Airyanem Vaejah
Airyanem Vaejah (Avestan: 𐬀𐬫𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬥𐬆𐬨 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬘𐬀𐬵, romanized: Ayriianəm Vaēǰah; Middle Persian: Ērān-wēz; Persian: Irānwēj; Parthian: Aryānwēžan, 'the Arya Expanse[note 1]') is considered in Zoroastrianism to be the homeland of the early Iranians and the place where Zarathustra received the religion from Ahura Mazda.
[2] Based on these descriptions, modern scholarship initially focused on Airyanem Vaejah in an attempt to determine the homeland of the Iranians or Indo-Iranians in general.
[4] More recent scholarship, however, no longer agrees as to where Airyanem Vaejah might have been located or to what extent it is a mythological rather than a specific historical place.
[8] Friedrich Carl Andreas derives it from a hypothetical Old Iranian *vyacah which he connects to Vedic Sanskrit vyacas "territory, region".
[12] On the other hand, Émile Benveniste connects it to the Avestan term vaig (brandish, throw (a weapon)) which would be cognate to Vedic Sanskrit vega (vehement movement, irruption, flow) and, therefore, would give vaējah the meaning of "extent" or "expanse".
[13] It may also be related to Vedic Sanskrit vej/vij (to move with a quick darting motion, speed, heave (said of waves)), suggesting the region of a fast-flowing river.
In the Yashts, Airyanem Vaejah is most prominently named in the Aban Yasht as the place where both Ahura Mazda and Zarathustra sacrifice to Anahita: Unto her did the Maker Ahura Mazda offer up a sacrifice in the Airyanem Vaejah, by the good river Daitya; with the Haoma and meat, with the Baresman, with the wisdom of the tongue, with the holy spells, with the speech, with the deeds, with the libations, and with the rightly-spoken words.
The other verses in which Airyanem Vaejah occurs in the Yashts follow the same structure, differing only in the deity to whom the sacrifice is offered.
In these verses, Ahura Mazda is meeting there with Yima and instructs him to build a shelter for the winter that Angra Mainyu would soon unleash upon the material world.
[25][26] Airyanem Vaejah has, therefore, been compared to Mount Hara, a mountain that both appears in Zoroastrian mythology and has been variously identified with real geographical locations.
[27] Modern scholarship is thus trying to distinguish between these mythical and historical elements in the Zoroastrian sources and to find out how the early Iranians conceived of their world in each respective context.
[20][28] Since the Bundahishn (29.12) specifically places Airyanem Vaejah near Adarbaygan, it is clear that during Sassanian times Iranians believed it to be located in Western Iran.
[39] Taken together, these reasons have made the Khwarezm hypothesis very popular and scholars like Mary Boyce,[40] Nasser Takmil Homayoun, [41] and Elton L. Daniel[42] have endorsed it more recently.
For instance, Vogelsang has noted that the notion of Khwarezm as an important center of early Iranian civilization is not substantiated by recent evidence and places Airyanem Vaejah in the general region of Transoxiania.
[43] Frantz Grenet has interpreted the cold of Airyanem Vaejah as referring to a mountainious rather than a northern region and places it in the upper course of the Oxus river at the pre-Pamirian highlands.
