Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 31 — The Zend-Avesta, Part III / Yasna & Gathas (Mills, page scans)

Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.

1(cp. jégerezad(t) (2) and other instances), or is the proper reading Svaité(¢), after the ad class, and a third pl.? We natu- rally hesitate to accept this latter suggestion, but the word actually stands in some MSS. . 416 If we cannot accept yd = ydni as subject, shavaité(2) is apparently sg. for pl., or Svaité(é) (?) is to be read, with Bartholomae, as 34 pl. mid.; that is,.unless /vd understood is the subject. We have then ‘how the lofty treat the lowly’. But the difficulty remains as to * avéshdm néd* vid(v)é ydni (or yéna). To return now to those words in connection with what follows, our difficulty is not only the for- bidden (?) abstract ‘influences’ (neut. nom.) as ‘exerting influence’, but the nom. form of ereshvdonhd, whereas we need the acc. We should be obliged to render: ‘Of those things (partitive gen.) are not to be known those which move the lofty ddréig’. Possibly ereshvdonhd, which is difficult for the metre, should be read ereshvéig. Some emendation seems needed. Then shavaité(é) may point to hvd; see also the hvd in v. 4 with its vichird. ‘Of those things (or by those people) are not to be known how He moves the lofty ddrég--- (so shall it be to us as He shall will)’. Finally, to reconsider ddréig, I have a strong distrust of the copied Sansk. word @dhréin. The ‘lower ones’ is not a Gathic expression. God’s sacred people would not be naturally described thus. One might suspect a shortened ddaréig, and consider the Indian ddardn = ‘cares’, ‘solicitous attentions’, (rajid kritddaram); ‘how the lofty ones carry out their cares (for men)’. Moreover ‘treat’ seems no easy meaning for shavaité(é) governing the acc. Shw = chyu means (secondarily) to ‘exert moving influence’; ‘how they impel, advance, the ddréig’ would be closer, even if ddréng means ‘people’. After all the difficulties, would it not be well to glance at the original translation, shattered though it be? The hint of the Pahl. trir. has at least one signal advantage; it is cer- tainly concrete. The ‘fires’ or ‘lights’ (cp. raochebis, and perhaps sdchd ¥. 30, 1, 2) are at least physical objects, and, according to some expositors, all the more likely to be mentioned, ‘how the lofty ones move the stars (of destiny)’, or ‘what things move the lofty (ereshveéng) fires (stars)’, or ‘how He moves them’. If ddréig means ‘fires’ or ‘lights’ (see the Pahl. roshané, Persian rishan), it is of course not in its original form. In the first place the dental is made sonant, as, perhaps, in dhrahyd for thrayd in raf(e)- dhrahyd etc.; or cp. a possible Parsi word ddér cited by Justi. Confusion may also have arisen from the fact that the word once stood in the indefinite Pahl. character in which the same sign sometimes renders ¢ and d; and secondly the termination is nasalized by an inversion of the usual process; ataras [°6] = ddaras = ddras may have become ddras = ddréig; cp. mitaras(cha), which seems also to show a transfer to the a declension.

