Avestan – Text sample
Hintze, Almut
This lecture features several text samples in the Avestan language in order to showcase various stylistic and grammatical features of Avestan.
 Hello there! In the meantime, you may have seen me already. My name is Almut Hinze. Welcome to the final session of our introductory course on Avestum. In this video, we are going to look at two short sample texts of the Avesta in order to illustrate some of the points that were made in the previous lessons with a real text. The texts I have chosen are two stanzas from the Garzikim Jassna 44 and a verse from the Jassna Habtanghaiti. So two older western texts but of two different text genres. Jassna 44 is one of the best-known hymns of the Gatas. It is sometimes referred to as cosmological hymn because there are several stanzas that ask questions about where phenomena we find in nature and in human life come from. The hymn consists of 20 stanzas. With the exception of the last stanza, each of them is introduced by the sentence Tat Thva Purasa Irishmoy Vauja Ahura. That means, I ask you this, tell me truly, O Lord! The stylistic device of Anafura thus characterizes the composition of this hymn. That means a repetition of this line at the beginning of each hymn. Stylistically, the hymn is couched in the situation of a conversation between a person, the I and his God, Ahura Mazda. No answers are given to the questions which are being asked but since the questions are rhetorical, the answer is implied. It is always Ahura Mazda who has ordered the cosmos. Now let us look at the first stanza which we are going to discuss. This is Yasna 44.3 and you can see it here on the slide. You can see it in transliteration of the text as we find it in the manuscripts and here you have a phonemic interpretation of the text as we read it in the manuscript keeping in mind that what we read in the manuscripts is sound not meaning but as here we have a phonemic interpretation of that sound and here obviously that's the translation. So if you allow me to read it what it might sound in its in its avestan as we read it in the manuscript it would sound something like This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the stars? Who is it by whom the moon not only waxes but also wanes? I wish to know this and other things oh wise one. Now this is after what I've just read is the text as it appears in the manuscripts. You can see on the right hand side of this slide the phonemic interpretation of that text as it appears in the manuscript in the manuscripts and you can also see that there is a gap in the middle of a line and that is the Cesura. The meter of this stanza is four plus seven syllables and you may also have noticed that some of the words are pronounced as if there with a slur in them and this included the words and also the word which I read and if we read them in this way we do get the regular meaning so Kasna Khvahang for syllables and then stramcha we need to read with three syllables stramcha dat atva nam to get seven syllables and then the next line kya maa uhshie ti nirv sai ti swat so four plus seven syllables and this is how the meter works. Syllable counting with a Cesura after a fixed number of syllables in this case after four syllables. Now just let me read the translation of this. This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the stars? Who is it by whom the moon not only waxed but also wanes? I wish to know this and other things oh wise one. I must add here a word of caution the translation is as tentative as is the phonological interpretation. All that's really certain is what we actually read in the manuscripts and even that is that is given here on the left hand side is rather odd looking text that is what we read in the manuscripts here also in a sort of normalized standardized representation. The readings of the manuscripts are even much more varying so then let us look at a few words of a particular interest in this stanza. The word spelled Pau Ruiu in the first line that's this one here it's in the Avestan script here incorporates several phonetic features which are phonologically irrelevant. Old Persian Paruvia this one here and Vedic Purvia are the etymological equivalents of this old Avestan word and they indicate that the phonological interpretation of the Avestan word is Parvia or Parvia this sievers law. The phonetic processes which affected this form were first U-apentysis producing Old Avestan Pau Ruiu this form here Pau Ruiu with U-apentysis sorry this one here Pau Ruiu you see this the U which precedes the R is apensetic it is anticipated from the word which follows the R. So this would have been the old Avestan form something like Pau Ruiu. Now and this is more or less the underlying form which we read in the older Avesta and that's how this word has been interpreted phonologically in the phonological interpretation section of this stanza. Now in young Avestan we have a sound change which affected this word and this is a specifically young Avestan sound change of Ruiu to Uriu. We have the sound sequence Ruiu in our word here this is Ruiu the U being a phonologically irrelevant and that means that our parvia became young Avestan Pau Ruiu that means the V after the R jump forward and disappeared after the R and this then produced a form where we have an I following Ruiu and that triggered off eye apentysis or if you like palatalization of the R in phonetic terms. So the outcome of all of this is then our younger Avestan form Pau Pau Yiria and here then in the younger Avestan form we have the feature that the preceding the R this or here which originally is the epithetic of the old Avestan form is reinterpreted as a second member of a diphthong of a diphthong Aau and this is then followed by an epithetic eye. So here we then have our younger Avestan form Pau Yiria and these are all phonetic processes not phonological but they surface very strongly in the forms which we have actually attested and of course obviously they need to be explained. Now let's look at the next word which is this word written in bold letters, Khwong which we've already mentioned and this word is metrically disulabic although it looks monosulabic but it isn't. We've discussed this word already earlier in the session on phonology as an example for dialectal forms in Avestan texts and we mentioned other forms which have initial Khwong especially in words which are located in river names and a land name located in the area of the hill mount basin in Sistan. Now here in this particular word we would not expect a form with Khwong instead we would expect a form with initial Khu-v, that means a syllable and this would account for the syllable which we are missing. So we would expect a form like Khu-wong in Old Avestan which however we don't have. However that such a form really existed is demonstrated by the Young Avestan form Khwong. We have in Young Avestan a form which I'm now going to write here Khwong which is the genitive singular of the word for son, means of the son and this form Khwong goes back to an earlier Khu-wur, pre-Young Avestan if you like Khu-wur. This then becomes Khu-wur and then ends up as Khu in Young Avestan and this Khu-wur in turn is the descents directly from our postulated Old Avestan form Khu-wong. So indirectly the Young Avestan form who demonstrates that a form Khu-wur must have existed but we don't have it. Instead we have this form with the unexpected Khu-wur. So here the Khu-wur is a dialectal feature which entered the pronunciation of the Old Avesta only and this consistently this form Khu-wur is a tested three times in the Gata's always metrically disyllabic and consistently in this form. The Mita is also gives us also a hint about for the disyllabic value of the nominative singular Ma, the nominative singular of the word for the moon and this in the on the surface again looks like a monosyllabic form but it isn't. The disyllabic metrical value is here only explicable with reference to the intervocalic laryngeal which must have been present at the time when this text was composed obviously. The word for the moon is derived from the verb root Ma which is M in the European M, E and the first laryngeal to measure and that is extended with the suffix A, H, Indo-Iranian E, S in Indo-European and there was then an intervocalic laryngeal in the nominative singular something like this in Old Iranian, Avestan Ma, A for the nominative singular. The laryngeal must still have been realized as a distinct sound in order to prevent the merger of the two vowels R which was otherwise have been adjacent and the merger of these two vowels R into one long A is just natural so there must have been something