Avestan – Introduction, Part 2
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Hintze, Almut
Introduction to the Avestan text corpus, the Avesta itself and its literary composition and transmission.
 Hello and welcome to the second lesson of our module on Avesten. Today we are going to look at the Avesten texts and at their use in Zoroastrian religious practice in ritual in particular. But before we go into this, let's look more closely at the term Avesta. The word Avesten is not an Avesten word, but it comes from Middle Persian abhistar, which is spelled like this in the Pachlavi script. The word is also found in Pazant, which is the spelling of Pachlavi in the fully vocalized Avesten script, and there it is spelled abhistar. This picture here illustrates the way the word Avestak, the Pachlavi word, occurs in the Pachlavi script. We will talk about the Avesten script in the third lesson. The meaning of Avestak is disputed. The two main competing explanations both start from a nominal derivative with the suffix akka, which is in Avestak, from a verbal compound, but attach it to different compounds. According to the first explanation proposed by Christiane Bartolomé, the noun derives from the verb upastu and goes back to upastavaka. Praise. Jean Kellens has supported this explanation by pointing out the phraseological combination of the verb upastu with the noun hauma in Yassna 10, which forms part of the hymn to hauma. According to Kellens, the name denotes the book which begins with the praise of hauma. The second explanation was put forward by Walter Bruno Henning. He reads the Middle Persian word as abhistar, from Old Iranian abhi staka at munition. And he interprets it as the injunction of urmast. Middle Persian abhistar would be, according to Henning, a cognate of Sogdian upstavan, which is spelled upstavan in the Sogdian script, and upstavan like this in the Manichaean script. And there is a morphological parallel for this in Old Persian nishtavan. And according to Henning, abhi staka then goes back to the Sogdian word upstavan, then goes back to an earlier abhi stavan. Werner Sundermann has further elaborated on this explanation, pointing out that in Christian Sogdian pashstavan translates the Syriac ditka, which in turn renders the name of the New Testament, Greek diateche, disposition testament. Sundermann suggests that Middle Persian abhi staka specifically denotes the written abhesta. According to Sundermann, abhi staka became the word for the Zoroastrian sacred texts at precisely the time when they were committed to writing in the late Sasanian period. In choosing this word for the written abhesta, Sundermann argues, the Zoroastrians emulated Jews and Christians who perceived of their own scriptures as divine injunctions. The abhesta is by no means a uniform corpus. It includes texts from different periods and of different literary genres. With respect to language, there are two basic divisions. The first consists of texts composed in a more archaic idiom commonly called Old Avestan. The second, usually called Young Avestan, is slightly different dialectally and shows a more advanced stage of linguistic development. In addition, good arguments have recently been put forward for positing a third Middle Avestan layer, which is between the older and the younger abhesta. The oldest Avestan texts sit right in the middle of the core Zoroastrian ritual, the jasna, where they occupy chapters 28 to 54 of the text's 72 chapters. They are made up of 17 hymns grouped according to their meter into five gatas. The younger abhesta refers to them as the five gatas of Zarathustra and presents Zarathustra as the individual through whom the god Ahura Mazda communicated the Mazda worshipping religion or Dainah Mazda Yasni to humankind. The gatas are held in the highest esteem by Zoroastrians up to the present day and they are frequently quoted in the Young Avestan texts. The first Ahuna Vaity Gata comprises seven hymns and extends from Yasna 28 to 34. The second Ustavaity Gata is made up of four hymns. The third Spönta Mayu Gata is made up of equally four hymns. Then we have the Vohukshatra Gata which consists of one hymn only and the Vahishtoistigata which also consists of only one hymn. At the beginning and at the end of these five gatas are placed two holy prayers. One, the Yata Ahuvayriya prayer, the holiest of all the Zoroastrian prayers, sits in Yasna 2713 and the last one, the Aryaman Ishiya prayer, constitutes Yasna 54.1. Of course these holy prayers are also quoted many, many times in the rest of the Avesta. But it seems here in this arrangement of the old Avestan texts we have sort of a concentric arrangement with the two holy prayers at the beginning and at the end and the gatas in the middle. You may have noticed that there are gaps in the numbering. The first biggest gap is from Yasna 35 to 42 