The colophons of Iranian Avestan Manuscripts

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The project "The colophons of Iranian Avestan Manuscripts" is a sub-project of ECoDA (European Cooperation on Digitizing Avestan) and related to other sub-projects which are in progress in other universities in Germany (Göttingen and Berlin) and in other countries such as England (London), Italy (Bologna), and Spain (Salamanca). This project is of particular importance for the religious minority of Zoroastrianism in Iran and India. The culture, language, and history of Zoroastrians are in serious danger, especially in Iran, as there is no official interest on the side of Iran's government to recover and preserve this heritage. Mass migration of young Zoroastrians, especially to the USA and Canada, and their social integration in the new country, is another reason for this emergency situation. Avestan as an Old Iranian language, is attested only in manuscripts, found in Iran and India. The oldest part of the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians, is about 3000 years old. Our successful travels to Iran, with the recovery of more than thirty Avestan manuscripts, clearly show that there should be many more manuscripts in Iran, and it is thus important to continue the search for them and the work of digitizing them. The colophons of these manuscripts are in the Middle Persian and Persian languages. They contain relevant information useful not only for religious studies, but also for linguistic, cultural, historical, and literature studies. For this reason it is very important to first provide a data bank of colophons, also containing transcription and translation. This data bank can be used for interdisciplinary purposes. Avestan manuscripts, and especially their colophons, help us to reconstruct the history of various aspects of the Zoroastrian community. The genealogical information of colophons supports the reconstruction of the family tree of the priest families in Iran, who are also the scribes of the Avestan manuscripts. According to this information, we can test the hypothesis of the hyparchetypes or "Stammhandschriften", which was developed by Hoffmann around the 1970s. He developed this hypothesis in order to explain the transmission errors in different ceremonies. He mentioned that there might have been different copies of each Avestan text, but that all copies go back to the same origin. Hoffmann's theory has been discussed and proved to be false by other Avestan experts, such as Cantera and Tremblay. In the submitted project, the colophons are used as a tool to test the theory of Hoffmann.