Crossword clues for avestan
avestan
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Avestan \A*ves"tan\, a. Of or pertaining to the Avesta or the language of the Avesta. -- n. The language of the Avesta (an ancient Iranian language); -- less properly called Zend.
Syn: Zend [Webster 1913 Suppl.] ||
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Eastern Iranian language that survived in sacred texts centuries after it went extinct, from Persian Avesta "sacred books of the Parsees," earlier Avistak, literally "books."
Wiktionary
a. Of or pertaining to Avesta or Avestan. n. 1 An ancient Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. 2 An alphabet which was developed based on Pahlavi scripts and used to write Avestan and Middle Persian languages.
Wikipedia
Avestan , formerly also known as " Zend", is one of the Eastern Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name. Its area of composition comprised ancient Arachosia, Aria, Bactria, and Margiana, corresponding to the entirety of present-day Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Yaz culture of Bactria-Margiana has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of the early Eastern Iranian culture described in the Avesta.
Avestan's status as a sacred language has ensured its continuing use for new compositions long after the language had ceased to be a living language. It is closely related to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language.
Avestan is a Unicode block containing characters devised for recording the Zoroastrian religious texts, Avesta, and was used to write the Middle Persian, or Pazand language.
Usage examples of "avestan".
The whole middle expanse of Asia was not academically conquered for Orientalism until, during the later eighteenth century, Anquetil-Duperron and Sir William Jones were able intelligibly to reveal the extraordinary riches of Avestan and Sanskrit.
Journal of the American Oriental Society most fitly be called the Avestan dialect.
The collection, such as it was, was in the Avestan dialect, which had grown partially obsolete and unintelligible.
The translation of the Avestan books, probably made under these circumstances as early as A.
Pehlevi probably of the fourth century, according to Troyer,6 and is believed to have been originally written in the Avestan tongue, though this is extremely doubtful.
Secondly, the striking agreement in regard to fundamental doctrines, pervading spirit, and ritual forms between the accounts in the classics and those in the Avestan books, and of both these with the later writings and traditional practice of the Parsees, furnishes powerful presumption that the religion was a connected development, possessing the same essential features from the time of its national establishment.
The earliest Avestan account of the earthly condition of men describes them as living in a garden which Yima or Jemschid had enclosed at the command of Ormuzd.
An Avestan fragment 20 and the Viraf Nameh give the same account, only with more picturesque fulness.
Since we know from Theopompus that certain conceptions, illustrated in the Bundehesh and not contained in the fragmentary Avestan books which have reached us, were actually received Zoroastrian 25 Studien uber das Zend Avesta, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1855, band ix.
In view of the whole case as it stands, until further researches either strengthen it or put a different aspect upon it, we feel forced to think that the doctrine of a general resurrection was a component element in the ancient Avestan religion.
Instead he overshot his early goal and traveled as far east as Surat, there to find a cache of Avestan texts, there also to complete his translation of the Avesta.