and this is the place of the Yasna Haptangaiti or the ritual in seven parts or sections whose language is also Old Avestan. These seven chapters end at Yasna 41 and they are followed by a chapter in Yang Avestan, Yasna 42 which praises the Yasna Haptangaiti. This Yang Avestan chapter forms something like a buffer between the end of the Yasna Haptangaiti and the beginning of the second gata, the Ustavaiti Gata. And so does the first stanza of the Yasna Haptangaiti, Yasna 35.1 which is also in Yang Avestan and the Yang Avestan chapter, Yasna 52 which is recited between the fourth and the fifth gata. With regard to language, composition and contents, the gatas are among the most intricate and dense pieces of literature ever composed. The metric characteristics of the gatas is their stihik form. The principle is that each stanza consists of a fixed number of verse lines and each verse line has a fixed number of syllables. Unlike the gatas, the Yasna Haptangaiti is not metrically structured by a fixed number of basically isoscelobic verse lines but by a variety of rhythmic patterns. Because the rhythmic pattern follows an inherited model of traditional liturgical recitation for which are parallels in early Latin and Umbrian prayer and liturgy. The Yasna Haptangaiti provides the compositional model for much of the Yang Avestan liturgical compositions in praise of various divine beings. The old Avestan core of the Yasna is preceded and followed by texts in Yanga Avestan, constituting Yasna 27, 1 to 27 and Yasna 55 to 72 respectively. These Yang Avestan parts include the praise of Hauma in Yasna 9 to 10 and the hymn to Srausha in Yasna 56 to 57. The entire composition of the 72 chapters is that of several concentric circles with the Yasna Haptangaiti at its core. The central position of the Yasna Haptangaiti is illustrated in the diagram here. The sac by putting it somehow in the middle and a bit raised up as the culmination of the ritual. And it is at that point when the Yasna Haptangaiti is recited that the emulation of the sacrificial animal took place during the Yasna performance. In contemporary ritual practice, the Yasna ceremony is only performed by the parties of India, while the know-how was lost amongst the Iranian Zoroastrians some 50 years ago. So the performance of these Zoroastrian rituals is an endangered heritage. As part of the multimedia Yasna project, which is funded by the European Research Council and housed at Sours in the University of London, we undertook to film a full performance of the Yasna ritual, not in order to preserve this endangered heritage, to document it, but also to make it available for scholarly study. We filmed the ritual in November 2017 in the Dada Atonan Institute in Mumbai. And we were supported in this by the director of the Atonan Institute, Dr. Ramya Karanjia. And we had two of the best ritual priests who had agreed to perform the ritual for us. It was a staged ritual conducted on the premises of the school where the young aspiring priests learn how to perform this ritual and other rituals. I'm going to show you now a short, very short extract from the film which we made just to give you an idea of what such a ritual performance looks like today and might have looked like earlier. There is never any guarantee that no changes have been introduced, which is very likely that they have been introduced, but it just gives you an idea of what a performance looks like. You will see the scene of the recitation of Yasna 34-7, that is from the last hymn of the first gata. I hope the video has helped you enough, I would like to thank you and tell you that this is your tremendous grudge against me, that you have created and entrusted me both I hope you enjoyed watching this. The whole film is about three hours. And as you could see, the priests recited an enormous speed. And it's very difficult to make out individual words. For that reason, we are going to provide subtitles of the recitation texts of the words. So that you can actually read the words, the western words which the priests recite while watching the film in slow movement. And we are also going to provide a translation so that you can read the translation as well as the words which the priests recite while watching the film. We are also going to create a multimedia application which is going to give interactive features, providing the viewer with explanations of ritual implements used by the priests. And you can request for the explanations by clicking on an item. You have it illustrated on this slide here. So this is here the recitation text in a western. And that's going to be provided with a translation and the viewer can manipulate the way the film is going to be watched. There will also be then the possibility of clicking on items here. For example, one can click on the barrisman tricks which the priests use