Ilm-e-Khshnoom ('science of ecstasy', or 'science of bliss') is a school of Zoroastrian thought, practiced by a very small minority of the Indian Zoroastrians ( Parsis / Iranis ), based on a mystic and esoteric, rather than literal, interpretation of religious texts.
114-461: At the core of the philosophy is the belief that faith facilitates a connection to a consciousness that transcends normal experience or critical analysis, and that the prayers of the Avesta , which are to a degree metrical , are a means to achieve that consciousness. In contrast with mainstream Zoroastrianism, the beliefs in reincarnation , vegetarianism, spiritual vibrations, and the like are unique to
228-453: A dialect of a language defined in this way. In these terms, Danish and Norwegian , though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages. In the framework of Heinz Kloss , these are described as languages by ausbau (development) rather than by abstand (separation). In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates
342-508: A dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data. In many societies, however,
456-513: A "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing". The designation "dialect"
570-518: A "dialect", including standardized ones . A second usage, which refers to colloquial settings, typically diglossic , in a few countries like Italy , such as dialetto , patois in France , much of East Central Europe, and the Philippines , may carry a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of an autochthonous non-national language to
684-644: A Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language. Today, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from
798-465: A Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case, and is classified as its own language. Within this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a language as an autonomous variety in addition to all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960. A heteronomous variety may be considered
912-456: A central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a language . Another occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority . According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of
1026-412: A dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect associated with a particular social class is called a sociolect ; one associated with a particular ethnic group is an ethnolect ; and a geographical or regional dialect is a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). Any variety of a given language can be classified as
1140-533: A distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war , Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic. In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco,
1254-703: 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 Bibliothèque nationale de France ('P'-series manuscripts), while Rask's collection now lies in
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#17328014549871368-402: A given language can be classified as "a dialect", including any standardized varieties . In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In
1482-501: A hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian word for "praise-song" (Bartholomae: Lobgesang ); but this word is not actually attested in any text. 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 nask s ("books") of
1596-415: A language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages. A standard dialect , also known as a "standardized language", is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of
1710-582: A large tract of land in Bombay with the intention of establishing a Fire temple and a Zoroastrian residential complex there. The foundations were laid in 1923 by Behramshah Shroff himself, but it was not until 2001 that the Fire-Temple, now known as the "Behramshah Nowroji Shroff Daremeher", could be consecrated. The residential complex, now known as "Behram Baug", grew up around it. Behramshah Nowroji Shroff died in 1927. Phiroze Masani continued to publish
1824-459: A limited time frame. Most scholars today consider a time 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 fixed shortly after their composition. During their long history, the Gathic texts seem to have been transmitted with the highest accuracy. Most of the Avestan corpus
1938-466: A matter of dispute. Macedonian , which is largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian ( Torlakian ), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, while in North Macedonia , it is regarded as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before
2052-462: A much larger Avestan corpus was still available during the Sassanian period than 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 three-quarters of Avestan material, including an indeterminable number of juridical, historical and legendary texts have been lost since then. On
2166-543: A mystic aspect of the teachings of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) . Upon his return to India , Shroff gathered a following from among the Parsi community, who in due course began calling themselves 'Khshnoomists' after 'Khshnoom', or spiritual ecstasy, that they believed were embodied in their prayers and ceremonies. Around 1909, Behramshah Nowroji Shroff met the Parsi priest and Zoroastrian scholar Phiroze Masani, who, influenced by
2280-787: A number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages ( French , Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect , Franco-Provençal ); the Rhaeto-Romance languages ( Friulian and Ladin ); the Ibero-Romance languages ( Sardinia 's Algherese ); the Germanic Cimbrian , Southern Bavarian , Walser German and the Mòcheno language ; the Albanian Arbëresh language ;
2394-590: A number of distinct stages, during which different parts of the Avestan corpus were composed, transmitted in either fluid or fixed form, as well as edited and redacted. A small portion of the Avestan corpus is composed in a more archaic language than the rest. These so called Old Avestan texts are the Gathas , the Yasna Haptanghaiti , and a number of short mantras . They are linguistically very similar and are therefore considered to have been composed over
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#17328014549872508-478: A particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term "dialect" refers specifically to varieties with low social status . In this secondary sense of "dialect", language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages : The status of "language"
2622-438: A separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties' criteria for a separate language. Despite this, these "dialects" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered
2736-430: A sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties. Others have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of
2850-399: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives, and the term "dialect" is sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. The term
2964-441: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives. The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. Conversely, some dialectologists have reserved
