Avestan in the context of "Sacred language"

This is a list of languages arranged by age of the oldest existing text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered writing systems, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, would push backward the first attestation of certain languages. It also does not include inscriptions consisting of isolated words or names from a language. In most cases, some form of the language had already been spoken (and even written) considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here.

A written record may encode a stage of a language corresponding to an earlier time, either as a result of oral tradition, or because the earliest source is a copy of an older manuscript that was lost. An oral tradition of epic poetry may typically bridge a few centuries, and in rare cases, over a millennium. An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text date to c. 1500 BC, while the oldest known manuscripts date to c. 1040 AD.Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD.

Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly inflected.

Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE).

The Iranian languages, or the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, mainly in the Iranian Plateau.

The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from the Achaemenid Empire) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta). Avesta predates Old Iranian language, Old Avestan (c. 1500 – 900 BCE)[8] and Younger Avestan (c. 900 – 400 BCE).[9] Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite empires).

The Avesta is the text corpus of religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Modern editions of the Avesta are based on the various manuscripts that have survived in India and Iran.

The individual texts of the Avesta were originally oral compositions. They were composed over a long period of several centuries during the Avestan period (possibly ranging from 15th century BCE – 4th century BCE). The written transmission began much later during the Sasanian era (224 to 651 CE), with the creation of the Avestan alphabet. The resulting texts were then compiled into the multi-volume edition of the Sasanian Avesta. This edition was lost sometime after the 10th century CE, and only a small portion of it has survived, scattered across a number of individual manuscript traditions. The oldest surviving fragment of such a manuscript dates to 1323 CE.

Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster or Zarathustra, was an Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. In the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, which he is traditionally believed to have authored, he is described as a preacher and a poet-prophet. Some have claimed, with much scholarly controversy, to find his influence in Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, and, perhaps less controversially, in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly through concepts of cosmic dualism and personal morality.

He spoke an Eastern Iranian language, named Avestan by scholars after the corpus of Zoroastrian religious texts written in that language. Based on this, it is tentative to place his homeland somewhere in the eastern regions of Greater Iran (perhaps in modern-day Afghanistan or Tajikistan), but his exact birthplace is uncertain. His life is traditionally dated to sometime around the 7th and 6th centuries BC; though most scholars, using linguistic and socio-cultural evidence, suggest a dating to somewhere in the second millennium BC.

Angra Mainyu (/ˈæŋrə ˈmaɪnjuː/; Avestan: 𐬀𐬢𐬭𐬀⸱𐬨𐬀𐬌𐬥𐬌𐬌𐬎, romanized: Aŋra Maniiu) is the Avestan name of Zoroastrianism's hypostasis of the "destructive/evil spirit" and the main adversary in Zoroastrianism either of the Spenta Mainyu, the "holy/creative spirits/mentality", or directly of Ahura Mazda, the highest deity of Zoroastrianism. The Middle Persian equivalent is Ahriman (/ˈɑːrɪmən/; Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭧𐭫𐭬𐭭𐭩, romanized: Ahreman). The name can appear in English-language works as Ahrimanes.

Frashokereti (Avestan: 𐬟𐬭𐬀𐬴𐬋⸱𐬐𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬙𐬌 frašō.kərəti) is the Avestan language term (corresponding to Middle Persian 𐭯𐭫𐭱(𐭠)𐭪𐭥𐭲 fraš(a)gird <plškrt>) for the Zoroastrian doctrine of a final renovation of the universe, when evil will be destroyed, and everything else will be then in perfect unity with God (Ahura Mazda).

The doctrinal premises are (1) good will eventually prevail over evil; (2) creation was initially perfectly good, but was subsequently corrupted by evil; (3) the world will ultimately be restored to the perfection it had at the time of creation; (4) the "salvation for the individual depended on the sum of [that person's] thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine being to alter this." Thus, each human bears the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, and simultaneously shares in the responsibility for the fate of the world.