A Third Exegesis of the Avesta? New Observations on the Middle Persian Word ayārdag

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure a letter of Jean de Menasce addressed to Moḥammad Moʻīn some seventy years ago, this article traces the progressive advancement of the analysis of the rare Middle Persian word ayārdag, mentioned in three Persian lexicons and two Arabic sources of the 10th and 11th centuries. These sources consider the term as a third exegetical stratum of the Avesta, the first two being the zand and the pāzand. With the aid of Middle Persian sources such as the Dēnkard and the Bundahišn, we will attempt to identify the phenomenon that Muslim authors interpreted as a “third exegesis” and, furthermore, we will propose an interpretation of this word in the sense of “synthesis, abridgment” of a Gāthic nask.