Avestan

Native Avestan

The Avestan language is only known from the Avesta and otherwise unattested. As a result, there is no external evidence on which to base the time frame during which the Avestan language was natively spoken and all attempts have to rely on internal evidence. Such attempts were often linked to the life of Zarathustra, being the central figure of Zoroastrianism.^[26] Zarathustra was traditionally based in the 6th century BC meaning that Old Avestan would have been spoken during the early Achaemenid period.^[27] Given that a substantial time must have passed between Old Avestan and Young Avestan, the latter would have been spoken somewhere during the Hellenistic or the Parthian period of Iranian history.^[28]

However, more recent scholarship has increasingly shifted to an earlier dating.^[29][30][31] The literature presents a number of reasons for this shift, based on both the Old Avestan and the Young Avestan material. As regards Old Avestan, the Gathas show strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the Rigveda, which in turn is assumed to represent the second half of the second millennium BC.^{[11][32][33][34]} As regards Young Avestan, texts like the Yashts and the Vendidad are situated in the eastern parts of Greater Iran and lack any discernible Persian or Median influence from Western Iran.^[35] This is interpreted such that the bulk of this material, which has been produced several centuries after Zarathustra, must still predate the sixth century BC.^[36][37][38] As a result, more recent scholarship often assumes that the major parts of the Young Avestan texts mainly reflect the first half of the first millennia BC,^[39][40][9] whereas the Old Avestan texts of Zarathustra may have been composed around 1000 BC^{[41][42][43][44]} or even as early as 1500 BC.^[45][8][46]

It is not known at what point Avestan ceased to be a spoken language. Even the Young Avestan texts are still quite archaic and show no signs of evolving into a hypothetical Middle Iranian stage of development.^[47] In addition, none of the known Middle Iranian languages are the successor of Avestan.^[48] The Zend, i.e., the Middle Persian commentaries of the Avesta show that Avestan was no longer fully understood by the Zoroastrian commentators, indicating that it was no longer a living language by the late Sasanian period.

Geographical distribution

There are no historical sources that connect Avestan or its native speakers with any specific region. In addition, the Old Avestan texts do not mention any places names that can be identified. On the other hand, the Younger Avestan texts contain a substantial number of geographical references that are known from later sources and therefore allow to delineate the geographical horizon that was known and important to the speakers of Younger Avestan. It is nowadays widely accepted that these place names are situated in the eastern parts of Greater Iran corresponding to the entirety of present-day Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as parts of Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.^[49] Avestan is therefore assumed to have been spoken somewhere within this large region, although its precise location cannot be further specified.^[50]

Due to this geographical uncertainty, as well as the lack of any dateable historical events within the texts themselves, linking any given archeological culture with the speakers of Avestan has remained difficult. Among possible candidates, the Yaz culture has been named as likely.^[51] This is due to the fact that it is connected with the southward spread of steppe-derived Iranic groups, the presence of farming practices consisted with the Young Avestan society and the lack of burial sites, indicating the Zoroastrian practice of open air excarnation.^[52]

Liturgical Avestan

Both Old and Young Avestan texts are assumed to have been composed by their respective native speakers and were possibly updated and revised for an extended period of time. At two different times, however, they became fixed, purely liturgical, languages and were transmitted by an oral tradition.^[53] Scholars like Kellens, Skjærvø and Hoffman have identified a number of distinct stages of this transmission and how they changed the Avestan during its use as the sacred language of Zoroastrianism.^[54][55][56]

In the first stage, Old Avestan would have become the liturgical language of the early Zoroastrian community as described in the Young Avestan texts.^[56] Karl Hoffmann for instance identifies changes introduced due to slow chanting, the insertion of Young Avestan phonetic features into the material, attempts at standardizations as well as other editorial changes.^[57] The Young Avestan texts, however, were still produced, recomposed, and handed down during this time in a fluid oral tradition.^[58]

In the next stage, the Young Avestan texts crystallized as well meaning that both the Young and Old Avestan texts became the fixed, liturgical literature of non-Avestan Zoroastrian communities.^[59] The transmission of this literature largely took place in Western Iran as evidenced by alterations introduced by native Persian speakers.^[60] In addition, different scholars have tried to identify other dialects that may have impacted the pronunciation of certain Avestan features during the transmission, possibly before they reached Persia.^[21] Some Young Avestan texts, like the Vendidad, show ungrammatical features and may have been partly recomposed by non-Avestan speakers.^[61]

The purely oral transmission came to an end during the 5th or 6th century CE, when the Avestan corpus was committed to written form. This was achieved through the creation of the Avestan alphabet resulting in the Sasanian Avesta.^[62] Despite this, the post Sasanian written transmission saw a further deterioration of the Avestan texts. A large portion of the literature was lost after the 10th century BCE^[63] and the surviving texts show signs of incorrect pronunciations and copying errors.^[21]

Many phonetic features cannot be ascribed with certainty to a particular stage since there may be more than one possibility. Every phonetic form that can be ascribed to the Sasanian archetype on the basis of critical assessment of the manuscript evidence must have gone through the stages mentioned above so that "Old Avestan" and "Young Avestan" really mean no more than "Old Avestan and Young Avestan of the Sasanian period".^[21]

Consonants

According to Beekes, [ð] and [ɣ] are allophones of /θ/ and /x/ respectively (in Old Avestan).

Vowels

Nouns

Verbs