which blocked this merger and that is the laryngeal which we can make responsible for this. So here I've represented this consonant, this glottal consonant between the two vowels R with the sign for the glottal stop this sort of question mark sign. Now the last word of this stanza which I would like to comment on is the form Vidje. This is an infinitive it's metrically disolubic and we have a parallel formation for this sort of infinitive in the Ghaasic form Da Voi here and that looks on the surface as if it is a suffix Vai attached directly to the verbal root. Now Avestan infinitives are normally case forms usually they are datives and they are derived not from verbal roots but from a verbal noun and usually they have a verbal meaning so they denote an action but the form and Vai is not found anywhere else either in Avestan or in other Indo-European languages. We would therefore much more like an analysis in which here the ending i the dative ending i is attached to a u stem and this is what Jeremy Mao, Rau has proposed he suggests that these infinitives in fact derive from stems Vidhu and Dahu attached extended by the dative ending i and these stems would denote the act of knowing and the act of giving. So much on this stanza then let's have a look at the next stanza. This is Yasna 44.4 so as before I would like to read it keeping in mind that the meter is as in the previous stanza four plus seven syllables. So we read here. And this translation would be something like this I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who upholds the earth below and the clouds from falling down who upholds the waters and the plants who yolks the swift teams to the wind and the clouds who is the creator of good sort O wise one. You have the phonological interpretation as before again on the right. So let's look at a few of these words in this stanza there the all the words which I would like to talk on are in this line which you have written here at the top. The first word is Vatai the form is the dative singular of the noun Vata the wind and it's again metrically tricelabic. So the Gata is here give us valuable evidence for the laryngeal which is in at the end of the verbal root namely the root Vat to blow and it's the first laryngeal and here the laryngeal comes to stand between two consonants the consonant following the laryngeal being a vocalized N which vocalizes to a in Indo-Iranian and so we get the form Vata to be precise I should have written this rather as a glottal stop. So here I was just trying to indicate this it should be of course I've been slightly inconsistent here it's the glottal stop but the notation is a bit open to debate it's certainly a consonant here consonantal glottal stop quite indistinct probably phonetically which prevented the merger of the two vowels into one long a and which forms the hiatus and is responsible for the tricelabic metrical value of the word Vatae the dative singular. Then the next word I would like to comment on is the form Yoke. This is the third singular injunctive or aorist root aorist of the root Yoke here this root here and it's however not what we would expect we would expect something like jaocht in our western you see something jaocht this is supposed to be an a sorry jaocht and which would be phonologically jaocht from a preform jaucht so the secondary ending attached to the full grade root that would be a normal third singular injunctive of the root aorist of this root but we don't have this we instead we have this rather curious form jaocht so now what is this we have a few some parallels for such a phenomenon this sequence gut gut at the end of words one of them is the form Paiti aocht answering it's an also an alter of Olde-Western form and then we have was a younger Western form Bresi aocht these are both participants apparently and from the root aocht to speak so also from a root that ends in a voiced stop just like huge although here in our historically that ja goes back to a voiced aspirated stop and a various huge is just a normal an aspirated stop so we cannot invoke Bartolomé's law here whereas we could in the case of aug de now there are various theories about where this good comes from perhaps it's a sandy form it seems to represent something phonetic and the tur is this implosive sound which is articulated with the occlusion of the stop remaining unresolved and this sound occur in a western occurs at word boundaries almost always at the end of a word but in a couple of instances also at the beginning of the word where it's always it's per placed in front of another stop now here we have it after another stop a voiced stop and in the case of jaocht and in the case of the yes yes now 46.8 form piteaocht answering and Bresi aocht loudly spoken the root ends here in a voiced stopger or girl and here good might represent a sandy form in our case here it occurs before a su before of a word starting with a vowel so is that reflection of a is a sandy form perhaps I don't I don't have an answer and I'm just mentioning what has been thought and just to make things complete the picture here we have got two more forms with a good and they are from roots ending in a voiceless stop the root from a root only one hatch to follow which is of course an old Indo-European labia or villa voiceless sequa and it's found in these compounds ashish hacht and Arma it ish hacht and it's this means accompanied by reward or and accompanied by right-mindedness and here a T is not expected at all and it's this also occurs the to the gut sequence also occurs in the adverb Paragd which is from a nominal stem parange so here again one would one wouldn't really expect the term in fact these forms ashish hacht and Arma it ish hacht they refer to a neuter stem so they could they are grammatically neuter forms and it has been thought whether this is a neuter T attached to the end to the root but the form remains rather curious anyway so it's a bit they are still rather mysterious perhaps going moving on to the next word which is the word arsou swift it's the accusative dual of the adjective arsou week okus oku swift and here it is combined with our form yawch yawkd yawch the root yawch to yawk now here this stanza offers a very nice instance of a phraseological agreement between Vedic and Avestan the combination of arsou this dual form which is the two swift ones the two races these are the two horses the races which are being yawked and that has a phraseological parallel in the Vedic language where we have the expression you nudge me arsou I am yawking the swift team literally I am yawking the two swift ones namely the two swift horses and here at this point I would just like to refer you back to our very first lecture in this series you may remember we were we talked about the horse and the chariot and the important role this animal and the chariot play in the imagery of the Vedic and the Avestan texts so here we have this very important combination of the horse which is yawked to the chariot and that would have been thus chariot with a spoked wheel which is very swift in battle and in chariot race so with this image here I would like to conclude our discussion of the Gatas and would like to move on to our second and final sample text which is a stanza from the Yassna Habtangaiti now the stanza I have chosen is Yassna 35.2 the very opening stanza of the Yassna Habtangaiti this stanza is preceded by Yassna 35.1 but this stanza is in Yang Avestan and it is a stanza which intervenes between the last stanza of the Ahuna Vaitygata Yassna 34 and the beginning of the Yassna Habtangaiti in Yassna 35.2 if you remember when we were talking about the Avestan texts in our introductory lecture we mentioned the how Yang Avestan texts were introduced as buffers at key points in the composition of our old Avestan texts so here we have an example where Yassna 35.1 has this function it's a buffer between the end of the Gatas and the Yassna Habtangaiti which starts exactly at Yassna 35.2 so let us listen to this text I'm reading it out first the text in on the left in the left column is again the transcription from transliteration from the manuscripts and on the right you can see the phonological interpretation and then a translation so I'm reading the text as you have it here in the transliteration who much and the translation of this is something like of good thoughts of good words good deeds both here and elsewhere being done and having been done we are welcome us not revilers of such good things we are namely of such such good things is of good thoughts good words good deeds here you already have the implication of bad thoughts bad words bad deeds which are rejected now then