Disputationes Iranologicae Vindobonensis, I.

The common aspect of the first volume of the series Disputationes Iranologicae Vindobonenses" presented hereby is the language, literary analysis and reassessment of the most ancient monuments of Indo-Iranian languages - the Avesta and the Rigveda. This volume is the first result of a research cooperation between the Institute for Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Bologna, Italy, as well as the Italian Institute for Africa and the East (IsIAO). The contributions printed here unite texts which were introduced in the context of two courses of lectures laid out reciprocally in Italy and in Austria. The study of Antonio PANAINO under the title "Chronologia Avestica: Between linguistic and religious history (Philology and History of Avestan Text, I.)" starts out from the assessment of a number of contemporary attempts of periodization of Avestan language and text history (made by M. de Vaan, J. Kellens, P. O. Skjærvø). It discusses the question of the relation between the Old (Gathic) Avestan and the Young Avestan, and especially whether they represent varieties of the Avesta language differing diatopically or only diachronically. Here, one has to underline those phenomena, in which it is exactly the Young Avestan and not the Old Avestan to maintain the forms inherited from the Proto-Indo-Iranian, and to agree with the Vedic Old Indian. Besides purely philological, linguistic arguments, Panaino discusses also changes in the field of culture and religious history like the introduction of the Zoroastrian calendar - an area, on which the author has been working for years - and emphasizes also the artificiality of language and style of the Gathas. The author introduces new aspects to the assessment of the linguistic juxtaposition of Old and Young Avestan which is much more complex than generally assumed. This leads away of the idea of both languages being monolithic blocks and shows that we have to consider the possibility of different varieties of the Old and Young Avestan, respectively. The study of Velizar SADOVSKI bears the title "Epithets and divine names in Older Indo-Iranian: The hymnal catalogues of names in the Veda and Avesta (Stilistica Indo Iranica, I.)". It represents the first part of a large-scale examination of the linguistic characteristics in common between the preserved poetic texts of Old Iranian and Old Indian, which analyzes stylistic features of the two related languages on phonological, morphological, syntactical and phraseological levels and creates the basis for a long-time lacking comparison between the Avestan and the Vedic. What is completely new here is the systematic comparison, made by Sadovski, of the name catalogues of gods and humans, contained in the Avestan hymns, with the oldest Indo-Aryan lists from the Vedas and also with more recent catalogues of this kind in the epic and classic Sanskrit. After a presentation of the catalogues of epithets and divine names (Chapter I), the study treats the mechanisms of development and extension of epithet systems, starting out from an inherited, traditional core. These are, on the one hand (Ch. II), principles of religious and cosmological character; on the other hand (Ch. III), formal stylistic devices like stylistic accumulation or rhetorical repetition. Among them (Ch. IV), the most important part is played by figures like paronomasia, anaphora and epiphora as well as alliteration, rhyme and homoioteleuton. The author shows the close connection between the formation of epithets and that of personal names and the importance of the aspects of Language of Poetry in the investigation of their respective systems both from Indian Iranian and from Indo-European perspective. The two studies are followed by further publications of the series "Disputationes Iranologicae Vindobonenses to be alternately published in Italy and in Austria.