For other uses of the word "Avesta", see Avesta (disambiguation).
For the Swedish town, see Avesta (locality).
Avesta
French translation of the Avesta by Polish Orientalist Ignacy Pietraszewski, Berlin, 1858.
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The Avesta (/əˈvɛstə/) is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.[1]
The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the liturgical group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism's primary act of worship, and at which the Yasna text is recited. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to Zoroaster himself. These hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the Yasna, are in the Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasna's texts are in Younger Avestan, which is not only from a later stage of the language, but also from a different geographic region.
Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Vendidad and the Visperad.[2] The Visperad extensions consist mainly of additional invocations of the divinities (yazatas),[3] while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws.[3] Even today, the Vendidad is the only liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory.[3] Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts,[3] which are hymns to the individual yazatas. Unlike the Yasna, Visperad and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these other lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza, and various other fragments. Together, these lesser texts are conventionally called Khordeh Avesta or "Little Avesta" texts. When the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, these texts (together with some non-Avestan language prayers) became a book of common prayer for lay people.[2]
The term Avesta is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Middle Persian abestāg,[4][5] Book Pahlavi ʾp(y)stʾkʼ. In that context, abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge, and are distinguished from the exegetical commentaries (the zand) thereof. The literal meaning of the word abestāg is uncertain; it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The widely repeated derivation from *upa-stavaka is from Christian Bartholomae (Altiranisches Wörterbuch, 1904), who interpreted abestāg as a descendant of a hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian word for "praise-song" (Bartholomae: Lobgesang); but this word is not actually attested in any text.
The Avesta (/əˈvɛstə/) is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into several...
the world's oldest organized faiths, it is based on the teachings of the Avesta and the Iranian prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrians exalt an uncreated and benevolent...
Mehrdad Avesta (Mohammad Reza Rahmani, Persian: مهرداد اوستا; 8 August 1930 – 6 May 1991) was an Iranian poet. He was born in Borujerd (on 8 August 1930)...
Khordeh Avesta, meaning 'little, or lesser, or small Avesta', is the name given to two different collections of Zoroastrian religious texts. One of the...
Avesta Motorstadion also called the Arena Avesta or Stadion Brovalla is a 12,000 capacity motorcycle speedway track located 10 kilometres south of Krylbo...
from their conjoined use as the scriptural language of Zoroastrianism; the Avesta serves as their namesake. Both are early Eastern Iranian languages within...
Avesta Municipality (Avesta kommun) is one of 290 municipalities of Sweden. It is in Dalarna County, in the central part of the country, and its seat...
times in the later parts of the Avesta. The Tuiryas as they were called in Avesta play a more important role in the Avesta than the Sairimas, Sainus and...
the place where Zarathustra received the religion from Ahura Mazda. The Avesta also names it as the first of the "sixteen perfect lands" that Ahura Mazda...
the Avesta it is also called the Sarsaok. In the 14th century, it was said to have raided Iran, giving itself a name as a fearsome beast. The Avesta is...
Persian (from the Achaemenid Empire) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones...
substantivizing -ta suffix, hence aṣ̌i/arti "that which is granted." In the Avesta, the term implies both material and spiritual recompense. Although conceptually...
number of real-world mountains in Iran and neighboring regions. In the Avesta, Mount Hara is the home of Mithra. In later texts like the Bundahishn, it...
like Ormazd. This is significantly different from what is found in the Avesta (where Mazda's stock epithet is dadvah, "Creator", implying Mazda is the...
pre-Arm. *Zuradašt". There is no consensus on the dating of Zoroaster. The Avesta gives no direct information about it, while historical sources are conflicting...
principally defined as the interpretation of Avesta, the Zoroastrian religious book. The Zend, an explanation of Avesta which is written in Pahlavi language and...
languages (هوم). The physical attributes, as described in the texts of the Avesta, include: the plant has stems, roots and branches (Yasna 10.5). it has a...
exegetical glosses, paraphrases, commentaries and translations of the Avesta's texts. The term zand is a contraction of the Avestan language word zainti...
1500 – c. 500 BCE) is the period in the history of the Iranians when the Avesta was produced. It saw important contributions to both the religious sphere...
Arsher Avesta Ali (born 9 April 1984) is a British actor. He has played various TV and film roles, and is a regular lead performer at the Royal Shakespeare...
Nuriye Kesbir (also known as Sozdar Avesta; born 20 June 1948), is a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and also of the presidential council...
Avesta AIK is a Swedish football club located in Avesta, Sweden. The club was founded in February 1905 as Avesta Absolutisters Idrottsklubb. The name was...
Avesta architectural complex (or "Avesta" garden-complex) is a complex consisting of a garden and a monumental object located on Al-Khorazmi street, Urgench...
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