let us look at this text and I would like here to focus on the stylistic devices which are being employed in the composition of this text the first stylistic device is that of alliteration who who who the first syllable of the first three words opening words of the entire Yassna Habtangaiti are these three words who Matanam, Huhtanam, Huwastanam and these of three words then become something like the motto of the Zoroastrian religion it's the triad which you find everywhere in Zoroastrian contexts contexts even today they denote the chief commitment of the followers of this religion so this idea of good thoughts good words good deeds goes back right here to the older Avesta the Yassna Habtangaiti in particular and of course the opposite Dusjmata Dusjurtha Dusjvarshta is implied and that's rejected as is done here in our stanza the expression of the second line Yadaccha An Yadaccha both here and elsewhere is the stylistic device of argument and counter argument and it denotes the idea of totality in space that means both here and anywhere else and this expression is then followed by a expression of the totality in time in so far as present and past are referred to being done now and having been done in the past the future here is not mentioned it they refer to the present and the past deeds of those they are welcomeers of course thoughts words and deeds and then the final two lines are constructed as a chiasmus with the verb mahi we are here mahi we are both at the beginning and at the end of the close they frame the entire close and there we have again almost a synonym synonymous expression Ibi Jartara is the welcomeers and Nye Nye star Nye star is from nightstar from the need to rebuke and Nye is a negative prefix here either Nye or night which denotes which negates it we are not blamers so we are welcomeers we are not blamers so again an implicit reference to the bad ones so Dushu Dushmata Dushuhta Dushvarshta because those people who practice Dushmata Dushuhta Dushvarshta they blame who Mata who Uhtahu Vahshta they reject them but here these ones the people who pronounce these words here of the Yassna this verse from the Yassna Habtanghaiti they are not such people they are not such blamers and they state that explicitly right at the center of this chiasity construction which is framed by the verbal form Mahi and then this Nye Nye star is further then complemented by the expression Yassana Vahunam now this Yassna is an interesting form it is the relative pronoun Yat extended by the particle Na so it represents Yatna and this again a sandy form with a thir instead of the expected implosive thir it has been merged into one and there are parallels for such a development also in Old Avestan Chisana so these are sandy forms where these two words have been merged into one and here the sir is somehow represents the implosive our implosive thir in word final position so here internally it's realized as a fricative as a voiceless fricative Chisana and Yassna and it's it's a sort of a restituted postal form Yassna and Chisna standing for Yatna and Chitna and the form with internal sandy would have been Yatna and Chitna by normal assimilation of the voiceless thir to the voiced D N follow of the first sound of the particle Na so this links then the complement the genitive plural Vahunam of what is good we are not blamers of what is good and here this Vahunam this refers back to this three times who who who mentioned at the beginning in the plural Vahunam of what is good so all of that is being welcomed is being praised is being received full-heartedly and it's not being rejected and that's what's being affirmed here right at the outset of this of this text now there is some debate about the poetic form of the Yassna Abtanghaiti in older literature it's being refers to as a prose text however what I hope it has become clear that this is a densely composed text and employs a wide range of poetic figures as we have seen just in these few lines and that these figures form smaller units they don't form any units of the kind of the garters where we have fixed numbers of verse lines fixed stanzas which a fixed number of verse lines and each verse line has a fixed number of syllables with a saesura at a determined place nothing like this here in the Yassna Abtanghaiti but we do have a poetic form I think but it's a different poetic form it is an internally structured rhythm which we have here we have little clauses which are organized and internally deeply structured so this is a type of poetry which was particularly popular by amongst the Indo-Iranian people and maybe even earlier for liturgies when they recited texts in the in the rituals as part of of the rituals and Yassna Abtanghaiti has never been any doubt that the Yassna Abtanghaiti is a liturgy it's actually quite a self-contained liturgy it has a beginning at an end it has an high point right in the middle in Yassna 38 where the waters are being praised and it is a poetic form which has its parallels in other liturgical forms of Latin poetry the Suo Vittoralia for example and other texts but it's a different type of poetry so in some ways you can then say that the oldest Avestan texts which have survived the older Avesta attests to two very archaic forms of poetry the Gartas have the syllable counting Stihik poetic form and the Yassna Abtanghaiti has the strophic form of internally structured rhythmic phrases and the number of phrases you add you you add is not limited by any way limited as it is in the Gartas now so we have now reached the end of this session it concludes our taster session on Avestan texts I hope you enjoyed it and I thank you very much for watching goodbye
 Hello there! In the meantime, you may have seen me already. My name is Almut Hinze.  Welcome to the final session of our introductory course on Avestum.  In this video, we are going to look at two short sample texts of the Avesta in  order to illustrate some of the points that were made in the previous lessons  with a real text. The texts I have chosen are two stanzas from the Garzikim  Jassna 44 and a verse from the Jassna Habtanghaiti. So two older western texts  but of two different text genres. Jassna 44 is one of the best-known hymns of  the Gatas. It is sometimes referred to as cosmological hymn because there are  several stanzas that ask questions about where phenomena we find in nature and  in human life come from. The hymn consists of 20 stanzas. With the exception of the  last stanza, each of them is introduced by the sentence Tat Thva Purasa  Irishmoy Vauja Ahura. That means, I ask you this, tell me truly, O Lord! The  stylistic device of Anafura thus characterizes the composition of this hymn.  That means a repetition of this line at the beginning of each hymn.  Stylistically, the hymn is couched in the situation of a conversation between a  person, the I and his God, Ahura Mazda. No answers are given to the questions which  are being asked but since the questions are rhetorical, the answer is implied. It  is always Ahura Mazda who has ordered the cosmos. Now let us look at the first  stanza which we are going to discuss. This is Yasna 44.3 and you can see it  here on the slide. You can see it in transliteration of the text as we find  it in the manuscripts and here you have a phonemic interpretation of the text as  we read it in the manuscript keeping in mind that what we read in the  manuscripts is sound not meaning but as here we have a phonemic interpretation  of that sound and here obviously that's the translation. So if you allow me to  read it what it might sound in its in its avestan as we read it in the  manuscript it would sound something like  This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial father of order by  begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the stars? Who is it by  whom the moon not only waxes but also wanes? I wish to know this and other  things oh wise one. Now this is after what I've just read is the text as it  appears in the manuscripts. You can see on the right hand side of this slide the  phonemic interpretation of that text as it appears in the  manuscript in the manuscripts and you can also see that there is a gap in the  middle of a line and that is the Cesura. The meter of this stanza is four plus  seven syllables and you may also have noticed that some of the words are  pronounced as if there with a slur in them and this included the words  and also the word which I read and if we read them in this way we do get the  regular meaning so Kasna Khvahang for syllables and then stramcha we need to  read with three syllables stramcha dat atva nam to get seven syllables and then  the next line kya maa uhshie ti