Avesta

The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. Although some of the texts are very old, the term Avesta itself only dates to the second century CE. The term's etymological roots are the middle Persian Abestāg, old Persian Upastāvaka, "Praise [of God]".

1 History
2 Structure and content
3 The Khordeh Avesta
4 Other Zoroastrian religious texts
5 See also
6 Bibliography
7 Further reading
8 References

[edit] History

[edit] Age of the texts

The texts of the Avesta were collated over several hundred years. The most important portion, the Gathas, in Gathic Avestan, are the hymns thought to have been composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself, and date linguistically to around 1000 BCE. The liturgical texts of the Yasna, which includes the Gathas, is partially in Older and partially in Younger Avestan. The oldest portions may be older than the Gathas, later adapted to more closely follow the doctrine of Zoroaster. The hymns of the Yasht, which are also attributed to Zoroaster but were almost certainly not composed by the prophet, are in Younger Avestan and thought to date to the Achaemenid era (648–330 BCE). The Vendidad, which is also in Younger Avestan, was probably composed even later, during the Parthian era (141 BCE-224 CE). The Visperad contains the youngest portion of the Avesta, which are in middle Persian and date to Sassanid times (226-651 CE).

[edit] Early transmission

Some Avesta texts are thought to have been transmitted orally for centuries before they found written form. The Book of Arda Viraf, a work composed in the 3rd or 4th century CE, suggests that the Gathas and some other texts that were incorporated into the Avesta had previously existed in the palace library of the Achaemenid kings (648–330 BCE). According to the Shatroiha-i Airan, the palace library was lost in a fire caused by the troops of Alexander the Great. However, neither assertion can be confirmed since the texts, if they existed, have been lost.

Nonetheless, Rasmus Christian Rask concluded that the texts must indeed be the remnants of a much larger literature, as Pliny the Elder had suggested in his Naturalis Historiae, where he describes one Hermippus of Smyrna having "interpreted two million verses of Zoroaster" in the 3rd century BCE. As Peter Clark in Zoroastrianism. An Introduction to an Ancient Faith (1998, Brighton) points out, it is unlikely that the Gathas and older Yasna texts would have retained their old-language qualities if they had only been orally transmitted.

[edit] Later redaction

According to the Dēnkard, a semi-religious work written in the 9th century, the king Volgash (thought to be the Parthian king Vologases IV, c. 147–191 CE) attempted to have the sacred texts collected and collated. The results of this undertaking, if it occurred, have not survived.

In the 3rd century, the Sassanian emperor Ardashir I (226-241 CE) commanded his high priest Tonsar (or Tansar) to compile the theological texts. According to the Dēnkard, the Tonsar effort resulted in the reproduction of twenty-one volumes, called nasks, in the Avestan language (though not in the original Gathic Avestan), subdivided into 348 chapters, with approximately 3.5 million words in total.

One final redaction took place under Shapur II (309-379). The Avesta, as used today, is essentially the result of that revision, although important sections of the text have been lost since then, especially after the fall of the Persian empire, after which Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Islam.

[edit] European scholarship

The texts became available to European scholarship comparatively late. Abraham Anquetil-Duperron travelled to east India in 1755, and discovered the texts in Parsi communities. He published a French translation in 1771, based on a modern Persian language translation provided by a Parsi priest.

Several Avesta manuscripts were collected by Rasmus Rask on a visit to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1820, and it was Rask's examination of the Avestan language that first established that the texts must indeed be the remnants of a much larger literature of sacred texts of ancient Persia and Bactria (Ta-Hsia).

Rask's collection now lies in the library of the University of Copenhagen. Other manuscripts are preserved in the East India House and the British Museum in London; the Bodleian library at Oxford and at various university libraries in Paris.

[edit] The Zend

The word Zend or Zand, meaning "commentary" or "translation", refers to late middle Persian and Pazend language supplementaries in Pahlavi script. These commentaries from the early Sassanid era were not intended for use as theological texts by themselves but for religious instruction of the (by then) non-Avestan-speaking public. In contrast, the texts of the Avesta proper remained sacrosanct and continued to be recited in Avestan, which was considered a sacred language.

The use of the expression Zend-Avesta to refer to the Avesta, or the use of Zend as the name of a language or script, are relatively recent and popular mistakes. In 1759, Anquetil-Duperron reported having been told that Zend was the name of the language of the more ancient writings. In his third discourse, published in 1798, Sir William Jones mentions a conversation with a Hindu priest who told him that the script was called Zend, and the language Avesta.

The confusion then became too universal in Western scholarship to be reversed, and Zend-Avesta, although a misnomer, is still occasionally used to denote the older texts.

Rask's seminal work, A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language (Bombay, 1821), may have contributed to the confusion. N. L. Westergaard's Zendavesta, or the religious books of the Zoroastrians (Copenhagen, 1852-54) only propagated the error.

[edit] 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.

The 21 nasks 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. Only about a quarter of the text from the nasks has survived until today.

