Avestan

Avestan
Avestan
	Yasna 28.1, Ahunavaiti Gatha (Bodleian MS J2)
Region	Central Asia
Era	Late Bronze Age, Iron Age
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Avestan; ; ;
Writing system	Avestan alphabet; Gujarati script and Devanagari script (used by Indian Zoroastrians);
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ae
ISO 639-2	ave
ISO 639-3	ave
Glottolog	aves1237
Linguasphere	58-ABA-a
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Avestan (/əˈvɛstən/ ə-VESS-tən)^[1] is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages, Old Avestan (spoken in the mid-2nd to 1st millennium BC) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BC).^{[f 1]} They are known only from their conjoined use as the scriptural language of Zoroastrianism. Both are early Eastern Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian language branch of the Indo-European language family. Its immediate ancestor was the Proto-Iranian language, a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language; as such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexicon to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language.

This article contains Avestan characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Avestan characters.

The Avestan text corpus was composed in the ancient Iranian satrapies of Arachosia, Aria, Bactria, and Margiana,^[2] corresponding to the entirety of present-day Afghanistan as well as parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Yaz culture^[3] of Bactria–Margiana has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of the early "Eastern Iranian" culture that is described in the Zoroastrian Avesta.

^ Wells, John C. (1990), Longman pronunciation dictionary, Harlow, England: Longman, p. 53, ISBN 0-582-05383-8 entry "Avestan"
^ Witzel, Michael. "THE HOME OF THE ARYANS" (PDF). Harvard University. p. 10. Retrieved 8 May 2015. Since the evidence of Young Avestan place names so clearly points to a more eastern location, the Avesta is again understood, nowadays, as an East Iranian text, whose area of composition comprised – at least – Sīstån/Arachosia, Herat, Merw and Bactria.
^ Mallory, J. P. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. page 653. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. entry "Yazd culture".

Cite error: There are <ref group=f> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=f}} template (see the help page).

[1] Wells, John C. (1990), Longman pronunciation dictionary, Harlow, England: Longman, p. 53, ISBN 0-582-05383-8 entry "Avestan"

[3] Witzel, Michael. "THE HOME OF THE ARYANS" (PDF). Harvard University. p. 10. Retrieved 8 May 2015. Since the evidence of Young Avestan place names so clearly points to a more eastern location, the Avesta is again understood, nowadays, as an East Iranian text, whose area of composition comprised – at least – Sīstån/Arachosia, Herat, Merw and Bactria.

[4] Mallory, J. P. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. page 653. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. entry "Yazd culture".

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Avestan
Yasna 28.1, Ahunavaiti Gatha (Bodleian MS J2)
Region	Central Asia
Era	Late Bronze Age, Iron Age
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Avestan
Writing system	Avestan alphabet Gujarati script and Devanagari script (used by Indian Zoroastrians)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	`ae`
ISO 639-2	`ave`
ISO 639-3	`ave`
Glottolog	`aves1237`
Linguasphere	`58-ABA-a`
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.