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The “Ahurian” and “Daevian” Vocabularies in the Avesta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Louis H. Gray
Louis H. Gray
Affiliation:
Columbia University.
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Extract

Within the last quarter of a century two serious attempts have been made to explain the fact that the Avesta uses one set of words for beings belonging to the creation of Ahura Mazda and another for those formed by Aura Mainyu. The former of these theories was advanced by Leo Frachtenberg (“Etymological Studies in Ormazdian and Ahrimanian Words in Avestan,” in Spiegel Memorial Volume, Bombay, 1908, pp. 269–89), and the latter by Hermann Güntert (“Ueber die ahurischen und daēvischen Ausdrücke im Avesta, eine semasiologische Studie,” in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, philbsophisch-historische Klasse, 1914, Abhandlung 13).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 1927 , pp. 427 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1927

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References

page 438 note 1 Cf. von Bradke, P., Dyâaus Asura, Ahura Mazdâ, und die Asuras, Halle, 1885Google Scholar; Hillebrandt, A., Vedische Mythologie, Breslau, 1891–1902, iii, 430–44Google Scholar.

page 438 note 2 Essays on … the Parsis, 3rd ed., London, 1884, pp. 287 seqqGoogle Scholar.

page 438 note 3 Dēv occurs, however, in a good sense in the Osrūšanian proper names Dēvdās and Dēvdast as late as the ninth century a.d. (Nöldeke, T., in Zeitschrift für Indologie und Iranistik, ii [1923], 318)Google Scholar.

441 note 1 For an exhaustive study of this entire subject see Güntert, H., Von der Sprache der Götter und Geister, Halle, 1921Google Scholar, though his underlying theory is not the one here favoured (cf. also Ipsen, G., in Indogerrmnisches Jahrbuch, ix [1924], 34)Google Scholar. For the Greek material see pp. 92–4, 104–11,115–16, 118–19; for the interesting, though only superficial, parallel in the Icelandic Alvismợl, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, see ib., pp. 130–5, and for Sanskrit parallels (especially Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa I, i, 44; X, iv, 116; vi, 41), ib. pp. 157–60.

page 441 note 2 Rivet, P., in Meillet, and Cohen, , Les Langues du monde, Paris, 1924, p. 642Google Scholar; Adam, L., Du Parler des hommes et du parler des femmes dang la langue caraibe, do., 1879Google Scholar.