VÎDÊVDAD 10-12: Critical edition, translation and commentary of the avestan and pahlavi texts

Abstract

[EN]As a result of his own research in the field of Avestan philology my director, Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera, highlighted some years ago the urgent need to once again edit the Avestan text of Vīdēvdād together with its Pahlavi translation. He started this overwhelming project some 15 years ago. He edited V 1-4 as part of his doctoral thesis, and following this he worked on the edition of the following five chapters, V 5-9. As a result of many years’ extensive study of the Avestan text of Vīdēvdād and its Pahlavi translation he also became fully aware of the importance of reviewing its oral and written transmission before editing this text once more. Thus, first within the scope of his own Vīdēvdād Project and more recently in his next initiative, the Avestan Digital Archive (ADA) Project, he started and guided our team’s search for all the Avestan manuscripts of Vīdēvdād and of other Avestan texts all over the world. As a result of this search, many new manuscripts of Vīdēvdād have recently been brought to light; this has changed our view about the transmission of Vīdēvdād and other texts. Together with the mistakes found in the critical edition of K. F. Geldner (1896), the need of a new critical edition of the Avesta is all the more necessary. In the scope of this project, my doctoral thesis, comprising a critical edition, translation and commentary of the Avestan and Pahlavi texts of the fragard or chapters 10-12 of Vīdēvdād, tries to be a contribution to a new complete edition of Vīdēvdād.