Zoroastrian News - اخبار زرتشتیان

Date of the Gathas ( 0ld Avesta)

Linguistic analysis of Avestan long ago established the probability that it was an East-Iranian language. Geographical references in the Young Avesta, moreover, render likely the conclusion that the oldest texts originally came from central Asia, specifically the area between Choresmia and Bactria, whence the later tribes migrated further south into Sistan. By algebra—that is, by adding up the time periods that must be allowed for the language to develop from proto-Indo-Iranian to Young Avestan—and comparing Old Persian, which can be dated to the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., we can set the time of Old Avestan, hence also of the texts in this language, to around the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. Read More »