Re: The Zend-Avesta Or Persian Holy Scripture Download
Outi Foote
For our first direct knowledge, or rather practically for the discovery of the Avesta, we have to thank the spirited zeal of that enthusiastic young Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron. The somewhat romantic story of his enterprise and its success is too familiar to relate; suffice to say, that in 1771 with his translation of the Zoroastrian scriptures, the first in any European tongue (Le Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre, 3 vols., Paris, 1771), he opened to scholars a new field for research, the rich harvest of which we are really only just beginning to reap, and which stands ready to oIfer more full and abundant sheaves, especially to the student of our own Bible.
To the biblical student, the Avesta and the religion of Zoroaster have more than one distinct point of interest. It may fairly be said that the sacred books of no other people, outside the light of the great revelation, contain a clearer grasp of the ideas, of right and wrong, or a firmer faith in the importance of the purity alike of body and soul, a more ethical conception of duty (considering the early times), or a truer, nobler, more ideal belief in the resurrection of the body, the coming of a Saviour, and of the rewards and punishments hereafter for the immortal soul, than are to be found in the scriptures of ancient Iran, illuminated by the spirit of the great teacher himself, Zoroaster.
Zoroaster again enquires, asking questions about the pious persons who in the past have worshipped Haoma, and prepared the sacred draught. The divinity names several holy men; among them is Yima, in whose reign was the Golden Age. His blessed rule is thus described:
The chanting of the praises of Haoma continues for three chapters, concluding at Ys. 11. Then follows an interesting chapter (Ys. 12), the Avestan Creed, recited by those who adopted the Zoroastrian faith, renounced their primitive marauding and nomadic habits, and peacefully cultivated the fields. Other divisions of a catechetical or a devotional nature are inserted; and then come the Gāthās or Psalms, the most interesting and valuable part of all the Avesta, comprising chapters 28-53. The closing sections of the Yasna (Ys. 55-72) conclude the ritual worship.
Some idea of the Yashts, for example, may be gained from the following selections: In Yt. 19:40-41, the praises of the ancient and noble hero Keresaspa, and of his deeds, are sung in pious strains. The meter is the same as above.
From the above description of the Zoroastrian sacred books, however, some idea of their interest and importance may be formed. The Avesta, as we now possess it, is perhaps rather a Prayer-Book than a Bible. The Vendidad, Visperad and Yasna are always recited together, and with their chapters intermingled in the ritual, they might remind one, in fact, of the forms of prayer to-day used in church. The Vendidad might be compared with portions of the Old or New Testament lessons; the solemn preparation of the holy water, the barsom or consecrated twigs, and of the haoma juice, is a sort of communion service; the Gatha would be psalms, or even collects and gospel; the metrical parts of the Yasna might supply hymns. The epic and narrative parts of the great metrical Yashts might perhaps find a parallel in the apocryphal books, or in the legends of the saints which were not wanting in the old Anglo-Saxon church.
Let us remember that the faith of Zoroaster lingers even until to-day; the Avesta is yet chanted in solemn tones by the white-robed priest in the temples at Bombay; the spark of the sacred fire is still cherished; most of the old rites, ceremonies and customs are preserved as of yore; and the followers of the Prophet of Ancient Iran, though they now number hardly 90,000 brethren, still form a united community, upright, honest, thrifty, prosperous, and faithful to the teachings of their Master. What the nature of those teachings is, must be reserved for discussion elsewhere.
World Mythology, Volume 1: Gods and Creation Copyright by Jared Aragona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
The sacred books of Parsees, or Zoroastrians, and the main source of our knowledge concerning the religious and spiritual life the ancient Persians. This collection of writings occupies the same place in the literature of Iran (ancient Persia) that the Vedas do in India. The designation Zend-Avesta, which is often employed to denote the sacred code, is not strictly correct. It owes its origin to a mistaken inversion of the Pahlavi designation Avistak u Zand, a term which probably means "Text and Commentary"; for the word Zand (in the Avesta itself, Zainti) signifies "explanation" and even in the Avesta is applied to the exegetical matter in the text. It is similarly used by the Parsee priests to denote the Pahlavi version and commentary, but not the original scriptures. Whether the term Avistak, which is the Pahlavi form of the word Avesta, has the meaning of "text", "law", is not absolutely certain. Some scholars interpret it as "wisdom", "knowledge".