here in the ritual. And then a window opens providing an explanation of what these tricks are for in the ritual. The same ritual was also filmed a second time with a spherical camera here, this one a ball, which carries six cameras dotted around it, four at the circumference, one at the top and one at the bottom. And everybody had to leave the room. The priests performed the ritual which was took only two and a half hours instead of three or four hours. And they just run through the ritual nonstop. And this ritual was filmed with the spherical cameras, camera producing six films which are going to be stitched together and then produce a film in virtual reality. That means you can watch the film in 360 degrees. So in order to watch it, one needs to wear these special goggles, which our chief priest, our Zoot Adil Bhezania, wears here and he's enjoying the film, watching himself in virtual reality. And this gentleman here is our collaborator, Dr. Ramya Karanjia, the director of the Priestley School where we made the film. So the film in virtual reality then provides a 360 degree view of the ritual performance. And here, while wearing the goggles, the viewer can look up, can look down, can look around, can look into the pots which the priests use here on the ritual table here. And you can watch the fire, you can watch the two priests simultaneously, see what the other priests do while certain ritual actions are being performed and get a full view of the ritual. And here potentially we have an enormous source of information on detail of the ritual performance. And we are hoping to use all of this in our text editions of the Yasna ritual, which we are also preparing. Like Vedic ritual, Zoroastrian ritual is an act of hospitality offered to the gods. The key person of the ritual is the host, usually a member of the lady. He or she hires the ritual expert, that is the priest, to perform the ritual on his or her behalf. Thus these people, these members of the lady become the patron of the ritual, the Yajamana in Vedic. The merit for performing the ritual goes on the account of the patron. The priests, usually several of them, these ones here, they perform the ritual. They perform the ritual, which is offered to the divine being, as indicated by the arrows here. The divine beings in turn are invited to come to the ritual precinct, to enjoy the offerings, here they come down to the ritual precinct, enjoy the offerings and bestow great gifts of hospitality on the patron, this one here, who has hired the priest to perform the ritual. And then they return to their heavenly abode after the ritual has been performed. The fire plays a central role during the ritual, here there is the fire of course, blazing during the ritual. It is the medium between the divine and the human worlds. And it's a go-between between these two worlds. Then at the end of the ritual, the patron is obliged to pay the priest. That's absolutely essential. And the priest should be remunerated generously and immediately. And only after this sacrificial gift has been made, the ritual is complete, otherwise not. The principle of elaborating on and inserting texts into existing composition not only produced our extensive 72 chapter Yasna, but also longer rituals, all of which are ultimately based on the Yasna. These are the Vizperat ceremony, the Videvdad ceremony and the Viztaspeyar ceremonies. Now the name Vizperat results from the univabation of the Avestan word, vizpe rathavu, which means something like Oratus. We can't really translate this word rathu well. It's almost impossible to translate just like the word Asha. Solemn, it is the name of a more solemn ceremony celebrated at the six seasonal festivals of the Zoroastrians, the Gahan bars. While the text of the Yasna is occasionally substituted with other words, the Vizperat is characterized by additional text passages which are inserted at certain points into the Yasna. Many of these passages elaborate on preceding sections of the Yasna, so the Vizperat in some ways is closely linked to the text of the Yasna. And these additional passages thus make the Yasna longer and more solemn. Most of the sections of the Vizperat are inserted into the Stauta Yesnia of the Yasna. These are Yasna 14 to 58, that means they are the central portion of the Yasna. This arrangement may be as old as the Avesta itself, because it is referred to in one of the younger Avestan hymns, the Mihir Yashd. Thus we read in Yashd 10, 122, let no one drink from these libations unless he is apt at reciting the Vizperatavu of the Stauta Yesnia. So here we are, we have it already in the Avesta. The substitutions of text passages in the different ceremonies is illustrated here with the sections which name the watch in which the respective ceremonies start. These sections here, so all of these sections have number eight and you can