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Airyanem Vaejah (Avestan: 𐬀𐬫𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬥𐬆𐬨 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬘𐬀𐬵, romanized: Ayriianəm Vaēǰah; Middle Persian: Ērān-wēz; Persian: Irānwēj; Parthian: Aryānwēžan, 'the Arya Expanse') is considered in Zoroastrianism to be the homeland of the early Iranians and the place where Zarathustra received the religion from Ahura Mazda. The Avesta also names it as the first of the "sixteen perfect lands" that Ahura Mazda created for the Iranians.

Based on these descriptions, modern scholarship initially focused on Airyanem Vaejah in an attempt to determine the homeland of the Iranians or Indo-Iranians in general. Among these early attempts, the region of Khwarezm emerged as a likely locale. More recent scholarship, however, no longer agrees as to where Airyanem Vaejah might have been located or to what extent it is a mythological rather than a specific historical place.

Etymology and related words

The Avestan Airyanəm Vaējah and the Middle Persian Ērān-wēz are compound terms, where the first part is the adjective or genitive plural of Arya (Avestan: 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀, airiia; Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭩𐭫‎, er), respectively. This term also appears in Vedic Sanskrit as the self designation of the people of the Vedas. Within the context of Iran, however, this term simply means Iranian. However, the exact meaning of the second part vaējah or wēz is uncertain. Friedrich Carl Andreas derives it from a hypothetical Old Iranian *vyacah which he connects to Vedic Sanskrit vyacas "territory, region". On the other hand, Émile Benveniste connects it to the Avestan term vaig (brandish, throw (a weapon)) which would be cognate to Vedic Sanskrit vega (vehement movement, irruption, flow) and, therefore, would give vaējah the meaning of "extent" or "expanse". It may also be related to Vedic Sanskrit vej/vij (to move with a quick darting motion, speed, heave (said of waves)), suggesting the region of a fast-flowing river.

Zoroastrian tradition knows at least two other terms that associate the Iranian people with a geographical region. The first is found in the Avesta specifically in the Mihr Yasht. Vers Yt. 10.13 describes how Mithra reaches Mount Hara and overlooks the Airyoshayana (Avestan: airyō.šayana, 'Iranian lands'). This term is usually interpreted to refer to the entire land inhabited by Iranians which would make it an umbrella term for the Iranian regions mentioned in the following verse Yt. 10.14. However, Gherardo Gnoli notes the ambiguity of the text, such that Airyoshayana, like Airyanem Vaejah, may only refer to a specific country, one that occupies a prominent place among the Iranian countries from verses Yt. 10.13-14. The second term is the Middle Persian Ērān-shahr (𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭𐭱𐭲𐭥𐭩) and Ērān (𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭). This word is the origin of the modern Persian term Iran. However, a possible Old Iranian origin *aryānām xšaθra- has not been established and the term may be an innovation of the Sassanians.

In the Avesta

The earliest mentions of Airyanem Vaejah are found in the Avesta, in particular in the Vendidad and several of the Yashts. In the Yashts, Airyanem Vaejah is most prominently named in the Aban Yasht as the place where both Ahura Mazda and Zarathustra sacrifice to Anahita:

Unto her did the Maker Ahura Mazda offer up a sacrifice in the Airyanem Vaejah, by the good river Daitya; with the Haoma and meat, with the Baresman, with the wisdom of the tongue, with the holy spells, with the speech, with the deeds, with the libations, and with the rightly-spoken words.

...

Unto her did the holy Zarathushtra offer up a sacrifice in the Airyanem Vaejah, by the good river Daitya; with the Haoma and meat, with the Baresman, with the wisdom of the tongue, with the holy spells, with the speech, with the deeds, with the libations, and with the rightly-spoken words.

— Aban Yasht 5.17, 5.104 (translated by James Darmesteter).

The other verses in which Airyanem Vaejah occurs in the Yashts follow the same structure, differing only in the deity to whom the sacrifice is offered. While in Yt. 5.104, Zarathustra is sacrificing to Anahita, this is changed to Drvaspa in the Drvasp Yasht (Yt. 9.25), and to Ashi in the Ard Yasht (Yt. 17.45). In the Vendidad, however, Airyanem Vaejah appears as the first of the sixteen best lands and countries that Ahura Mazda had created for the Zoroastrian community:

I have made every land dear (to its people), even though it had no charms whatever in it:
had I not made every land dear (to its people), even though it had no charms whatever in it, then the whole living world would have invaded the Airyanem Vaejah.

The first of the good lands and countries which I, Ahura Mazda, created, was the Airyanem Vaejah, by the good river Daitya.
Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, and he counter-created the serpent in the river and winter, a work of the Deavas.

There are ten winter months there, two summer months; and those are cold for the waters, cold for the earth, cold for the trees.
Winter falls there, with the worst of all plagues.