2in the indefinite Pahl. character in which the same sign sometimes renders ¢ and d; and secondly the termination is nasalized by an inversion of the usual process; ataras [°6] = ddaras = ddras may have become ddras = ddréig; cp. mitaras(cha), which seems also to show a transfer to the a declension. No explanation is entirely satisfactory, but, if the text is to stand, I suppose that: ‘By (?) these it is not to be known how (?) the lofty ones . . z ' a 417 carry out their purposes’ (?) is about as little wide of the meaning of the composer as any rendering. Next to that I would place: ‘of these things those are not to be known which move the lofty fires’ (this, on account of the appearance of avaé(¢)sham .-- yd). But if y@ = yéna, and ereshvéig is read, then I would render: ‘Of those things those are not to be known by which He executes His pur- poses; He is the greatest of beings to whom I will come (without seeking an answer to the perplexing questions) with the utterance of invocations’. Aojisto (cp. mazistem Y. 28, 5, and madristd) describes Ahura; see the next verse. There can be no objection to including the Deity among the hata in view of aojistd; ‘beings’ are not necessarily ‘creatures’. Even if a separate Géus tashan is meant, he must at all events be regarded as being, like the Spénista Mainyu (see above), a representative of Ahura. The fact that aojista is applied in the later Avesta to Vayu, Mithra, and to the glorified Zarathustra, should not militate against its application to the Deity, or to Spénista Mainyu, here in the Gathds. To refer the word ‘strongest’ to the wailing Cow, or ‘her soul’, seems a mistake; one writer would render ‘great- est of beast’ (?). But if he (or she) was so ‘powerful’, he would not bellow in his woes as here. (It is ‘the Cow’, fem., which is elsewhere so prominent in the Gathas). Zaveng at first glance would seem to express the acc, of goal, the things ~ come to (see Spiegel and Bartholomae); but this would force us to separate hdtéim hd aojisto from hed vichird Ahurd, and from tashd géus, to which it may well refer as practically equivalent to Mazda, and this notwith- standing the oblique diction in the third person. See the 27¢ person in v.5 following the 3din v. 4. It is to be noted that yahmdi eaveng is no natural way to express ‘to whose calls’. Yahmdi, with a verb, ‘to come’, in the immediate connection, can never be dat. for gen.: ‘To whom as ‘to his calls’, would be the proper rendering. Whether Asha can be said ‘to come’ (jim) ‘with the production of invocations’ might be a question, but hardly with those who identify Asha with the ‘holy congregation’ at every step. The matters in hand are so momentous that Asha might well be represented as making appeals in the matter to Ahura (He being referred to obliquely in the third person). He is imme- diately declared to be the saédré mairistd, and this seems to contain a certain echo of zavéjig, although not at all in apposition with it.

3are so momentous that Asha might well be represented as making appeals in the matter to Ahura (He being referred to obliquely in the third person). He is imme- diately declared to be the saédré mairistd, and this seems to contain a certain echo of zavéjig, although not at all in apposition with it. Otherwise jimd must be a nom. pl. of the verbal adj., or noun; cp. mashd: ‘to whom the coming ones have made (??) invocations’, or ‘to whom they are (or all are) coming’. I do not think that the difficulty is suf- ficiently great to force us to suppose a new speaker. 53 418 If it were, the Géus tashan might be considered as rejoining to Asha’s report that the questions could not be answered; but, while this relieves the difficulty as to zavéng jimd, it creates a difficulty as to aajistd. Asha’s coming to the calls of an aojista is equally difficult. And Asha, as expressed in ashd@, is far more probable than a wholly unexpressed subject. If hdtam hvo aojisté can be separated from the mazristé -+- hvd vichird Ahuré, atha né anhad(t) yathd hvd vasad(t), then of course Asha is the Immortal who comes to the aojista’s calls, but what would be the aojisté? Gavoi is generally recognized as fem. in the Gathas (see above), its masc. use not being probable. The masc. urvan of the Cow would not be likely to be wnderstood im- mediately .in connection with the word gavéi expressed in the fem. Keredushd is difficult enough. Some able scholars seem to suppose that we have only to copy any Sansk. word which looks like it, as in the case of ddréng = ddhrin. Take for instance krit = ‘to spin out? (an offering), we might hold keredushd to be krit(d) (the d for ¢ by sandhi, or false writing; cp. wkhdha) + the suffix ws = uS, ‘in weaving invocations’ (cp. ufydni). Or, if urirudhusha is allowed to stand as an irreg. nom. pl. masc. of the perf. part., we might think of a plural from a possible keret-vah (cp. vidvdo); ‘to whom those who come have made their invocations’. Even a sociative instr. might be considered : ‘to whom I will come with the one (?) making in- vocations’. Or, looking once more for an outwardly similar word, we might query whether keredushé could be an instr. meaning ‘in want’, ‘in my need’; cp. kridht = ‘defective’ for meaning; and, for change of suffix, cp. vani and vanus. At last turning to the hints of the Pahl. writer, we may see a form from kar. (Cp. kritvan for meaning, and, partially, for form). I prefer an adverbial instr., kered + us (uS@) = ‘with zealous’ (uttering) (cp. kriéti, and, for varying suffix, cp. rité, rité, pitt, pitt). Keredushé as a noun of action governs zavéng. Pahl. Valman, as it may be gen. by position, should be rendered as equivalent to avd valman = ahmdi. The translator evidently had a text reading §(k)yé(é)itt before him (or mistook y for v as often), hence his ‘peace’. He elsewhere has no difficulty in rendering shu. He it was who origi- nally taught us that shw equals chyu (see Y.

The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.