Hello there, in the meantime you may have seen me already, my name is Almutinze. Welcome to the final session of our introductory course on Avestan. In this video we are going to look at two short sample texts of the Avesta in order to illustrate some of the points that

were made in the previous lessons with a real text. The texts I have chosen are two stanzas from the gothic hymn Jasna 44 and a verse from the Jasnahabtang Hayti, so two older western texts but of two different textual genres. Jasnah 44 is one of the best known hymns of the Gathas,

it is sometimes referred to as cosmological hymn because there are several stanzas that ask questions about where phenomena we find in nature and in human life come from. The hymn consists of 20 stanzas, with the exception of the last stanza each of them is introduced by the

sentence that means I ask you this tell me truly oh lord. The stylistic device of anaphora thus characterizes the composition of this hymn, that means the repetition of this line at the

beginning of each hymn. Stylistically the hymn is couched in the situation of a conversation between a person, the I and his god Ahura Mazda. No answers are given to the questions

which are being asked but since the questions are rhetorical the answer is implied, it is always Ahura Mazda who has ordered the cosmos. Now let us look at the first stanza which we are going to discuss, this is Jasnah 44.3 and you can see it here on the slide, you can see it in

transliteration of the text as we find it in the manuscripts and here you have a phonemic interpretation of the text as we read it in the manuscript keeping in mind that what we read in

the manuscripts is sound not meaning whereas here we have a phonemic interpretation of that sound and here obviously that's the translation so if you allow me to read it what it might sound in its avesten as we read it in the manuscript it would sound something like

this I ask you tell me truly oh lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting

who has established the path of the sun and the stars who is it by whom the moon not only waxes but also wanes I wish to know this and other things oh wise one. Now this is

what I've just read is the text as it appears in the manuscripts you can see on the right hand side of this slide the phonemic interpretation of that text as it appears in the manuscript in the manuscripts and you can also see that there is a gap in the middle of a line and that

is the caesura the meter of this stanza is four plus seven syllables and you may also have noticed that some of the words are pronounced as if they're with a slur in them and this included the words and also the word which I read disyllabic and if we read them in this way we do

get the regular meeting so four syllables and then we need to read with three syllables

to get seven syllables and then the next line so four plus seven syllables and this is how the meter works syllable counting with a caesura after a fixed number of syllables in this case after four syllables now just let me

read the translation of this this I ask you tell me truly oh lord who is the primordial father of order by begetting who has established the path of the sun and the stars who is it by

whom the moon not only waxes but also wanes who I wish to know this and other things oh wise I must add here a word of caution the translation is as tentative as is the phonological interpretation all that's really certain is what we actually read in the manuscripts and

even that is that is given here on the left hand side is rather odd looking text that is what we read in the manuscripts here also in a sort of normalized standardized representation the readings of the manuscripts are even much much more varying so then let us look at a few

words of a particular interest in this stanza the word spelled pauro in the first line that's this one here it's in the avestan script here incorporates several phonetic features

which are phonologically irrelevant old persian paruvia this one here and vedic purvia

are the etymological equivalents of this old avestan word and they indicate that the phonological interpretation of the avestan word is parvia or parvia this sievers law

the phonetic processes which affected this form were first u appendices producing old avestan power via this form here power via with u appendices uh sorry this one here power via you see uh this uh the u which precedes the r is

epenthetic it is anticipated from the word which follows the r so this would have been the old avestan form something like power via now uh and that's this

is more or less the underlying form which we read in the older avesta and that's how this word has been interpreted phonologically in the phonological interpretation section of this stanza now in young avestan we have a sound change which affected this word and this is

a specifically young avestan sound change of rivi to urri we have the sound sequence rivi in our word here this is rivi the u being phonologically irrelevant and

that means that our parvia became young avestan poweria that means the v after the r

jumped forward and disappeared after the r and this then produced a form where we have an i following r and that triggered off i appendices or if you like palatalization of the r

in phonetic terms so the outcome of all of this is then our younger avestan of form pow powiria and here then in the younger avestan form we have the feature that

the o preceding the r this o here which originally is the epenthetic u of the older by an epenthetic i so here we then have our younger avestan form powiria

