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The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta's texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the liturgical group is the ''Yasna'', which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism's primary act of worship, and at which the ''Yasna'' text is recited. The most important portion of the ''Yasna'' texts are the five Gathas, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to Zoroaster himself. These hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the ''Yasna'', are in the Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan language. The remainder of the ''Yasna'' Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the ''Vendidad'' and the ''Visperad''. The ''Visperad'' extensions consists mainly of additional invocations of the divinities (''yazatas''), while the ''Vendidad'' is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws. Even today, the ''Vendidad'' is the only liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the ''Yasht''s, which are hymns to the individual ''yazata''s. Unlike the ''Yasna'', ''Visperad'' and ''Vendidad'', the ''Yasht''s and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the ''Yasht''s, these other lesser texts include the ''Nyayesh'' texts, the ''Gah'' texts, the ''Siroza'', and various other fragments. Together, these lesser texts are conventionally called ''Khordeh Avesta'' or "Little Avesta" texts. When the first ''Khordeh Avesta'' editions were printed in the 19th century, these texts (together with some non-Avestan language prayers) became a book of common prayer for lay people. ==Historiography== The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today, derive from a single master copy produced by Sassanian-era (224-651 CE) collation and recension. That master copy, now lost, is known as the 'Sassanian archetype'. The oldest surviving manuscript (''K1'') of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE. Summaries of the various Avesta texts found in the 9th/10th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that about three-quarters of the corpus has since been lost. A pre-Sassanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend and myth. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the 9th-11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (i.e. in the so-called Pahlavi books). The legends run as follows: The twenty-one ''nasks'' "books" of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda and brought by Zoroaster to his patron Vishtaspa (''Denkard'' 4A, 3A). Supposedly, Vishtaspa (''Dk'' 3A) or another Kayanian, Daray (''Dk'' 4B), then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other in the royal archives (''Dk'' 4B, 5). Following Alexander's conquest, the Avesta was then supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks after they translated the scientific passages that they could make use of (''AVN'' 7-9, ''Dk'' 3B, 8). Several centuries later, one of the Arsacid kings named Valaksh (one of the Vologases) supposedly then had the fragments collected, not only of those that had previously been written down, but also of those that had only been orally transmitted (''Dk'' 4C). The ''Denkard'' also transmits another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In that story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sassanid-era priest Tansar (high priest under Ardeshir I, ''r.'' 224–242, and Shapur I, ''r'' 240/242-272), who had the scattered works collected, and of which he approved only a part as authoritative (''Dk'' 3C, 4D, 4E). Tansar's work was then supposedly completed by Adurbad Mahraspandan (high priest of Shapur II, ''r.'' 309-379) who made a general revision of the canon and continued to ensure its orthodoxy (''Dk'' 4F, ''AVN'' 1.12-1.16). A final revision was supposedly undertaken in the 6th-century under Khusrow Anoshiravan (''Dk'' 4G). In the early 20th century, the legend of the Arsacid collation engendered a search for an 'Arsacid archetype' of the Avesta. In the theory of Friedrich Carl Andreas (1902), the archaic nature of the Avestan texts was assumed to be due to preservation via written transmission, and unusual or unexpected spellings in the surviving texts were assumed to be reflections of errors introduced by Sasanian-era transcription from the Arsacid-era Aramaic-derived consonantal alphabet (Arsacid Pahlavi script). The search for the 'Arsacid archetype' was increasingly criticisized in the 1940s and was eventually abandoned in the 1950s after Karl Hoffmann demonstrated that the inconsistencies noted by Andreas were actually due to unconscious alterations introduced by oral transmission. Hoffmann identifies these changes to be due in part to modifications introduced through recitation; in part to influences from other Iranian languages picked up on the route of transmission from somewhere in eastern Iran (i.e. Central Asia) via Arachosia and Sistan through to Persia; and in part due to the influence of phonetic developments in the Avestan language itself. The legends of an Arsacid-era collation and recension are no longer taken seriously. It is now certain that for most of their long history the Avesta's various texts were handed down orally, and independently of one another, and that it was not until around the fifth or sixth century that they were committed to written form. However, during their long history, only the Gathic texts seem to have been memorized (more or less) exactly. The other less sacred works appear to have been handed down in a more fluid oral tradition, and were partly composed afresh with each generation of poet-priests, sometimes with the addition of new material. The Younger Avestan texts are therefore composite works, with contributions from several different authors over the course of several hundred years. The texts became available to European scholarship comparatively late. Abraham Anquetil-Duperron travelled to India in 1755, and discovered the texts among Indian Zoroastrian (Parsi) communities. He published a set of French translations in 1771, based on translations provided by a Parsi priest. Anquetil-Duperron's translations were at first dismissed as a forgery in poor Sanskrit, but he was vindicated in the 1820s following Rasmus Rask's examination of the Avestan language (''A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language'', Bombay, 1821). Rask also established that Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts were a fragment of a much larger literature of sacred texts. Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts are at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris ('P'-series manuscripts), while Rask's collection now lies in the Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen ('K'-series). Other large Avestan language manuscript collections are those of the British Museum ('L'-series), the K. R. Cama Oriental Library in Bombay, the Meherji Rana library in Navsari, and at various university and national libraries in Europe. The term ''Avesta'' is from Zoroastrian tradition. The meaning of the word is uncertain. Many etymologies have been suggested, but none has been universally accepted. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Avesta」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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