Zend-Avesta I: Vendīdād
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- James Darmesteter
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Anonymous or composite
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~120,000 words · 574 passages
Cite this work
- APAAvesta. (n.d.). The Zend-Avesta, Part I: The Vendidad (SBE vol. IV) [Zend-Avesta I: Vendīdād] (James Darmesteter, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/avesta/the-zend-avesta-part-i-the-vendidad-sbe-vol-iv
- MLAAvesta. The Zend-Avesta, Part I: The Vendidad (SBE vol. IV) [Zend-Avesta I: Vendīdād]. Translated by James Darmesteter. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/avesta/the-zend-avesta-part-i-the-vendidad-sbe-vol-iv.
- ChicagoAvesta. The Zend-Avesta, Part I: The Vendidad (SBE vol. IV) [Zend-Avesta I: Vendīdād]. Translated by James Darmesteter. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/avesta/the-zend-avesta-part-i-the-vendidad-sbe-vol-iv.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first part of the Avesta in the 'Sacred Books of the East': the Vendidad, the Zoroastrian code of purity and purification.
Context and history
It is the part of the Avesta that least resembles a religious book as a modern reader imagines one, and that is worth saying. The Vendidad — 'law against the demons' — is above all a legal and ritual treatise: which contacts defile, how a corpse is to be handled, what penalty attaches to each fault, how earth, water and fire are purified, how a dog is to be cared for. Its interest is twofold: it is a legal and social document of ancient Iran of extraordinary detail, and it explains Zoroastrian practices that still exist. The ancient and religiously central core of the Avesta is the Gathas, which are in part three. The translation is Darmesteter's, of 1880.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Mazdcism but the name of its founder, who from a Magus was converted into a magician and master of the hidden sciences. It was not until the Renaissance that real inquiry was resumed. The first step was to collect all the information that could be gathered from Greek and Roman writers. That task was undertaken and successfully completed by Barnab£ Brisson 3. A nearer approach to the original source was made in the following century by Italian, English, and French travellers in Asia. Pietro della Valle, Henry Lord, Mandelslo, Ovington, Chardin, Gabriel du Chinon, and Tavernier found Zoroaster’s last followers in Persia and India, and made known their existence, their manners, and the main features of their belief to Europe. Gabriel du Chinon saw their books and recognised that they were not all written in the same language, their original holy writ being no longer understood except 1 Fabricius, Graeca Bibliotheca, fourth cd. p. 309 seq. 2 Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata I. Cf. infra, III, ii, and Porphyrius, de vita Plotini, § 16. 8 ‘ De regio PtVsarum principatu libri tres,’ Paris, 1 590. The second book is devoted to the religion and manners of the ancient Persians. XIV by means of translations and commentaries in another tongue. In the year 1700, a professor at Oxford, Thomas Hyde, the greatest Orientalist of his time in Europe, made the first systematic attempt to restore the history of the old Persian religion by combining the accounts of the Mohammedan writers with ‘ the true and genuine monuments of ancient Persia1.’ Unfortunately the so-called genuine monuments of ancient Persia were nothing more than recent compilations referring to the last stage of Parsiism.…