nirv sai ti swat so four plus seven syllables and  this is how the meter works. Syllable counting with a Cesura after a fixed  number of syllables in this case after four syllables. Now just let me read the  translation of this. This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial  father of order by begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the  stars? Who is it by whom the moon not only waxed but also wanes? I wish to  know this and other things oh wise one. I must add here a word of caution the  translation is as tentative as is the phonological interpretation. All  that's really certain is what we actually read in the manuscripts and even that  is that is given here on the left hand side is rather odd looking text that is  what we read in the manuscripts here also in a sort of normalized standardized  representation. The readings of the manuscripts are even much more  varying so then let us look at a few words of a particular interest in this  stanza. The word spelled Pau Ruiu in the first line that's this one here it's in  the Avestan script here incorporates several phonetic features which are  phonologically irrelevant. Old Persian Paruvia this one here and Vedic  Purvia are the etymological equivalents of this old Avestan word and they  indicate that the phonological interpretation of the Avestan word is  Parvia or Parvia this sievers law. The phonetic processes which affected this  form were first U-apentysis producing Old Avestan Pau Ruiu this form here  Pau Ruiu with U-apentysis sorry this one here Pau Ruiu you see this the U which  precedes the R is apensetic it is anticipated from the word which follows  the R. So this would have been the old Avestan form something like Pau Ruiu.  Now and this is more or less the underlying form which we read in the  older Avesta and that's how this word has been interpreted phonologically in the  phonological interpretation section of this stanza. Now in young Avestan we  have a sound change which affected this word and this is a specifically young  Avestan sound change of Ruiu to Uriu. We have the sound sequence Ruiu in our  word here this is Ruiu the U being a phonologically irrelevant and that  means that our parvia became young Avestan Pau Ruiu that means the V after  the R jump forward and disappeared after the R and this then produced a form  where we have an I following Ruiu and that triggered off eye apentysis or if  you like palatalization of the R in phonetic terms. So the outcome of all of  this is then our younger Avestan form Pau Pau Yiria and here then in the  younger Avestan form we have the feature that the preceding the R this or  here which originally is the epithetic of the old Avestan form is reinterpreted  as a second member of a diphthong of a diphthong Aau and this is then followed  by an epithetic eye. So here we then have our younger Avestan form Pau Yiria  and these are all phonetic processes not phonological but they surface very  strongly in the forms which we have actually attested and of course  obviously they need to be explained. Now let's look at the next word which is  this word written in bold letters, Khwong which we've already mentioned and this  word is metrically disulabic although it looks monosulabic but it isn't. We've  discussed this word already earlier in the session on phonology as an example  for dialectal forms in Avestan texts and we mentioned other forms which have  initial Khwong especially in words which are located in river names and a land  name located in the area of the hill mount basin in Sistan. Now here in this  particular word we would not expect a form with Khwong instead we would expect  a form with initial Khu-v, that means a syllable and this  would account for the syllable which we are missing. So we would expect a  form like Khu-wong in Old Avestan which however we don't have. However that such  a form really existed is demonstrated by the Young Avestan form Khwong. We have in  Young Avestan a form which I'm now going to write here Khwong which is the  genitive singular of the word for son, means of the son and this form Khwong goes  back to an earlier Khu-wur, pre-Young Avestan if you like Khu-wur.  This then becomes Khu-wur and then ends up as Khu in Young Avestan and this Khu-wur  in turn is the descents directly from our postulated Old Avestan form Khu-wong.  So indirectly the Young Avestan form who demonstrates that a form Khu-wur must  have existed but we don't have it. Instead we have this form with the  unexpected Khu-wur. So here the Khu-wur is a dialectal feature which entered the  pronunciation of the Old Avesta only and this consistently this form Khu-wur is  a tested three times in the Gata's always metrically disyllabic and  consistently in this form. The Mita is also gives us also a hint about for the  disyllabic value of the nominative singular Ma, the nominative singular of  the word for the moon and this in the on the surface again looks like a  monosyllabic form but it isn't. The disyllabic metrical value is here only  explicable with reference to the intervocalic laryngeal which must have been  present at the time when this text was composed obviously. The word for the moon  is derived from the verb root Ma which is M in the European M, E and the first  laryngeal to measure and that is extended with the suffix A, H, Indo-Iranian  E, S in Indo-European and there was then an intervocalic laryngeal in the  nominative singular something like this in Old Iranian, Avestan Ma, A for the  nominative singular. The laryngeal must still have been realized as a distinct  sound in order to prevent the merger of the two vowels R which was otherwise  have been adjacent and the merger of these two vowels R into one long A is  just natural so there must have been something which blocked this merger and  that is the laryngeal which we can make responsible for this. So here I've  represented this consonant, this glottal consonant between the two vowels R  with the sign for the glottal stop this sort of question mark sign. Now the last  word of this stanza which I would like to comment on is the form  Vidje. This is an infinitive it's metrically disolubic and we have a  parallel formation for this sort of infinitive in the Ghaasic form Da Voi  here and that looks on the surface as if it is a suffix Vai attached directly to  the verbal root. Now Avestan infinitives are normally case forms usually they are  datives and they are derived not from verbal roots but from a verbal noun and  usually they have a verbal meaning so they denote an action but the form and  Vai is not found anywhere else either in Avestan or in other Indo-European  languages. We would therefore much more like an analysis in which here the  ending i the dative ending i is attached to a u stem and this is what Jeremy  Mao, Rau has proposed he suggests that these infinitives in fact derive from  stems Vidhu and Dahu attached extended by the dative ending i and these stems  would denote the act of knowing and the act of giving. So much on this stanza  then let's have a look at the next stanza. This is Yasna 44.4 so as before I  would like to read it keeping in mind that the meter is as in the previous  stanza four plus seven syllables. So we read here.  And  this translation would be something like this I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who  upholds the earth below and the clouds from falling down who upholds the waters  and the plants who yolks the swift teams to the wind and the clouds who is the  creator of good sort O wise one. You have the phonological interpretation as  before again on the right. So let's look at a few of these words in this stanza  there the all the words which I would like to talk on are in this line which  you have written here at the top. The first word is Vatai the form is the  dative singular of the noun Vata the wind and it's again metrically  tricelabic. So the Gata is here give us valuable evidence for the laryngeal which  is in at the end of the verbal root namely the root Vat to blow and it's the  first laryngeal and here the laryngeal comes to stand between two consonants  the consonant following the laryngeal being a vocalized N which vocalizes to  a in Indo-Iranian and so we get the form Vata to be precise I should have written  this rather as a glottal stop. So here I was just trying to indicate this it  should be of course I've been slightly inconsistent here it's the glottal stop  but the notation is a bit open to debate it's certainly a consonant here  consonantal glottal stop quite indistinct probably phonetically which  prevented the merger of the two vowels into one long a and which forms the  hiatus and is responsible for the