relation rig veda - avesta

[freddy27]

does anyone knows who is the oldest and is there a important similarity between them?

[els]

Hai Freddy,

The Rig Veda is of course from India, and the Avesta is Persian.

There are common characters and stories in it, but they also differ. I have not read those books, but I know some similarities
I know that Mitra is in both books, and his Vedic counterpart Varuna may be Ahura Mazda in the Avesta. The Vedic Saraswati is Aredvi Sura Anahita.

In the Indian religion you have the ashura's and the devas, in the avesta the ahura's and daeva's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asura

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varuna

Here's a relief of the crowning of the Sassanid Ardashir by Ahura Mazda and Mithra.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra

Interestingly, the only real evidence for an early mentioning of Mithra, Varuna, Indra and others is from a 14th century b.c. Hittite text, from Boghaz Keui (or Koi), in which those divine names ratify a treaty between the Hittites and Mittani.

Here's a page with the Avesta literature:

http://www.avesta.org/avesta.html

And the Rig Veda:

http://sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/index.htm

The Avesta texts were written down in the third century A.D. (the Sassanide era in Persia).

But both books have a mythic origin. All you can find about their age is something like 'the time they originated', which is not very convincing.

This is from wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta

The texts of the Avesta — which are all in the Avestan language — were collated over several hundred years. The most important portion, the Gathas, in Gathic Avestan, are the hymns thought to have been composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself, and date linguistically to around 1000 BCE. The liturgical texts of the Yasna, which includes the Gathas, is partially in Older and partially in Younger Avestan. The oldest portions may be older than the Gathas, later adapted to more closely follow the doctrine of Zoroaster. The various Yashts are in Younger Avestan and thought to date to the Achaemenid era (559–330 BCE). The Visperad and Vendidad, which are also in Younger Avestan, were probably composed even later but this is not certain.


[edit] Early transmission
The various texts are thought to have been transmitted orally for centuries before they found written form. The Book of Arda Viraf, a work composed in the 3rd or 4th century, suggests that the Gathas and some other texts that were incorporated into the Avesta had previously existed in the palace library of the Achaemenid kings (559–330 BCE). According to Arda Viraf 1.4-7 and Denkard 3.420 the palace library was lost in a fire caused by the troops of Alexander the Great. However, neither assertion can be confirmed since the texts, if they existed, have been lost.

Nonetheless, Rasmus Christian Rask concluded that the texts must indeed be the remnants of a much larger literature, as Pliny the Elder had suggested in his Naturalis Historiae, where he describes one Hermippus of Smyrna having "interpreted two million verses of Zoroaster" in the 3rd century BCE.

I looked up what Plinius the Elder had to say about Zoroaster, and this is not what is implied on Wikipedia. Actually, he says that according to Eudoxus 'this Zoroaster should have lived 6000 years before Plato'. He also says that 'Hermippus had commented on all 'two million verses' that were written by Zoroaster and made an index of all his books. Hermippus said that Zoroaster lived 5000 years before the Trojan War. Then Plinius says that it's remarkable that the memory of Zoroaster had lived on so vividly while all of his writings were lost and the tradition was not kept by Magi. He was only known by heresay.

So you can find a lot about the old age of these texts, but as soon as you check one single source, this doesn't stand up.

Here's also the Rigveda from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rig_Veda

It is also one of the oldest texts of any Indo-European language. Philological and linguistic evidence indicate that the Rigveda was composed in the Sapta Sindhu (a land of seven great rivers), which is the region around present-day Punjab, roughly between 1700–1100 BCE (the early Vedic period). There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the early Andronovo culture of ca. 2000 BCE.

I hope my English makes any sense.

[els]

Nou, ik heb zitten zweten op het Engels, maar zie nu dat je ook Nederlands spreekt.
Nou ja, dat de volgende die reageert hier maar zijn voordeel mee mag doen.