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36-607: The Vedic mṛtyú , along with Avestan mərəθiiu and Old Persian məršiyu comes from the Proto-Indo-Iranian word for death, *mr̥tyú- , which is ultimately derived from the Indo-European root *mer- ("to die") and thus is further related to Ancient Greek μόρος and Latin mors . Mrtyu is invoked in the hymns of the Rigveda : Depart, Mṛtyu, by a different path; by that which is your own, and distinct from

72-480: A horse (ashva), because it swelled (ashvat), and was fit for sacrifice (medhya); and this is why the horse-sacrifice is called Ashva-medha [...] Therefore the sacrificers offered up the purified horse belonging to Prajapati, (as dedicated) to all the deities. Verily the shining sun [ye tapati] is the Asvamedha, and his body is the year; Agni is the sacrificial fire (arka), and these worlds are his bodies. These two are

108-777: A number of reasons for this shift, based on both the Old Avestan and 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

144-598: Is a key text for understanding Sassanid-era Zoroastrian orthodoxy. The Denkard , a 9th or 10th century text, includes extensive summaries and quotations of zand texts. The term zand is a contraction of the Avestan language word za nti ( 𐬰𐬀𐬌𐬥𐬙𐬌 , meaning "commentary, explanation"). The authorship of the Zand is unknown. The dating of the Zend is considered complicated in contemporary scholarship, especially in

180-532: Is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages , Old Avestan (spoken in the mid-2nd to 1st millennium BC) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BC). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scriptural language of Zoroastrianism . Both are early Eastern Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian language branch of the Indo-European language family . Its immediate ancestor

216-462: 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

252-566: 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

288-489: 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 script used for writing Avestan developed during

324-630: 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,

360-470: 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

396-584: 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 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

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432-508: The Sasanian period ". The Avestan language 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

468-414: 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 is written right-to-left. Among

504-508: 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

540-691: The Authenticity of the Zend Language (Bombay, 1821), may have contributed to the confusion. Propagated by N. L. Westergaard's Zendavesta, or the religious books of the Zoroastrians (Copenhagen, 1852–54), by the early/mid 19th century, the confusion became too universal in Western scholarship to be easily reversed, and Zend-Avesta , although a misnomer, continued to be fashionable well into the 20th century. The following list of Zand texts

576-583: 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 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

612-625: The Avestan as literally as possible. In a second step, the priests then translated the Avestan idiomatically. In the final step, the idiomatic translation was complemented with explanations and commentaries, often of significant length, and occasionally with different authorities being cited. Several important works in Middle Persian contain selections from the zand of Avestan texts, also of Avestan texts which have since been lost. Through comparison of selections from lost texts and from surviving texts, it has been possible to distinguish between

648-436: The Avestan language texts remained sacrosanct and continued to be recited in the Avestan language, which was considered a sacred language . The Middle Persian zand can be subdivided into two subgroups, those of the surviving Avestan texts, and those of the lost Avestan texts. A consistent exegetical procedure is evident in manuscripts in which the original Avestan and its zand coexist. The priestly scholars first translated

684-467: The Sasanian cultural context with none belonging to the post-conquest era (and no references to Islam), as well as the use of source criticism to provide a relative dating of the text alongside other more concretely dated texts. One study has shown that all the major authorities of the Zend flourished from the late fifth to sixth centuries CE. The priests' practice of including commentaries alongside

720-486: 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: Zend Zend or Zand ( Middle Persian : 𐭦𐭭𐭣 ) is a Zoroastrian term for Middle Persian or Pahlavi versions and commentaries of Avesta n texts. These translations were produced in

756-478: 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 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

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792-457: 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

828-485: The former class of manuscripts was misunderstood to be the proper name of the texts, hence the misnomer "Zend-Avesta" for the Avesta. In priestly use, however, "Zand-i-Avesta" or "Avesta-o-Zand" merely identified manuscripts that are not suitable for ritual use since they are not "clean" ( sade ) of non-Avestan elements. The second mistaken use of the term Zend was its use as the name of a language or script. In 1759, Anquetil-Duperron reported having been told that Zend

