The Ram Yasht is the fifteenth

Yasht A Yasht (, ) is a hymn of praise composed in the Young Avestan language and dedicated to specific Zoroastrian divinities. The term commonly applies to the collection of 21 Yashts, although it may also refer to other texts within the wider Avest ...

of the 21 Yasht collection. It is named after Raman, a minor Zoroastrian deity, but it is actually dedicated to

Vayu Vayu (; ), also known as Vata () and Pavana (), is the Hindu deities, Hindu god of the winds as well as the divine messenger of the gods. In the ''Vedic scriptures'', Vayu is an important deity and is closely associated with Indra, the king o ...

, the Zoroastrian divinity representing the

Wind Wind is the natural movement of atmosphere of Earth, air or other gases relative to a planetary surface, planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heatin ...

and

Atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

Name

Ram is the

Middle Persian Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...

name of Raman (, ), a minor Zoroastrian divinity whose name translates as ''peace'' or ''tranquility'' and which is celebrated on the 21th day of the month of the

Zoroastrian calendar Adherents of Zoroastrianism use three distinct versions of traditional calendars for Zoroastrian festivals, liturgical purposes. Those all derive from Middle Ages, medieval Iranian calendars and ultimately are based on the Babylonian calendar a ...

. The content of the Yasht, however, does not mention Raman but is dedicated to Vayu (, ). This is one of the two Zoroastrian divinities representing the wind, with the other one being Vata (, ), with whom Vayu is sometimes fused. The title ''Ram Yasht'' is assumed to be a secondary addition to the text, presumably with the intent to align it with the

. It is not clear what motivated the association between Raman and Vayu, although Kellens speculates that it was due to the close association of Vayu with Vata, whose name day is one day after Raman.

Structure and content

The Ram Yasht consists of 58 stanzas, and is further subdivided into 11 sections, called ''Kardas''. According to Darmesteter , it can be divided into two main parts. The first part conists of stanzas 1-40, which contains a long list of people who sacrifice to Vayu. Such lists of worshippers who sacrificed to a divinity are typical for a number of Yashts, which are grouped into the so called ''Legendary Yashts''. The second part consists of stanzas 42-58 and contains a list of the many names of Vayu.

History

The Ram Yasht is considered to be linguistically defective. The list of names of Vayu found in the second part of the Yasht, for example, consists of many names in the wrong

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

. This means that they have been copied from an originally different context without accounting for the new situation. The Ram Yasht is consequently, considered to be the product of a late redaction, which must have taken place after

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

ceased to be a living languange. The written transmission of the Bahram Yasht probably began during the Sasanian period, when a comprehensive edition of the Avestan texts in 21 volumes, called nasks, was produced. Within this edition, the Bahram Yasht was part of the so called Bagan Yasht nask, where it formed the 12th chapter. Although this Sasanian edition of the Avesta is lost, the Yashts which were contained in the Bagan Yasht nask survived until today through the E1 and F1 manuscript traditions.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * *

External links

Avestan text of the Ram Yasht
at Avesta.org based on the edition by Geldner
English translation of the Ram Yasht
at Avesta.org based on the translation by Darmesteter {{Zoroastrian literature Avesta