Avesta: Selected Texts
Multiple Zoroastrian textual traditions
Primary text · Reading guide
The short answer
An entry into a Zoroastrian scriptural and liturgical corpus, beginning with selected Yasna material and the Gathas.
Zoroastrianism · Primary text
The reading guide
The Avesta is not one authored book. The Gathas belong within the Yasna; later Middle Persian literature forms another body of sources.
Reading lens: symbolic and religious interpretation; historical details are identified through the sources below.
What this text is doing
“The Avesta” names a corpus rather than a single modern book. The Gathas and other liturgical material have different forms and histories. Reading selected texts with clear identification of the section and translation gives a more honest entrance than treating every passage as a single author’s prose.
Start with the Gathas
The hymns traditionally associated with Zarathustra are difficult poetry. Their linguistic distance calls for notes and caution about neat English summaries.
Move through the Yasna
The ritual setting matters to the form of the words. Identify the section being read and what role it plays in worship.
Compare witnesses
Translation and manuscript history can shape what is available to a modern reader. Use the linked text and research resource as different kinds of evidence.
Keep in mind: Which text and translation am I actually looking at within this larger corpus?
Choose an edition
Avesta.org hosts legacy translations with different provenances. Identify the section and translator; use SOAS’s Multimedia Yasna for ritual and manuscript context.
A path through the book
A corpus orientation
Distinguish the Avesta from later Middle Persian writings.
Yasna and Gathas
Read selected passages with their place in the larger liturgy identified.
Ritual context
Consult the Multimedia Yasna project alongside the English text.
Sources & editions
- Avesta.org: Yasna translations ↗
Edition and reading reference.
- SOAS: Multimedia Yasna ↗
Academic context for manuscript and ritual study.
An editorial reading guide with original summaries and source links. Modern translations remain the work of their named translators.
Read alongside
At a glance
- Origin
- Emerging. Gathas usually dated c. 1500–1000 BCE, though some scholars argue for later dates; the Younger Avesta was composed over the following centuries in eastern Iran; written down c. 5th–6th century CE
- Language
- Established. Avestan (Old Avestan for the Gathas and Yasna Haptanghaiti; Younger Avestan for most of the rest)
- Form
- Established. A liturgical corpus: Yasna (72 chapters, including 17 Gathas), Visperad, Vendidad (22 fargards), 21 Yashts and the Khordeh Avesta
- First full reading
- Experiential. 2–3 hours for the Gathas with notes; 15–20 hours for the full SBE translation
Translation quoted on this page
The Zend-Avesta (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 4, 23 and 31) — L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887
Rights ledger: recorded as a public-domain translation. Darmesteter's volumes appeared in 1880 (vol. 4, Vendidad) and 1883 (vol. 23, Sirozahs, Yashts and Nyayish); Mills' vol. 31 (Yasna, Visperad, Afrinagan, Gahs) appeared in 1887. Darmesteter died in 1894 and Mills in 1918, so these translations are public domain worldwide. Mills' Gatha renderings are dense and much of his interpretation is now contested; modern readers of the Gathas usually turn to Stanley Insler (1975), Helmut Humbach (1991) or Prods Oktor Skjærvø, whose translations are in copyright and are not quoted here.
Reading the choice in Yasna 30
20 minutesRead Yasna 30.1–30.6 in Mills' translation. Then copy verse 3 by hand, leaving out every word Mills placed in brackets, and read the shorter version aloud. Write down which bracketed words changed the meaning most, and what the verse asks the listener to do. If you have access to a modern translation, compare verse 3 and note one place where the two disagree.
Key Insights
- Liturgy and textual interpretation belong together.
- Corpus, section, and translation are different levels of identification.
- Historical translation archives are useful without being definitive editions.
Quotes Worth Remembering
6 passages in L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts)’s 1887 translation, each linked to the page it was checked against. Other translations word these lines differently.
Thus are the primeval spirits who as a pair (combining their opposite strivings), and (yet each) independent in his action, have been famed (of old). (They are) a better thing, they two, and a worse, as to thought, as to word, and as to deed. And between these two let the wisely acting choose aright. (Choose ye) not (as) the evil-doers!
Yasna 30.3 (Gatha Ahunavaiti), tr. Mills
This is the passage behind every summary of Zoroastrian dualism, and it frames the two spirits as a choice set before the listener rather than as a finished cosmology.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright: Who by generation was the first father of the Righteous Order (within the world)? Who gave the (recurring) sun and stars their (undeviating) way? Who established that whereby the moon waxes, and whereby she wanes, save Thee? These things, O Great Creator! would I know, and others likewise still.
Yasna 44.3 (Gatha Ushtavaiti), tr. Mills
Yasna 44 is built from repeated questions put to Ahura Mazda, and this verse shows the Gathas praying by asking rather than by asserting.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
As the Ahû is excellent, so is the Ratu (one who rules) from (his) sanctity, a creator of mental goodness, and of life's actions done for Mazda; and the Kingdom (is) for Ahura, which to the poor may offer a nurturer.
Yasna 27.13, the Ahuna Vairya (Yatha Ahu Vairyo), tr. Mills
This is the most recited Zoroastrian prayer, and Mills' bracketed, halting English shows how hard its compressed Avestan syntax is to carry over.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
He who sows corn, sows holiness: he makes the law of Mazda grow higher and higher: he makes the law of Mazda as fat as he can with a hundred acts of adoration, a thousand oblations, ten thousand sacrifices.
Vendidad, Fargard 3.31, tr. Darmesteter
The Vendidad treats farming as a religious act, and this line sets tilling the ground on the same scale as worship.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
For that deed there is nothing that can pay, nothing that can atone, nothing that can cleanse from it; it is a trespass for which there is no atonement, for ever and ever.
