Jean Kellens. Complémentarité des deux dernières Gâthâs (Y51 et Y53-54.1)
Jean Kellens. Complémentarité des deux dernières Gâthâs (Y51 et Y53-54.1). Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT: Peeters, 2022, 91 p. (Études avestiques et mazdéennes 9, Persika 24).
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1With this study on the Vohuxšaϑrā Gāϑā (VoG, Yasna 51) and Vahištōišti Gāϑā (VaG, Yasna 53–54.1), J. Kellens completes his systematic revisit to the Gāthās launched with two articles in 2013 and 2014 (see the survey at https://doi.org/10.4000/abstractairanica.55023). The book includes a new French translation with commentary notes, embedded into an essay-like frame. As with Kellens’ other recent contributions on the Gāthās, the overarching goal of the work is to elucidate the original ritual context for which, according to one of his central hypotheses, each individual Gāthā was composed. His key methods are the analysis of commonalities and differences (re-configurations, additions, omissions) in each Gāthā’s usage of a shared inventory of motives, terms and textual patterns; and the attempt (fraud with difficulties) to assign each segment of the text to different participants in a ritual drama. These include the well-known figures of the “Gāthic circle” (Zaraϑuštra, Vīštāspa, etc.), which, in Kellens’ interpretive framework, are purely symbolical representations of priestly roles (pp. 71f.). Moreover, Kellens suggests that, in the case of the VoG, the sacrificial fire also acts as an interlocutor (p. 25ff.).
2Kellens’ central conclusions may be summarized as follows. The two final Gāthās form a set of complementary units, both originally linked to the Gāthic funerary rites. This is reflected in the focus which the VoG puts on an individual ‘man’ (nar-), in contrast to the community-centred outlook of the other Gāthās, particularly the otherwise closely related Uštauuaitī Gāϑā. Another distinctive feature of the VoG and VaG that matches their funerary purpose is the fact that they offer a joint treatment of two obligatory, but elsewhere separate textual components in the ritual outline of a Gāthā: a “catalogue of personal names” (presenting the figures of the “Gāthic circle” involved in the ritual), and a section dedicated to the ‘vision-soul’ (daēnā-), who in the VaG is also impersonated by the figure of Pourucistā. Kellens takes this as indicative that the daēnā-, whose union with the deceased person’s soul forms a decisive step in the passing to the afterlife, is the very target (“cible”) of the rites underlying the two final Gāthās (pp. 37f., 54ff.).
3The ritual of the VoG is meant to support the deceased ‘man’ at his ‘final turning point of existence’ (apə̄me aŋhə̄uš uruuaēsē, Y.51.6; p. 19f.) and during his journey to reach the ‘bliss’ (uštā, Y.51.16) of paradise. The word nar- here seems to co-refer to the ‘soul’ (uruuan-), a word which is, with one exception, surprisingly absent from the final two Gāthās (p. 77). The VoG above all aims at the acquisition of Ahura Mazdā’s ‘desirable power’ (xšaϑra- vairiia-, Y.51.1), resulting in the achievement of ‘immortality and wholeness’ (amərətātā hauruuātā, Y.51.7, pp. 47ff.). The VaG, an infamously difficult text in the shape of a wedding hymn, celebrates the subsequent union of the deceased person’s soul and his daēnā-. Having gained access to Ahura Mazdā’s ‘power’ in return for the human offerings, the ritual has produced the ‘desirable reward’ (vairiia- mīžda-): the successful ‘setting-in-motion’ (aṣ̌i-) of the soul towards paradise (thus Kellens’ interpretation of the concluding Airiiaman Išiia stanza, Y.54.1).
4Kellens makes several observations that hint at a special position of the VoG and VaG within the Gāthic corpus. They appear to be more closely aligned with the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (YH) than the other Gāthās, while also anticipating later, Young Avestan presentations of some of the topics they address. For example, Y.51.7 attributes to the primordial ‘cow’ and the divine abstract entities (the later Aməṣ̌a Spəṇtas) a status prior to the creation of the physical world. This is at odds with the cosmogony of the Uštauuaitī Gāϑā (Y.44) but in line with the YH and the Young Avestan texts (pp. 21, 46). Conversely, the funerary significance at least of the VoG was still perfectly clear to the Young Avestan composers, as seen in Hadōxt Nask 2, which, in Kellens’ view, is a narrative exegesis (“un zand”) of the VoG (pp. 36f., 50f.). Kellens finally underlines the thematic homogeneity that results from the insertion of the (second) Yasna Haptaŋhāiti after the VoG in the Young Avestan Visperad liturgy: without the insertion of the YH, the VoG’s concluding stipulation of a yasna- involving the mentioning of the deities’ “own names” (Y.51.22) would remain unfulfilled, and the resumption of the theme of yasna- at the beginning of the VaG less meaningful (p. 46). This leads Kellens to the speculation (uncomfortable, it seems, for himself) that the composition of the two final Gāthās perhaps even followed the integration of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti and the remaining Gāthās into a single Old Avestan corpus (p. 79).
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Benedikt Peschl, « Jean Kellens. Complémentarité des deux dernières Gâthâs (Y51 et Y53-54.1) », Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 45 | 2023, document 10, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2025, consulté le 16 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/57591 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15h3m
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