The Zarathushtra Gâthâs and the origins of Mazdaism (continued) (5)

As for fire, it has been introduced into the GA text according to two evocation systems:

a) stylistic with ellipsis

In Y 28.2, where the subject of daidīt̰is missing: "I who wish to serve you with good Thought, O Ahura Mazdā, so that you may give me the favors arranged from the two states-of-existence, that of body and that of thought, (favors) by which he deposits in well-being those who offer him help".

In Y 29.9, fire is allusively identified as the helper with hands: "Yet the soul of the cow continues its lament: 'I should have to be content with the incapable voice of a man without strength, when I want him to have power through the power īš ! Will he ever be the one to grant him the favor of his hands?".

In the following stanza, at Y 29.10, the thread of ellipsis resumes: "You (= gods), to them (= sacrificers), O Ahura(s), give through Arrangement and good Thought, the authority and power that make it (= fire) guarantee safe quarters and peace! As for me, I am of the opinion, O Mazdā, that you are the first who spots it (= fire signal)".

Y 30.7 attests on the one hand to the massive ellipsis in the first line and on the other to a transmission breakdown (cf. metrical disorder) in the last line, resulting in an untranslatable third line: "But to him he comes with power, good Thought and Arrangement. Youth (him) gives a form-visible and Right-Thinking a breath, so that ... is constituted ... the first ... by the arrangements". In the third verse, however, let's raise ādānāiš to the plural instrumental, as the corresponding term in Sanskrit is ādhāna-, which expresses the setting of the ritual fire.

The ellipsis is a roundabout way of introducing fire into the reading of the ritual gāthic cursus, thus destroying the second paradox, as well as the first, since the rare attestations come from the use of undertones. As for the stereotype, three attestations escape it and help us to understand the process.

b) allusions to light

From Y 30.1 onwards, we see allusions to light appear with Aṣ̌a finding himself visible: "I will say, O you who seek to come, the sacrificial and (precatory) praises to which even the learned must pay attention, (I will say them), O attentive ones, to the intention of Ahura and the Arrangement, whose lights I rejoice that he is visible".

Finally, in Y 30.2, allusion is made to the crackling of fire:

"Hear by the sound and see by the flame, with the best Thought, the preferences of discrimination, awakening each man before the great yāh so that to each his body may appear".

4. The ancient Avesta is composed of the Gāθās and the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (= YH). Now, the YH attaches paramount importance to fire, with an entire chapter (Y 36) devoted to it. As Narten rightly observed in 1985, this text attests to the transubstantiation of fire: commonplace, domestic fire becomes the visible form of the gods.

In Y 36.1, we learn that fire can cause harm:

With the fundamental clan of this fire, we serve you, O Master Mazdā, (and we) (serve) you with your most beneficial state of mind, which is nevertheless pain for the one you wish to subject to pain.

Y 36.2 attests to the presence of two important terms that we have already encountered: uruuāzā (Y 30.1) "I rejoice, I exalt myself" and yāh-(Y 30.2), a technical term linked to the enthronement of the sacrificers and that of the ritual fire:

May you meet the object of our request, O fire of Master Mazdā! By the exaltation given by the most exalting, by the homage paid by the most honoring, may you meet the greatest of our requests!

Then comes the transubstantiation of fire:

Thou art certainly the fire of the Master Mazdā, thou art certainly his most beneficent state of mind; (by these names of "fire" and "state of mind") or by the (name) of "most conveying" among thy names, O fire of the Master Mazdā, we serve thee.

The triad of behavior appears in sentences 4 and 5:

4. With divine Thought, with divine Harmony, by deeds and words of divine understanding, we serve thee.

5. We pay thee homage and bring thee vigor, O Master Mazdā; by all that has been well thought, all that has been well said, all that has been well done, we serve thee.

In the concluding sentence, fire becomes a representative of the great celestial light:

We acknowledge thee, O Master Mazdā, the most beautiful body of bodies: this heaven, among the heights, that which is as high as the sun seen by one from below.

What is the great difference between the text of the YH and the text of the Gāθās?

Of course there are several differences: the ambiguity of fire, the presence of the material world, the presence of the triad or even that of the mainiiu, but what is striking is the presence of the word nāman. Three times, the YH makes the utterance of the name the ideal of sacrificial practice. One must pronounce the name of the fire: ātar-, but also its metaphorical names: the host(asti) and the vehicle of offerings(vāzišta). The same procedure is followed in Y 37 with Ahura Mazdā, then in Y 38 with the Waters.

Y 30.3 or the stanza of the two mainiius

It is in this stanza that traces of a dualistic religious system have been sought, with an opposition between elements that would be good and others that would be bad in the moral domain.

The first authorized translation is by Martin Haug: "In the beginning, there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of peculiar activity: there are the good and the base, in thought, word and deed. Choose one of these two spirits! Be good, not base! In mainiiu translation by "spirit", which can be spǝṇta "beneficent", we have a genuine desire for analogy with a religious system. One of the difficulties lies in translating this term. For Haug, it is a mental force internal to Ahura Mazdā and to man. It explains all that is good and evil in the world, it is the basis of two types of thoughts, words and actions, and one must choose between these two types.

Let's take a look at Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin's translation: "Now, originally, the two spirits that are known (...) as twins / Are, one, the better, the other, the evil / In thought, speech, action. And between them both, / The intelligent choose well, not the foolish". We can see straight away that he preferred not to translate the word ^xvafǝnā "sleep", which is difficult to insert in this context.

Let's begin by analyzing the sentence from the point of view of syntax. An enclitic is a sentence marker, since it generally occupies the second sentence position. But here we have the particle: hī (^3rd person duel nominative enclitic), which therefore tells us that š́iiaoθanōi is the first word of a sentence. As a result, the main proposition has no verb, since the second hemistiche of the first verse is a secondary sentence with a relative proposition. To restore the verb of this main sentence, we need to refer to the parallel induced by the particle at̰with Y 30.1: at̰ tā vaxšiiā "I'm going to say this". On the basis of this parallelism, a vaxšiiā "I will say" must be rendered in the main Y 30.3, hence the translation: "(I will say) the two ancient mainiius which, during sleep, were considered twins".

In the next lecture, we'll continue analyzing this sentence syntactically, and then talk about semantics, another crucial problem in Y 30.3.

[1] As usual, the original texts can be found in the downloadable Abstract below.