Avestan period

The Avestan period is the period in the history of the Iranians when the Avesta was produced. It saw important contributions to both the religious sphere, as well as to Iranian mythology and its epic tradition.

Quotes

• But it was more faithfully preserved by the Zoroastrians, who migrated from India to the North-west and whose religion has been preserved to us in the Zind Avesta, though in fragments only... The Zorastrians were a colony from Northern India.
  • Professor Max Muller , Science of Language, p. 242. Science of Language, p. 253. quoted in [1] 156

• In point of fact the Zind is derived from the Sanskrit, and a passage in Manu (Chapter X, slokes 43-45) makes the Persians to have descended from the Hindus of the second or Warrior caste.
  • Professor Heeren Historical Researches, Vol. II, p. 220. quoted in [2], 156ff

• I was not a little surprised to find that out of ten words in Du Perron’s Zind Dictionary, six or seven were pure Sanskrit.
  • Sir W, Jones’ works, Vol. I, pp. 82 and 83, quoted in [3], 157ff

• In the Vedas as well as in the older portions of the Zind-Avesta (see the Gathas), there are sufficient traces to be discovered that the Zoroastrian religion arose out of a vital struggle against a form which the Brahminical religion had assumed at a certain early period.‘ ... “These facts throw some light upon the age in which that great religious struggle took place, the consequence of which was the entire separation of the Ancient Iranians from the Brahmans and the foundation of the Zoroastrian religion. It must have occurred at the time when Indra was the chief god of the Brahmans.
  • Haag,“-Haug’s Essays on the Parsees, p. 287-8 quoted in [4], 157ff

• Zarathustra's date, unfortunately, is far from certain. Previously, a sixth century B.C.E. date based on Greek sources was accepted by many scholars, but this has now been completely discarded by present-day specialists in the field. Two dates for the prophet were current in Greek sources: 5000 years before the Trojan War, that is, 6000 B.C.E., and 258 years before Alexander—the sixth century B.C.E. date. This more modest date has been shown to be completely fictitious, but it initially gained wide acceptance be- cause it seems to have been adopted by the later Zarathustran scholastics themselves in the Pahlavi books
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 7

• Geographically, the Avesta has little to offer the quest for the homeland of the Indo-Aryans speakers—with one very important exception. In sharp contradistinction to the lack of any clear reference in the Vedic tradition to an outside origin, the Avesta does preserve explicit mention of an airiianam vaejo, the legendary homeland of the Aryans and of Zarathustra himself.24 The descriptions of this place, despite the fact that "it is revealed that Ohrmazd made [it] to be better than the other places and regions," speak of severe climatic conditions (Humbach 1991, 35).25 Gnoli (1980, 130) situates the airiiansm vaejo in the Hindu Kush because all the identifiable geographic references in the Avesta are of eastern Iran, south central Asia and, Afghanistan, with an eastern boundary formed by the Indus. There is no mention of any place north of the Sir Darya (the ancient Jaxartes),26 nor of any western Iranian place (Boyce 1992, 3). ... There are also identical names of rivers common to both Iran and India, such as the Iranian Harahvaiti and Haroyu, which correspond to the Indian SarasvatT and Sarayu (Sanskrit s = Iranian h). In and of themselves, all that can be said of this data is that these names could have been either transferred by incoming Indo-Aryan tribes from Iranian rivers to Indian ones, as is generally assumed, or by outgoing Indo-Iranian tribes from Indian rivers (although any transfer from Iran to India must have occurred before Iranian developed the h phoneme, since s can become h but never vice versa).
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• If "we use archaeology and history to date the Avesta, we cannot turn around and use the Avesta to date the same archaeo- logical and historical events, and vice versa".
  • Skjaervo (1995) (158). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• "Zoroastrians were a colony from Northern India. . . . A schism took place and [they] migrated westward to Arachosia and Persia. . . . They gave to the new cities and to the rivers along which they settled, the names of cities and rivers familiar to them, and reminding them of the localities which they had left"
  • Max Muller (1875) (248). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• "it would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion"
  • Erdosy (1989) (42). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Besides the uncertain date of the Avesta, the cases of cultural, stylistic and lexicographical parallelism between texts of this description do not necessarily point to simultaneity.
  • Gonda (1975) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12