Avestan geography
Avestan geography refers to the investigation of place names in the Avesta and the attempt to connect them to real-world geographical sites.
[1][2] It is connected to but different from the cosmogony expressed in the Avesta, where place names primarily refer to mythical events or a cosmological order.
[3] Identifying such connections is important for localizing the people of the Avesta and is therefore crucial for understanding the early history of Zoroastrianism and the Iranians.
The identification of these Avestan place names with real locations is often supported by comparisons with references made in later Iranian sources.
As a result, not all Avestan place names can be identified with certainty with present-day locations and therefore remain subject to debate.
Modern scholarship, however, agrees that the place names in the Avesta are concentrated in the eastern regions of Greater Iran up to the Indo-Iranian border.
Early Pahlavi sources have traditionally located many of these countries in the western Iranian regions; a tendency that was followed by much of 20th century scholarship.
[9] This changed with the work of Gherardo Gnoli who argued that all place names in the Vendidad are located in the eastern part of Greater Iran, i.e. centered around modern day Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
[10] Since then, a number of revisions of Gnoli's work have been proposed, often attempting to derive the position of the more uncertain place names from an assumed arrangement according to which countries appear in the list.
These definitions perpetuate interpretations of the Airyanem Vaejah as Urheimat des Awestavolkes, Urland of the Indo-Iranians[54] or the Wiege aller iranischen Arier.
[55] While the first chapter of the Vendidad contains the longest and most elaborate geographical description in the Avesta, several of the Yashts (Avestan: yašt, 'prayer, honor') contain additional information.
who is the first supernatural god to approach across the Hara, in front of the immortal swift-horsed sun; who is the first to seize the beautiful gold-painted mountain tops; from there the most mighty surveys the whole land inahbitated by the Iranians;
where gallant rulers organize many attacks, where high, sheltering mountains with ample pasture provide solicitous for cattle; where deep lakes stand with surging waves; where navigable rivers rush with wide a swell towards Parutian Ishkata, Haraivian Margu, Sogdian Gava, and Chorasmia.
[58] Pouruta on the other hand has been connected to the Parautoi mentioned by Ptolemy; a tribe that lived close to the Hindu Kush in the Ghor (gairi, "mountain") region.
The Arya (airiia, 'Iranians') are the main ethnic group mentioned in the Avesta, where they are typically equated with the Zoroastrian community in general.
[68] The Sarmatians were an Iranian speaking tribe that came into contact with the Greeks in the western steppe during classical antiquity but their origins are assumed to be in the southern Ural region.
At this point, the Yasht provides a detailed description of the hydrography of the Sistan Basin, in particular of Hāmūn-e Helmand: (the Unappropriated Glory) which is coming over to Saoshyant Verethrajan who will rise from the area where the Kansayoya sea is situated by the (River) Haetumant and Mount Ushada around which the many watercourses meet, coming from the mountains.
Apart from the Helmand River, these verses contain the names of eight other rivers flowing into lake Hamun; namely the Khvastra (xᵛāstrā, 'good pasture'), the Huvaspa (hvaspā, 'good horse'), the Fradata (fradaθā, 'wealthy'), the Khvarenanguhaiti (xᵛarənahvaitī), the Ushtavaiti (uštavaitī), the Urva (urvaδā, 'liquid'), the Erezi (Ǝrəzī), and the Zurenumaiti (zurənumaitī).
[75][76][77][78] These attempts rely on parallels in Pahlavi literature like the Bundahishn and the Tarikh-i Sistan, where a number of Sistani rivers are mentioned.
Further features of Sistani geography recur in the same verses, like the Kansayoya sea or Mount Ushada, both of which are closely connected to Zoroastrian eschatology.
To the south, it included Arachosia, Drangiana, Gandara and the upper Punjab up to the Indus River; an area known as Ariana, the land of the Arya, to the Greeks.
The near-total absence of western Iranians place names, with the possible exception of Rey and Hyrcania, makes it unlikely that the composition of these texts happened after the rise of the Acheminids.
