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Old Iranian Online

Lesson 1: Old Avestan

Scott L. Harvey, Winfred P. Lehmann, and Jonathan Slocum

The Gathas of Zarathustra are the earliest extant collection of an Old Iranian language. In form and stylistic technique, they are not unlike the larger collections of hymns preserved in the Indian Rigveda, since their author was a sacrificial priest reared in the same traditional methods of Indo-Iranian liturgical composition. Much of their grammar and vocabulary, however, is unique, and their strikingly different mythology gives a great deal more weight to theodicy and moral code than anything in any Indian work contemporary to the period. These differences often render comparison with the Indian texts well-nigh impossible; interpretation is often difficult, given the total absence of other contemporary works in Old Iranian dialects. Fortunately, Zarathustra's composition and ideology are rigorously unified and consistent and can at least be understood, albeit to a limited extent, within the framework of the hymns themselves.

Reading and Textual Analysis

Yasna 29, the Cow's Lament, is one of the most widely discussed Gathas in Zarathustra's opus. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most difficult to comprehend, since the hymn is unique among the Gathas for its dialogic form. Who is the cow? What is her purpose? Which other characters are speaking or described? Though the Rigveda preserves a number of hymns of this type, scholars have yet to determine their rules of composition with satisfactory precision. Thus, answers to these questions must be tentative at best. Yet as with Zarathustra's other compositions, the hymn shares themes and formulae with other Gathas and one can utilize these and the context of the hymn itself to formulate an interpretation.

The cow represents humanity at large, the Wise Lord's great flock of men. Her plight is their plight and the provider she seeks is the virtuous man who can lead them to prosperity. Zarathustra opens the hymn with the cow plaintively asking her Fashioner why He created for her such a sorrowful existence and imploring him to wrest her from its estate. In verse two, the Fashioner asks Truth to respond to the cow. Verse three is not easily attributed, though one may presume it is Truth's reply. Zarathustra makes the verse serve double duty, both as a warning against questioning the intentions of the gods and implying that Truth has sent him -- the poet -- as the 'savior' who is sought by the cow: "he to whom I shall go ... will be the strongest of beings." This introduces a major theme of the hymn. Verses four and five then read as the first direct address to Ahura Mazda, his Wise Lord. The remaining verses will be covered in Lesson 2.

1 - xshmaibyâ gêush urvâ gerezhdâ       kahmâi mâ thwarôzhdûm kê mâ tashat

â mâ aêshemô hazas-câ       remô âhishâyâ deresh-câ tevish-câ

nôit môi vâstâ xshmat anyô       athâ môi sãstâ vohû vâstryâ

2 - adâ tashâ gêush peresat       ashem kathâ tôi gavôi ratush

hyat hîm dâtâ xshayantô       hadâ vâstrâ gaodâyô thwaxshô

kêm hôi ushtâ ahurem       yê dregvôdebîsh aêshemem vâdâyôit

3 - ahmâi ashâ nôit sarejâ       advaêshô gavôi paitî-mravat

avaêshãm nôit vîduyê       yâ shavaitê âdrêng ereshvånghô

hâtãm hvô aojishtô       yahmâi zavêng jimâ keredushâ

4 - mazdå saxvârê mairishtô       yâ zî vâverezôi pairî-cithît

daêvâish-câ mashyâish-câ       yâ-câ vareshaitê aipî-cithît

hvô vîcirô ahurô       athâ nê anghat yathâ hvô vasat

5 - at vâ ustânâish ahvâ       zastâish frînemnâ ahurâi â

mê urvâ gêush-câ azyå       hyat mazdãm dvaidî frasåbyô

nôit erezhejyôi frajyâitish       nôit fshuyentê dregvasû pairî

Lesson Text

1 xshmaibyâ gêush urvâ gerezhdâ       kahmâi mâ thwarôzhdûm kê mâ tashat
â mâ aêshemô hazas-câ       remô âhishâyâ deresh-câ tevish-câ
nôit môi vâstâ xshmat anyô       athâ môi sãstâ vohû vâstryâ

2 adâ tashâ gêush peresat       ashem kathâ tôi gavôi ratush
hyat hîm dâtâ xshayantô       hadâ vâstrâ gaodâyô thwaxshô
kêm hôi ushtâ ahurem       yê dregvôdebîsh aêshemem vâdâyôit

3 ahmâi ashâ nôit sarejâ       advaêshô gavôi paitî-mravat
avaêshãm nôit vîduyê       yâ shavaitê âdrêng ereshvånghô
hâtãm hvô aojishtô       yahmâi zavêng jimâ keredushâ

4 mazdå saxvârê mairishtô       yâ zî vâverezôi pairî-cithît
daêvâish-câ mashyâish-câ       yâ-câ vareshaitê aipî-cithît
hvô vîcirô ahurô       athâ nê anghat yathâ hvô vasat

5 at vâ ustânâish ahvâ       zastâish frînemnâ ahurâi â
mê urvâ gêush-câ azyå       hyat mazdãm dvaidî frasåbyô
nôit erezhejyôi frajyâitish       nôit fshuyentê dregvasû pairî

Translation

1   The cow's soul lamented to you, [the gods]: "For whom did you create me?
          Who fashioned me?
    Cruelty, oppression, bloodlust, rage, and violence have fettered me,
    [And] there is no herdsman for me other than you.
          Therefore, you must all show me [the way to] good pastures."
     