see how there are lexical differences between these two, across the different ceremonies. And here as well, this belongs part of the day watches, the gars and the formulae are different in the different gars. And the Videvdad ceremony starts in the Usha-Hin Gah, which is at midnight, and whereas the Yasna ceremony starts in the Havan Gah, and so the Vizperat ceremony and therefore different gars are mentioned in this begin first section. The Videvdad and the Vishtaspiyas ceremonies are both based on the Vizperat ceremony. So that is this section on this ceremony here, the Vizperat in turn, of course, as we have seen is a Yasna ceremony expanded with special texts to make the Yasna ceremony more solemn. So the Videvdad and the Vishtaspiyas ceremony, which is added here are based on the more solemn variety of the Yasna ceremony. Now, beginning just before Yasna 28, which is here, and ending just before Yasna 55, which is here, pairs of the 22 sections of the Videvdad and the 8 sections of the Vishtaspiyas are inserted into the text of the Visperat at fixed points in between the chapters of the Old Avestan texts. So here it's this kernel of the Yasna or Visperat ceremony, which is further expanded by the insertion of chapters of the Videvdad, of the Vigars of the Videvdad and of the Vishtaspiyas. As mentioned already, the Videvdad ceremony starts at midnight. Apart from these ceremonies, there must have been other intercalation ceremonies, but unfortunately these ceremonies are lost today. One of these ceremonies seems to have been the Bayan Yasna, this one here. In this ceremony, it were the Yashts which were intercalated into the Visperat, and we can hear Grasp at least one of the ritual functions of the Yashts. The Yashts are a collection of 21 hymns devoted to a wide, though quite heterogeneous range of divinities, worshipped by Zoroastrians. Now, who are these deities? Well, some of them have cognates in the Vedic Pantheon and can be traced back to Indo-Iranian, such as, for example, Hauma, the sacrificial plant, which of course has its equivalent in Vedic Soma. Then we have Mithra, the God-contract which corresponds to Vedic Mithra, and Verathragna, which is victory, literally breaking resistance, and here we have the Vedic concept of Ritrahan breaking resistance, who is the drugginslayer. The names, though, not necessarily the figures of others deities worshipped in the Yashts are specifically Iranian, and to these belong the goddess Aradvinsura Anahita, to whom Yasht 5 is dedicated, the goddess Drvaspa, and also the glory or the Kharana, to whom two Yashts are dedicated, Yash 18 and Yash 19. Other divine beings personify Zoroastrian religious concepts, and these include the Fravashis, choice, Ashi, Wanguhi, good reward, Srausha, attentiveness, chista, insight, and Ashi, Wanguhi, good reward, and also the Rashnu judgment. The first four Yashts of the whole collection are devoted to Ahura Mazda, which is Yash 1, to the Amishas Pintas, Yash 2, and there are special hymns dedicated to Asha, Yash 3, and Harvatat, Yash 4. So you can see that here we have the four Yashts at the beginning of the collection dedicated to these very Zoroastrian divinities. In the extant Avestan manuscripts, the Yashts have been transmitted as part of the Kardi or the Little Avesta, which includes a range of different texts in Avestan and in Pachlavi, recited in lay and priestly rituals, and testifying to the wide range of different and complex rituals that must once have been practiced. These texts include the Nyayishins or praises, Afrinagan or blessings, Seroza or the formula for each of the month's 30 days, the ghaz, which are the texts recited in the five watches of the Zoroastrian 24-hour day, the patets or penitentiary prayers, nirangs or purification rites, and many other prayers. The manuscripts of the Kardi Avesta may include all the Yashts, such as the manuscript E1, or just a selection of them. The only exception is the Kordex F1, which dates from 1591, and this Kordex provides the text of all the Yashts of the Nyayishin without any of the other text characteristics of the Kordi Avesta. And this Kordex F1 is in fact the oldest and most important witness for the Yashts. Apart from the liturgical and the devotional texts of the Avesta, there are also small collections of non-liturgical Avestan literature. It includes the ritual texts, text Herbetistan, which means something like precepts for priests, talks about the training of priests, and the nirangistan, which may be translated as ritual precepts, which chiefly deals with how the rituals should be performed. These two texts discuss questions pertaining to religious instruction of both priests and members of the lady, and also to ritual matters. Please join us for our third lesson in which we shall talk about the transmission of the Avesta.
