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29-509: Sedreh (also called sudreh , sudre or sudra ) is the Avestan term for the undergarment worn by Zoroastrians , which is worn alongside the Kushti . The sedreh contains a small pocket in the front, which does not open, which is supposed to collect one's good deeds. It is worn to protect the wearer from evil acts. It is considered a spiritual shield from evil. This Zoroastrianism -related article

58-581: A detailed scholarly approach to the Gathas, but an intensive comparison of its single lines and their respective glosses with their Gathic originals usually reveals the train of thought of the translator. This obviously reflects the Gatha interpretation by the priests of the Sasanian period, the general view of which is closer to the original than what is sometimes taught about the Gathas in our time." The problems that face

87-507: A life as Ahura Mazda has directed, and pleads to Ahura Mazda to intervene on their behalf. Other verses, from which some aspects of Zoroaster's life have been inferred, are semi-(auto)biographical, but all revolve around Zarathustra's mission to promote his view of the Truth (again Asha ). For instance, some of the passages describe Zarathustra's first attempts to promote the teachings of Ahura Mazda, and

116-567: A translator of the Avestan Gathas are significant: "No one who has ever read a stanza of [the Gathas] in the original will be under any illusions as to the labour that underlies the effort [of translating the hymns]. The most abstract and perplexing thought, veiled further by archaic language, only half understood by later students of the seer's own race and tongue, tends to make the Gathas the hardest problem to be attempted by those who would investigate

145-424: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Avestan The Avestan text corpus was composed in the ancient Iranian satrapies of Arachosia , Aria , Bactria , and Margiana , corresponding to the entirety of present-day Afghanistan as well as parts of Tajikistan , Turkmenistan , and Uzbekistan . The Yaz culture of Bactria–Margiana has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of

174-459: Is attested in roughly two forms, known as "Old Avestan" (or "Gathic Avestan") and "Younger Avestan". Younger Avestan did not evolve from Old Avestan; the two differ not only in time, but they are also different dialects. Every Avestan text, regardless of whether originally composed in Old or Younger Avestan, underwent several transformations. Karl Hoffmann traced the following stages for Avestan as found in

203-560: Is classified as Eastern Old Iranian. But the east–west distinction is of limited meaning for Avestan, as the linguistic developments that later distinguish Eastern from Western Iranian had not yet occurred. Avestan does not display some typical (South-)Western Iranian innovations already visible in Old Persian, and so in this sense, "eastern" only means "non-western". Old Avestan is closely related to Old Persian and largely agrees morphologically with Vedic Sanskrit . The Avestan language

232-567: Is interpreted such that the bulk of this material, which has been produced several centuries after Zarathustra, must still predate the sixth century BC. As a result, more recent scholarship often assumes that the major parts of the Young Avestan texts mainly reflect the first half of the first millennia BC, whereas the Old Avestan texts of Zarathustra may have been composed around 1000 BC or even as early as 1500 BC. The Avestan language

261-552: Is only known from the Avesta and otherwise unattested. As a result, there is no external evidence on which to base the time frame during which the Avestan language was spoken and all attempts have to rely on internal evidence. Such attempts were often based on the life of Zarathustra as the most distinct event in the Avestan period . Zarathustra was traditionally based in the 6th century BC meaning that Old Avestan would have been spoken during

290-619: Is the primary liturgical collection of texts within the greater compendium of the Avesta . The 17 hymns are identified by their chapter numbers in the Yasna , and are divided into five major sections: With the exception of Ahunavaiti Gatha, that is named after the Ahuna Vairya prayer ( Yasna 27, not in the Gathas), the names of the Gathas reflect the first word(s) of the first hymn within them. The meter of

319-535: Is written right-to-left. Among the 53 characters are about 30 letters that are – through the addition of various loops and flourishes – variations of the 13 graphemes of the cursive Pahlavi script (i.e. "Book" Pahlavi) that is known from the post-Sassanian texts of Zoroastrian tradition. These symbols, like those of all the Pahlavi scripts, are in turn based on Aramaic script symbols. Avestan also incorporates several letters from other writing systems, most notably

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348-561: The c.  12th century texts of Neryosang Dhaval and other Parsi Sanskritist theologians of that era, which are roughly contemporary with the oldest surviving manuscripts in Avestan script. Today, Avestan is most commonly typeset in the Gujarati script ( Gujarati being the traditional language of the Indian Zoroastrians). Some Avestan letters with no corresponding symbol are synthesized with additional diacritical marks, for example,

377-470: The /z/ in zaraθuštra is written with j with a dot below. Avestan has retained voiced sibilants, and has fricative rather than aspirate series. There are various conventions for transliteration of the Avestan alphabet , the one adopted for this article being: Vowels: Consonants: The glides y and w are often transcribed as < ii > and < uu >. The letter transcribed < t̰ > indicates an allophone of /t/ with no audible release at

406-481: The Proto-Indo-Iranian word *gaHtʰáH , from the root *gaH- "to sing". The Gathas are in verse, metrical in the nature of ancient Iranian religious poetry, that is extremely terse. The 17 hymns of the Gathas consist of 238 stanzas , of about 1300 lines or 6000 words in total. They were later incorporated into the 72-chapter Yasna (chapter: ha or had , from the Avestan ha'iti , 'cut'), that in turn

