Avestan
Spoken in:	liturgical language of Zoroastrianism (Iran, India)
Language extinction:	likely by the 7th century BCE
Language family:	Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Iranian    Eastern Iranian     Avestan
Writing system:	Avestan alphabet, Brahmi based scripts in India
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	ae
ISO 639-2:	ave
ISO 639-3:	ave
Yasna 28.1, Ahunavaiti Gatha (Bodleian MS J2)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. Iranian languages are part of the Indo-Iranian Language group which includes the Indian languages such as Sanskrit. The Indo-Iranian language group is the biggest branch of the Indo-European language family.

Along with Old Persian, Avestan is one of the two oldest Iranian languages of which we have evidence (see also classification, below). The Avestan language should not be confused with the Avestan alphabet, which is a significantly later invention.

The Avestan language, as reflected in the Avesta, is divided into two different forms:

1. Old Avestan or Gathic Avestan: This form of the language was used to compose the Gathas and other more ancient portions of the Yasna. Gathic Avestan is an archaic language with a complicated grammar which consists of eight case forms and a highly inflected noun system. It is still quite close to the Vedic Sanskrit. Like Zoroaster's lifetime, widely differing dates for Avestan have been proposed; scholarly consensus floats around 1000 BCE (roughly contemporary to the Brahmana period of Vedic Sanskrit).
2. Young Avestan: the language used for composing the greater part of the Avesta, including many of the Yashts, the Visperad, Vendidad and some sections of the Yasna. Young Avestan itself has two forms, one called Original Young Avestan, and the other, Artificial Young Avestan. The first form was probably a natural development of Old Avestan and was most likely also a spoken language up to the 8th century BCE. The Artificial Young Avestan however is a corrupt form of the language, a form that was never spoken and was used by the priesthood in later times in order to compose new texts. The Vendidad is the most significant collection of texts that were composed in Artificial Young Avestan.

Classification

Avestan is usually classified as Eastern Iranian. However, because the separation of Eastern and Western Iranian is poorly understood, and because there is no attestation of an Iranian language contemporary to Avestan, as well as because of the defective tradition of the Avestan texts, the validity, or even applicability, of this classification is uncertain.

For example, Avestan jwa "live" is cited as closer to Sogdian žw, Khotanian juv- than to Old Persian jīva, but phonological Eastern characteristics of Avestan such as this one have been suspected of being due to a phase of the historical tradition of the texts rather than an original feature of Avestan itself. According to Kellens,¹ the only thing that can be asserted with confidence is that Avestan is not a Persian dialect (the only Old Iranian language besides Avestan known in any detail being Old Persian). Avestan contains passive morpheme quite similar to that of Gorani or Hewrami, which is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken along Iran - Iraq border.

The original geographical location of Avestan is likewise uncertain, and it has been variously placed in north-western Iran, north-eastern Iran, Chorasmia, Sistan, and Bactria-Margiana.

Alphabet

Main article: Avestan alphabet

The script used for writing Avestan developed during Sassanian times, very likely in the 3rd or 4th century. By then the language had been extinct for many centuries, and remained in use only as a liturgical language of the Avesta canon (cf. language extinction). As is still the case today, the liturgies were memorized by the priesthood and recited by rote.

The script devised to render Avestan was natively known as Din dabireh "religion writing". It has 53 distinct characters and is written right-to-left. Among the 53 characters are about 30 letters that are – through the addition of various loops and flourishes – variations of the 13 graphemes of the cursive Pahlavi script (i.e. "Book" Pahlavi) that is known from the post-Sassanian texts of Zoroastrian tradition. These symbols, like those of all the Pahlavi scripts, are in turn based on Aramaic script symbols. Avestan also incorporates several letters from other writing systems, most notably the vowels, which are mostly derived from Greek minuscules. A few letters were free inventions, as were also the symbols used for punctuation. Avestan also has one letter that is not used for Avestan; the character for /l/ (a sound that Avestan does not have) was added to write Pazend texts.

Avestan script is alphabetic, and the large number of letters suggests that its design was due to the need to render the orally recited texts with high phonetic precision. The correct enunciation of the liturgies was (and still is) considered necessary for the prayers to be effective.

The Zoroastrians of India, who represent the largest surviving Zoroastrian community worldwide, also transcribe Avestan in Brahmi-based scripts. This is a relatively recent development first seen in the ca. 12th century texts of Neryosang Dhaval and other Parsi Sanskritist theologians of that era, and which are roughly contemporary with the oldest surviving manuscripts in Avestan script. Today, Avestan is most commonly typeset in Gujarati script (Gujarati being the traditional language of the Indian Zoroastrians). Some Avestan letters with no corresponding symbol are synthesized with additional diacritical marks, for example, the /z/ in zaraθuštra is written with /j/ + dot below.

Phonology

The Avestan sound differs from the later Old Persian chiefly by the larger inventory of vowels. As opposed to Sanskrit, Avestan has retained voiced sibilants, and has fricative rather than aspirate series. There are various conventions for transliteration of Dīn Dabireh, the one adopted for this article being:

Vowels:

a ā ə ə̄ e ē o ō å ą i ī u ū

Consonants:

k g γ x x^w č ǰ t d δ ϑ t̰ p b β f

ŋ ŋ^w ṇ ń n m y w r s z š ṣ̌ z h

The glides y and w are often transcribed as ii and uu, imitating Dīn Dabireh orthography.

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Nouns

Verbs

Notes

References

• Robert S. P. Beekes, A Grammar of Gatha-Avestan, E.J. Brill: Leiden, New York, København, Köln 1988 ISBN 90-04-08332-4
• Karl Hoffmann & Bernhard Forssman, Avestische Laut- und Flexionslehre (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 84), Universität Innsbruck 1996 ISBN 3-85124-652-7
• Encyclopedia Iranica, "Avestan Language", Karl Hoffmann
• Encyclopedia Iranica, "Avestan Syntax", Jean Kellens

See also

• Iranian languages vocabulary comparison table
• Ebrahim Poordavood

External links

• avesta.org - Avestan lessons, Grammar, Dictionaries, etc.
• Text samples
• Unicode pipeline (contains suggestion for Avestan encoding)
• Avesta Corpus, Titus text collection. On the basis of the editions by K. F. Geldner, Avesta. The Sacred Books of the Parsis, Stuttgart 1889-96; N. L. Westgaard, Zendavesta or The Religious Books of the Zoroastrians, Copenhagen 1852-54, and others. Digitized text: University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
• M. Boyce, Avestan people, Encyclopaedia Iranica, [1].
• G. Gnoli, Avestan geography, Encyclopaedia Iranica, [2].