Rasn Yast

For the first time, this work treats in a comprehensive manner the Rašn Yašt, or 'Hymn to Justice'. The Rašn Yašt stands in praise of the Zoroastrian deity Rašnu 'Justice' and belongs to the group of religious texts known as the Avesta – a collection of compositions in the ancient Iranian language of Avestan. Although the Rašn Yašt, like all of the Avesta, is generally assumed to have been committed to writing either during or shortly after the Sasanian era (224-651 CE.), its verses were probably composed during the early first millennium BCE. The present monograph contains an English translation of the Rašn Yašt supported by a critical edition of the Avestan text. The latter is based on the testimony of thirteen manuscripts, of which nine were newly collated. Variant readings from the manuscripts are recorded in a detailed and easy to read apparatus. Matters of a philological or text critical nature are taken up for discussion in an accompanying commentary and all forms appearing in the Rašn Yašt are parsed in the text's glossary. In addition, this book includes three introductory chapters that aim to elucidate the key themes of the Rašn Yašt. The first chapter concerns the titular divinity Rašnu and explores his role as a judicial figure, both in this world and the hereafter. The second chapter explicates the cosmographic scheme which is uniquely preserved in the Hymn to Justice and argues this map of the universe encodes numerical and spatial patterns. The third chapter draws upon Avestan and Middle Persian sources to give an in depth account of the use of ordeal rituals in ancient Iran – a practice with which Rašnu is intimately associated and which is repeatedly mentioned in the Rašn Yašt. This work is intended for specialist and more general audiences alike, and is principally aimed at those with interests in Indo-Iranian philology, Zoroastrianism, ancient Iran and comparative religion.