Maharashtra HSC Avesta-Pahlavi (MSBSHSE) flashcards

36 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Avestan alphabet size

The native Avestan script has 53 characters and writes vowels fully, unlike Pahlavi; it developed from a Pahlavi-type cursive and is attested only in manuscripts later than the Sassanian period.

Avestan case system

Avestan nouns inflect for eight cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative), three genders, and three numbers including a dual, inherited from Indo-Iranian.

Injunctive in Avestan

The injunctive is an augmentless past-tense form using secondary endings without the augment; it carries past narrative force in the Gathas, where the historical augment is often absent.

Old versus Younger Avestan

Old Avestan is the archaic, metrically regular language of the Gathas and Yasna Haptanghaiti; Younger Avestan is the more regularised liturgical prose of the Yashts, Vendidad and later Yasna material.

Avestan schwa vowels

Avestan distinguishes epenthetic vowels ə and ə̄, often arising from Proto-Indo-Iranian syllabic resonants; the sequence ərə commonly reflects earlier syllabic r, as in the word for 'lord'.

Gathas chapter counts

The five Gathas total 17 hāitis: Ahunavaiti 7 (Y 28–34), Ushtavaiti 4 (Y 43–46), Spentamainyu 4 (Y 47–50), Vohukhshathra 1 (Y 51), and Vahishtoishti 1 (Y 53).

Yasna Haptanghaiti

The 'seven-chapter Yasna' (Y 35–41) is Old Avestan prose close in age to the Gathas; it is largely ritual in content and is the principal Old Avestan prose text.

Ahuna Vairya

The chief Zoroastrian prayer, also called the Yatha Ahu Vairyo, is 21 words long; Pahlavi tradition correlates its words with the 21 nasks of the Avesta and treats it as a summary of the religion.

Visperad ceremony

The Visperad is a liturgical expansion of the Yasna performed at the six seasonal Gahambars; it inserts invocations of the ratu, the lords of the ritual, before each Yasna chapter.

Vendidad structure

The Vendidad, or Videvdad, is a Younger Avestan legal-ritual code in 22 fargards, recited together with the Yasna in the Videvdad ceremony and concerned with purity, pollution and expiation.

Khordeh Avesta

The Khordeh Avesta is the lay prayer book, collecting short daily prayers, Niyayeshes, Gah and Siroza invocations and excerpts from the Yashts for recitation by non-priests.

Pahlavi script ambiguity

Book Pahlavi has about 14 letter shapes for more phonemes, so b/p, g/k, d/t, w/f, r/l and y/j share signs; vowels are mostly unwritten, and reading depends on context and known vocabulary.

Huzvarishn ideograms

Huzvarishn are Aramaic words written in Pahlavi but read as Iranian: MLKʾ is written for 'king' read šāh, KRA for 'head' read sar, and YK for 'one' read ēw.

Middle Persian past tense

The Middle Persian past is formed from the past participle in -ag/-ad plus the copula, so kard plus -am yields 'I made'; this construction is ancestral to the New Persian past tense.

Pahlavi abstract suffix

The suffix -īh forms abstract nouns and recurs in Zoroastrian theological vocabulary, as in xwadāyīh 'lordship'; adjectival suffixes include -īg, -ōmand and -war.

Zand definition

Zand is the Middle Persian translation and explanatory commentary on an Avestan text; it glosses rather than translates literally, and Zand manuscripts transmit Avestan with its Pahlavi interpretation.

Bundahishn

The Bundahishn, 'Primal Creation', is a Pahlavi cosmogony and cosmology surviving in Greater and Lesser recensions; it is the principal source for Zoroastrian cosmography and eschatological world history.

Denkard contents

The Denkard is a ninth-century Pahlavi encyclopaedia in nine books; books 3 to 9 include summaries of the 21 Avestan nasks and theological argument, preserving knowledge of lost Avestan texts.

Arda Wiraz Namag

The Arda Wiraz Namag is a Pahlavi visionary narrative of the priest Wiraz's journey through heaven and hell, reflecting Zand-based eschatology and the genre of otherworld journeys.

Pazand texts

Pazand designates Middle Persian written in the Avestan alphabet with full vowels instead of Book Pahlavi script; the Pazand corpus preserves liturgical material in a more explicit orthography.

Twenty-one nasks

Zoroastrian tradition divides the Avesta into 21 nasks arranged in three groups of seven; the Denkard summarises their contents, and only the Vendidad survives intact among them.

Gathic metre

The Gathas use syllabic metres named after their hymns, such as ahunavaiti and ushtavaiti; metrical analysis controls text reconstruction and helps separate Old from Younger Avestan material.

Zand glossing practice

Pahlavi translators supply explanatory glosses, often marked by 'meaning', and expand ambiguous Avestan; Zand therefore records an interpretation and must not be equated with the literal Avestan sense.

Menog and Getig

Pahlavi hermeneutics distinguishes menog, the spiritual or invisible state, from getig, the material or corporeal state; texts may be read cosmologically, ritually and morally under this scheme.

Humata Hukhta Huvarshta

The cardinal Zoroastrian ethical formula means good thoughts, good words and good deeds; its opposites are dushmata, duzhukhta and duzhvarshta, and it is the criterion of moral action.

Amesha Spentas

The seven Bounteous Immortals are Ahura Mazda with Vohu Manah, Asha Vahishta, Khshathra Vairya, Spenta Armaiti, Haurvatat and Ameretat; they personify divine attributes and creation.

Frashokereti

Frashokereti is the final renovation of the world, when evil is defeated and existence is made perfect; it follows the ethical dualism of the twin spirits in Gathic teaching.

Dakhma exposure

A dakhma is a tower of silence where the dead are exposed, based on the rule that corpse matter must not pollute earth, water or fire; the practice is documented in Pahlavi and Rivayat literature.

Gahambars

The six Gahambars are seasonal festivals tied to creation, from Maidhyoi-zaremaya in spring to Hamaspathmaedaya at year-end, the latter associated with honouring the fravashis, the ancestral spirits.

Sanjan migration date

Tradition dates the Zoroastrian migration to Sanjan in Gujarat to 936 CE; the Qissa-i Sanjan records the settlement and the conditions of refuge granted by the local ruler Jadi Rana.

Kadmi and Shahanshahi

The Kadmi and Shahanshahi calendars differ on intercalation, producing an eighteenth-century communal split among Parsis; the Fasli calendar movement followed in the twentieth century.

Pahlavi Rivayats

The Persian and Pahlavi Rivayats of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries record correspondence between Indian and Iranian priests on ritual questions and document divergence between the two communities.

Parsi Panchayat

The Parsi Panchayat was the community council, centred on Navsari and later Bombay, that regulated internal affairs; anjumans were the associational bodies that grew alongside it.

Avestan verb parsing order

To translate an Avestan line, identify the verb's person, number, tense and mood from its ending, then assign case roles to the nouns, then resolve sandhi across word boundaries.

Avestan case functions

In translation, the genitive marks possession or partitive relation, the dative purpose or indirect object, the instrumental means, the locative place or time, and the ablative separation or cause.

Pahlavi present stems

Pahlavi verbs have a present stem and a past stem, and the present stem must be learned per verb: kun- means 'do', baw- 'become', and dār- 'hold', as in kunam 'I do'.