The liturgical language of Zoroastrianism, in its Old and Younger forms, carrying the Avesta.
Avestan preserves the Gathas, the hymns attributed to Zarathustra himself, among the oldest religious texts in any Indo-European language. No one has spoken it natively for over two thousand years, yet Zoroastrian priests still recite it daily, understanding its power to reside in the rightly spoken word.
Key Texts
Learning and Reference Resources
- Avesta.org — texts and translations Free / open access
Provenance
Classification follows Ethnologue and standard Indo-Iranian linguistics; identifiers verified at build time.