Avestan studies

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Avestan studies
KU frue plads.jpg
University of Copenhagen, an important early center for Avestan studies [1]
Field Historical linguistics, Comparative linguistics, Zoroastrianism, History of Iran
OriginLate 18th century Europe
Key people James Darmesteter, Karl Friedrich Geldner, Helmut Humbach

Avestan studies is the investigation of the Avesta, i.e, the collection of Zoroastrian texts, and the Avestan languange, in which those texts are composed. [2] It is an interdisciplinary field combining Indo-European linguistics, comparative philology, Zoroastrian studies [3] and Iranian history.

Contents

Overview

Avestan is the oldest attested Iranian language and one of the oldest of any Indo-European languages. It is attested through the Avesta, the collection of religious literature of Zoroastrianism. Like Vedic Sanskrit, which is named after the Vedas, the Avestan corpus is identical with the Avesta, and is therefore named after the text corpus in which it is used. [4] These texts represent an important source for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European language, culture and history. [5] Avestan studies, therefore, has a close relationship to Indo-European linguisits and Zoroastrian studies. [3]

Compared to related fields, Avestan studies has a number of challenges. First, compared to the closely related Vedic corpus, the Old Avestan layer is comparably small, leading to a number of hapax legomena . Second, there is no direct descendent of Avestan, which limits the number of reliable cognates. Third, the transmission of the corpus was purely oral for a long time, which creates a large gap between their composition and production of the written sources. [6]

Zoroastrian scholarship

The earliest attempts of scholarly interpretation of the Avesta are found in Zoroastrianism itself, where a long tradition of exegesis exists. [7] The largest sources of this tradition are the exegetical translations and commentaries of the Avesta, known as Zend. [8] This tradition flourished particularily during the Sasanian period, when the Sasanian Avesta comprised not only the Avestan text but a large Middle Persian Zend. [9] However, after the Islamic conquest of Iran and the subsequent marginalization of Zoroastrianism, this exegetical tradition began to deteriote and most of the exegetical texts were lost. [10] In the 17th and 18th century, when western scholars came into contact with the Zoroastrian community, knowledge of the Avestan languange had become severly diminshed. [11]

Modern scholarship

Beginnings

Western scholars only became aware of Zoroastrian texts in the 17 and 18th century through contacts of European merchants and travellers with the Parsis, the community of Zoroastrians in India. [12] Soon, a number of Avestan manuscripts were purchased and collections established in Europe. The first such collection was created by Thomas Hyde at the end of the 17th century, with other important collections being established by Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Samuel Guise and Rasmus Rask. [13]

Anquetil-Duperron also published a French translation of the Avestan texts he had aquired in 1771, based on translations provided by a Parsi priest. This translation became the topic of the first dispute in Avestan studies, when a number of scholars, in particular William Jones, accused his work of being a forgery. His translation was, however, eventually vindicated by Tychsen and Heeren. [14] Avestan studies, as a scholarly field was founded with the work of Rask [15] and Burnouf. [16]

Golden Age - second half of the 19th century

Geldner's edition of the Avesta is widely considered to be a seminal achievement of Avestan studies Geldner Avesta I page 0.png
Geldner's edition of the Avesta is widely considered to be a seminal achievement of Avestan studies

The second half of the 19th century is regarded as one of the most important phases in the history of Avestan studies. [18] It saw the publication of the all critical editions of the Avestan corpus. The first one was published in 1852 by Westergaard, followed in 1853–1858 by Spiegel and finally between 1886 -1895 by Geldner's edition. [19] Bartholomae's work, in particular his Altiranisches Wörterbuch, [20] grounded the Old Iranian languanges like Old Persian and Avestan within the framework of Indo-Europen linguistics. [21] This period was also marked by disputes by the so called traditional school and the Vedic school. Whereas the former believed in the use of Zoroastrian scholarship expressed in the Zend, the latter relied on an etymological approach by comparison with the more abundant Vedic material. [22] The achievements of this period are so important that, even more than a century later, Geldner's edition of the Avesta and Bartholomae's Altiranisches Wörterbuch are still foundational works of Avestan studies. [23]