Vendidad, Fargard 3.39, tr. Darmesteter
The same chapter that praises the farmer ends with penalties for burying a corpse in the earth, and a reader should see how purity law and cosmic struggle are bound together in this book.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
And when the sun rises up, then the earth, made by Ahura, becomes clean; the running waters become clean, the waters of the wells become clean, the waters of the sea become clean, the standing waters become clean; all the holy creatures, the creatures of the Good Spirit, become clean.
Khorshed Yasht (Yasht 6).2, tr. Darmesteter
This short hymn to the sun belongs to the daily prayers of the Khordeh Avesta, and it shows the later Avesta's concern with light, water and cleanliness in concrete terms.
L. H. Mills (Yasna and Gathas); James Darmesteter (Vendidad and Yashts), 1887 · check the source ↗
Editorial reading map
An editorial reading map. Each row names a place to start, with the idea to carry and a short summary. Read the text itself for its own order.
01Yasna (72 chapters)
The core liturgy recited by priests during the high ritual of the same name.
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The Yasna is the text of the principal Zoroastrian act of worship, performed by priests with the preparation and offering of haoma. Its 72 chapters (haiti) combine invocations, confessions of faith and hymns. The Gathas and other Old Avestan pieces sit inside it, so the oldest material survives as part of a living ritual rather than as a separate book.
02The Gathas (Yasna 28–34, 43–51, 53)
Seventeen hymns in Old Avestan, traditionally attributed to Zarathustra.
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The seventeen Gathas are arranged in five groups by metre: Ahunavaiti, Ushtavaiti, Spentamainyu, Vohukhshathra and Vahishtoishti. They address Ahura Mazda directly and speak of truth (asha), the lie (druj), good mind and the choice each person makes. Their language is archaic and their syntax compressed, which is why translations differ sharply. The Yasna Haptanghaiti (Yasna 35–41), in the same Old Avestan dialect, is usually studied alongside them.
03Visperad
Supplementary liturgy that extends the Yasna for seasonal festivals.
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The Visperad ("all the lords") is a set of additional invocations inserted into the Yasna service, especially for the six seasonal festivals (gahambars). It is not read on its own in ritual practice. Mills translated it in the same SBE volume as the Yasna.
04Vendidad (22 fargards)
Law against the demons: purity, penalties, and a cosmology of the good creation.
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The Vendidad (videvdad, "law against the daevas") opens with a list of lands created by Ahura Mazda and the story of Yima, then turns to purity law, the handling of the dead, penalties and the care of dogs and the earth. Fargard 3, on what gladdens and grieves the earth, praises cultivation and forbids burying corpses. It is in Younger Avestan and is generally dated later than the Gathas, though scholars disagree about when it was compiled.
05Yashts (21 hymns)
Hymns to individual yazatas, the beings worthy of worship.
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The Yashts praise figures such as Mithra, Anahita, Tishtrya (Sirius) and the fravashis, and several preserve old Iranian myth and epic material. Some are long and narrative; others, like the Khorshed Yasht to the sun, are brief. Darmesteter translated them in SBE vol. 23 together with the Sirozahs and Nyayish.
06Khordeh Avesta
The "little Avesta" of prayers used by lay Zoroastrians.
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The Khordeh Avesta is a prayer book drawn from the wider corpus for daily and household use. It gathers short formulas such as the Ashem Vohu and the Ahuna Vairya, the five Nyayish, the Gah prayers for the times of day, the Sirozah and selected Yashts. Its contents vary between editions and between Parsi and Iranian communities.
07Survival and loss of the corpus
What exists today is a fraction of a larger Sasanian canon, preserved mainly through ritual use.
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The texts were transmitted orally for many centuries and written down in a purpose-built Avestan script, probably in the Sasanian period (c. 5th–6th century CE). Middle Persian sources, especially the Denkard, describe a Sasanian Avesta of 21 books (nasks), of which only part survives; a common estimate is about a quarter. The surviving manuscripts are late, the oldest dating from around the 13th–14th centuries CE, and what survived is largely what was recited in worship.
Best For
Frequently Asked Questions
Which translation of the Avesta should I read?
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For the Gathas, most readers now use a modern scholarly translation such as those by Stanley Insler, Helmut Humbach or Prods Oktor Skjærvø, since they rest on better linguistic knowledge than the Victorian versions. The Sacred Books of the East volumes by Mills and Darmesteter remain the only complete English Avesta that is freely available, and they are useful for the Vendidad and Yashts. Whichever you use, note the section and the translator, because renderings of the same verse can differ widely.
Did Zarathustra write the Avesta?
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Zoroastrian tradition attributes the Gathas to Zarathustra, and most scholars accept that they come from him or from his immediate circle. The rest of the Avesta was composed later by many hands over a long period. His dates are disputed: estimates range from before 1000 BCE to around the 6th century BCE, with many specialists favouring the earlier range on linguistic grounds.
Where should a beginner start with the Avesta?
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Start with a few Gathas, such as Yasna 30 and Yasna 44, read slowly with notes. Then read Vendidad Fargard 3 and one short Yasht, such as the Khorshed Yasht, to see how the later texts differ in language and concern. Keep in mind that these are liturgical texts recited in Avestan, not books written to be read silently in translation.
Is the Avesta the same as the Zend-Avesta?
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"Zend-Avesta" is an older European name that joins Avesta (the scripture) and Zand (its Middle Persian commentary and translation). Scholars now prefer to call the scripture simply the Avesta. Middle Persian works such as the Bundahishn and Denkard are a separate body of religious literature, even though they draw on the Avesta.
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