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The ability to correctly render Avestan did, however, have a direct benefit: By the common era, the Avestan language words had almost ceased to be understood, which led to the preparation of the Zend texts (from Avestan zainti "understanding"), commentaries on and translations of the canon. The development of the Avestan alphabet allowed these ...
Avestan (/ ə ˈ v ɛ s t ən / ə-VESS-tən) [1] is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. [2] It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family and was originally spoken during the Old Iranian period (c. 1500 – 400 BCE) [3] [f 1] by the Iranians living in the eastern portion of Greater Iran.
Avestan ṣ̌ continues Indo-Iranian *-rt-.Its phonetic value and its phonological status (one or two phonemes) are somewhat unclear. The conditions under which change from -rt-to -ṣ̌-occurs are fundamentally ill-defined, though it is likely to occur if the preceding vowel is accented.
Some Middle Persian texts were also transcribed into the Avestan alphabet. The latter process, being a form of interpretation, was known as 'pa-zand'. "Pazand texts, transcribed phonetically, represent a late and often corrupt Middle Persian pronunciation, and so present their own problems."
Most of the Avestan corpus 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. [ 29 ] Due to a number of geographical references , there is a wide consensus that they were composed in the eastern portion of Greater Iran . [ 30 ]
The Vedic accent is generally considered the most archaic, fairly faithfully reflecting the position of the original PIE accent. Avestan manuscripts do not have written accent, but we know indirectly that at some period the free PIE accent was preserved (e.g. Avestan *r is devoiced yielding -hr-before voiceless stops and after the accent — if the accent was not on the preceding syllable, *r ...
The Avestan language noun haurvatat is grammatically feminine and in scripture the divinity Haurvatat is a female entity. However, in tradition (K)Hordad was/is considered male; this development is attributed to the loss of grammatical gender in Middle Persian.
In the latter case it acquires the meaning of possession, comparable to the English noun good in the sense of item of merchandise. The first line can therefore mean both "asha is the best possession" or "asha [is] good, it is best." The term uštā is equally ambiguous. It can be derived from ušta (desired things) or from ušti (desire).