Translating the Avesta: The Avestan and Pahlavi Versions of the Hom Yasht

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The Yasna of 72 chapters is the chief ritual text of Zoroastrianism, the main religion of pre-Islamic Iran, which shares a common heritage with the language and culture of Ancient India as documented in the Vedas. Yasna 9-11 is dedicated to Haoma, a deity who represents the embodiment of the sacrificial plant used in the Yasna. During the Yasna ceremony, twigs of the plant are pressed to extract its juice. As a result, Yasna 9-11 recounts that the deity rewards worshippers with strength, victory, health, knowledge, and excellent offspring. Yasna 9 begins with a dialogue between the prophet Zarathushtra and Haoma. The latter tells Zarathushtra about illustrious heroes, culminating in Zarathushtra's own father, who pressed him in the past, and about wonderful sons, including Zarathusthra himself, who were born to them as a reward for the sacrificial act. The core of Yasna 9-11 encompasses a series of prayers and eulogies.The original text of the Yasna is in Avestan, an Iranian language spoken ca. 1500-500 BCE. The Avestan texts were in all likelihood transmitted orally until the Sasanian period (224-651 CE) when they were written down in a consciously invented and precise phonetic script reflecting the pronunciation of the words. During the Sasanian and early Islamic periods, Zoroastrian priests also translated and commented on the Yasna in Pahlavi, the Middle Iranian language of the province of Pars. In the manuscripts, the Pahlavi version alternates with its Avestan original and the codices that include them are traditionally called the Pahlavi Yasna manuscripts. In spite of the significance of the Pahlavi version for the history of Zoroastrian thought, it has mainly been treated as an auxiliary text to its Avestan counterpart. Combining new methods in textual criticism and tools in Digital Humanities, this project proposes to fill this gap by providing the first-ever text-critical edition of the Pahlavi version of the hymn to Haoma (Pahlavi Hom).The project will produce full-text digital transliterations of Pahlavi Yasna 9-11 of nine text-critically important manuscripts in XML (Extensible Markup Language) and will publish them online to be accessible to researchers for further studies. The XML transliterations will be uploaded onto the collation software CollateX by means of which the readings will be either categorised as main variants or regularised under their main variants as text-critically insignificant sub-readings. The collation will then be exported into the typesetting software LaTeX to form the critical apparatus as part of the edition. The print edition will offer the edited Pahlavi text in transcription with an English translation. As the Pahlavi version occurs together with its Avestan original in the manuscripts, the Avestan text and its English translation as edited in the MUYA project at SOAS (2016-2021), will be provided for convenient consultation. The Pahlavi section of each stanza will be followed by an in-depth commentary discussing literary, linguistic, ritual, and other features of the Pahlavi version. The edition will also provide the edited Pahlavi text in transliteration together with the text-critical apparatus of variant readings. The research will enhance the understanding of the UK public of Zoroastrianism, one of Iran's great contributions to the history of human thought. This research will also contribute to the UK public awareness of about 5000 Zoroastrians, living in the UK, and will raise the understanding of the Zoroastrian community and Iranians of their own past. Khanizadeh intends to create a project website and a twitter page to post project news and also to collaborate with popular cultural magazines and websites to create international awareness of the project. He will also deliver a talk at the annual Kutar Memorial Lecture at SOAS on "The Transmission of Zoroastrian Literature" in the second year of the project to reach out to wider audiences, both academic and non-academic.