YASTS AND SÎRÔZAHS.

The Zend Avesta, Part II (SBE23), James Darmesteter, tr. [1882], at sacred-texts.com

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THE word yast, in Zend yêsti, means properly 'the act of worshipping,' the performance of the yasna; and it is often used in Parsi tradition as synonymous with yasna. But it has also been particularly applied to a certain number of writings in which the several Izeds are praised and magnified. These writings are generally of a higher poetical and epical character than the rest of the Avesta, and are most valuable records of the old mythology and historical legends of Iran.

The Parsis believe that formerly every Amshaspand and every Ized had his particular Yast, but we now possess only twenty Yasts and fragments of another ¹. The writings known as Yast fragments, the Âfrîn Zartust, and Vîstâsp Yast (printed as Yasts XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV in Westergaard's edition), are not proper Yasts, and have no liturgical character; they are not devoted to the praise of any Ized.

The order in which the Yasts have been arranged by the Parsis follows exactly the order of the Sîrôzah, which is the proper introduction to the Yasts.

SÎRÔZAH.

Sîrôzah means 'thirty days:' it is the name of a prayer composed of thirty invocations addressed to the several Izeds who preside over the thirty days of the month.

There are two Sîrôzahs, but the only difference between them is that the formulas in the former are shorter ², and there is also, occasionally, some difference in the epithets, which are fuller in the latter.

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In India the Sîrôzah is recited in honour of the dead, on the thirtieth day after the death, on the thirtieth day of the sixth month, on the thirtieth day of the twelfth month, and then every year on the thirtieth day from the anniversary day (Anquetil, Zend-Avesta, II, 315).

The correspondence between the formulas of the Sîrôzah and the Yasts is as follows:

The Yasts that have been lost are, therefore, those of Khshathra-vairya, Spenta-Ârmaiti, Ameretât, Âtar, Vâta, Asman, Mãthra-Spenta, and Anaghra raokau. The second Yast, or Yast of the seven Amshaspands, appears to have been no independent Yast: it was common to all the seven Yasts devoted to the several

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[paragraph continues] Amshaspands, and, accordingly, it is recited on the first seven days of the month. One might suppose that it was originally a part of the Ormazd Yast, as the Amesha-Spentas are invoked in company with Ahura Mazda (Sîrôzah 1, 8, 15, 23). There may, indeed, have been several Yasts for one and the same formula of the Sîrôzah, as in all of these formulas more than one Ized are invoked: this would apply not only to the Yast of the seven Amshaspands, but also to the Vanant Yast (Yast XX), which, in that case, ought to follow the Tîr Yast (see Sîrôzah 13).

Not every Yast, however, is devoted to the Ized whose name it bears: thus the Ardibehest Yast is mostly devoted to Airyaman; the Râm-Yast and the Zemyâd-Yast are devoted to Vayu and to the Hvarenô: but Airyaman, Vayu, and the Hvarenô are invoked in the same Sîrôzah formulas as Ardibehest, Râm, and Zemyâd, and a Yast is named from the opening name in the correspondent Sîrôzah formula.

The systematic order so apparent in the Sîrôzah pervades the rest of the liturgy to a great extent: the enumeration of Izeds in Yasna XVII, 12-4a (XVI, 3-6) follows exactly the order of the Sîrôzah, except that it gives only the first name of each formula; and the question may be raised whether this passage in the Yasna is taken from the Sîrôzah, or whether the Sîrôzah is developed from the Yasna.

The very idea of the Sîrôzah, that is to say the attribution of each of the thirty days of the month to certain gods, seems to have been borrowed from the Semites: the tablets found in the library of Assurbanipal contain an Assyrian Sîrôzah, that is, a complete list of the Assyrian gods that preside over the thirty days of the month 1.

Footnotes

1:1 The Bahman Yast (see Yt. I, §§ 24 and following).

1:2 In the greater Sîrôzah the names of the gods invoked are introduced with the word yazamaidê, 'we sacrifice to;' in the lesser Sîrôzah there is no introductory word, the word khshnaothra, 'propitiation,' being understood, as can be seen from the introductory formulas to the several Yasts.