3078-582: A socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited. By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of some language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the same language or dialects of different languages. The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be. Thus there
3192-649: A speaker of purely Eastern Lombard , a language in Northern Italy 's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect , would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian -speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan , or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile,
3306-694: Is a ceremony called the Vendidad , 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 Yasht s (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 yasht s, but are not counted among
3420-610: 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 (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
3534-503: Is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. John Lyons writes that "Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect." In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary . There are three geographical zones in which Arabic
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3648-432: 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. The Vendidad, unlike the Yasna and the Visparad, is a book of moral laws rather than the record of a liturgical ceremony. However, there
3762-504: Is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect . A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect . A geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). According to this definition, any variety of
3876-645: Is composed in Young Avestan. These texts originated in a later stage of the Avestan period separated from the Old Avestan time by several centuries. Due to a number of geographical references , there is a wide consensus that they were composed in the eastern portion of Greater Iran . These texts appear to have been handed down during this time in a more fluid oral tradition and were partly composed afresh with each generation of poet-priests, sometimes with
3990-542: Is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan . The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century , and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called tre corone ("three crowns"): Dante Alighieri , Petrarch , and Giovanni Boccaccio . Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as
4104-486: Is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages , most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them ( Albanian , Catalan , German , Greek , Slovene , Croatian , French , Franco-Provençal , Friulian , Ladin , Occitan and Sardinian ) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to
4218-801: Is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts , which are hymns to the individual yazata s. Unlike the Yasna , Visperad and Vendidad , the Yasht s and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yasht s, 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
4332-613: Is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese , whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility. National boundaries sometimes make
4446-778: Is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German ". There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is " variety "; " lect " is another. A more general term is " languoid ", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not. The colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy (see dialetto ), France (see patois ) and
4560-454: Is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility : two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains
4674-405: Is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended. The extent to which
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4788-518: Is said to be autonomous. In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch , and hence is categorized as a dialect of Dutch instead. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German,
4902-641: Is spoken (Jastrow 2002). Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant , Egypt , North Africa , Iraq , and some parts of Iran . The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including
5016-496: Is supported by the Académie Française institution. A nonstandard dialect also has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support. The distinction between the "standard" dialect and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In
5130-488: Is the only nask that has survived in its entirety. The text consists of 22 Fargard s, 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 Yima . The remaining fargard s deal primarily with hygiene (care of
5244-641: Is today the primary publication of followers of the Ilm-e-Kshnoom . Avesta The Avesta ( / ə ˈ v ɛ s t ə / ) is the primary collection of religious literature of Zoroastrianism . It was compiled and redacted during the late Sassanian period (ca. 6th century CE) although its individual texts were ″probably″ produced during the Old Iranian period (ca. 15th century BCE - 4th century BCE). Before their compilation, these texts had been passed down orally for centuries. All texts in
5358-570: 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 Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself. The Gathas are structurally interrupted by the Yasna Haptanghaiti ("seven-chapter Yasna "), which makes up chapters 35–42 of the Yasna and
5472-490: 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
5586-587: The Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects. Though mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance,
5700-572: The Darijas translated as literally meaning Dialect in Arabic (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam ), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be
5814-626: The Ehrbadistan ); the Pursishniha "questions," also known as "Fragments Tahmuras "; and the Hadokht Nask "volume of the scriptures" with two fragments of eschatological significance. Dialect A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. It can also refer to a language subordinate in status to a dominant language, and is sometimes used to mean a vernacular language. The more common usage of
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#17328014549875928-681: The Frashogard until his death in 1943. In 1947, Jehangir Chiniwalla, the younger brother of Framroze Chiniwalla, one of the more prolific authors of articles in the Frashogard , began publishing the weekly newspaper "Parsi Avaz". The Parsi Avaz , which remained in print for 27 years, was followed by the Dini Avaz in Bombay in 1976, and the "Mazdayasni Connection" in the United States in 1983. The Parsi Pukar , founded in Bombay in 1995,
6042-603: The Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek ; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect ; and the various Slovene languages , including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect . The language indigenous to Sardinia , while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into
6156-609: The Middle Ages . However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy . During the Risorgimento , Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian. Proponents of Italian nationalism , like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni , stressed
