No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The Ahuna-Vairya was so distinguished by the later use which was made of it that it became a formula of unusual moral and ritualistic importance—indeed, more so than, upon our first glance upon it, we should, the most of us, think that it deserved. But, though bearing unmistakable traces of being somewhat artificially constructed, both in its metre and contents, upon closer study the little group of words seems well worthy of its parentage, for it is a succinct cipher of that remarkable manifestation of the moral idea which, as the one point of Zoroastrianism, must have had enormous influence during successive generations among the inhabitantsof Mid-Asia. The Pahlavi form of the name Ahunaver is but a contraction of Ahuna-Vairya, —the nasal n having intruded from thenasal m of an accusative ahūm, or else from mere euphony.
page 58 note 1 And the yẹn'hẹ (yahya) hātãm.
page 58 note 2 It may possibly have been put together by some priestly author at a later age; but such conscious imitative construction is, on the whole, not so probable, and would not have occurred to any sacerdotal writer of a much later age.
page 59 note 1 This i is Pahlavi-Avesta y with its inherent vowel a = ya; see ZDMG., 1893, Heft iii, of October,1898, Heft iii, and of 1901, Heft ii, etc. The supposed ιm is yam as in numbers of cases.
page 60 note 1 See Yasna XXVII, 1, dazdyāi ahūmča ratūmča, Visp. XI, 21, dademahī ahūmča ratūmča. See the name itself, Ahuna-vairya, used as sacrosanct, and like the “Word of God”, which was the “Sword of the Spirit”; so in the Temptation of Zarathuštra, so in the Hōrn- Yast and in the Srōš Yast., in Yasna XIX and elsewhere.
page 61 note 1 A provisional text at this date, but probably little to be improved upon.
page 63 note 1 We are constrained to refer Aūharmazd to αχū explaining it, but this gloss might be merely corroborative; see line c.
page 64 note 1 My warrant for this ‘let it be” is supplied by v'airyō=“to be chosen”, though that form is not reported by the Pahlavi text; we must treat the Pahlavi texts as if they were only fitfully correct as to the ultimate details, and at times, as might be expected, not consistent with themselves.
page 64 note 2 Not αχυān'= “spiritual Lords” (!) as the plural of αχū in a; the word renders the Av. word aṅheuš= “of life”; so also Nēr. = antarbhuvane (accidental repetition).
page 65 note 1 A commentator, or “of the Zartūshts”; read -tān′.
page 65 note 2 Notice that min = ‘from” is a closer rendering of aṅhēuš.
page 65 note 3 Or they know a ‘man-of-deeds from his interior life”; but this seems to be far too modern a turn of thought.
page 65 note 4 See note above, Aχū seems explained as Aūharmazd in line a, but such inconsequences are to be expected.
page 67 note 1 Notice that the glosses in Nēr. do not correspond exactly with those of the Pahlavi. Were some of these latter added since Nēryōsangh wrote ? Notice also that Nēr. does not evenrender the same grammatical forms which we see in the Pahlavi. Though Nēr. states that his translations into Sanskrit were made upon the Pahlavi translation, yet his eye was always upon the original Av. text, and this is proved by his frequent emendations.
page 67 note 2 It is somewhat difficult to make ādeçyaḥ equal “to be obeyed”— this also in view öf υαsιšṭ'āt; see both the Pahl. ratīhā and the Av. ratuš.
page 67 note 3 Or read υαsιšṭ'āt(?) from Sanctity the Best, from Aša Vahišta(?); hardly.
page 68 note 1 Does this tasya, see also tena in the gl., show that Nēr. understood the Pahl. text as “χυatāī aš” rather than as “χυatāιyīh”?