Talk:Gathas/Archive 1

untitled comments

Gathic Avestan is covered on the Avestan page. I don't see a Gathic page being created in the foreseeable future, as the Gathas and comparison with Vedic Sanskrit are the only evidence we have of its age and particular grammatical structure. I'll clean this up a little, add a few verses, some Avestan and clean it up a tad - though its not that bad now. Khirad 05:09, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

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I dont see any mention of the fact that some parts of Gathas are missing? --Kash 12:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Non-Zoroastrian Gathas

Gathas also feature in the Buddhist faith usually taking the form of short verses recited for the purposes of daily mindfullness. Shouldn't this get a note on this page since it is the sole one on Gathas Lostsocks 21:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. A seperate article should be created for Buddhist gathas. Quincybuddha

Exactly, a separate article should be created for the Buddhist gathas. If necessary there can be a DAB page to offer visitors a choice. But please first create the article for the Buddhist gathas and we can take the rest from there. Shabdiz | Talk 16:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, Quincy and Lostsocks are referring to two hymn books of the Pali Canon. -- Fullstop 17:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

article

This article needs some serious expansion. It's a good start though. --alidoostzadeh 15:31, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

@Ali: why does

Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (1999), "Avestan Quotations in Old Persian? Literary sources of the Old Persian Inscriptions", in Shaked, Saul; Netzer, Amnon (eds.), Irano-Judaica IV, Jerusalem: Makhon Ben-Zvi (Ben-Zvi Institute), pp. 1–64

appear under "further reading"? That text is Skaervo's justification of why he reads/reconstructs/translates some OP words in a particular way. -- Fullstop 07:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Where should it be located?

Also do you think your commentaries on Gathas is necessary? Sometimes the statements are deeper than commenatries of various users on what they mean. Also it makes it seem like Zoroaster wrote it himself where-as we know he was directed by Bahman (according to Bahram Pezhdu). --alidoostzadeh 02:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Would you also happen to have access to Pahlavi commentaries? Or know where I can find them published? Without the occasional ideograms, Pahlavi is relatively understandable for a modern Persian speaker. --alidoostzadeh 02:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for my late response, I had forgotten about my comment here.

1. I think Skaervo's article would be more suitable as "Further reading" in the article on the languages [Av and OP].

2. "commentaries on Gathas"? Do you mean the reference to Darmesteter's translation? As you note, the statements are deeper than the commentaries, but Darmesteter's translation is is very often quoted and it is what those on the web are based on. Moreover,

a) the MP translations are really not that bad: Although - from a philological point of view - they may not be good because they take tradition into account (which e.g. Kellens does not) and sometimes contain guesswork, in other cases the MP translations provide nuances of meaning that the modern translations do not. Remember that the commentaries and actual writing were done by the same set of people. Moreover, some Gathic translations (particularly those based on Jamaspi's dictionary) are as interpretative as the one's based on MP are.

b) some of the old (19th and early 20th century) Gathic translations are erronous because the authors didn't have anything but a Vedic framework to work from.

c) *all* translations are to some extent guesswork. The lack of grammar in the verses is a very serious problem.

As for "it makes it seem like Zoroaster wrote it himself," I'm not sure what you're referring to. At any rate (and irrespective of whether he was divinely inspired or not), a real person composed the hymns.

3. I have several raw analyses of the commentaries (as published in journals or whatever), but no fascimile editions (the kind where the left page is a photo of the source and the right page is the analysis/translation). I do however have a few photographs that I have taken myself, including one of page 5 of the Pahlavi Psalter that I really should upload it, but keep forgetting. The problem of my photos is that they are all taken through glass, so there are reflections/distortions and since I used no flash are very dark.

-- Fullstop 20:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

What does the word "Gathas" actually mean??

What does the word "Gathas" actually mean?? Please can you give a breakdown of the meaning and background of the word? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.96.254.123 (talk) 22:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Gatha generally means "song," because they are in a religious context "hymn," but which are not in a metric that was meant to be sung, hence "chant." In Avestan philology Gathas refers explicitly and exclusively to the religious compositions attributed to Zoroaster, and as such is a proper noun so the literal meaning of the common noun becomes irrelevant.

While the term is also used in other parts of the Avesta, the identification of a particular set of hymns as Gathas comes from Yasna 54.2-55, which serves as the lower "bracket" around all the oldest hymns (not just what we today call the Gathas). The present-day literary identification of the 17 "songs" as the Gathas (and also the attribution to Zoroaster) goes back to Martin Haug. -- Fullstop (talk) 19:12, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The word gāthās comes from Indo-Iranian gāti, gāyati '(he) sings' (speaking about birds). Cf. Latvian: gailis 'cockerel, rooster (a singer bird)', gā-gā 'the geese gaggle'. gāthās = gā '(birds) singing' + tās 'those'. Roberts7 20:01, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Cite, please. "singing - those birds" seems like a rather radical stretch and highly unlikely. As far as I was aware, it was simply "song" from the simple IA root. ناهد^𒀭(^dAnāhita) ^𒅴 02:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)