6270-622: The Parthian 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 ( high priest under Ardashir I , r. 224–242 CE, and Shapur I , 240/242–272 CE), who had
6384-422: The Philippines , carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties , but instead they evolved in
6498-813: 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-era collation engendered a search for a 'Parthian archetype' of
6612-429: The Yasht collection since the three are a part of the primary liturgy. The Yasht s 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 Siroza ("thirty days") is an enumeration and invocation of the 30 divinities presiding over the days of the month. (cf. Zoroastrian calendar ). The Siroza exists in two forms,
6726-523: The Yasna text 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
6840-420: The conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of
6954-412: The exegetical commentaries (the zand ) 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
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#17328014549877068-455: The nask s 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 nask s has survived to the present day. The contents of the Avesta are divided topically (even though the organization of the nask s is not), but these are not fixed or canonical. Some scholars prefer to place
7182-504: The temperance movement of the United States , had established The Parsi Vegetarian & Temperance Society in Bombay two years earlier. The philosophy of the Ilm-e-Kshnoom had a deep influence on Masani, who in turn began publishing Shroff's teachings in Frashogard ('renewal'), the society's Gujarati quarterly. In 1917, the society, together with its sister organization, the Zoroastrian Radih Society , bought
7296-678: The volgare of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the lingua franca among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among
7410-463: The Avesta are composed in the Avestan language and are written in the Avestan alphabet . The oldest surviving fragment of a text dates to 1323 CE. The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect , or by usage. The principal text in the liturgical group is the Yasna , which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism's primary act of worship, at which
7524-590: 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
7638-455: The Avesta is a compilation from various sources, and its different parts date from different periods and vary widely in character. Only texts in the Avestan language are considered part of the Avesta. According to the Denkard , the 21 nask s (books) mirror the structure of the 21-word-long Ahuna Vairya prayer: each of the three lines of the prayer consists of seven words. Correspondingly,
7752-543: 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 , Daray ( 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
7866-420: 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-Sassanian phase saw a pronounced deterioration of the Avestan corpus. Summaries in the texts of the Zoroastrian tradition from the 9th/10th century indicate that
7980-411: 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'
8094-424: The Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian , which even, for a time, had its own ISO code. An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance . For a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between
8208-595: The Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects . Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis. In Lebanon , a part of the Christian population considers "Lebanese" to be in some sense
8322-558: The Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area. Spoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing. When talking about the German language, the term German dialects
8436-704: The West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language. One criterion, which
8550-471: 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 (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 19th nask , which
8664-777: The addition of new material. Most scholars assume that this phase corresponds to a time frame from ca. 900-400 BCE. 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 place in Western Iran as evidenced by alterations introduced by native Persian speakers. Scholars like Skjærvø and Kreyenbroek correlate this second crystallization with
8778-537: The adoption of Zoroastrianism by the Achaemenids . As a result, Persian - and Median -speaking priests would have become the primary group to transmit these texts. Having no longer an active command of Avestan, they choose 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
8892-471: 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 (from yazišn "worship, oblations", cognate with Sanskrit yajña ), 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
9006-470: The country's official language(s). Dialects in this sense do not derive from a dominant language, are therefore not one of its varieties , but they evolved in a separate and parallel way. While they may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter, "dialects" under this second definition are separate languages from
9120-694: The day and the month. The five Nyayesh es, abbreviated Ny. , are prayers for regular recitation by both priests and laity. They are addressed to the Sun and Mithra (recited together thrice a day), to the Moon (recited thrice a month), and to the Waters and to Fire . The Nyayesh es are composite texts containing selections from the Gathas and the Yashts, as well as later material. The five gāh s are invocations to
9234-411: 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]. Fargard s 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
9348-454: The default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language. The Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects
9462-594: The dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment. The situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are
9576-440: The distinction between "language" and "dialect" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate "language" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate "people", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a "dialect" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy. The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published
9690-606: The educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people. Aside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages , the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group , spanning throughout much of Northern Italy 's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese , Emilian-Romagnol , Ligurian , Lombard , Venetian , Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy , etc.). Finally, other languages from
9804-461: The expression, A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot ( "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט" : " A language is a dialect with an army and navy ") in YIVO Bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without
9918-452: 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. 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