435-462: The Sasanian period ". The script used for writing Avestan developed during the 3rd or 4th century AD. By then the language had been extinct for many centuries, and remained in use only as a liturgical language of the Avesta canon. As is still the case today, the liturgies were memorized by the priesthood and recited by rote. The script devised to render Avestan was natively known as Din dabireh "religion writing". It has 53 distinct characters and

464-489: The Avestan term 𐬎𐬞𐬀𐬯𐬙𐬁𐬬𐬀𐬐𐬀 , upastāvaka , 'praise'. The language was sometimes called Zend in older works, stemming from a misunderstanding of the Zend (commentaries and interpretations of Zoroastrian scripture) as synonymous with the Avesta itself, due to both often being bundled together as "Zend-Avesta". Avestan and Old Persian are the two attested languages comprising Old Iranian , and while Avestan

493-620: The Young Avestan material. As regards Old Avestan, the Gathas show strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the Rigveda , which in turn is assumed to represent the second half of the second millennium BC. As regards Young Avestan, texts like the Yashts and the Vendidad are situated in the eastern parts of Greater Iran and lack any discernible Persian or Median influence from Western Iran. This

522-514: The early Achaemenid period . Given that a substantial time must have passed between Old Avestan and Young Avestan, the latter would have been spoken somewhere during the Hellenistic or the Parthian period of Iranian history. However, more recent scholarship has increasingly shifted to an earlier dating. The literature presents a number of reasons for this shift, based on both the Old Avestan and

551-481: The early " Eastern Iranian " culture that is described in the Zoroastrian Avesta . It is not known what the original speakers of Avestan called the language. The modern term "Avestan" comes from the Avesta , a collection of Zoroastrian religious literature composed in the language, the name of which comes from Persian اوستا , avestâ and is of obscure origin, though it might come from or be cognate with

580-516: The end of a word and before certain obstruents . According to Beekes, [ð] and [ɣ] are allophones of /θ/ and /x/ respectively (in Old Avestan). The following phrases were phonetically transcribed from Avestan: Gatha (Zoroaster) The Gathas ( / ˈ ɡ ɑː t ə z , - t ɑː z / ) are 17 hymns in the Avestan language from the Zoroastrian oral tradition of the Avesta ,

609-508: The extant texts. In roughly chronological order: Many phonetic features cannot be ascribed with certainty to a particular stage since there may be more than one possibility. Every phonetic form that can be ascribed to the Sasanian archetype on the basis of critical assessment of the manuscript evidence must have gone through the stages mentioned above so that "Old Avestan" and "Young Avestan" really mean no more than "Old Avestan and Young Avestan of

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638-544: The hymns is historically related to the Vedic tristubh-jagati family of meters. Hymns of these meters are recited, not sung. The sequential order of the Gathas is structurally interrupted by the Yasna Haptanghaiti ("seven-chapter Yasna ", chapters 35–41, linguistically as old as the Gathas but in prose) and by two other minor hymns at Yasna 42 and 52. The language of the Gathas, Gathic or Old Avestan , belongs to

667-492: The literary monuments." Some of the verses of the Gathas are directly addressed to the Omniscient Creator Ahura Mazda . These verses, devotional in character, expound on the divine essences of truth ( Asha ), the good-mind ( Vohu Manah ), and the spirit of righteousness. Some other verses are addressed to the public that may have come to hear the prophet, and in these verses, he exhorts his audience to live

696-472: The medieval texts is often discouraged as the commentaries are frequently conjectural. While some scholars argue that an interpretation using younger texts is inadvisable ( Geldner , Humbach ), others argue that such a view is excessively skeptical ( Spiegel , Darmesteter ). The risks of misinterpretation are real, but lacking alternates, such dependencies are perhaps necessary. "The Middle Persian translation seldom offers an appropriate point of departure for

725-509: The old Iranian language group that is a sub-group of Eastern families of the Indo-European languages . Although arising from the same family, it is still not possible to translate them using Proto Sanskrit or Pali . Sassanid era translations and commentaries (the Zend ) have been used to interpret the Gathas, but by the 3rd century the Avestan language was virtually extinct, and a dependency on

754-470: The oldest surviving text fragment of which dates from 1323 CE. They are traditionally believed to have been composed by the prophet Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself. They form the core of the Zoroastrian liturgy (the Yasna ). They are arranged in five different modes or metres. The Avestan term gāθā (𐬔𐬁𐬚𐬁 "hymn", but also "mode, metre") is cognate with Sanskrit gāthā (गाथा), both from

783-432: The vowels, which are mostly derived from Greek minuscules. A few letters were free inventions, as were also the symbols used for punctuation. Also, the Avestan alphabet has one letter that has no corresponding sound in the Avestan language; the character for /l/ (a sound that Avestan does not have) was added to write Pazend texts. The Avestan script is alphabetic , and the large number of letters suggests that its design

812-458: Was due to the need to render the orally recited texts with high phonetic precision. The correct enunciation of the liturgies was (and still is) considered necessary for the prayers to be effective. The Zoroastrians of India, who represent one of the largest surviving Zoroastrian communities worldwide, also transcribe Avestan in Brahmi -based scripts. This is a relatively recent development first seen in

841-401: Was localized in the northeastern parts of Greater Iran according to Paul Maximilian Tedesco  [ de ] (1921), other scholars have favored regarding Avestan as originating in eastern parts. Scholars traditionally classify Iranian languages as "old", "middle" and "new" according to their age, and as "eastern" or "western" according to geography, and within this framework Avestan

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