 Hello and welcome to the second lesson of our module on Avesten.  Today we are going to look at the Avesten texts and at their use in Zoroastrian religious  practice in ritual in particular.  But before we go into this, let's look more closely at the term Avesta.  The word Avesten is not an Avesten word, but it comes from Middle Persian abhistar, which  is spelled like this in the Pachlavi script.  The word is also found in Pazant, which is the spelling of Pachlavi in the fully vocalized  Avesten script, and there it is spelled abhistar.  This picture here illustrates the way the word Avestak, the Pachlavi word, occurs in  the Pachlavi script.  We will talk about the Avesten script in the third lesson.  The meaning of Avestak is disputed.  The two main competing explanations both start from a nominal derivative with the suffix  akka, which is in Avestak, from a verbal compound, but attach it to different compounds.  According to the first explanation proposed by Christiane Bartolomé, the noun derives  from the verb upastu and goes back to upastavaka.  Praise.  Jean Kellens has supported this explanation by pointing out the phraseological combination  of the verb upastu with the noun hauma in Yassna 10, which forms part of the hymn to  hauma.  According to Kellens, the name denotes the book which begins with the praise of hauma.  The second explanation was put forward by Walter Bruno Henning.  He reads the Middle Persian word as abhistar, from Old Iranian abhi staka at munition.  And he interprets it as the injunction of urmast.  Middle Persian abhistar would be, according to Henning, a cognate of Sogdian upstavan,  which is spelled upstavan in the Sogdian script, and upstavan like this in the Manichaean script.  And there is a morphological parallel for this in Old Persian nishtavan.  And according to Henning, abhi staka then goes back to the Sogdian word upstavan, then  goes back to an earlier abhi stavan.  Werner Sundermann has further elaborated on this explanation, pointing out that in Christian  Sogdian pashstavan translates the Syriac ditka, which in turn renders the name of the New  Testament, Greek diateche, disposition testament.  Sundermann suggests that Middle Persian abhi staka specifically denotes the written abhesta.  According to Sundermann, abhi staka became the word for the Zoroastrian sacred texts  at precisely the time when they were committed to writing in the late Sasanian period.  In choosing this word for the written abhesta, Sundermann argues, the Zoroastrians emulated  Jews and Christians who perceived of their own scriptures as divine injunctions.  The abhesta is by no means a uniform corpus.  It includes texts from different periods and of different literary genres.  With respect to language, there are two basic divisions.  The first consists of texts composed in a more archaic idiom commonly called Old Avestan.  The second, usually called Young Avestan, is slightly different dialectally and shows  a more advanced stage of linguistic development.  In addition, good arguments have recently been put forward for positing a third Middle  Avestan layer, which is between the older and the younger abhesta.  The oldest Avestan texts sit right in the middle of the core Zoroastrian ritual, the  jasna, where they occupy chapters 28 to 54 of the text's 72 chapters.  They are made up of 17 hymns grouped according to their meter into five gatas.  The younger abhesta refers to them as the five gatas of Zarathustra and presents Zarathustra  as the individual through whom the god Ahura Mazda communicated the Mazda worshipping  religion or Dainah Mazda Yasni to humankind.  The gatas are held in the highest esteem by Zoroastrians up to the present day and they  are frequently quoted in the Young Avestan texts.  The first Ahuna Vaity Gata comprises seven hymns and extends from Yasna 28 to 34.  The second Ustavaity Gata is made up of four hymns.  The third Spönta Mayu Gata is made up of equally four hymns.  Then we have the Vohukshatra Gata which consists of one hymn only and the Vahishtoistigata  which also consists of only one hymn.  At the beginning and at the end of these five gatas are placed two holy prayers.  One, the Yata Ahuvayriya prayer, the holiest of all the Zoroastrian prayers, sits in Yasna  2713 and the last one, the Aryaman Ishiya prayer, constitutes Yasna 54.1.  Of course these holy prayers are also quoted many, many times in the rest of the Avesta.  But it seems here in this arrangement of the old Avestan texts we have sort of a concentric  arrangement with the two holy prayers at the beginning and at the end and the gatas in  the middle.  You may have noticed that there are gaps in the numbering.  The first biggest gap is from Yasna 35 to 42 and this is the place of the Yasna Haptangaiti  or the ritual in seven parts or sections whose language is also Old Avestan.  