10032-401: The first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian, with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents. The most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group . This wide category includes: Modern Italian
10146-436: The five divinities that watch over the five divisions ( gāh s) of the day . Gāh s are similar in structure and content to the five Nyayesh es. The Afrinagan s 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. All material in
10260-475: The following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the "correct" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage ; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which
10374-413: The importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity . With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as "dialects" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education. In the early 20th century,
10488-544: The intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education , Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian. While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as " regional Italian ", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with
10602-590: The intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects, though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the Language Survey Reference Guide of SIL International , publishers of the Ethnologue and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes . They define a dialect cluster as
10716-515: 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 ( yazata s), 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
10830-435: The main corpus became fixed. Regardless of such changes and redactions, the main Avestan corpus was passed on orally until its compilation and redaction during the Sassanian period. It was not until around the 5th or 6th century CE that Avestan corpus was committed to written form. 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
10944-405: The modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language . The Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects. Italy is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word "dialect" ( dialetto )
11058-687: The mountains. The Saheb-e-Dilan , according to Shroff, were a group of about 2000 individuals led by 72 Mahgav ( Magi ) priests, called the Abed Saheb-e-Dilan , who lived in isolation in the recesses of Caucasus Mountains (alternatively, in the Alborz range, around Mount Damavand ). Having accompanied the caravan, say his followers, Behramshah Shroff lived with the Saheb-e-Dilan for three years, and so obtained an intimate knowledge of their religious practices and traditions which followed
11172-532: The movement and are heavily influenced by Theosophy . In 1875, an eighteen-year-old Parsi named Behramshah Nowroji Shroff left Surat ( Gujarat , India ) for Peshawar (now in Pakistan ) in search of employment. According to followers of the mystic philosophy, on Shroff's way there, he met a caravan led by members of the Saheb-e-Dilan ("Masters of the Heart"), who persuaded him to accompany them to their home in
11286-585: The national language) of limited geographic distribution, languages lacking institutional support, or even those considered to be "unsuitable for writing". Occasionally, in a third usage, dialect refers to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. Features that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon ( vocabulary ) and grammar ( morphology , syntax ) as well as in pronunciation ( phonology , including prosody ). In instances where
11400-412: 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. In its present form,
11514-459: The others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster . In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International , who produce Ethnologue ,
11628-574: 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. The notion of an Arsacid-era collation and recension is generally rejected by modern scholarship. Instead, 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. Based on linguistic aspects, scholars like Kellens , Skjærvø and Hoffman have also identified
11742-731: The salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term accent may be used instead of dialect . Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be classified as creoles . When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons . Differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects or cant, and include slangs and argots . The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect . Languages are classified as dialects based on linguistic distance . The dialects of
11856-486: The same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German , which
11970-476: The same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction between dialect and language is therefore subjective and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in
12084-813: The same town or region. The classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants ( Serbian and Croatian ). Both are based on the Shtokavian dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia ( Torlakian ) and Croatia ( Kajkavian and Chakavian ), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains
12198-429: 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). Texts of
12312-412: The shorter ("little Siroza ") is a brief enumeration of the divinities with their epithets in the genitive. The longer ("great Siroza ") has complete sentences and sections, with the yazata s being addressed in the accusative. The Siroza 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
12426-474: The standard or national language. Under this definition, the standard or national language would not itself be considered a dialect, as it is the dominant language in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. Dialect used this way implies a political connotation, often being used to refer to non-standardized "low-prestige" languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from
12540-584: The term "dialect" for forms that they believed (sometimes wrongly) to be purer forms of the older languages, as in how early dialectologists of English did not consider the Brummie of Birmingham or the Scouse of Liverpool to be real dialects, as they had arisen fairly recently in time and partly as a result of influences from Irish migrants. There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of
12654-479: The term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible , especially if geographically close to one another in a dialect continuum . The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but
12768-621: The two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized. For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German , are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in
12882-502: The vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean ), but have been officially recognized as minority languages ( minoranze linguistiche storiche ), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian dialetti , since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan , Sicilian and Venetian , have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since
12996-407: 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
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