Stagnation - first half of the 20th century

The first half of the 20th century is largely seen as lost decades during which Avestan studies stagnated in comparison to other fields of Indo-European studies. [24] Progress was only isolated and incremental. [25] This was due to the, ultimately wrong, theory introduced in 1902 by Friedrich Carl Andreas. According to this theory, the extant Avestan texts were "a clumsy transcription" from a Parthian-era collection written in Pahlavi script. The aim of Avestan studies should therefore be to restore the hypothesized Parthian Archetype of the extant manuscript tradition. [26] The theory gradually lost support due to the works of Henning, Bailey, and Morgenstierne. [27] It was eventually abandoned in the 1950s after Karl Hoffmann demonstrated that the inconsistencies noted by Andreas were actually due to unconscious alterations introduced by oral transmission. [28]

Renewal - second half of the 20th century

The post war period in Avestan studies was characterized by a renewal of the philological approach to the Avesta, based on the works of Hoffmann and continued by his pupil Narten. [29] Their combined work has established the phonetic value of the Avestan script and led to a subtantial number of new editions for individual texts of the Avestan corpus. [30] Furthermore, Humbach has been instrumental in applying the methods of textual criticism to the interpretation of the Avestan texts themselves. [31] He also changed the interpreation of the Gathas. Accordin to him, they are not sermons where Zarathustra addresses to his followers but hymns where he worships Ahura Mazda. [32]

The last decades have seen a number of changes in Avestan studies. One is the discovery of a large number of hitherto unknown manuscripts, primarily from Iran. Another change concerns the re-evaluation of the liturgical aspects of the Avesta and the role of Zarathustra. [33] As a result, the surviving Avestan texts are nowaday seen as witnesses of a living liturgical tradition and should be edited as such. [34] These developments led to the creation of the Corpus Avesticum Berolinense (CAB), a project which attempts to edit the manuscripts within their original ritual context. [35]

Centers

Modern Avestan studies is a subfield of Iranian studies. Important centers are Harvard University, SOAS University of London, University of Hamburg, Collège de France, Leiden University and University of Mumbai. [36] In addition, a large number of Avestan manuscripts are available in Indian, Iranian and Western libraries as well as privat collections of Zoroastrian priestly families. [37] Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts are now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France , while the Codex Hafnienses (mostly collected by Rask) is now at the Royal Library in Denmark. [38] Other important examples are K. R. Cama Oriental Institute library in Mumbai, the Meherji Rana library in Navsari, [39] the British Library in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Bavarian State Library in Munich. [37]