and these are all phonetic processes not phonological but they surface very strongly in the forms which we have actually attested and of course obviously they need to be explained

now let's look at the next word which is this word written in bold letters which we've already mentioned and this word is metrically disyllabic although it looks monosyllabic but it isn't we've discussed this word already earlier in the session on phonology as an example for

dialectal forms in avestan texts and we mentioned other forms which have initial hoover especially in words which are located in river names and a land name

located in the area of the hillmand basin in sistan now here in this particular word we would not expect a form with hoover instead we would expect a form with initial hoover that means a syllabic a syllable hoover and this would account for the syllable which we are

missing so we would expect a form like who weren't in older western which however we don't have however that such a form really existed is demonstrated by the young avestan form

who we have in young avestan a form which i'm now going to write here who which is the genitive singular of the word for sun means of the sun and this form who

goes back to an earlier who were pre-young avestan if you like who were via this then and then ends up as who in young avestan and this who were in turn is the

descends directly from our postulated old avestan form who work so indirectly the younger avestan form who demonstrates that a form who work must have existed but we don't have it

instead we have this form with the unexpected hoover so here the hoover is a dialectal feature which entered the pronunciation of the older avesta only and this consistently this form who work is attested three times in the gutters always metrically disyllabic and

consistently in this form the meter is also gives us also a hint about for the disyllabic value of the nominative singular ma the nominative singular of the word for the moon

and this in the on the surface again looks like a monosyllabic form but it isn't the disyllabic metrical value is here only explicable with reference to the intervocalic laryngeal which must have been present at the time when this text was composed

obviously the word for the moon is derived from the verbal root ma which is m indo-european m e and the first laryngeal to measure and that is extended with the suffix indo-iranian s in indo-european and there was then an intervocalic laryngeal in the nominative

singular the laryngeal must still have been realized as a distinct sound in order to prevent

the merger of the two vowels are which was otherwise have been adjacent and the merger of these two vowels are into one long a is just natural so there must have been something which blocked this merger and that is the laryngeal which we can make responsible for this

so here i've represented this consonant this glottal consonant between the two vowels are with the sign for the glottal stop this sort of question mark sign now the

last word of this stanza which i would like to comment on is the form um v this is an infinitive it's metrically disolabic and we have a parallel formation for this sort of infinitive in the gothic form here and that looks on the surface as if it is

a suffix y attached directly to the verbal root now avestan infinitives are normally case forms usually they are datives and they are derived not from verbal roots but from a verbal

noun and usually they have a verbal meaning so they denote an action but the formant y is not found anywhere else either in avestan or in other into european languages we would therefore much more like an analysis in which here the ending i the dative ending i is attached to a

u-stem and this is what Jeremy Rao has proposed he suggests that these infinitives in fact derive from stems vidu and dahu attached extended by the dative ending i

and these stems would denote the act of knowing and the act of giving so much on this stanza then um let's have a look at the next stanza this is yasna 44 4 so as before i would like to

read it keeping in mind that the meter is as in the previous stanza 4 plus 7 syllables so we read here

who and translation would be something like this i ask you tell me truly oh lord

as before again on the right so let's look at a few of these words in this stanza they are the all the words which i would like to talk on are in this line which you have written here at the top the first word is the form is the dative singular of the noun vata the wind

and it's again matrically trisyllabic so the gutters here give us valuable evidence for the laryngeal which is in at the end of the verbal root namely the root vah to blow

and it's the first laryngeal and here the laryngeals comes to stand between two consonants the consonant following the laryngeal being a vocalized n which vocalizes to

a in indo-iranian and so we get the form vata to be precise i should have written this rather as a glottal stop so here i was just trying to indicate this it should be of course i've been slightly inconsistent here it's the glottal stop but

the notation is a bit open to debate it's certainly a consonant here consonant glottal stop quite indistinct probably phonetically which prevented the merger of the two vowels

into one long a and which forms the hiatus and is responsible for the trisyllabic metrical value of the word vatai the dative singular then the next word i would like to comment on is the form jaukt this is the third singular injunctive or aorist root aorist of the root

juch to joke here this root here and it's however not what we would expect we would expect something like jaukt in a western you see something jaukt

