The Ahuna-Vairya was so distinguished by the later use which was made of it that it became a formula of unusual moral and ritualistic importance—indeed, more so than, upon our first glance upon it, we should, the most of us, think that it deserved. But, though bearing unmistakable traces of being somewhat artificially constructed, both in its metre and contents, upon closer study the little group of words seems well worthy of its parentage, for it is a succinct cipher of that remarkable manifestation of the moral idea which, as the one point of Zoroastrianism, must have had enormous influence during successive generations among the inhabitantsof Mid-Asia. The Pahlavi form of the name Ahunaver is but a contraction of Ahuna-Vairya, —the nasal n having intruded from thenasal m of an accusative ahūm, or else from mere euphony.
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