at U+10B00—10B35 for letters ( ii and uu are not represented as single characters, but as sequences of characters) and U+10B38—10B3F for punctuation.
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