Avestan Language

Information about Avestan Language

Avestan
Spoken in:	liturgical language of Zoroastrianism
Language extinction:	likely by the 7th century BC
Language family:	}}} Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Iranian Avestan}}}
Writing system:	Avestan alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	`ae`
ISO 639-2:	`ave`
ISO 639-3:	`ave`
Yasna 28.1, Ahunavaiti Gatha (Bodleian MS J2)

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. Avestan contains passive morpheme quite similar to that of Gorani or Hewrami, one of two major dialects spoken today by modern Kurds in Iran and Iraq.^[1]

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:

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 BC (roughly contemporary to the Brahmana period of Vedic Sanskrit).
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,^[2] 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).

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

After the alleged destruction of the Achaemenid palace library by Alexander the Great in 330 BC, the Avesta was transmitted orally until at least the first, and most likely until the 4th century AD. The script used for the writing of Avesta, called Dīn Dabireh, developed during the 5th or 6th century (late Sassanian times) was a derivative of Pahlavi script of Middle Persian. Dīn Dabireh is specially designed to reflect the Avestan sound system, not unlike Devanāgarī, it allows phonetic disambiguation of allophones.

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

	Labial		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alveolar or palatal		Velar		Labiovelar		Glottal
Nasal		m /m/		n /n/				ń [ɲ]		ŋ /ŋ/		ŋ^w /ŋʷ/
Plosive	p /p/	b /b/	t /t/	d /d/			č /tʃ/	ǰ /dʒ/	k /k/	g /g/
Fricative	f /ɸ, f/	β /β/	θ /θ/	δ /ğ/	s /s/	z /z/	š /ʃ/	ž /ʒ/	x /x/	γ /ɣ/	x^w /xʷ/		h /h/
Approximant								y /j/				w /w/
Trill				r /r/
Lateral				l /l/

Vowels

	short	long	short	long	short	long
	Front		Central		Back
Close	i /i/	ī /iː/			u /u/	ū /uː/
Mid	e /e/	ē /eː/	ə /ə/	ə̄ /əː/	o /o/	ō /oː/
Open			a /a/	ā /aː/		å /ɒː/
Nasal			ą /ã/

Grammar

Nouns

Case	"normal" endings			a-stems: (masc. neut.)
Case	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	-s	-ā	-ō (-as), -ā	-ō (yasn-ō)	-a (vīr-a)	-a (-yasna)
Vocative	-	-ā	-ō (-as), -ā	-a (ahur-a)	-a (vīr-a)	-a (yasn-a), -ångho
Accusative	-em	-ā	-ō (-as, -ns), -ā	-em (ahur-em)	-a (vīr-a)	-ą (haom-ą)
Instrumental	-ā	-byā	-bīš	-a (ahur-a)	-aēibya (vīr-aēibya)	-āiš (yasn-āiš)
Dative	-ē	-byā	-byō (-byas)	-āi (ahur-āi)	-aēibya (vīr-aēibya)	-aēibyō (yasn-aēibyō)
Ablative	-at	-byā	-byō	-āt (yasn-āt)	-aēibya (vīr-aēibya)	-aēibyō (yasn-aēibyō)
Genitive	-ō (-as)	-å	-ąm	-ahe (ahur-ahe)	-ayå (vīr-ayå)	-anąm (yasn-anąm)
Locative	-i	-ō, -yō	-su, -hu, -šva	-e (yesn-e)	-ayō (zast-ayō)	-aēšu (vīr-aēšu), -aēšva

Verbs

Primary active endings
Person	Sg.	Du.	Pl.
1.	-mi	-vahi	-mahi
2.	-hi	-tha	-tha
3.	-ti	-tō, -thō	-ngti

Notes

1. ^ Dr. Michiel Leezenberg: Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish
2. ^ Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum (1989), p. 35

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

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.

