Avesta texts - comprehension and translation
The comprehension-and-translation domain gives you a short Avestan passage - a Gathic stanza, a Yašt verse or a prayer - and asks for a working translation, plus questions on where that passage sits in the corpus.
Map of the corpus
- Yasna: 72 hāitis. Its 17 Gathas stand in five groups: Ahunavaiti (Y. 28–34), Uštavaiti (43–46), Spəntā Mainyu (47–50), Vohu Xšaθra (51) and Vahištōišti (53). Y. 35–41 is the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti.
- Old Avestan = Gathas + Haptaŋhāiti; everything else, including the Vidēvdād (22 chapters), the Visperad (24) and the 21 Yašts, is Younger Avestan.
- The Khordeh Avesta gathers the daily prayers: Nyāyiš, Gāh, Sīrōza, Āfrīnagān.
A translation routine
- Locate the verb - it often stands late and carries person, number and voice.
- Take the nominative as subject and the accusative as object.
- Let the remaining cases work: instrumental "by means of", dative "for", ablative "from", genitive "of", locative "in".
- Resolve -ca "and" before translating, and check whether a familiar formula is being quoted.
Worked example
Ahuna Vairya, line 1: yathā ahū vairyō athā ratuš ašāt̰cit̰ hacā. yathā ... athā frame a comparison, "as ... so". ahū is nominative singular of ahu- "lord"; vairyō belongs to var- "to choose" and means "is to be chosen". ratuš is nominative singular, "the judge, the model". hacā "in accordance with" governs the ablative ašāt̰ "truth". Result: "As the Lord is to be chosen, so is the judge, in accordance with truth."
Traps
- Treating the Vidēvdād as the oldest Avestan text, or the Gathas as Younger Avestan.
- Rendering aša as "law" where the Gathic sense is "truth, cosmic order".
- Leaving an ablative after hacā untranslated.