Yasna LVII

THE AVESTA as we possess it is a collection made at the command of the first Sasdnian monarch, Ardashir I (224/6-241), of fragments gathered at the order of the Arsakid Valagash (Volagases) which had survived the destruction of the original documents during the invasion of Alexander the Great (Dinkart, iv, 23-26, tr. E. W. West, SBE xxxvii, Oxford, 1892, pp. 413-414). This Arsakid was probably Volagases I (51-77/8) (J. Darmesteter, Le ZendAvesta iii, Paris, 1893, pp. xxiii-xxiv; A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, Copenhagen, 1936, p. 34), although F. Justi (Grundriss der iranischen Philologie ii, Strasbourg, 1904, p. 510; cf. K. Geldner, ib. p. 34) thought that it was Vologases III (148191). The Avesta had evidently been reduced to writing at a very early date (cf. Christensen, pp. 509-512), but the present text is a transcription of an older alphabet. This transcription is highly imperfect, and many forms appear which are plainly incorrect and which should be disregarded in linguistic investigation. It becomes necessary, therefore, to reconstruct the text by a combination of linguistics and palaeography; and on such reconstruction I am at present preparing a detailed study. In evaluating the forms, one must bear in mind that the Vulgate reproduction shows more or less an attempt at phonetic writing. The form yasnam Sanskrit yajni.m, for instance, implies that, as in later India, the original oxytone accent had been shifted, with the result that [jas'nam] had become [ljasnm]. In addition to these linguistic, phonetic, and palaeographic problems, the Avestan Vulgate shows countless interpolations which disturb the continuity of the hymns and which must be excised in the interests of a more exact knowledge of early Zoroastrianism. The result of such reconstruction will, in all probability, give a text much closer to the original than is the present Vulgate; and until this work is

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