2   Then the cow's Fashioner asked Truth: "What [was] your allotment for the cow
    when, ruling [the earth], you all gave her cow-tending nourishment
          together with pasturage?
    Whom do all of you desire as the Lord who would destroy the cruelty [wielded] by the
          Possessor of the Lie?"
     
3   [The one who is] not a slayer of the alliance with Truth
          [and is] free from hatred for the cow would reply to him:
    "[One] is not to know of those [things] by which He drives the lowly to lofty [heights].
    [But] he to whom I shall go, on account of [his] having sent out requests [for aid?],
          [will be] the strongest of beings.
     
4   [Zarathustra:] "The Wise One [is he] remembering best the pacts
          that, indeed, he has made with daevas and men sometime before [now]
    And [those also] that he will make sometime later.
    He is the discerning Lord; it will be for us just as he would wish."
     
5   [Zarathustra: And] so, then, do we two -- my soul and the fertile cow's --
          devote ourselves with zeal, with hands stretched out to the Lord,
    So [that] we may dispose the Wise One to [answer our] inquiries.
    Is there no prospect for the cattle-breeder living justly among the Possessors of the Lie?"

Grammar

1. The Alphabet

The earliest complete Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th to 14th centuries A.D. They are written in a script based on the Pahlavi, or Middle Persian alphabet, invented to record an earlier version of the texts during the Sassanid dynasty (ca. 224-640 A.D.). This earlier script had itself evolved from the Aramaic characters brought to the Iranian plateau several centuries earlier still. Like Aramaic, Avestan is read from right to left.

The alphabet is presented here in its English transliteration, organized by place and manner of articulation. The example of each character's approximate pronunciation is taken from American English unless otherwise noted.

Letter   Sound       Letter   Sound       Letter   Sound
a   gutter       k   kipper       y   youth
â   father       x   Ger. Loch       r   room
i   sit, Ger. bitte       h   horse       v   vice; medially, werewolf
î   me       xv   h + v            
u   book       g (g)   gipper       s   sound
û   choose       gh   approx. brogue, Sp. haga       sh (shy)   shout
e   red       ng   sing       sh   wish you were here
ê   hey       c   chip, It. ciao       z   zoo
o   goat, Sp. rojo       j   jest       zh   azure
ô   hoe       n   Sp. año            
e   approx Fr. peut-être       t   approx. as British bitter       h   horse
ê   herd, Fr. peur       t   time            
ã   gong       d   dime            
å   bawdy       th   theater            
            dh   father            
            n   never            
            n   before t, d = n; before k, g = ng; before p, b = m            
            p   pour            
            f   fair            
            b   boar            
            B   Sp. recibir            
            m   moot            
            m   hmm...            

In addition to the alphabet as described, the diphthongs /ay/ and /ao/ are written as contiguous letters:

    aê   sight
    ao   ouch
2. The Sound System
2.1. Phonology

The original pronunciation of both the old and the younger Avestan language is unknown. Existing texts reflect only the liturgical enunciation of the hymns at the time they were first written down, ca. 400 A.D. No more than a few fragments of these earliest recensions are extant; peculiar word breaks, meaningless repetitions of verbal prefixes, and metrical erosion show that the scribes had lost living contact with the language by this time. (Pliny and the Parsi tradition both refer to an older manuscript recorded under the Arsacids who ruled from ca. 250 B.C. to 226 A.D., but no physical evidence survives. Scholars who accept its existence believe that it had an even simpler and more ambiguous orthography than the Sassanid fragments.) The degree of phonemic change that occurred between the original composition and this fifth century recension, and between this recension and the extant manuscripts from ca. 1350 A.D., cannot be gauged. Nevertheless, the pronunciation of the existing script is more or less certain. Each letter represents one discrete phoneme and must, for the most part, be read individually. Exceptions are the vowel combinations comprising diphthongs and the sequence ng.