Notable scholars

Important works

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Asmussen 2004.
  2. ↑ Kellens 1987, chap. History of Avestan studies.
  3. 1 2 Stausberg & Vevaina 2015.
  4. ↑ Schmitt 2000, p. 21.
  5. ↑ Hintze 2002, p. 31: "Owing to their age, these texts not only constitute the oldest documents in any Iranian language, but they also number among the oldest literature in any Indo-European language".
  6. ↑ Gippert 2003, pp. 165-166.
  7. ↑ Kreyenbroek 1999.
  8. ↑ Cantera 2015.
  9. ↑ West 1892, chap. Introduction.
  10. ↑ West 1892, chap. Introduction: "[B]ut when, through conversion and extermination, the Mazda-worshippers had become a mere remnant, and then fell under the more barbarous rule of the Tartars, they rapidly lost all their old literature that was not in daily religious use".
  11. ↑ Dhalla 1938, p. 486.
  12. ↑ Boyce 1984, p. 8.
  13. ↑ Gholami 2024, p. 17.
  14. ↑ Duchesne-Guillemin 1985.
  15. ↑ Asmussen 2004, "[Rask's] work marks a turning point in the history of Avestan philology; it proves that the Avestan language was a language in its own right with its own historical development".
  16. ↑ Herrenschmidt 1990, "[H]is most important publication is the Commentaire sur le Yaçna (1833), in which he established the basis for understanding Avestan and for Iranian linguistics as a whole".
  17. ↑ Gholami 2024, p.19: "Geldner's edition has been considered the canonical text to date".
  18. ↑ Kellens 1987, "Avestan studies were particularly active during the second half of the nineteenth century".
  19. ↑ Gholami 2024, p. 19: "In the second half of the nineteenth century, the three main editions of the Avesta were those compiled by Westergaard (1852), Spiegel (1853–1858) and K. F. Geldner (1886–1896)".
  20. ↑ Bartholomae 1904.
  21. ↑ Schmitt 1988, "Bartholomae devoted the main part of his life and work to Iranian linguistics, his chief endeavor being directed toward the integration of Iranian into the framework of Indo-European languages".
  22. ↑ Kellens 1987, "Avestan studies [...] became involved in a fierce polemic between the “traditional” school represented by scholars such as Spiegel and Darmesteter, [...] and the “Vedic” school, of which Karl-Friedrich Geldner was the most famous representative".
  23. ↑ Hintze 2012, p. 419: "To the present day Avestan Studies largely rely on two monumental works[:] Karl Friedrich Geldner's edition of the Avesta of 1889–1896 and Christian Bartholomae's Altiranisches Wörterbuch of 1904".
  24. ↑ Kellens 1987, "Avestan philology had gone off on a wrong track precisely during the important fifty years in which the Vedic, Greek, or Latin philologies accomplished progress of prime importance".
  25. ↑ Kellens 1987, "Progress in Avestan studies from 1902 until about 1965 was confined largely to the elucidation of particular facts, almost always from the etymological point of view".
  26. ↑ Kellens 1987, "The year 1902 opened a new period in the history of Avestan philology. That year, at the congress in Hamburg, Friedrich-Carl Andreas stated the hypothesis that the Avesta, as it is transmitted to us, was a clumsy transcription in a differentiated phonetic alphabet of a text—the Arsacid archetype".
  27. ↑ Kellens 1987, "It was not until counterarguments were brought to light during World War II by Henning (“Disintegration”), Bailey (ZoroastrianProblems), and Morgenstierne (“Orthography and Sound-system”) that confidence in Andreas’ principle was lost".
  28. ↑ Humbach 1991, p. 57.
  29. ↑ Kellens 1987, "Over the last twenty years K. Hoffmann has been in the center of the renewal of an adequate philological approach to the Avesta".
  30. ↑ Cantera 2012, p. 439: "These new discoveries have stimulated numerous editions of many Avestan texts".
  31. ↑ Schmitt 2021, "He used the methods and principles of textual criticism, as they were already customary in Classics for a long time but not yet applied in Old Iranian studies".
  32. ↑ Schmitt 2021, "Humbach is firmly convinced that the Gathas are not didactic or even dogmatic verse sermons [...], but religious hymns performed at the sacrifice for invoking and glorifying Ahura Mazdā".
  33. ↑ Skjaervø 1997.
  34. ↑ Cantera 2022, "In Sasanian times, there were two parallel collections: the Great Avesta and the Ritual Avesta. The extant Avesta known from the manuscripts derives from the latter".
  35. ↑ Cantera 2020, p. 200: "This is the main aim of the Corpus Avesticum Berolinense. In this project carried out at the Institute for Iranian Studies (https://cab.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/), we aim to present an edition of the rituals in Avestan in two diferent ways: 1) a presentation of the ritual system still operating in Iran in the 16th century using mainly the evidence of the manuscripts".
  36. ↑ O'g'li 2025.
  37. 1 2 Cantera 2013, p. 345.
  38. ↑ Asmussen 1992.
  39. ↑ Skjaervø 2011, p. 60.

Bibliography

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