Capitalizing the Amesha Spentas in a Yasht List
A student is translating a short invocation from a Yasht for a class anthology. The Avestan line lists six entities after Ahura Mazda: vohu manō, aša vahišta, xšaθra vairya, spənta ārmaiti, haurvatāt, amərətāt. The student's first draft renders them in lowercase: 'good thought, best truth, desirable dominion, holy devotion, wholeness, immortality.' A classmate insists they must be capitalized as names: 'Vohu Manah, Aša Vahišta, Xšaθra Vairya, Spənta Ārmaiti, Haurvatāt, Amərətāt.' The teacher says the decision must be defended from the passage itself, not from personal preference. The passage is a list of beings invoked with yazamaidē, and the same words occur elsewhere in the Gathas as ordinary nouns. The student has to choose a translation policy, mark the grammatical forms, and explain how context decides between common noun and proper name. The anthology will print only one version.
1. What grammatical evidence in the list supports taking the six words as a coordinated set of divine beings?
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The six expressions are all nominative singular forms: vohu manō (neuter), aša vahišta (neuter), xšaθra vairya (neuter), spənta ārmaiti (feminine), haurvatāt (feminine), amərətāt (feminine). They are listed in asyndeton, a common Avestan pattern in which coordinated items are placed side by side without a conjunction. The list follows the name of Ahura Mazda and is governed by the same invocation, yazamaidē. That parallelism makes them a set of invoked beings rather than a random string of abstract nouns. Grammar alone does not prove that they are proper names, but the nominative parallelism plus the cultic verb supplies the syntactic frame. The student should mark each form as nom. sg. and note the gender split before deciding on capitalization.
2. How should the student decide between lowercase and capitalized translations?
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The decision is a translation-policy call, not a script issue: Avestan has no capital letters. In this passage the words appear in a liturgical list of beings invoked alongside Ahura Mazda, and the set corresponds to the six Amesha Spentas. Capitalizing them as Vohu Manah, Aša Vahišta, Xšaθra Vairya, Spənta Ārmaiti, Haurvatāt, and Amərətāt signals to the reader that the text is naming hypostases, not offering a list of moral abstractions. The student should capitalize in this context and add a first-occurrence gloss such as 'Good Thought (Vohu Manah)'. The justification must cite the invocation and the parallel list, not simply the later doctrinal system. A footnote can explain that the same words occur as common nouns elsewhere.
3. What is the risk of over-capitalizing every occurrence?
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If every occurrence of vohu manō is printed as 'Vohu Manah', the Gathas' ethical language is flattened into a pantheon of separate deities. In Old Avestan contexts, vohu manō can function as the good thought or good mind that a worshipper cultivates; aša can be truth or order as a principle. Over-capitalization can also suggest that the Avesta is straightforwardly polytheistic, which misrepresents the texts' own tension between Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas. The safer policy is context-sensitive: capitalize in lists of invoked beings, keep lowercase in ethical or psychological passages, and gloss the ambiguity where it matters. The student should state the policy explicitly so the examiner can see that the choice is reasoned, not arbitrary.