The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (2)

If we rely on Gāθās alone, he has no mention of ancestry as far as Vīštāspa is concerned. However, Y 53.2 kauuacā vīštāspō, zaraθuštriš spitāmō, fǝrašaoštrascā "... That the kauui Vīštāspa Spitāma, son of Zaraθuštra, and Fǝrašaoštra..." attests zaraθuštri- patronymic formed on Zaraθuštra. Instead of seeing three people as in the usual translations, we could see two. Vīštāspa would thus be presented here as Zaraθuštra's son, perhaps to be interpreted morally as his spiritual son (Helmut Humbach's hypothesis). The variability attested for Zaraθuštra's ancestry also appears for that of Vīštāspa, since, in the Avesta, his father is called auruuat̰.aspa-"he whose horses are swift".

For Fǝrašaoštra and Dǝ̄jā̄māspa, we again have a patronymic: Huuō.guua-"he who has beautiful cows".

What do the Gāθās tell us about them? As Helmut Humbach showed in 1959, the Gāθās are hymns, words that a man or men address to the deities. And the enumeration of proper names is an invective against deceivers, against adversaries.

Variability from the point of view of the grammatical person

When reading the Gāθās, we constantly notice the change in the point of view of the grammatical person: GA in the first person, GS in the third person, GU in the second person or the GVo in the third person.

[1] Gāθā Ahunauuaitī (= GA): combination of he + I into we; ultimately a first-person enumeration.

Gāθā Spǝṇtā.mainiiu (= GS): briefest enumeration without mention of Zaraθuštra's name, only Fǝrašaoštra and Dǝ̄jā̄māspa appear; again he + I > we.

Gāθā Uštauuaitī (= GU): long, complex enumeration. Mention of a perhaps distant ancestry common to both families: the Friiāna.

Gāθā Vohuxšaθrā (= GVo): more difficult analysis as this Gāθā comprises only one chapter. Generally speaking, however, this is the third person singular.

Gāθā Vahištōišti (= GVa) is uniformly in the third person singular.

Who are they? Can we define their functions?

1. title

Zaraθuštra according to Y 50.5-6 is manθrān literally "he who has the mantras". We find an indirect allusion to his title in Y 28.5-7.

Vīštāspa is kauui (ved. kavi-"inspired poet") with all the semantic difficulties inherent in this word.

Fǝrašaoštra would be nar-"male-male" according to Y 28.8 with perhaps a reference to a sacrificial function.

On the other hand, Dǝ̄jā̄māspa does not seem to be characterized by a title.

2. designation of sacrificers

In previous years, we saw that there were three levels of designation: *aθauruuan is the man who by birth is a priest. Then there are the officiating priests, of whom there are eight in the recent Avesta, the main one being the zaotar (ved. hótar) "the one who draws liquid". He is an officiating priest with a sacrificial function. After a certain number of operations, he becomes saošiiaṇt, i.e. the priest in his sacred function. So the priest is a social reality, a sacrificial reality and a sacred reality. In the next lecture, we'll take a look at the Gāθās.

[1] For the texts, please refer to the Abstract downloadable below.