These seven chapters end at Yasna 41 and they are followed by a chapter in Yang Avestan,  Yasna 42 which praises the Yasna Haptangaiti.  This Yang Avestan chapter forms something like a buffer between the end of the Yasna  Haptangaiti and the beginning of the second gata, the Ustavaiti Gata.  And so does the first stanza of the Yasna Haptangaiti, Yasna 35.1 which is also in Yang  Avestan and the Yang Avestan chapter, Yasna 52 which is recited between the fourth and  the fifth gata.  With regard to language, composition and contents, the gatas are among the most intricate and  dense pieces of literature ever composed.  The metric characteristics of the gatas is their stihik form.  The principle is that each stanza consists of a fixed number of verse lines and each  verse line has a fixed number of syllables.  Unlike the gatas, the Yasna Haptangaiti is not metrically structured by a fixed number  of basically isoscelobic verse lines but by a variety of rhythmic patterns.  Because the rhythmic pattern follows an inherited model of traditional liturgical recitation  for which are parallels in early Latin and Umbrian prayer and liturgy.  The Yasna Haptangaiti provides the compositional model for much of the Yang Avestan liturgical  compositions in praise of various divine beings.  The old Avestan core of the Yasna is preceded and followed by texts in Yanga Avestan, constituting  Yasna 27, 1 to 27 and Yasna 55 to 72 respectively.  These Yang Avestan parts include the praise of Hauma in Yasna 9 to 10 and the hymn to  Srausha in Yasna 56 to 57.  The entire composition of the 72 chapters is that of several concentric circles with the  Yasna Haptangaiti at its core.  The central position of the Yasna Haptangaiti is illustrated in the diagram here.  The sac by putting it somehow in the middle and a bit raised up as the culmination of  the ritual.  And it is at that point when the Yasna Haptangaiti is recited that the emulation of the sacrificial  animal took place during the Yasna performance.  In contemporary ritual practice, the Yasna ceremony is only performed by the parties  of India, while the know-how was lost amongst the Iranian Zoroastrians some 50 years ago.  So the performance of these Zoroastrian rituals is an endangered heritage.  As part of the multimedia Yasna project, which is funded by the European Research Council  and housed at Sours in the University of London, we undertook to film a full performance of  the Yasna ritual, not in order to preserve this endangered heritage, to document it,  but also to make it available for scholarly study.  We filmed the ritual in November 2017 in the Dada Atonan Institute in Mumbai.  And we were supported in this by the director of the Atonan Institute, Dr. Ramya Karanjia.  And we had two of the best ritual priests who had agreed to perform the ritual for us.  It was a staged ritual conducted on the premises of the school where the young aspiring priests  learn how to perform this ritual and other rituals.  I'm going to show you now a short, very short extract from the film which we made just to  give you an idea of what such a ritual performance looks like today and might have looked like  earlier.  There is never any guarantee that no changes have been introduced, which is very likely  that they have been introduced, but it just gives you an idea of what a performance looks  like.  You will see the scene of the recitation of Yasna 34-7, that is from the last hymn of  the first gata.  I hope the video has helped you enough, I would like to thank you and tell you that  this is your tremendous grudge against me, that you have created and entrusted me both  I hope you enjoyed watching this. The whole film is about three hours.  And as you could see, the priests recited an enormous speed.  And it's very difficult to make out individual words.  For that reason, we are going to provide subtitles of the recitation texts of the words.  So that you can actually read the words, the western words which the priests recite while watching the film in slow movement.  And we are also going to provide a translation so that you can read the translation as well as the words which the priests recite while watching the film.  We are also going to create a multimedia application which is going to give interactive features,  providing the viewer with explanations of ritual implements used by the priests.  And you can request for the explanations by clicking on an item.  You have it illustrated on this slide here. So this is here the recitation text in a western.  And that's going to be provided with a translation and the viewer can manipulate the way the film is going to be watched.  There will also be then the possibility of clicking on items here. For example, one can click on the barrisman tricks which the priests use here in the ritual.  And then a window opens providing an explanation of what these tricks are for in the ritual.  