Yasna
The Yasna asserts that the created world is sustained through exact liturgical exchange, offerings of Haoma, fire, and precisely recited praise, conducted between worshippers and Ahura Mazda's court of divine beings.
- ritual offering as the mechanism sustaining cosmic order
- the Gathas embedded as the core of a much larger later liturgy
- Younger Avestan dialect marking a later compositional layer
- oral transmission for centuries before a Sasanian-era written redaction
The Yasna, meaning worship or sacrifice, is Zoroastrianism's central liturgical text, recited by priests during the primary act of worship of the same name. Its 72 chapters run from introductory invocations through the Hom Yasht honoring the sacred plant Haoma, a creedal statement, and an extended sequence of offerings and praise, and they embed as their sacred core the five Gathas attributed to Zoroaster himself, plus the older Yasna Haptanghaiti. It was composed orally in Younger Avestan, a later stage of the language than the Gathas' archaic dialect, over a period linguists place roughly between 1000 and 400 BC. That dating applies only to the era of oral composition: the text was not fixed in writing until Zoroastrian priests devised an Avestan alphabet under the Sasanian empire, centuries later, and everything before that point survived by memorized recitation alone. Its exact location within that eastern Iranian world is unknown.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…