Little was known concerning the religion and customs of ancient Persia before the Avesta was brought to Europe in the eighteenth century. From the allusions in Greek and Roman writers, like Herodotus, Plutarch, Pliny, and others, it had long been surmised that such a body of scriptures existed. Scattered allusions in Arabic and Syriac writers strengthened this conviction. But the information to be extracted from these references was vague and meagre. The first scholar to make the language and the contents of the sacred books of the Parsees known to Europe was a young Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron, who in 1754 went to India for this very purpose. His enthusiasm and perseverance overcame the many obstacles he encountered on his journey to Hindustan and the difficulties he met during his stay in Surat. Success at last crowned his efforts, and on his return in 1771 he was able to give to the world the first translation of the Avesta. From the moment of its publication a bitter controversy arose concerning the authenticity of the work. Some scholars, like Sir William Jones, declared that it was a clumsy forgery of modern Parsee priests, and the question was disputed for half a century until the advance made in the study of Sanskrit and comparative philology decided the matter and vindicated the genuineness of the scriptures and the value of Anquetil's work, although his translation, as a first attempt, was necessarily, imperfect in many respects.
Originally, the sacred scriptures of the Parsees were of far greater extent than would appear from the Avesta in the form in which we now possess it. Only a relatively small portion of the original has in fact been preserved, and that is collected from several manuscripts, since no single codex contains all the texts now known. In its present form, therefore, the Avesta is a compilation from various sources, and its different parts date from different periods and vary widely in character. Tradition tells us that the Zoroastrian scriptures consisted originally of twenty-one nasks (books), but only one of these, the Vendidad, had been completely preserved. The loss of the sacred books is attributed by the followers of Zoroaster to the invasion of Alexander "the accursed Iskandar", as they call him, who burned the palace library at Persepolis, thus destroying one archetype copy of the text, and threw the other into the river near Samarkand, according to the statement of the Pahlavi records (Dinkard, bk. III, West, "Sacred Books of the East", XXXVII, pp. xxx, xxxi, and Shatroiha-i Airan, 2-5). For wellnigh five hundred years after the Macedonian invasion the Parsee scriptures remained in a scattered condition, much being preserved only by memory, until the great Zoroastrian under the Sassanian dynasty (A.D. 226-651), when the texts were again collected, codified, translated into Pahlavi, and interpreted. A beginning in this direction had already been made under the last of the Parthian kings, but the great final redaction took place in Sassanian times, under Shahpuhar II (309-379). Our present Avesta is essentially the work of this redaction, although important sections of the text have been lost since then, especially after the Arabs conquered Persia. This conquest (637-651) was fatal to the Iranian religion, and caused Zoroastrianism to be supplanted by Mohammedanism and the Avesta by the Koran. As already mentioned, great portions of the scriptures have since disappeared entirely; out of the original twenty-one nasks, the nineteenth alone (the Verdidad) has survived. Portions of other nasks are preserved, interspersed here and there among the Yasna and Vispered, or have come down to us as flattered fragments in Pahlavi works, or have been rendered into Pahlavi, like the Bundahishn (Book of Creation) and the Shayast-la-Shayast (Treatise on the Lawful and Unlawful). In this way we are able to make good some of our losses of the old scriptures enough has been said, however, to explain the lack of coherence noticeable in certain parts of the Avestan code.
Besides this there are some independent fragments preserved in Pahlavi books (Hadhokt Nask, etc). The main divisions, when taken together, again fall into two groups, the one liturgical comprising Vendidad, Vispered and Yasna, or the Avesta proper, the other general, called Khorda Avesta (Abridged Avesta) and comprising the minor texts and the Yashts. A brief characterization of the five divisions will now be given.
(1) The Yasna (Skt. yajna), "sacrifice", "worship", the chief liturgical portions of the sacred canon. It consists principally of prayers and hymns used in the ritual, and is divided into seventy-two ha or haiti (chapters), symbolized by the seventy-two strands of the kushti, or sacred girdle with which the young Zoroastrian is invested on his being received into the Church. The middle third of the Yasna (Ys., 28-53), however, is not directly connected with the ritual, but contains the Gathas, the holy psalms, songs which preserved the metrical sayings of Zoroaster himself as used in his sermons. This is the oldest portion of the Avesta and descends directly from the prophet and his disciples. These canticles are metrical in their structure and are composed in the so-called Gatha-dialect, a more archaic form of language than is used in the rest of the Avesta. There are seventeen of the hymns, grouped in five divisions, each group taking its name from the opening words; thus Ahunavaiti, Ushtavaiti, etc. Inserted in the midst of the Gathas is the Yasna Haptanghaiti (the Seven-chapter Yasna) consisting of prayers and hymns in honour of the Supreme Deity, Ahura Mazda, the Angels, Fire, Water, and Earth. This selection also shows a more archaic type of language, and stands next to the Gathas in point of antiquity. Its structure though handed down in prose, may once have been metrical.
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