Vowels:   Front       Central       Back
High   i, î               u, û
Mid       o, ô       e, ê    
Low           a, â        
            e, ê        
Diphthongs:   å, aê, ao
     
Consonants:                            
    Unaspirated   Aspirated   Unaspirated   Aspirated   Nasal   Sibilant   Sibilant
    Unvoiced   Unvoiced   Voiced   Voiced       Unvoiced   Voiced
Velars:   k   x, h, xv   g, g   gh   ng        
Palatals:   c       j       n   sh, shy, sh   zh
Cerebrals:   t                        
Dentals:   t   th   d   dh   n, (n)   s   z
Labials:   p, f       b, B       m, m        
Semivowels:   y, r, v
Aspirates:   h
2.2. Accentuation

Avestan orthography does not indicate accentuation, but scholars have traced four phonetic patterns that must be ascribed to stress. The change h > xe is seen to occur when the vowel following h is accented. Likewise, an r clustered with a following unvoiced velar, dental, or labial devoices when the vowel preceding that r is accented: rk > hrk, rt > š, and rp > hrp. In both instances, ca 'and' when added to the word shifts the accent to the final syllable.

2.3. Length of Final Vowels

Word-final vowels are generally long in Old Avestan (OAv) and short in Younger Avestan (YAv). The examples in these lessons are in Old Avestan.

3. Noun Inflection

Avestan is highly inflected. This means that, unlike English whose syntax is primarily governed by word order and the use of prepositions, the functional relationships among the various words in a sentence are expressed by inflections, or endings, added to the stem, or base form, of a noun or adjective.

There are cases in Avestan. In addition to syntactic function, these also express number -- singular, dual, or plural. Each noun also has gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter.

The cases are as follows:

Case   Primary Function   English Translation
Nominative   Grammatical Subject   (subject)
Accusative   Direct Object   (object)
Instrumental   Object of Means   by, with
Dative   Indirect Object   to, for, for the sake of
Ablative   Object of Origin   from, out of, on account of
Genitive   Subject of Possession or Character   of
Locative   Object of Location   in, on, upon, over, under, at, etc.
Vocative   Object of Address   ('you', or name of person being addressed)

Case names and other grammatical terms are often abbreviated in these lessons (e.g., 'sg.' for singular, 'du.' for dual).

The nominal inflections applied to nouns and adjectives are classified according to the final letter of the noun's stem. Each "stem type" takes its own set of inflections, for which paradigms will be given through the course of these lessons. For each paradigm, a single word will be used; where a case form is not attested for that word, but is found for other words of the same stem type, the 'reconstructed' form will be marked by an asterisk. Where no attestation of a case exists for any word of the stem type, the form will be labelled 'unattested'.

3.1. a-Stem Nouns, Masculine and Neuter
Singular:   Masculine aspa- 'horse'   Neuter shyauthna- 'work'
Nom.   aspô, aspâ   *shyauthnem
Acc.   aspem   shyauthnem
Instr.   *aspâ   shyauthnâ
Dat.   *aspâi   shyauthnâi
Abl.   *aspât   shyauthnât
Gen.   *aspahya   *shyauthnahya
Loc.   *aspai   shyauthnai
Voc.   *aspâ   *shyauthna
Dual:        
Nom.   aspâ   shyauthne
Acc.   aspâ   shyauthne
Instr/Dat/Abl.   aspaebya   shyauthnaebya
Gen.Loc.   aspayâh   shyauthnâh
Plural:        
Nom.   aspå, aspnghô   shyauthnâ
Acc.   *aspêng   shyauthnâ
Instr.   *aspâish   shyauthnâish
Dat/Abl.   *aspaebyô   shyauthnaebyô
Gen.   *aspêm, aspanãm   shyauthnanãm
Loc.   aspaeshu   shyauthnaeshu
3.2. â-Stem Nouns, Feminine
Singular:   daênâ 'insight'
Nom.   daênâ
Acc.   daênãm
Instr.   daênayâ
Dat.   daênayâi
Abl/Gen.   daênayo
Loc.   daênayâ
Voc.   daêne
Dual:    
Nom.   *daêne
Acc.   daêne
Instr/Dat/Abl.   *daênâbya
Gen/Loc.   *daênayå
Plural:    
Nom.   daênå
Acc.   daên
Instr.   daênâbish
Dat/Abl.   daênâbyô
Gen.   daênanãm
Loc.   *daênâhu, daênâhva
4. Verb Inflection

Verbal inflections are added to a stem whose form conveys the tense of a verb. These endings express person, number, mood, and voice.

There are three persons (first, second, and third), and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural).

'Mood' refers to the attitude of the speaker towards an action. The indicative mood conveys a merely descriptive sense and is translated with the simple verb. The imperative mood indicates a command. Avestan also includes two potential moods, a subjunctive and an optative; the former conveys a greater sense of probability than the latter. As in Sanskrit, the subjunctive is found much more frequently in the older language (Vedic, Old Avestan) than in the younger (Classical Sanskrit, Younger Avestan); its functions are gradually replaced, with respect to the degree of probability to be communicated, by the optative mood and the future tense.