864-404: The late Sasanian period. Zand glosses and commentaries exist in several languages, including in the Avestan language itself. These Avestan language exegeses sometimes accompany the original text being commented upon, but are more often elsewhere in the canon. An example of exegesis in the Avestan language itself includes Yasna 19–21, which is a set of three Younger Avestan commentaries on

900-506: The light of the orality of the text and the lack of reference to it outside of Zoroastrian literature . The earliest manuscripts of the Zend date to the fourteenth century, with colophons assuring the existence of earlier manuscripts at least up to 1000 CE. For several reasons, it has been argued that the Zend was first assembled prior to the Arab conquests. These include the presence of many stylistic and linguistic characteristics that belong to

936-660: The path of the gods; Ispeak to you who have eyes, who have ears; do no harm to our offspring, nor to our male progeny. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (a mystical appendix to the Shatapatha Brahmana and likely the oldest of the Upanishads) has a creation myth where Mṛtyu "Death" takes the shape of a horse, and includes an identification of the Ashvamedha horse sacrifice with the Sun: Then he became

972-490: The sacrificial fire and the Asvamedha-sacrifice, and they are again one deity, viz. Death. Mrtyu fights in the war between the devas and the asuras in the legend of Jalandhara . The Mahabharata references a legend regarding a dispute between Time , Mrityu, Yama, Ikshvaku , and a Brahmana . Mrityu is female in this legend. Avestan Avestan ( / ə ˈ v ɛ s t ən / ə- VESS -tən )

1008-466: The text being commented upon led to two different misunderstandings in 18th/19th century western scholarship. The first was the treatment of "Zend" and "Avesta" as synonyms and the mistaken use of "Zend-Avesta" as the name of Zoroastrian scripture. This mistake derives from a misunderstanding of the distinctions made by priests between manuscripts for scholastic use ("Avesta- with -Zand"), and manuscripts for liturgical use ("clean"). In western scholarship,

1044-413: The text being glossed. The practice of including non-Avestan commentaries alongside the Avestan texts led to two different misinterpretations in western scholarship of the term zand ; these misunderstandings are described below . These glosses and commentaries were not intended for use as theological texts by themselves but for religious instruction of the (by then) non-Avestan-speaking public. In contrast,

1080-590: The three Gathic Avestan 'high prayers' of Yasna 27. Zand also appears to have once existed in a variety of Middle Iranian languages , but of these Middle Iranian commentaries, the Middle Persian zand is the only one to survive fully, and is for this reason regarded as 'the' zand . With the notable exception of the Yashts , almost all surviving Avestan texts have their Middle Persian zand , which in some manuscripts appear alongside (or interleaved with)

1116-645: The translations of Avestan works and the commentaries on them, and thus to some degree reconstruct the content of some of the lost texts. Among those texts is the Bundahishn , which has Zand-Agahih ("Knowledge from the Zand ") as its subtitle and is crucial to the understanding of Zoroastrian cosmogony and eschatology. Another text, the Wizidagiha , "Selections (from the Zand)", by the 9th century priest Zadspram,

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1152-432: 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

1188-462: 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

1224-562: Was the Proto-Iranian language , a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language , with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language ; as such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexicon to Vedic Sanskrit , the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language . The Avestan text corpus was composed in the ancient Iranian satrapies of Arachosia , Aria , Bactria , and Margiana , corresponding to

1260-468: Was the name of the language of the more ancient writings. Similarly, in his third discourse, published in 1798, Sir William Jones recalls a conversation with a Hindu priest who told him that the script was called Zend , and the language Avesta . This mistake resulted from a misunderstanding of the term pazend , which actually denotes the use of the Avestan alphabet for writing certain Middle Persian texts. Rasmus Rask 's seminal work, A Dissertation on

1296-556: Was traditionally based in the 6th century BC meaning that Old Avestan would have been spoken during 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

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