The same ritual was also filmed a second time with a spherical camera here, this one a ball,  which carries six cameras dotted around it, four at the circumference, one at the top and one at the bottom.  And everybody had to leave the room. The priests performed the ritual which was took only two and a half hours instead of three or four hours.  And they just run through the ritual nonstop. And this ritual was filmed with the spherical cameras,  camera producing six films which are going to be stitched together and then produce a film in virtual reality.  That means you can watch the film in 360 degrees.  So in order to watch it, one needs to wear these special goggles, which our chief priest, our Zoot Adil Bhezania, wears here and he's enjoying the film,  watching himself in virtual reality. And this gentleman here is our collaborator, Dr. Ramya Karanjia, the director of the Priestley School where we made the film.  So the film in virtual reality then provides a 360 degree view of the ritual performance.  And here, while wearing the goggles, the viewer can look up, can look down, can look around, can look into the pots which the priests use here on the ritual table here.  And you can watch the fire, you can watch the two priests simultaneously, see what the other priests do while certain ritual actions are being performed  and get a full view of the ritual. And here potentially we have an enormous source of information on detail of the ritual performance.  And we are hoping to use all of this in our text editions of the Yasna ritual, which we are also preparing.  Like Vedic ritual, Zoroastrian ritual is an act of hospitality offered to the gods. The key person of the ritual is the host, usually a member of the lady.  He or she hires the ritual expert, that is the priest, to perform the ritual on his or her behalf.  Thus these people, these members of the lady become the patron of the ritual, the Yajamana in Vedic.  The merit for performing the ritual goes on the account of the patron. The priests, usually several of them, these ones here, they perform the ritual.  They perform the ritual, which is offered to the divine being, as indicated by the arrows here.  The divine beings in turn are invited to come to the ritual precinct, to enjoy the offerings, here they come down to the ritual precinct, enjoy the offerings  and bestow great gifts of hospitality on the patron, this one here, who has hired the priest to perform the ritual.  And then they return to their heavenly abode after the ritual has been performed.  The fire plays a central role during the ritual, here there is the fire of course, blazing during the ritual.  It is the medium between the divine and the human worlds. And it's a go-between between these two worlds.  Then at the end of the ritual, the patron is obliged to pay the priest. That's absolutely essential.  And the priest should be remunerated generously and immediately.  And only after this sacrificial gift has been made, the ritual is complete, otherwise not.  The principle of elaborating on and inserting texts into existing composition not only produced our extensive 72 chapter Yasna,  but also longer rituals, all of which are ultimately based on the Yasna.  These are the Vizperat ceremony, the Videvdad ceremony and the Viztaspeyar ceremonies.  Now the name Vizperat results from the univabation of the Avestan word, vizpe rathavu, which means something like Oratus.  We can't really translate this word rathu well. It's almost impossible to translate just like the word Asha.  Solemn, it is the name of a more solemn ceremony celebrated at the six seasonal festivals of the Zoroastrians, the Gahan bars.  While the text of the Yasna is occasionally substituted with other words, the Vizperat is characterized by additional text passages which are inserted at certain points into the Yasna.  Many of these passages elaborate on preceding sections of the Yasna, so the Vizperat in some ways is closely linked to the text of the Yasna.  And these additional passages thus make the Yasna longer and more solemn.  Most of the sections of the Vizperat are inserted into the Stauta Yesnia of the Yasna.  These are Yasna 14 to 58, that means they are the central portion of the Yasna.  This arrangement may be as old as the Avesta itself, because it is referred to in one of the younger Avestan hymns, the Mihir Yashd.  Thus we read in Yashd 10, 122, let no one drink from these libations unless he is apt at reciting the Vizperatavu of the Stauta Yesnia.  So here we are, we have it already in the Avesta.  The substitutions of text passages in the different ceremonies is illustrated here with the sections which name the watch in which the respective ceremonies start.  These sections here, so all of these sections have number eight and you can see how there are lexical differences between these two, across the different ceremonies.  