'Voice' refers to the nature of the action with respect to the logical subject of a sentence. The active voice indicates direct action. The middle voice signals that a self-reflexive purpose or benefit to the subject motivates the action expressed. The passive is used when the agent of a sentence is not the grammatical subject; it is treated in Lesson 5.

The four tenses -- present, aorist, perfect, and future -- are classified by the formation of the stem, to which endings are added. The present system is divided into two types, thematic and athematic. The thematic classes are presented below; the athematic classes and the other tense systems will be treated in subsequent lessons.

4.1. The Present Tense

The present tense conveys action that occurs at the time of speaking. It may be translated with either a general sense, as in "Zarathustra spins a tale," or with a continuous sense, as in "Zarathustra is spinning a tale."

Stems of the present system that end with the theme-vowel -a- are called thematic. This -a- may be added directly to a verbal root in its stong or weak grade (cf. Section 8.2 on vowel gradation) as in the examples below, or it may be a part of the fuller suffixes -ya- or -aya-. To this stem, various endings are added.

Thematic Present Paradigms: bara- 'carry, bear'

Indicative   Active   Middle
1 sg.   barâmi   baire
2 sg.   barahi   unattested
3 sg.   baraiti   baraite
         
3 du.   unattested   *baraite
         
1 pl.   barâmahi   *baramaide
2 pl.   baratha   *barathve
3 pl.   barenti   barente
         
         
Imperative        
2 sg.   bara   barangvha
3 sg.   baratu   *baratãm
         
2 pl.   *barata   *baradhBvem
3 pl.   barentu   *barenta
         
Subjunctive        
1 sg.   barâni   *barâne, *barâi
2 sg.   barâhi   *barânhe
3 sg.   *barâiti, barât   *barâite
         
3 du.   *barâtô   unattested
         
1 pl.   barâma   unattested
2 pl.   *barâtha   unattested
3pl.   *barãn   barângte, *barâire
Optative        
1 sg.   unattested   baraya
2 sg.   baraish   baraisha
3 sg.   barait   baraita
         
1 pl.   baraima   *baraimaide
2 pl.   *baraita   *baraithem
3 pl.   barayen   *barayanta
4.2. The Imperfect

The present system also includes the imperfect, a past tense; it is discussed in Lesson 5.

5. Word Order

The standard word order of an Avestan clause or sentence is generally Subject-Object-Verb, though the texts in these lessons are poetic in nature and tend to be freer in form. Two common exceptions to the "verb last" rule are when a verb is accompanied by an adverbial preposition, which may appear in the final position, and when a verb is embedded between an adjective and a noun. Adjectives generally precede the nouns they modify, though sometimes separated by other words.

As an example of the "verb last" rule, Yasna 29 opens with a clause ended by the verb gerezhdâ:

    xshmaibyâ   gêush   urvâ   gerezhdâ
    To you   the cow's   soul   laments...

The first line of verse 5 demonstrates typical adjective-noun word order,

    at   vâ   ustânâish   ahvâ   zastâish   frînemnâ   ahurâi-â
    And so   we two   with outstretched   dwell   (with) hands   devoting ourselves   to the Lord,

where ustânâish 'outstretched' precedes the noun zastâish 'hands' and the phrase ends in the adverb rather than the verb (or, as here, rather than the verbal adjective). The adjective and noun enclosing the clause's main verb ahvâ 'we two dwell' is a form of discontinuous word order called 'enclosure'.

These rules are of great help to the translator or interpreter of an Avestan liturgical text. Nevertheless, ambiguity may occasionally occur. A line from Yasna 43.15, for example, may be rendered in two ways:

    ... vîspêng angrêng ashanô âdare
    ... They call all the evil (ones) truthful.
    ... They call all the truthful (ones) evil.

Here, the accusative plural adjective vîspêng 'all' precedes both of the accusative plural nouns angrêng 'evil' and ashanô 'truthful', and may be taken with either one since the stylistic device of the 'enclosure' may or may not be employed. In such situations one must decide, based on context, which of the meanings best represents the author's intent.

An exception to the standard adjective-noun pattern became formulaic in the later language: ahura- mazdah-, literally 'Lord wise'. The phrase first appeared in the Gathas, but only with a caesura or another [enclosed] word in between, as in 51.15 or 51.5,

caesura:   garô demânê ahurô       mazdâ jasat ...
    Ahura Mazda went into the house of song ...
     
enclosure:   ahurô xshathrâ mazdå...
    Ahura Mazda, by (his) power...

The phrase grew increasingly frequent in the Yasna Haptanhaiti and, by the time of the younger language, would become the usual form, with or without caesura or enclosure.