tricelabic metrical value of the word  Vatae the dative singular. Then the next word I would like to comment on is the  form Yoke. This is the third singular injunctive or aorist root aorist of the  root Yoke here this root here and it's however not what we would expect we  would expect something like jaocht in our western you see something jaocht this  is supposed to be an a sorry jaocht and which would be phonologically jaocht  from a preform jaucht so the secondary ending attached to the full grade root  that would be a normal third singular injunctive of the root aorist of this  root but we don't have this we instead we have this rather curious form jaocht  so now what is this we have a few some parallels for such a phenomenon this  sequence gut gut at the end of words one of them is the form Paiti aocht  answering it's an also an alter of Olde-Western form and then we have was a  younger Western form Bresi aocht these are both  participants apparently and from the root aocht to speak so also from a root  that ends in a voiced stop just like huge although here in our historically  that ja goes back to a voiced aspirated stop and a various huge is just a normal  an aspirated stop so we cannot invoke Bartolomé's law here whereas we could in  the case of aug de now there are various theories about where this good comes  from perhaps it's a sandy form it seems to represent something phonetic and the  tur is this implosive sound which is articulated with the occlusion of the  stop remaining unresolved and this sound occur in a western occurs at word  boundaries almost always at the end of a word but in a couple of instances also  at the beginning of the word where it's always it's per placed in front of another  stop now here we have it after another stop a voiced stop and in the case of  jaocht and in the case of the yes yes now 46.8 form piteaocht answering and Bresi  aocht loudly spoken the root ends here in a voiced stopger or girl and here good  might represent a sandy form in our case here it occurs before a su before of  a word starting with a vowel so is that reflection of a is a sandy form perhaps  I don't I don't have an answer and I'm just mentioning what has been thought  and just to make things complete the picture here we have got two more  forms with a good and they are from roots ending in a voiceless stop the root  from a root only one hatch to follow which is of course an old  Indo-European labia or villa voiceless sequa and it's found in these compounds  ashish hacht and Arma it ish hacht and it's this means accompanied by reward or  and accompanied by right-mindedness and here a T is not expected at all and it's  this also occurs the to the gut sequence also occurs in the adverb  Paragd which is from a nominal stem parange so here again one would one  wouldn't really expect the term in fact these forms ashish hacht and Arma it  ish hacht they refer to a neuter stem so they could they are grammatically  neuter forms and it has been thought whether this is a neuter T attached to  the end to the root but the form remains rather curious anyway so it's a bit  they are still rather mysterious perhaps going moving on to the next word  which is the word arsou swift it's the accusative dual of the adjective arsou  week okus oku swift and here it is combined with our form  yawch yawkd yawch the root yawch to yawk now here this stanza offers a very  nice instance of a phraseological agreement between Vedic and Avestan the  combination of arsou this dual form which is the two swift ones the two  races these are the two horses the races which are being yawked and that has a  phraseological parallel in the Vedic language where we have the expression  you nudge me arsou I am yawking the swift team literally I am yawking the  two swift ones namely the two swift horses and here at this point I would  just like to refer you back to our very first lecture in this series you may  remember we were we talked about the horse and the chariot and the important  role this animal and the chariot play in the imagery of the Vedic and the  Avestan texts so here we have this very important combination of the horse which  is yawked to the chariot and that would have been thus chariot with a  spoked wheel which is very swift in battle and in chariot race so with this  image here I would like to conclude our discussion of the Gatas and would like to  move on to our second and final sample text which is a stanza from the Yassna  Habtangaiti now the stanza I have chosen is Yassna 35.2 the very opening stanza  of the Yassna Habtangaiti this stanza is preceded by Yassna 35.1 but this  stanza is in Yang Avestan and it is a stanza which intervenes between the last  stanza of the Ahuna Vaitygata Yassna 34 and the beginning of the Yassna Habtangaiti  in Yassna 35.2 if you remember when we were talking about the Avestan texts in  our introductory lecture we mentioned the how Yang Avestan texts were  introduced as buffers at key points in the composition of our old Avestan  texts so here we have an example where Yassna 35.1 has this function it's a  buffer between the end of the Gatas and the Yassna Habtangaiti which starts  exactly at Yassna 35.2 so let us listen to this text  I'm reading it out first the text in on the left in the left column is again  the transcription from transliteration from the manuscripts and on the right  you can see the phonological interpretation and then a translation  so I'm reading the text as you have it here in the transliteration who much  and the translation of this is something like of good thoughts of good words good  deeds both here and elsewhere being done and having been done we are welcome  us not revilers of such good things we are namely of such such good things is  of good thoughts good words good deeds here you already have the implication of  bad thoughts bad words bad deeds which are rejected now then let us look at  this text and I would like here to focus on the stylistic devices which are  being employed in the composition of this text the first stylistic device is  that of alliteration who who who the first syllable of the first three words  opening words of the entire Yassna Habtangaiti are these three words who  Matanam, Huhtanam, Huwastanam and these of three words then become  something like the motto of the Zoroastrian religion it's the triad which  you find everywhere in Zoroastrian contexts contexts even today they denote  the chief commitment of the followers of this religion so this idea of good  thoughts good words good deeds goes back right here to the older Avesta the  Yassna Habtangaiti in particular and of course the opposite Dusjmata Dusjurtha  Dusjvarshta is implied and that's rejected as is done here in our stanza  the expression of the second line Yadaccha An Yadaccha both here and  elsewhere is the stylistic device of argument and counter argument and it  denotes the idea of totality in space that means both here and anywhere else  and this expression is then followed by a expression of the totality in time in  so far as present and past are referred to being done now and having been done in  the past the future here is not mentioned it they refer to the present and  the past deeds of those they are welcomeers of course thoughts words and  deeds and then the final two lines are constructed as a chiasmus with the verb  mahi we are here mahi we are both at the beginning and at the end of the close  they frame the entire close and there we have again almost a synonym synonymous  expression Ibi Jartara is the welcomeers and Nye Nye star Nye star is from  nightstar from the need to rebuke and Nye is a negative prefix here either Nye  or night which denotes which negates it we are not blamers so we are welcomeers  we are not blamers so again an implicit reference to the bad ones so  Dushu Dushmata Dushuhta Dushvarshta because those people who practice Dushmata  Dushuhta Dushvarshta they blame who Mata who Uhtahu Vahshta they reject them but  here these ones the people who pronounce these words here of the Yassna this  verse from the Yassna Habtanghaiti they are not such people they are not such  blamers and they state that explicitly right at the center of this chiasity  construction which is framed by the verbal form Mahi and then this Nye  Nye star is further then complemented by the expression Yassana Vahunam now this  Yassna is an interesting form it is the relative pronoun Yat extended by the  particle Na so it represents Yatna and this again a sandy form with a  thir instead of the expected implosive thir it has been merged into one and  there are parallels for such a development also in Old Avestan Chisana so  these are sandy forms where these two