Kellens, Jean, and Céline Redard. 2021. Introduction à l’Avesta: Le récitatif liturgique sacré des zoroastriens. Les Belles Lettres.
Almost all religions of the contemporary world refer to a book that their followers consider sacred. The Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian communities of Iran, India and the diaspora is one of them, which bears witness to the origins of the pre-Islamic religion of the Iranian peoples.
Something, however, demands a closer look. Often approached as the theoretical expression of a religious doctrine or the mirror of a forgotten history and geography, the Avesta is also a literary engine whose mechanisms can be dismantled, that is, the precise analysis of the mode of transmission, the particularities of structure and the liturgical intentions presided over these textual assemblies.
Such is the ambition of this book, which traces the evolution of research from its origins to the advances of the 21st century, when our understanding of the Avesta was revolutionised.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Chapitre 1. Formation de la philologie avestique
- Chapitre 2. La mise par écrit de l’Avesta
- Chapitre 3. Le matériel manuscrit
- Chapitre 4. Le texte transmis : l’Avesta
- Chapitre 5. Analyse interne des textes constitutifs de l’Avesta
- En guise de conclusion : un essai de chronologie