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A Zoroastrian Liturgy: The Worship in Seven Chapters (Yasna 35-41). By ALMUT HINTZE. Iranica, vol. 12. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2007. Pp. xiv + 397.
Ever since Johanna Narten's truly groundbreaking edition of and commentary on the Yasna Haptaqhaiti (Der Yasna Haptaqhäiti, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986), this liturgy (hereafter YH), nestled in the very middle of the Yasna in the midst of the Gäthäs, has taken its rightful place in the corpus of Old Avestan on the merits of the antiquity of its language and the high literary value of its style. Though Humbach treated only the Gäthäs in his first edition of the Old Avestan corpus (Helmut Humbach, Die Gäthäs des Zarathustra, Heidelberg: Winter, 1959), his 1991 re-edition includes the YH, as the title suggests (The Gäthäs of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts, Heidelberg: Winter, 1991), and the three volumes of Jean Kellens and Eric Pirart's Les texts vieil- a? 'estique 's (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1988, 1990, 1991) also treat it along with the Gäthäs. And the text, translation, and commentary now appear in an English edition, the volume under review, dedicated to Narten.
The book is something of a hybrid. The author herself tells us (p. xiii) that she intended only to produce an English translation with short notes, but feeling that Narten's discussions "have not had the impact which they deserve" and noting that subsequent scholars (particularly Humbach...