words have been merged into one and  here the sir is somehow represents the implosive our implosive thir in word  final position so here internally it's realized as a  fricative as a voiceless fricative Chisana and Yassna and it's it's a  sort of a restituted postal form Yassna and Chisna standing for Yatna and  Chitna and the form with internal sandy would have been Yatna and Chitna by  normal assimilation of the voiceless thir to the voiced D N follow of the  first sound of the particle Na so this links then the complement the genitive  plural Vahunam of what is good we are not blamers of what is good and here  this Vahunam this refers back to this three times who who who mentioned at  the beginning in the plural Vahunam of what is good so all of that is being  welcomed is being praised is being received full-heartedly and it's not  being rejected and that's what's being affirmed here right at the outset of  this of this text now there is some debate about the poetic form of the  Yassna Abtanghaiti in older literature it's being refers to as a prose text  however what I hope it has become clear that this is a densely composed text and  employs a wide range of poetic figures as we have seen just in these few lines  and that these figures form smaller units they don't form any units of the  kind of the garters where we have fixed numbers of verse lines fixed stanzas  which a fixed number of verse lines and each verse line has a fixed number of  syllables with a saesura at a determined place nothing like this here in the  Yassna Abtanghaiti but we do have a poetic form I think but it's a different  poetic form it is an internally structured rhythm which we have here we  have little clauses which are organized and internally deeply structured so this  is a type of poetry which was particularly popular by amongst the  Indo-Iranian people and maybe even earlier for liturgies when they recited  texts in the in the rituals as part of of the rituals and Yassna Abtanghaiti  has never been any doubt that the Yassna Abtanghaiti is a liturgy it's  actually quite a self-contained liturgy it has a beginning at an end it has an  high point right in the middle in Yassna 38 where the waters are being praised  and it is a poetic form which has its parallels in other liturgical forms of  Latin poetry the Suo Vittoralia for example and other texts but it's a  different type of poetry so in some ways you can then say that the oldest  Avestan texts which have survived the older Avesta attests to two very archaic  forms of poetry the Gartas have the syllable counting Stihik poetic form  and the Yassna Abtanghaiti has the strophic form of internally structured  rhythmic phrases and the number of phrases you add you you add is not  limited by any way limited as it is in the Gartas now so we have now reached the  end of this session it concludes our taster session on Avestan texts I hope  you enjoyed it and I thank you very much for watching goodbye
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Hello there! In the meantime, you may have seen me already. My name is Almut Hinze. Welcome to the final session of our introductory course on Avestum. In this video, we are going to look at two short sample texts of the Avesta in order to illustrate some of the points that were made in the previous lessons with a real text. The texts I have chosen are two stanzas from the Garzikim Jassna 44 and a verse from the Jassna Habtanghaiti. So two older western texts but of two different text genres. Jassna 44 is one of the best-known hymns of the Gatas. It is sometimes referred to as cosmological hymn because there are several stanzas that ask questions about where phenomena we find in nature and in human life come from. The hymn consists of 20 stanzas. With the exception of the last stanza, each of them is introduced by the sentence Tat Thva Purasa Irishmoy Vauja Ahura. That means, I ask you this, tell me truly, O Lord! The stylistic device of Anafura thus characterizes the composition of this hymn. That means a repetition of this line at the beginning of each hymn. Stylistically, the hymn is couched in the situation of a conversation between a person, the I and his God, Ahura Mazda. No answers are given to the questions which are being asked but since the questions are rhetorical, the answer is implied. It is always Ahura Mazda who has ordered the cosmos. Now let us look at the first stanza which we are going to discuss. This is Yasna 44.3 and you can see it here on the slide. You can see it in transliteration of the text as we find it in the manuscripts and here you have a phonemic interpretation of the text as we read it in the manuscript keeping in mind that what we read in the manuscripts is sound not meaning but as here we have a phonemic interpretation of that sound and here obviously that's the translation. So if you allow me to read it what it might sound in its in its avestan as we read it in the manuscript it would sound something like This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the stars? Who is it by whom the moon not only waxes but also wanes? I wish to know this and other things oh wise one. Now this is after what I've just read is the text as it appears in the manuscripts. You can see on the right hand side of this slide the phonemic interpretation of that text as it appears in the manuscript in the manuscripts and you can also see that there is a gap in the middle of a line and that is the Cesura. The meter of this stanza is four plus seven syllables and you may also have noticed that some of the words are pronounced as if there with a slur in them and this included the words and also the word which I read and if we read them in this way we do get the regular meaning so Kasna Khvahang for syllables and then stramcha we need to read with three syllables stramcha dat atva nam to get seven syllables and then the next line kya maa uhshie ti nirv sai ti swat so four plus seven syllables and this is how the meter works. Syllable counting with a Cesura after a fixed number of syllables in this case after four syllables. Now just let me read the translation of this. This I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting? Who has established the path of the Sun and the stars? Who is it by whom the moon not only waxed but also wanes? I wish to know this and other things oh wise one. I must add here a word of caution the translation is as tentative as is the phonological interpretation. All that's really certain is what we actually read in the manuscripts and even that is that is given here on the left hand side is rather odd looking text that is what we read in the manuscripts here also in a sort of normalized standardized representation. The readings of the manuscripts are even much more varying so then let us look at a few words of a particular interest in this stanza. The word spelled Pau Ruiu in the first line that's this one here it's in the Avestan script here incorporates several phonetic features which are phonologically irrelevant. Old Persian Paruvia this one here and Vedic Purvia are the etymological equivalents of this old Avestan word and they indicate that the phonological interpretation of the Avestan word is Parvia or Parvia this sievers law. The phonetic processes which affected this form were first U-apentysis producing Old Avestan Pau Ruiu this form here Pau Ruiu with U-apentysis sorry this one here Pau Ruiu you see this the U which precedes the R is apensetic it is anticipated from the word which follows the R. So this would have been the old Avestan form something like Pau Ruiu. Now and this is more or less the underlying form which we read in the older Avesta and that's how this word has been interpreted phonologically in the phonological interpretation section of this stanza. Now in young Avestan we have a sound change which affected this word and this is a specifically young Avestan sound change of Ruiu to Uriu. We have the sound sequence Ruiu in our word here this is Ruiu the U being a phonologically irrelevant and that means that our parvia became young Avestan Pau Ruiu that means the V after the R jump forward and disappeared after the R and this then produced a form where we have an I following Ruiu and that triggered off eye apentysis or if you like palatalization of the R in phonetic terms. So the outcome of all of this is then our younger Avestan form Pau Pau Yiria and here then in the younger Avestan form we have the feature that the preceding the R this or here which originally is the epithetic of the old Avestan form is reinterpreted as a second member of a diphthong of a diphthong Aau and this is then followed by an epithetic eye. So here we then have our