And here as well, this belongs part of the day watches, the gars and the formulae are different in the different gars.  And the Videvdad ceremony starts in the Usha-Hin Gah, which is at midnight, and whereas the Yasna ceremony starts in the Havan Gah,  and so the Vizperat ceremony and therefore different gars are mentioned in this begin first section.  The Videvdad and the Vishtaspiyas ceremonies are both based on the Vizperat ceremony.  So that is this section on this ceremony here, the Vizperat in turn, of course, as we have seen is a Yasna ceremony expanded with special texts to make the Yasna ceremony more solemn.  So the Videvdad and the Vishtaspiyas ceremony, which is added here are based on the more solemn variety of the Yasna ceremony.  Now, beginning just before Yasna 28, which is here, and ending just before Yasna 55, which is here,  pairs of the 22 sections of the Videvdad and the 8 sections of the Vishtaspiyas are inserted into the text of the Visperat at fixed points in between the chapters of the Old Avestan texts.  So here it's this kernel of the Yasna or Visperat ceremony, which is further expanded by the insertion of chapters of the Videvdad, of the Vigars of the Videvdad and of the Vishtaspiyas.  As mentioned already, the Videvdad ceremony starts at midnight.  Apart from these ceremonies, there must have been other intercalation ceremonies, but unfortunately these ceremonies are lost today.  One of these ceremonies seems to have been the Bayan Yasna, this one here.  In this ceremony, it were the Yashts which were intercalated into the Visperat, and we can hear Grasp at least one of the ritual functions of the Yashts.  The Yashts are a collection of 21 hymns devoted to a wide, though quite heterogeneous range of divinities, worshipped by Zoroastrians.  Now, who are these deities?  Well, some of them have cognates in the Vedic Pantheon and can be traced back to Indo-Iranian, such as, for example, Hauma, the sacrificial plant, which of course has its equivalent in Vedic Soma.  Then we have Mithra, the God-contract which corresponds to Vedic Mithra, and Verathragna, which is victory, literally breaking resistance, and here we have the Vedic concept of Ritrahan breaking resistance, who is the drugginslayer.  The names, though, not necessarily the figures of others deities worshipped in the Yashts are specifically Iranian, and to these belong the goddess Aradvinsura Anahita, to whom Yasht 5 is dedicated, the goddess Drvaspa, and also the glory or the Kharana, to whom two Yashts are dedicated, Yash 18 and Yash 19.  Other divine beings personify Zoroastrian religious concepts, and these include the Fravashis, choice, Ashi, Wanguhi, good reward, Srausha, attentiveness, chista, insight, and Ashi, Wanguhi, good reward,  and also the Rashnu judgment.  The first four Yashts of the whole collection are devoted to Ahura Mazda, which is Yash 1, to the Amishas Pintas, Yash 2, and there are special hymns dedicated to Asha, Yash 3, and Harvatat, Yash 4.  So you can see that here we have the four Yashts at the beginning of the collection dedicated to these very Zoroastrian divinities.  In the extant Avestan manuscripts, the Yashts have been transmitted as part of the Kardi or the Little Avesta, which includes a range of different texts in Avestan and in Pachlavi, recited in lay and priestly rituals, and testifying to the wide range of different and complex rituals that must once have been practiced.  These texts include the Nyayishins or praises, Afrinagan or blessings, Seroza or the formula for each of the month's 30 days, the ghaz, which are the texts recited in the five watches of the Zoroastrian 24-hour day, the patets or penitentiary prayers,  nirangs or purification rites, and many other prayers. The manuscripts of the Kardi Avesta may include all the Yashts, such as the manuscript E1, or just a selection of them.  The only exception is the Kordex F1, which dates from 1591, and this Kordex provides the text of all the Yashts of the Nyayishin without any of the other text characteristics of the Kordi Avesta.  And this Kordex F1 is in fact the oldest and most important witness for the Yashts.  Apart from the liturgical and the devotional texts of the Avesta, there are also small collections of non-liturgical Avestan literature.  It includes the ritual texts, text Herbetistan, which means something like precepts for priests, talks about the training of priests, and the nirangistan, which may be translated as ritual precepts, which chiefly deals with how the rituals should be performed.  These two texts discuss questions pertaining to religious instruction of both priests and members of the lady, and also to ritual matters.  Please join us for our third lesson in which we shall talk about the transmission of the Avesta.
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