On the Yašt Gāhān (= Gāh Sārnā)

Abstract

The Gāϑās are known to be a central building block of the Yasna/Visparad liturgy as well as of the Vīdēvdād Sāde and Vīštāsp Yašt Sāde, liturgies which are based on the Visparad. The functional difference of these liturgies (the Yasna/Visparad are intertwined with sacrificial, the Vīdēvdād with purification acts; the function of the Vīštāsp Sāde is obscure) shows that the Gāϑās can be used in a variety of ritual contexts, in other words, that they are hermeneutically open.

In Zoroastrian Studies the impression prevails that the Gāϑās could and can be used only in connection with their Younger Avestan embedding in the Yasna and in the Long Liturgy. However, with the text Yašt Gāhān, in which the first Gāϑā encounters a liturgical embedding that corresponds to that of the so-called Short Liturgies, there is a counter-example attested to in the manuscripts. Remnants of a parallel use of the second Gāϑā indicate a) that once (probably before the 2nd millennium CE) all five Gāϑās could be recited in the way the Yašt Gāhān is recited still today, and b) that the five Gāϑās formed perhaps a liturgical sequence also beyond the Yasna ritual complex. Since the Yašt Gāhān is a liturgy in the context of the rites of the dead – it is recited at the moment when the corpse is lifted up and carried out of the house – it seems reasonable to assume that a recitation of all five Gāϑās formed once the chant accompanying the dead from the place of death to the daxme. Furthermore, there are indications that there was a connection between the separate recitation of the five Gāϑās and the five (or twice five) year-end days named after the five Gāϑās.