younger Avestan form Pau Yiria and these are all phonetic processes not phonological but they surface very strongly in the forms which we have actually attested and of course obviously they need to be explained. Now let's look at the next word which is this word written in bold letters, Khwong which we've already mentioned and this word is metrically disulabic although it looks monosulabic but it isn't. We've discussed this word already earlier in the session on phonology as an example for dialectal forms in Avestan texts and we mentioned other forms which have initial Khwong especially in words which are located in river names and a land name located in the area of the hill mount basin in Sistan. Now here in this particular word we would not expect a form with Khwong instead we would expect a form with initial Khu-v, that means a syllable and this would account for the syllable which we are missing. So we would expect a form like Khu-wong in Old Avestan which however we don't have. However that such a form really existed is demonstrated by the Young Avestan form Khwong. We have in Young Avestan a form which I'm now going to write here Khwong which is the genitive singular of the word for son, means of the son and this form Khwong goes back to an earlier Khu-wur, pre-Young Avestan if you like Khu-wur. This then becomes Khu-wur and then ends up as Khu in Young Avestan and this Khu-wur in turn is the descents directly from our postulated Old Avestan form Khu-wong. So indirectly the Young Avestan form who demonstrates that a form Khu-wur must have existed but we don't have it. Instead we have this form with the unexpected Khu-wur. So here the Khu-wur is a dialectal feature which entered the pronunciation of the Old Avesta only and this consistently this form Khu-wur is a tested three times in the Gata's always metrically disyllabic and consistently in this form. The Mita is also gives us also a hint about for the disyllabic value of the nominative singular Ma, the nominative singular of the word for the moon and this in the on the surface again looks like a monosyllabic form but it isn't. The disyllabic metrical value is here only explicable with reference to the intervocalic laryngeal which must have been present at the time when this text was composed obviously. The word for the moon is derived from the verb root Ma which is M in the European M, E and the first laryngeal to measure and that is extended with the suffix A, H, Indo-Iranian E, S in Indo-European and there was then an intervocalic laryngeal in the nominative singular something like this in Old Iranian, Avestan Ma, A for the nominative singular. The laryngeal must still have been realized as a distinct sound in order to prevent the merger of the two vowels R which was otherwise have been adjacent and the merger of these two vowels R into one long A is just natural so there must have been something which blocked this merger and that is the laryngeal which we can make responsible for this. So here I've represented this consonant, this glottal consonant between the two vowels R with the sign for the glottal stop this sort of question mark sign. Now the last word of this stanza which I would like to comment on is the form Vidje. This is an infinitive it's metrically disolubic and we have a parallel formation for this sort of infinitive in the Ghaasic form Da Voi here and that looks on the surface as if it is a suffix Vai attached directly to the verbal root. Now Avestan infinitives are normally case forms usually they are datives and they are derived not from verbal roots but from a verbal noun and usually they have a verbal meaning so they denote an action but the form and Vai is not found anywhere else either in Avestan or in other Indo-European languages. We would therefore much more like an analysis in which here the ending i the dative ending i is attached to a u stem and this is what Jeremy Mao, Rau has proposed he suggests that these infinitives in fact derive from stems Vidhu and Dahu attached extended by the dative ending i and these stems would denote the act of knowing and the act of giving. So much on this stanza then let's have a look at the next stanza. This is Yasna 44.4 so as before I would like to read it keeping in mind that the meter is as in the previous stanza four plus seven syllables. So we read here. And this translation would be something like this I ask you tell me truly oh Lord who upholds the earth below and the clouds from falling down who upholds the waters and the plants who yolks the swift teams to the wind and the clouds who is the creator of good sort O wise one. You have the phonological interpretation as before again on the right. So let's look at a few of these words in this stanza there the all the words which I would like to talk on are in this line which you have written here at the top. The first word is Vatai the form is the dative singular of the noun Vata the wind and it's again metrically tricelabic. So the Gata is here give us valuable evidence for the laryngeal which is in at the end of the verbal root namely the root Vat to blow and it's the first laryngeal and here the laryngeal comes to stand between two consonants the consonant following the laryngeal being a vocalized N which vocalizes to a in Indo-Iranian and so we get the form Vata to be precise I should have written this rather as a glottal stop. So here I was just trying to indicate this it should be of course I've been slightly inconsistent here it's the glottal stop but the notation is a bit open to debate it's certainly a consonant here consonantal glottal stop quite indistinct probably phonetically which prevented the merger of the two vowels into one long a and which forms the hiatus and is responsible for the tricelabic metrical value of the word Vatae the dative singular. Then the next word I would like to comment on is the form Yoke. This is the third singular injunctive or aorist root aorist of the root Yoke here this root here and it's however not what we would expect we would expect something like jaocht in our western you see something jaocht this is supposed to be an a sorry jaocht and which would be phonologically jaocht from a preform jaucht so the secondary ending attached to the full grade root that would be a normal third singular injunctive of the root aorist of this root but we don't have this we instead we have this rather curious form jaocht so now what is this we have a few some parallels for such a phenomenon this sequence gut gut at the end of words one of them is the form Paiti aocht answering it's an also an alter of Olde-Western form and then we have was a younger Western form Bresi aocht these are both participants apparently and from the root aocht to speak so also from a root that ends in a voiced stop just like huge although here in our historically that ja goes back to a voiced aspirated stop and a various huge is just a normal an aspirated stop so we cannot invoke Bartolomé's law here whereas we could in the case of aug de now there are various theories about where this good comes from perhaps it's a sandy form it seems to represent something phonetic and the tur is this implosive sound which is articulated with the occlusion of the stop remaining unresolved and this sound occur in a western occurs at word boundaries almost always at the end of a word but in a couple of instances also at the beginning of the word where it's always it's per placed in front of another stop now here we have it after another stop a voiced stop and in the case of jaocht and in the case of the yes yes now 46.8 form piteaocht answering and Bresi aocht loudly spoken the root ends here in a voiced stopger or girl and here good might represent a sandy form in our case here it occurs before a su before of a word starting with a vowel so is that reflection of a is a sandy form perhaps I don't I don't have an answer and I'm just mentioning what has been thought and just to make things complete the picture here we have got two more forms with a good and they are from roots ending in a voiceless stop the root from a root only one hatch to follow which is of course an old Indo-European labia or villa voiceless sequa and it's found in these compounds ashish hacht and Arma it ish hacht and it's this means accompanied by reward or and accompanied by right-mindedness and here a T is not expected at all and it's this also occurs the to the gut sequence also occurs in the adverb Paragd which is from a nominal stem parange so here again one would one wouldn't really expect the term in fact these forms ashish hacht and Arma it ish hacht they refer to a neuter stem so they could they are grammatically neuter forms and it has been thought