Iranian Traditions

Tradition2 entries

Book · around 800 CE

The Avesta

A Liturgy, Not a Book

Zoroastrian scripture in Avestan, held to be Ahura Mazdā's revelation to Zarathustra.

SignificanceThe Pahlavi books tell it as revelation: twenty-one nasks created by Ahura Mazdā, brought by Zarathustra to king Vištāspa, written out twice, then scattered by Alexander's Greeks.

The FindingAnquetil-Duperron's Avesta of 1771 drew William Jones's charge that the Parsis had duped him with forgeries; Tychsen and Heeren vindicated him only in 1791–94.

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Book · Iranian Traditions · 1323

The Gāthās

Memorised for Two Millennia

Seventeen Old Avestan hymns ascribed to Zarathustra, recited within the Zoroastrian Yasna liturgy.

SignificanceTheir moral world turns on one opposition: aša, truth and right order, against druj, the Lie. Each person must choose between them, as the twin spirits did (Yasna 30).

The FindingThe oldest copies containing the Gāthās are two Yasna manuscripts, J2 and K5, written in Gujarat in 1323 by the priest Mihrābān Kayhusraw.

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