this is supposed to be an a sorry jaukt and which would be phonologically jaukt from a pre-form jaukt so the secondary ending attached to the full

grade root that would be a normal third singular injunctive of the root aorist of this root but we don't have this we instead we have this rather curious form jaukt so now what is this we have a few some parallels for such a phenomenon this

sequence good good at the end of words one of them is the form paiti aogt answering it's an alternate older western form and then we have also younger western form

these are both uh participles apparently and um from the root auj to speak so also from a root that ends in a voiced stop

just like huge although here in our historically that goes back to a voiced aspirated stop and a very huge is just a normal unaspirated stop so we cannot in invoke

batolome's law here whereas we could in the case of aogt now there are various theories about where this good comes from perhaps it's a sandy form

it seems to represent something phonetic and the t is this implosive sound which is articulated with the occlusion of the stop remaining unresolved

and this sound occurs at word boundaries almost always at the end of a word but in a couple of instances also at the beginning of the word where it's always it's placed in front of another stop now here we have it after another stop a voiced stop

and in the case of aogt and in the case of the jasna 46.8 form paitiaogt answering and beresiaogt loudly spoken the root ends here in a voiced stop or and here good might represent

a sandy form in our case here it occurs before our zoo before a word starting with a vowel so is that a reflection of a sandy form perhaps i don't i don't have an answer and i'm just

uh mentioning what has been thought and just to make things complete the picture here we have got two more forms with a good and they are from roots ending

in a voiceless stop the root from a root only one hutch to follow which is of course an old indo-european labia villa voiceless um segua and uh it's found in these compounds ashish

harked and armitis harked and it's this means accompanied by reward or and accompanied by right-mindedness and here a t uh is not expected at all and uh it's this also occurs

the t or the gut sequence also occurs in the adverb paragt which is from a nominal stem parang so here again one would one wouldn't really expect the t in in fact this forms ashish harked and armitis harked they refer to a neuter stem so

they are grammatically neuter forms and it has been thought whether this is a neuter t attached to the end to the root but the form remains rather curious anyway so

it's a bit they are still rather mysterious perhaps going moving on to the next word which is the word arsu swift it's the accusative dual of the adjective arsu greek ocus

swift and here it is combined with our form yauch yawked huge the root huge to yolk now here

this stanza offers a very nice instance of a phrasiological agreement between vedic and avestan the combination of arsu this dual form which is the two swift ones the two races these are the two horses the racers which are being yoked and that has a phrasiological parallel

in the vedic language where we have the expression you nudge me our shoe i am yoking the swift team literally i am yoking the two swift ones namely the two swift horses and here

at this point i would just like to refer you back to our very first lecture in this series you may remember we were we talked about the horse and the chariot and the important role this animal and the chariot play in the imagery of the vedic and the avestan texts

so here we have this very important combination of the horse which is yoked to the chariot and that would have been this chariot with a spoked wheel which is very swift in battle

and in chariot race so with this image here i would like to conclude our discussion of the ghatas and would like to move on to our second and final sample text which is a stanza from the yasna haptang haiti now the stanza i have chosen is yasna 35 2 the very opening

stanza of the yasna haptang haiti this stanza is preceded by yasna 35 1 but this stanza is in

young avestan and it is a stanza which intervenes between the last stanza of the ahuna vaiti gata yasna 34 and the beginning of the yasna haptang haiti in yasna 35 2 if you remember when we were talking about the avestan texts in our introductory lecture we mentioned

the ins how younger avestan texts were introduced as buffers at key points in the composition of our old avestan texts so here we have an example where yasna 35 1 has this

function it's a buffer between the end of the ghatas and the yasna haptang haiti which starts exactly at yasna 35.2 so let us listen to this text i'm reading it out first the text in on the

left in the in the left column is again the transcription from transliteration from the manuscripts and on the right you can see the phonological interpretation and then a translation so i'm reading the text as you have it here in the transliteration

and the translation of this is something like of good thoughts of good words good deeds

both here and elsewhere being done and having been done we are welcome not revilers of such good things we are namely of such good things is of good thoughts good words good deeds