whether this is a neuter T attached to the end to the root but the form remains rather curious anyway so it's a bit they are still rather mysterious perhaps going moving on to the next word which is the word arsou swift it's the accusative dual of the adjective arsou week okus oku swift and here it is combined with our form yawch yawkd yawch the root yawch to yawk now here this stanza offers a very nice instance of a phraseological agreement between Vedic and Avestan the combination of arsou this dual form which is the two swift ones the two races these are the two horses the races which are being yawked and that has a phraseological parallel in the Vedic language where we have the expression you nudge me arsou I am yawking the swift team literally I am yawking the two swift ones namely the two swift horses and here at this point I would just like to refer you back to our very first lecture in this series you may remember we were we talked about the horse and the chariot and the important role this animal and the chariot play in the imagery of the Vedic and the Avestan texts so here we have this very important combination of the horse which is yawked to the chariot and that would have been thus chariot with a spoked wheel which is very swift in battle and in chariot race so with this image here I would like to conclude our discussion of the Gatas and would like to move on to our second and final sample text which is a stanza from the Yassna Habtangaiti now the stanza I have chosen is Yassna 35.2 the very opening stanza of the Yassna Habtangaiti this stanza is preceded by Yassna 35.1 but this stanza is in Yang Avestan and it is a stanza which intervenes between the last stanza of the Ahuna Vaitygata Yassna 34 and the beginning of the Yassna Habtangaiti in Yassna 35.2 if you remember when we were talking about the Avestan texts in our introductory lecture we mentioned the how Yang Avestan texts were introduced as buffers at key points in the composition of our old Avestan texts so here we have an example where Yassna 35.1 has this function it's a buffer between the end of the Gatas and the Yassna Habtangaiti which starts exactly at Yassna 35.2 so let us listen to this text I'm reading it out first the text in on the left in the left column is again the transcription from transliteration from the manuscripts and on the right you can see the phonological interpretation and then a translation so I'm reading the text as you have it here in the transliteration who much and the translation of this is something like of good thoughts of good words good deeds both here and elsewhere being done and having been done we are welcome us not revilers of such good things we are namely of such such good things is of good thoughts good words good deeds here you already have the implication of bad thoughts bad words bad deeds which are rejected now then let us look at this text and I would like here to focus on the stylistic devices which are being employed in the composition of this text the first stylistic device is that of alliteration who who who the first syllable of the first three words opening words of the entire Yassna Habtangaiti are these three words who Matanam, Huhtanam, Huwastanam and these of three words then become something like the motto of the Zoroastrian religion it's the triad which you find everywhere in Zoroastrian contexts contexts even today they denote the chief commitment of the followers of this religion so this idea of good thoughts good words good deeds goes back right here to the older Avesta the Yassna Habtangaiti in particular and of course the opposite Dusjmata Dusjurtha Dusjvarshta is implied and that's rejected as is done here in our stanza the expression of the second line Yadaccha An Yadaccha both here and elsewhere is the stylistic device of argument and counter argument and it denotes the idea of totality in space that means both here and anywhere else and this expression is then followed by a expression of the totality in time in so far as present and past are referred to being done now and having been done in the past the future here is not mentioned it they refer to the present and the past deeds of those they are welcomeers of course thoughts words and deeds and then the final two lines are constructed as a chiasmus with the verb mahi we are here mahi we are both at the beginning and at the end of the close they frame the entire close and there we have again almost a synonym synonymous expression Ibi Jartara is the welcomeers and Nye Nye star Nye star is from nightstar from the need to rebuke and Nye is a negative prefix here either Nye or night which denotes which negates it we are not blamers so we are welcomeers we are not blamers so again an implicit reference to the bad ones so Dushu Dushmata Dushuhta Dushvarshta because those people who practice Dushmata Dushuhta Dushvarshta they blame who Mata who Uhtahu Vahshta they reject them but here these ones the people who pronounce these words here of the Yassna this verse from the Yassna Habtanghaiti they are not such people they are not such blamers and they state that explicitly right at the center of this chiasity construction which is framed by the verbal form Mahi and then this Nye Nye star is further then complemented by the expression Yassana Vahunam now this Yassna is an interesting form it is the relative pronoun Yat extended by the particle Na so it represents Yatna and this again a sandy form with a thir instead of the expected implosive thir it has been merged into one and there are parallels for such a development also in Old Avestan Chisana so these are sandy forms where these two words have been merged into one and here the sir is somehow represents the implosive our implosive thir in word final position so here internally it's realized as a fricative as a voiceless fricative Chisana and Yassna and it's it's a sort of a restituted postal form Yassna and Chisna standing for Yatna and Chitna and the form with internal sandy would have been Yatna and Chitna by normal assimilation of the voiceless thir to the voiced D N follow of the first sound of the particle Na so this links then the complement the genitive plural Vahunam of what is good we are not blamers of what is good and here this Vahunam this refers back to this three times who who who mentioned at the beginning in the plural Vahunam of what is good so all of that is being welcomed is being praised is being received full-heartedly and it's not being rejected and that's what's being affirmed here right at the outset of this of this text now there is some debate about the poetic form of the Yassna Abtanghaiti in older literature it's being refers to as a prose text however what I hope it has become clear that this is a densely composed text and employs a wide range of poetic figures as we have seen just in these few lines and that these figures form smaller units they don't form any units of the kind of the garters where we have fixed numbers of verse lines fixed stanzas which a fixed number of verse lines and each verse line has a fixed number of syllables with a saesura at a determined place nothing like this here in the Yassna Abtanghaiti but we do have a poetic form I think but it's a different poetic form it is an internally structured rhythm which we have here we have little clauses which are organized and internally deeply structured so this is a type of poetry which was particularly popular by amongst the Indo-Iranian people and maybe even earlier for liturgies when they recited texts in the in the rituals as part of of the rituals and Yassna Abtanghaiti has never been any doubt that the Yassna Abtanghaiti is a liturgy it's actually quite a self-contained liturgy it has a beginning at an end it has an high point right in the middle in Yassna 38 where the waters are being praised and it is a poetic form which has its parallels in other liturgical forms of Latin poetry the Suo Vittoralia for example and other texts but it's a different type of poetry so in some ways you can then say that the oldest Avestan texts which have survived the older Avesta attests to two very archaic forms of poetry the Gartas have the syllable counting Stihik poetic form and the Yassna Abtanghaiti has the strophic form of internally structured rhythmic phrases and the number of phrases you add you you add is not limited by any way limited as it is in the Gartas now so we have now reached the end of this session it concludes our taster session on Avestan texts I hope you enjoyed it and I thank you very much for watching goodbye
two short sample texts of the Avesta in order to stop and in the case of jaocht and in the case of the Avestan texts in our introductory lecture we