• • [ e] Iranian languages
Old	Western: Median · Old Persian Eastern: Avestan^† · Old Scythian · Old Sogdian
Middle	Western: Parthian^† · Middle Persian Eastern: Bactrian^† · Khwarezmian^† · Ossetic · Parnian · Sacian · Saka · Scythian · Sogdian
Modern	Western: Alviri (Vidri) · Ashtiani · Old Azari^† · Baluchi · Bashkardi · Central Iran · Persian Dari · Dari (Zoroastrian) · Gilaki · Gorani · Harzani · Judeo-Persian · Kurdish Kurmanji · Laki · Luri · Bakhtiari Lori · Mazandarani · Ormuri · Sangsari · Parachi · New Persian · Sorani (Kurdish) · Tajik · Taleshi · Tat · Tati · Vafsi · Zazaki Eastern: Bartangi · Hindukush Group · Ishkashmi · Karakoram Group · Khufi · Munji · Oroshori · New Ossetic · Parachi · Pashto · Roshani (Roshni) · Sanglechi · Sarikoli · Shughni · Wakhi · Vanji^† · Waziri · Yaghnobi · Yidgha · Yazgulami · Zebaki
Legend: † Extinct language (no surviving native speakers and no spoken descendant)

Zoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zartosht). Mazdaism is the religion that acknowledges the divine authority of Ahura Mazda, proclaimed by Zoroaster to be the one uncreated Creator of
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An extinct language is a language which no longer has any native speakers, in contrast to a dead language, which is a language which has stopped changing in grammar, vocabulary, and the complete meaning of a sentence.
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The 7th century BC started the first day of 700 BC and ended the last day of 601 BC.

Events

700 BC to 600 BC — Baudhayana Sulbasutra, an orally transmitted Vedic Sanskrit text on altar construction, contains the earliest extant verbal statement of the

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A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics.
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Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of four language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, and Dardic.
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Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. With the Indo-Aryan languages they form the Indo-Iranian languages group. Avestan and Old Persian are the oldest recorded Iranian languages.
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Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times (from ca. the 4th century BC) The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian, but this is uncertain.
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writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

General properties

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the
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Avestan

ISO 15924 Avst

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during the Sassanid era (226-651) to render the Avestan language.
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ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. It consists of 136 two-letter codes used to identify the world's major languages. These codes are a useful international shorthand for indicating languages.
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ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for each language in this part of the standard are referred to as "Alpha-3" codes. There are 464 language codes in the list.
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ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. It extends the ISO 639-2 alpha-3 codes with an aim to cover all known natural languages. The standard was published by ISO on 5 February 2007^[1].
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For the Swedish town, see .

The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. The texts originate over a period spanning most of the 1st millennium BC, and notably include the Old Avestan
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languages of India primarily belong to two major linguistic families, Indo-European (whose branch Indo-Aryan is spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by about 24%).
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Sanskrit}}} | style="padding-left: 0.5em;" | Writing system: | colspan="2" style="padding-left: 0.5em;" | Devanāgarī and several other Brāhmī-based scripts ! colspan="3" style="text-align: center; color: black; background-color: lawngreen;"|Official
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Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects ^[1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the northern Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and much of Central Asia.
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Gorani can refer to:

Peoples:

Gorani (ethnic group) (Gorans, Goranci), a people from the mountainous region of Gora in Serbia (Kosovo) and Albania.

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Gorani (also Gurani) is a language in the province of Kurdistan and province of Kermanshah in Iran, and in the Halabja region in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Hewraman mountains between Iran and Iraq.
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Kurdistan

Turkey ^[1] ^[2]

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Old Persian}}}
Writing system: Old Persian Cuneiform
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: peo
ISO 639-3: peo

Old Persian is one of the two attested forms of Old Iranian languages.
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The Gathas (Gāθās) are 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself. They are the most sacred texts of the Zoroastrian faith.
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Yasna (Avestan: 'oblation' or 'worship') is the name of the primary liturgical collection of texts of the Avesta as well as the name of the principal Zoroastrian act of worship at which those verses are recited.
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inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person.
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Vedic Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language, the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian, attested during the period between roughly 1700 BCE (early Rigveda) and 600
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Zoroaster (Greek Ζωροάστρης, Zōroastrēs) or Zarathustra (Avestan: Zaraθuštra), also referred to as Zartosht (Persian:
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