ABSTRACT
Overall, the text of the Sh-rzag is transmitted uniformly and it may be assumed, therefore, that its manuscripts derive from same archetype, which can be identified with the first manuscript containing the collection of the short liturgies (i.e. the texts of the Xwurdag Abestg and the Yašts).1 This manuscript is very probably later than the transcription of the Sasanian Avesta (which is most probably not later than the 6th century, the latest date to which the invention of the Avestan alphabet can be attributed).2 The Xwurdag Abestg and the other liturgical texts were known to
1 For this group of texts, I am using the appellative “collection of the short liturgies” in accordance with the definition suggested by Kellens for the first time in 1998. Here the Belgian scholar discusses the hypothesis that all Avestan ritual texts that have come down to us are two liturgical anthologies, i.e. the collection of the short liturgies (“recueil des liturgies brèves”) and the recitative of the long liturgy (“récitatif de la liturgie longue,” i.e. the group Yasna – Visperad – Vdvdd). According to Kellens, these anthologies already existed, in parallel with the text of the Sasanian Avesta, at the latest in the first Sasanian era, at least in oral form. This hypothesis, which, by all means, can be shared, has found a broad consensus among specialists (see, for example, de Vaan 2003: 11-15; Cantera 2004, for the first time on pp. 21-24). It should be remembered that this differs radically from another view of the history of the Avesta, which previously was widely accredited, according to which the Avestan texts that have come down to us would derive from hyparchetypes copied in the 9th-10th centuries, which would originate directly from the Sasanian Avesta (the most complete formulation of this view is to be found in Hoffmann-Narten 1989; for other references, see Hoffmann-Narten 1989: 23-33; Kellens 1998: 466-68). See also the observations on the manuscript transmission of the Avesta in Kellens 1998: 452-88, and in Cantera 2004: 25-34.
