Poetry
The Zend-Avesta
اوستا
Anonymous · -1000
Synopsis
What survives of the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism: the Yasna, the liturgy of sacrifice, in which are embedded the Gathas, seventeen hymns attributed to Zarathustra in honour of Ahura Mazda; the Yashts, hymns addressed to various deities, which also tell the mythical history of the Iranians, their dynasties and their heroes; the Vendidad, a collection of laws of purity and of rites, concerning funerals or illness; and shorter prayers.
Context
The oldest texts, the Gathas, are thought to date from around the year one thousand before our era. Long transmitted by the memory of the priests alone, the corpus was fixed in the Sasanian period, in an alphabet created for it, in a reference copy now lost. The commentators of the ninth and tenth centuries cite much more than survives: about three quarters has been lost. The oldest surviving manuscript dates from 1323. Anquetil-Duperron, who studied it with the Parsi priests of Surat from 1758 to 1761, gave the first European translation in 1771.
Who it is for
A fragmentary liturgical corpus, best approached through an annotated translation. It helps to know that these are not continuous narratives but texts of worship, and that the Gathas are the oldest part.
Prizes and reception
Its translation by Anquetil-Duperron, in 1771, revealed the religion of ancient Iran to Europe and founded Avestan studies.