and here you already have the implication of bad thoughts bad words bad deeds which are rejected now then let us look at this text and i would like here to focus on the stylistic devices

which are being employed in the composition of this text the first stylistic device is that of alliteration who who who the first syllable of the first three words opening words of the entire yasna haptang haiti are these three words who matter

and these of three words then become become something like the motto of the Zoroastrian religion it's the triad which you find everywhere in Zoroastrian contacts contexts even today they denote the chief commitment of the followers of this religion

so this idea of good thoughts good words good deeds goes back right here to the older avesta the yasna haptang haiti in particular and of course the opposite matter is implied and that's rejected as is done here in our stanza the expression

of the second line yadacha and yadacha both here and elsewhere is the stylistic device of argument and counter-argument and the it denotes the idea of totality in space

that means both here and anywhere else and this expression is then followed by a expression of the totality in time insofar as present and past are referred to

being done now and having been done in the past the future here is not mentioned it we they refer to the present and the past deeds of those they are welcomeers of course thoughts words and deeds and then the final two lines are constructed as a

chiasmus with the verb mahi we are here mahi we are both at the beginning and at the end of the clause they frame the entire clause and there we have again

um almost a synonymous synonymous expression ibjartara is the welcomeers and nai nai star nai star is from from night star from the root need to rebuke and nai is a negative prefix here

either nai or night which uh which negates it we are not blameless so we are welcomeers we are not blameless so again an implicit reference to the bad ones because those people who practice

they reject them but here these ones the people who pronounce these words here of the yasna this verse from the yasna haptang haiti they are not such people

they are not such blameless and they state that explicitly right at the center of this construction which is framed by the verbal form mahi and then this nai nai star is further

than complemented by the expression yasana wahunam now this yasna is an interesting form it is the relative pronoun yat extended by the particle na so it go it's it represents yatna and it's again a sunday form uh with a sir instead of

the expected implosive it has been uh merged into one and there are parallels for such a development also in older western chitina so these are sunday forms where these two words

have been merged into one and here the sir is somehow represents um the implosive our implosive in um word final position so here internally it's realized as a fricative as a voiceless fricative chitna and yasna and um it's um it's a sort of a restituted postal form

yasna and chitna standing for yatna and chitna and the form with internal sunday would have been yatna and chitna by normal assimilation of the um uh voiceless to the

voiced the n follow of the the first sound of the particle na um so this links then the complement the genitive plural of what is good we are not

blameless of what is good and here this this refers back to this three times who who who mentioned at the beginning in the plural of what is good so all of that is being welcomed

is being praised is being received fullheartedly and it's not being rejected and that's what's being affirmed here right at the outset of this uh of this text now there is some debate about the poetic form of the yasna haptang haiti in older literature it's being refers to as

a prose text however what i hope it has become clear that this is a densely composed text and employs a wide range of poetic figures as we have seen just in these few lines and

that these figures form smaller units they don't form any units of the kind of the gutters where we have fixed numbers of verse lines fixed stanzas which a fixed number of verse

lines and each verse line has a fixed number of syllables with a caesura at a determined place nothing like this here in the yasna haptang haiti but we do have a poetic form i think but it's a different poetic form it is an internally structured rhythm which we have here

we have little clauses which are organized and internally deeply structured so this is a type of poetry which was particularly popular amongst the indo-iranian people and maybe even earlier

for liturgies when they recited texts in the rituals as part of their rituals and the yasna haptang haiti has never been any doubt that the yasna haptang haiti is a liturgy

it's actually quite a self-contained liturgy it has a beginning at an end it has an high point right in the middle in yasna 38 where the waters are being praised and it is a poetic form which has its parallels in other liturgical forms of latin poetry the sura vitarelia for example

and other texts but it's a different type of poetry so in some ways you can then say that the oldest avestan texts which have survived the older avesta attests to two very archaic

forms of poetry the gatas have the syllable counting stichik poetic form and the yasna haptang haiti has the strophic form of internally structured rhythmic phrases and the number of phrases you add is not limited by any way limited as it is in the gatas

now so we have now reached the end of this session it concludes our taster session on avestan texts i hope you enjoyed it and i thank you very much for watching goodbye