The problem of the Yašts (II)
The religious aspect: the doctrine of the millennia
The Yašt 19 recounts the cosmic history of the world and is, in this respect, an irrefutable witness to the doctrine of the millennia.
Ilya Gershevitch, "Approaches to Zoroaster's Gathas", Iran 33, 1995, 1-29.
Prods Oktor Skjaervø, "Iranian elements in manicheism a comparative approach*, Irano-manichaica I", Mélanges en l'honneur de Philippe Gignoux, Au carrefour des religions, 1996, 263-284.
We don't have timekeeping, but we do have elements of time measurement in some Avestic passages:
1. The Pehlevian translation of V2.19 with the question "how long did the mēnōg state of the world last?" unfortunately unanswered, as well as an indication of the millennium during which Yima is supposed to have exercised his power to suspend death.
2. Yt 9.10 also tells us about Yima's millennium.
Antonio Panaino, "Philologia Avestica VI: The Widēwdād Fragment about the Millennium of Yima", Orientalia Romana 7, 2000, 19-31.
As for the reference to the assault, it can be seen in Yt 13.57 "The Frauuaṣ̌is showed paths conforming to the Arrangement to the stars, moon, sun and infinite lights, which previously had long remained in the same place without setting in motion, before the noxiousness of the demons, before the attack of the demons" with daēuuanąm parō draomōhu "before the attack of the demons" where draoman- would be a synonym of *aibi-gati-> mp. ēbgat.
The doctrine of millennia is the distinguishing feature of Zoroastrianism, which means that Zoroastrianism already existed at the time of the recent Avesta.
Middle-Avestic
In 2003, Xavier Tremblay gave a highly acclaimed paper entitled "le pseudo-gāthique" :
Xavier Tremblay , "Le pseudo-gâthique", in: Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, held in Ravenna, 6-11 october 2003. Vol. I Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies. Ed. by A. Panaino and A. Piras, Milan, 2006, 233-281.
Pseudo-gāthics
According to Hoffmann, these are texts in recent Avestic that have the orthographic allure of Old Avestic: systematic lengthening of final vowels and maintenance of intervocalic sonorous occlusives. Tremblay will replace the notion of pseudo-gāthic with Middle Avestic and show that these are not recent texts, but Middle Avestic texts, i.e. an intermediate stage between Old Avestic and Recent Avestic.
The corpus
It comprises the Y11.16-Y15 sector with the intercalation of Vr3-6, Y27.15 (Yeŋ́he hātąm), Y35.1 and Y56 [Y27.6] with Y58.
Middle-Avestic features
1. the -biš disinence of the athematic instrumental is preserved ;
2. the systematic opposition of present tense and aorist is still used.
Literary features
1. Exegetical genre
Exegesis of older texts.
2. Exegesis by quotation
Exegesis proceeds by textual quotations, which have two characteristics:
a. old-avestic citation of lost texts
b. citation replaced by recomposition: instead of quoting the text verbatim, it is recomposed, e.g. Y51.22 is recomposed in Y27.15 then simplified in Vr16.3, similarly for Y33.14 in Y11.18 then in Y13.4.
3. Equal proportions of Gāθās and Yasna Haptaŋhāiti
Middle-Avestic texts are careful to balance references to the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti and the Gāθās.
The existence of these texts is perhaps a decisive argument for us to abandon the dating of the Gāθās to the 6th century B.C. Indeed, the practice of the texts under consideration shows that the Avesta has a long literary history.
