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From Nēryōsangh to Burnouf: the philological system of the Sanskrit Yasna
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2025
Abstract
The Parsi Sanskrit Yasna, attributed to Nēryōsangh, presupposes a sophisticated philological system that features historical, religious, and cultural elements. This philological system, developed in a multicultural environment, reflects both the Zoroastrian tradition and contemporary Indian society. Centuries later, Eugène Burnouf effectively utilised the same system to make significant advances in comparative Indo-Iranian studies. This article examines Burnouf’s philological approach and his rediscovery and revival of the original philological system of the Sanskrit Yasna, thanks to a multilingual and multicultural scope that allowed him to understand the text and draw important comparative patterns from it. The article emphasises the importance of multidisciplinary studies to fully explore the historical implications of the philological system, urging us to revisit its methodology in light of current knowledge and technology.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society.
References
1 The available Sanskrit writings of the Parsis have been collected and edited by S. D. Bharucha in Collected Sanskrit Writings of the Parsis (Bombay, 1906–1933).
2 The Yasna is the chief ritual and daily liturgy of Zoroastrianism. The full Yasna ceremony, which is nowadays performed only in India and by a very limited number of Zoroastrian priests, was recorded by the Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) project in 2017 and is available at https://muya.soas.ac.uk/tool/film-multimedia/.
3 The chapter subdivision is based on K. F. Geldner’s edition Avesta: The Sacred Books of the Parsis (Stuttgart, 1886–1896), which is still the most widely used.
4 On the Pahlavi version of the Yasna, see, for example, A. Cantera, Studien zur Pahlavi-Übersetzung des Avesta (Wiesbaden, 2004); and B. Peschl, The First Three Hymns of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā: The Avestan Text of Yasna 28–30 and Its Tradition (Leiden and Boston, 2022).
5 On the Parsi migration, we only have the Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān, a sixteenth-century poem in New Persian composed by Bahman Kay Qobād Sanjāna in 1599 CE. This account is full of mythical elements and cannot be read as an exclusively historical account; it rather represents the symbolic journey of the Parsis’ legitimisation in India. See, for example, A. Williams, The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora Text, Translation and Analysis of the 16th Century Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān ‘The Story of Sanjan’ (Leiden and Boston, 2009).
6 Further evidence for retracing Parsi history is found in the manuscripts and the colophons, which testify to the Parsis’ journey to and throughout India.
7 Pahlavi was the Middle Iranian language of the Sasanian empire (224–651 CE), the last Zoroastrian reign before the Muslim conquest of Iran. The Avestan script was also developed to write the Avestan language during the Sasanian empire. Therefore, as the Pahlavi translations were compiled during the Sasanian era, the Zoroastrian priests must have used Pahlavi as their contemporary language.
8 Nonetheless, the manuscripts containing the Sanskrit Yasna are generally bilingual, containing only Avestan and Sanskrit. To my knowledge, only manuscript 682_K7, preserved at the Ketabe-ye-Melli Library in Tehran, is trilingual, with Avestan, Pahlavi, and Sanskrit. We also know of a trilingual manuscript with Avestan, Sanskrit, and Old Gujarātī (ms. H1, used and described by S. D. Bharucha, Collected Sanskrit writings of the Parsis. Part I. Khorda-Avestâ-Arthaḥ (Bombay, 1906), p. vii), which is now unfortunately lost.
9 Text and translation by L. Goldman, The Sanskrit Yasna Manuscript S1: Facsimile Edition (Leiden and Boston, 2018), p. 2. The ‘Zand’ language in the quotation refers to the commentaries on Avestan passages, which are characteristic of Zoroastrian exegesis. On this, see, for example, P. G. Kreyenbroek, ‘EXEGESIS i. In Zoroastrianism’, in Encylopaedia Iranica Online, https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EIRO/COM-9390.xml?rskey=VS0B8b&result=1&ebody=full-html&Tab-menu=abstract (accessed 11 March 2025).
10 This account is narrated in the abovementioned Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān; see fn. 5.
11 For a brief overview, see M. Palladino, The Sanskrit Version of Yasna 1–8: A Critical Edition with Commentary and Glossaries (Leiden and Boston, 2025), pp. 23 sqq.
12 See Peschl, First Three Hymns, pp. 13 sqq.
13 Not all the Pahlavi comments are translated word by word; see Palladino, Sanskrit Version of Yasna 1–8, pp. 100 sqq.
14 Ibid, pp. 117 sqq.
15 Ibid, pp. 133 sqq.
16 The translation of all the Avestan terms is based on C. Redard, The Srōš Drōn—Yasna 3 to 8: A Critical Edition with Ritual Commentaries and Glossary (Leiden and New York, 2021).
17 See, for example, Sanskrit Yasna 1.14 and 3.16.
18 Sanskrit karman- is attested, for instance, in Sanskrit Yasna 1.21–22 and dharma- in stanzas 28.3–11.
19 For instance, Sanskrit namaskāraṇa- is attested in Sanskrit Yasna 4.7–8 and 22–25, namaskr̥ti- in 1.21–22, and pūjākaraṇa- in stanzas 3.1 and 7.1. The latter appears in an original Sanskrit comment to gloss the ablative singular form of sanmānakr̥ti-, the Sanskrit rendering of Avestan xšnūman-, a term indicating the gratification of divine beings, and particularly significant in the Zoroastrian context.
20 The original Sanskrit comments also include some interpretations of passages, titles, headers, and explanations of specific terms; therefore, we may consider them a sort of contemporary exegesis of the text.
21 On the Parsi script, see Goldman, Sanskrit Yasna manuscript S1, p. 27; and Palladino, Sanskrit Version of Yasna 1–8, pp. 47 sqq.