The contents of the Avesta, that is, the contents of the nasks supplemented by other (semi-)theological texts, are generally divided into five categories. This divisions are topical (even though the organization of the nasks is not) and are by no means fixed or canonical. Some scholars prefer to place the five categories in two groups, the one liturgical, and the other general.

The texts are preserved in two languages: the more ancient in the Avestan language, the oldest attested Indo-Iranian language still very closely related to Sanskrit and the younger texts in Middle Persian with Pahlavi script.

[edit] The Yasna

Main article: Yasna

Yasna 28.1 (Bodleian MS J2)

The Yasna (middle Persian yazišn "worship, oblations", cognate with Sanskrit yajña), is the primary liturgical collection. It consists of 72 sections called the Ha-iti or Ha. The 72 threads of lamb’s wool in the Kusti, the sacred thread worn by Zoroastrians, represent these sections. The Yasna includes all of the 21st nask (the seventh and last volume in the third and last group), which in turn includes the Gathas, the oldest and most sacred portion of the Avesta, and believed to have composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself. The Gathas are structurally interrupted by the Yasna Haptanghāiti ("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 honour of the Supreme Deity, Ahura Mazda, the Angels, Fire, Water, and Earth. The structure of the Yasna, though handed down in prose, may once have been metrical. Six of the nasks from the first group of nasks, which are commentaries on the Gathas, also belong to the Yasna category.

[edit] The Visparad

The Visparad (middle Persian vîspe ratavo, "all lords") is a collection of supplements to the Yasna. The Visparad is subdivided into 23 karda (sections, singular: kardo), which deal with a description of the angels, and the worship thereof.

[edit] The Yashts

Main article: Yasht

Faravahar, believed to be a depiction of a Fravashi, as mentioned in the Yasna, Yashts and Vendidad

The Yašts (yešti, "worship by praise"), of which there are twenty-four, are hymns in honour of various divinities, many of whom also have days of the month dedicated to them (see Zoroastrian calendar). The hymns are an important source of Persian mythology, and were incorporated by Ferdowsi, with due acknowledgement, in his Shahnameh epic. Among the divinities to whom special Yašts are devoted we find Ardvi Sura, the goddess of waters; Tishtrya, the star Sirius; Mithra, the divinity of light and truth; Fravaši, the guardian spirits; Verethragna, the genius of victory; and the Kavaya Hvarenah, "kingly glory", the divine light illuminating the ancient kings. The Yašts are for the most part metrical in structure, and some hymns show considerable poetic merit, an attribute that is not common in the Avesta texts. The older Hôm Yašt is part of the Yasna and is not counted among the twenty-four Yašts.

[edit] The Vendidad

Main article: Vendidad

The Vendidad (or Vidēdvāt, a corruption of Avestan Vî-Daêvô-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 19th nask, which is the only nask 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 account of creation, followed by the description of a destructive winter on the lines of the deluge of mythology. The second fargard recounts the legend of Yima (Jamshid). The remaining fargards deal primarily with hygiene (care of the dead in particular) [fargard 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 19] as well as disease and spells to fight it [7, 10, 11, 13, 20, 21, 22]. 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 Vendidad's different parts vary widely in character and in age. Some parts may be comparatively recent in origin although the greater part is very old.

[edit] Other material

All material in the Avesta that is not already present in one of the other four categories falls into a fifth category. This category does not have a name, and is generally considered to include shorter texts and prayers (as included in the Khordeh Avesta, see below), the five Nyaishes (worship and praise of the Sun, Moon, Mithra, Water, and Fire), the Sirozeh and the Afringans (blessings).

[edit] The Khordeh Avesta

The Khordeh Avesta, literally meaning 'abridged Avesta', or 'a selection of Avesta prayers', is a selection of texts from the Yasna, Visparad and Yasht, as well as minor texts and brief prayers, such as the five Nyaishes. The collection, taken together, is considered the prayer book for general daily use.

[edit] Other Zoroastrian religious texts

Although the Avesta is by far the most important of the Zoroastrian theological texts, other works, in both middle and modern Persian, are also included in the sacred canon. The most notable among the early middle Persian texts are the Dēnkard ("Acts of Religion"), dating from the 9th century; Bundahishn, ("Original Creation"), finished in the 11th or 12th century, but containing older material such as the nasks; the Mainog-i-Khirad ("Spirit of Wisdom"), a religious conference on questions of faith, and the Arda Viraf Namak ("Book of Arda Viraf"), a sort of Zoroastrian Divina Commedia, which is especially important because of its account of the Persian ideas concerning the future life. Later Zoroastrian literature in modern Persian include the Zartushtnamah ("Book of Zoroaster"), the Sad-dar ("Hundred Doors, or Chapters"), and the Rivayats (traditional treatises).

[edit] See also

The Gathas, the most sacred of the texts of the Zoroastrian faith.

[edit] Bibliography

Gershevitch, Ilya (1955). "Approaches to Zoroaster's Gathas". Iran 33.
Gnoli, Gherardo (2000). Zoroaster in History. New York: Oxbow.
"Avesta". Encyclopædia Iranica. (2002). New York: Mazda Pub.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

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Categories: Avesta | Indo-European mythology | Zoroastrian texts