The Jāmāspi is one of the most popular Zoroastrian texts. It was probably conceived as a kind of encyclopedia for laymen. At the beginning of the last century, it was still well-known among the Zoroastrian community of India and has reached us through various manuscript traditions: Pahlavi, Pāzand and Pārsi. A philological analysis of all the manuscript traditions suggests that there was a Pahlavi archetype of the text. Moreover, it shows clearly that the Pārsi codex M52, which represents the best preserved tradition, was the result of a collation of all the existing Pahlavi and Pāzand materials. The study of the language and the narrative pattern allows us to consider the Pārsi transcription as a mechanical transcription from a Pāzand model.

The Pahlavi literature of the Sasanian and post-Sasanian periods preserves not only many fragments of Pahlavi translations of lost Avestan texts, but also parallel versions of those attested in the extant Avestan manuscripts. Their differences are generally interpreted on the assumption of the existence of an underlying common Avestan text. However, the structural comparison between the Pahlavi translation of Vīdēvdād 11 in the Pahlavi text Zand ī Fragard ī Juddēwdād and its Avestan text in the Vīdēvdād Sāde and the Pahlavi Vīdēvdād manuscripts could point to the existence of two or even three different Avestan versions of the same chapter (fragard).

The episode under discussion in this article comes from the Middle Persian text Kārnāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān. It does not appear in any published edition of the Shāhnāmeh, nor does it seem to be recorded in any manuscript consulted for these editions. The episode is versified and illustrated in a nineteenth-century manuscript preserved in the Government Museum in Alwar, India. If it is an early interpolation, why is it not found in major Shāhnāmeh manuscripts? And if it is a late interpolation, how did it find its way into an Indian manuscript at such a late date? The article proposes a provenance for the manuscript and draws attention to the possible role of the Zoroastrian community in India in the transmission of Ferdowsi's opus.

This article argues that the Avestan text Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (“Yasna of the seven chapters”) was not originally divided into seven chapters. It was divided into three parts that were not considered hāitis (chapters) in the same way as the gathic hāitis. The division of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti into seven parts and its corresponding title is based on the arrangement of the Old Avestan texts. These texts try to reproduce the structure of the prayer Ahuna Vairiia; three verses with two hemistichs each correspond to three pairs of compositions with 7, 4 four and 1 hāiti each of the Old Avestan texts.

This article discusses the use of food as a mode of differentiation and identification according to Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Persian texts of the late antique period. In these texts, the list of foods consumed by Arabs and Indians are juxtaposed with that of the Iranian diet, and each group is given anthropological treatment. The article contends that the Zoroastrian dietary law, based on the Middle Persian texts, provides a mode of purity and impurity vis-à-vis others. Finally, the article touches upon the idea of moderation and the consumption of wine as dealt with in some Middle Persian sources.

In this article it is maintained that the extant Zand ī Wahman Yasn is a work which was composed to be recited orally. In it mythological and historical material familiar to both storyteller and audience is woven into an integral text whose purpose is to interpret contemporary events. An analysis of each chapter shows how various rhetorical devices belonging to every level of language are used to underscore the contents and give cohesion to the text. These devices include alliteration and assonance, grammatical parallelism, and clusters of synonyms. Different types of dialogues and monologues are discussed and comparisons are made with other extant texts with apocalyptic themes.

The present article investigates the relations between the corpus of the five Avestan Niyāyišns and that of the Yašts, showing the dependance of the former on the latter. Four Niyāyišns out of five incorporate chapters attested into the corpus of the Yašts; only the fifth Niyāyišn depends on Yasna 62, although it shares some stanzas with Yasna 27, 33 and 34; in any case this text cannot be considered the source of the parallel passages attested in the Yasna. The paragraphs of the Niyāyišns which do not have a direct parallel in other Avestan passages, cannot be considered as original, but probably depend on other original sources or have been made through imitating earlier passages.

This article sets forth a history (with literary-textual focus) of the Iranian mythological Snake-man, from the earliest Vedic and Avestan evidence, down to Ferdowsi. The continuous development of the myth in Iran is accompanied by changes in the monster's name, which show linguistic reassociations, while a constant in all of this is the figure's representation as an inimical outsider. The Vedic name of the brute's fortification, the background of which in etymology and realia will be shown to be the pre-Aryan Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, finds a clear but hitherto unobserved correlation in Pahlavi. This illuminates the Indo-Iranian antiquity of the myth in terms of prehistoric inter-ethnic rivalries.