22 Burnouf used two manuscripts with the Sanskrit translation: mss. 660_P3 and 674_P11. Ms. 660_P3 is a copy of the Sanskrit Yasna explicitly requested by Anquetil.
23 A. H. Anquetil-Duperron, Le Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre, contenant les idées théologiques, physiques & morales de ce législateur, les cérémonies du culte religieux qu’il a établi, & plusieurs traits importans relatifs à l’ancienne histoire des Perses, three vols (Paris, 1771).
24 Anquetil-Duperron published his translation of the Zend-Avesta relying exclusively on his consultations with the Parsi priests who were familiar with the Pahlavi version of the Zoroastrian texts at that time.
25 The British Library collection is very rich, as a good number of manuscripts were gathered during the British colonial dominion.
26 See, in particular, A. Keller, ‘Le déchiffrement de la langue pālie et le bouddhisme du Sud’, in Actes de la Journée d’étude d’Urville (28 mai 2022) suivis des Lalitavistara (ch. 1–2) et Kāraṇḍavyūha traduits par E. Burnouf, (ed.) G. Ducœur (Strasbourg, 2022), pp. 97–120.
27 L. Burnouf-Delisle, Choix de lettres d’Eugène Burnouf, 1825–1852: Suivi ďune bibliographie avec portrait et fac-similé (Paris, 1891), p. 117.
28 Letter to Christian Lassen, 24 June 1930; Burnouf-Delisle, Choix de lettres d’Eugène Burnouf, 1825–1852, p. 98.
29 See, for example, E. Burnouf, Commentaire sur le Yaçna (Paris, 1833), p. xix: ‘le style en est trop barbare, les règles les plus simples de la grammaire y sont trop ouvertement violées, et les fautes nombreuses qu’on y remarque à chaque pas trahissent trop clairement l’indécision d’un écrivain qui s’exprime dans une langue qui ne lui est pas familière.’
30 Ibid, p. 118, fn. 11: ‘Quoique la glose de Nériosengh soit certainement le texte sanscrit le plus incorrect et le plus barbare qui soit encore parvenu en Europe, l’importance des données qu’elle fournit pour l’explication du texte zend est trop considérable pour qu’il ne soit pas nécessaire de la reproduire telle que la donnent les manuscrits que nous en possédons.’
31 Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine whether the Parsi translators into Sanskrit had a conceptual knowledge or only a superficial understanding of other Indian religions and philosophical theories, as the Parsi Sanskrit literature consists of translations of Zoroastrian ritual texts. Although concepts and practices from other religious traditions are mentioned, and some formal features of Jain literature are adopted, the very nature of these texts does not allow an exploration of the extent of their knowledge or understanding of non-Zoroastrian religious terminology.
32 For instance, the sound [z] does not occur in Indian languages; therefore, in the Avestan manuscripts copied in India, the -z- is often replaced by -j-, probably following the contemporary pronunciation. See Redard, Srōš Drōn—Yasna 3 to 8, p. 66.
33 See, for example, Burnouf, Commentaire sur le Yaçna, p. xxiii.
34 Burnouf also contributed to the study of Old Persian, which he found to be close to Avestan. In particular, see his work Mémoire sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes trouvées près de Hamadan et qui font maintenant partie des papiers du Dr. Schulz (Paris, 1836). See also, for example, his letter to Christian Lassen, 15 July 1827; Burnouf-Delisle, Choix de lettres d’Eugène Burnouf, 1825–1852, p. 60.
35 This term is attested, for example, in Sanskrit Yasna 3.3 and 7.3.
36 It is attested, for example, in Sanskrit Yasna 1.14, 2.14, 3.16, and 6.13.
37 Before him, in 1789, William Jones thought that Avestan could be a language derived from Sanskrit; this hypothesis had already been contested by Rasmus Rask in 1826. See C. Gallien, ‘Une querelle orientaliste: la réception controversée du Zend Avesta d’Anquetil-Duperron en France et en Angleterre’, in Littératures classiques 81 (2013), pp. 257–268, pp. 265 sqq.
38 See M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899), p. 887.
39 In Hinduism, the Manus are superior human beings and progenitors of all humanity. The kalpas are the different eras in the Indian cyclical conception of time.
40 The idea of philological apparatus has recently been discussed by P. M. Kurtz in ‘The philological apparatus: science, text, and nation in the nineteenth century’, Critical Inquiry 47.4 (2021), pp. 752 sqq. He writes that ‘philology constituted a relational system of knowledge production, one that comprised not only physical instruments, equipment, and machinery but also intangible concepts, skills, and hermeneutics’ and ‘this assembly of strategies and operations, bodies and networks, projects and sites transformed into the science of philology.’
41 Studies on Zoroastrianism and its languages had only just begun. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Justus Olshausen (1800–1882) started working on Iranian and Zoroastrian languages. For instance, he translated Anquetil-Duperron’s French translation of the Zend-Avesta into German and published studies on Pahlavi. See R. Schmitt, ‘OLSHAUSEN, JUSTUS’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, 2020, Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_11415 (accessed 16 August 2023).
42 In recent years, especially thanks to the MUYA project (https://muya.soas.ac.uk/) and the Corpus Avesticum Berolinense (CAB—https://cab.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/), the way of editing the Zoroastrian texts has totally changed and scholars have started focusing their attention on ritual elements.
43 For example, the Zoroastrian Middle Persian Digital Corpus and Dictionary (MPCD; https://www.mpcorpus.org/) is rethinking the Pahlavi corpus and preparing a dictionary, which is most needed.