Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:53:33.213Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Yasna 45 and the Iranian Calendar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

J. Duchesne Guillemin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The structure of the gâthâs is at first sight far from obvious. It has even been contended that the sequences of stanzas preserved in the Avesta under the titles Yasna 28, 29, etc., were in nearly all cases mere haphazard collections.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , October 1950 , pp. 635 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 638 note 1 For a thorough study of the very intricate questions relating to old-Iranian computs, see Lewy, Hildegarde, “Le Calendrier perse”, in Orientalia, 1941, pp. 1–64.Google Scholar

page 638 note 2 The etymology *átr-yâiya is rejected by Henning, J.R.A.S., 1944, no. 2, on the ground that this “could appear in O. Persian only as ât(a)ryâdiya: tr becomes ss in Iranian only where a vowel follows”. Now, must the group ocolusive + ry always vocalize its r, never its y? It is true that Old-Iranian, in contrast with Sanskrit, shows a general tendency to do so, as can be judged from several passive forms in −ya: av. kiryeti (= k yati): skr. kriyáte; av. miryete (= *m yatai): skr. mriyáte. Still, there is at least one exception: in the passive of star “to strew ”, av. avâstryata, uslryamnô (*-striya-), the same treatment of r and y is exhibited as in skr. slriyate. Our Persian word can readily be explained by exactly the same treatment (r is consonant, y develops a i): *âtr-yâdiya > *âtriyâdiya. O.-P. amariyata is ambiguous, as has been seen by Bartholomæ, since it can represent either *amryala or—with the same guna-degree as in skr. smaryáte — *amaryata.

page 639 note 1 When the beginning of the year was shifted, Aramati fell at the end. Nyberg has rightly observed that the intercalary days, devoted to the dead, inserting themselves at the end of the year, came immediately after Aramati; and the dead give their name to the month which opens the year. Thus, Aramati seems to have its Armenian value of “abode of the dead”: sandarametk’ “hell, inferi”. But, in the primitive numeration, one can only say that Aramati ranges in the “first” function and the artâvan are placed between two terms to which they are etymologically akin: aramati and arta.

page 640 note 1 In writing this note, on the basis of my paper to the XXIst Congress of Orientalists in Paris, I have used suggestions or references by Messrs. Bailey, Barr, Dumézil, and Nyberg, for which I am grateful.