— Vendidad 1.1 - 1.3 (translated by James Darmesteter).

This connection between Airyanem Vaejah and winter is further described in Vd. 2.20-23. In these verses, Ahura Mazda is meeting there with Yima and instructs him to build a shelter for the winter that Angra Mainyu would soon unleash upon the material world. The harsh description of Airyanem Vaejah in Vd. 1.3, however, seems to conflict with the positive assessment given in Vd. 1.1. This has led some to speculate that the third verse is a later insertion, while others think that it could be a fragment of an originally longer description, and the text in Vd. 1.3 refers only to the upper headwaters of the river Daitya.

In Zoroastrian tradition

In middle Iranian sources, Airyanem Vaejah appears as Eranwez. The Bundahishn describes how Eranwez was the place where the first cattle was created (Bd. 13.4) and where Zarathustra first received the religion from Ahura Mazda (Bd. 35.54). The Bundahishn furthermore states that Eranwez is located near Adarbaygan (Bd. 29.12) and that it is connected by the river Daitya to a country called Gobadestan (Bd. 11A.7). The identity of Gobadestan is not known, but its name has been interpreted as a distortion of Sugdestan. Likewise, the river Daitya is often identified in the literature with the Oxus. This apparent conflict between a western and an eastern localization in Greater Iran has been explained as a westward shift in geographic place names that may have taken place parallel to the rise of political power in the western regions, in particular Media and Persis.

Modern scholarship

When investigating the historical reality behind Airyanem Vaejah, modern scholarship is faced with the fact that many references appear in a clearly mythical context, while others may point to a specific historical location. Airyanem Vaejah has, therefore, been compared to Mount Hara, a mountain that both appears in Zoroastrian mythology and has been variously identified with real geographical locations. Modern scholarship is thus trying to distinguish between these mythical and historical elements in the Zoroastrian sources and to find out how the early Iranians conceived of their world in each respective context.

Since the Bundahishn (29.12) specifically places Airyanem Vaejah near Adarbaygan, it is clear that during Sassanian times Iranians believed it to be located in Western Iran. Some early modern scholars tended to accept this localisation, assuming that it also reflected the understanding of Iranians at the much earlier time of the Avesta, i.e., the time when the earliest sources were produced. However, this notion has been criticised due to the observation that all place names in the Avesta that can be reliably identified with modern places are found in the eastern and northeastern part of Greater Iran. As a result, more recent scholarship mostly favours an eastern localisation of Airyanem Vaejah.

One hypothesis that has attracted considerable interest identifies Airyanem Vaejah with Khwarezm. It was proposed early on by Wilhelm Geiger and Josef Markwart and a number of arguments have been voiced in its favor over the years. First, Airyanem Vaejah is described as having long and cold winters and Khwarezm is among the coldest regions of Greater Iran. Next, Airyanem Vaejah is described as the original homeland of the Iranians and Khwarezm has been proposed as an early center of Iranian civilization. This point has been widely discussed within the search for "the traditional homeland" or "the ancient homeland" of the Iranians, perpetuating interpretations of the Airyanem Vaejah as Urheimat des Awestavolkes, Urland of the Indo-Iranians or the Wiege aller iranischen Arier. Another argument builds on a comparison between the list of Iranian countries in the Vendidad (Vd. 1.1.-1.19) and the Mihr Yasht (Yt. 10.13-14). As Christensen has argued, the place occupied by Khwarezm in the Mihr Yasht seems to be occupied by Airyanem Vaejah in the Vendidad. Taken together, these reasons have made the Khwarezm hypothesis very popular and scholars like Mary Boyce, Nasser Takmil Homayoun, and Elton L. Daniel have endorsed it more recently.

However, this hypothesis has also seen a number of criticisms and counter proposals. For instance, Vogelsang has noted that the notion of Khwarezm as an important center of early Iranian civilization is not substantiated by recent evidence and places Airyanem Vaejah in the general region of Transoxiania. Frantz Grenet has interpreted the cold of Airyanem Vaejah as referring to a mountainious rather than a northern region and places it in the upper course of the Oxus river at the pre-Pamirian highlands. According to Michael Witzel, however, Airyanem Vaejah lies at the center of the 16 lands mentioned in the Vendidad - an area now in the central Afghan highlands (around Bamyan Province). He also concludes that the idea of finding the "Aryan homeland" in the Avesta should be abandoned and one should rather focus on how both the earlier (Yasht 32.2) and later Avestan texts themselves regarded their own territory. Finally, some scholars like Skjaervo have concluded that the localization of Airyanem Vaejah is insolveable.

See also

• Avestan geography
• Ahura Mazda
• Ariana
• Āryāvarta, its Vedic counterpart
• Indo-Iranians
• Haryana

References

Notes

1. The translation of Vaejah as 'expanse' is tentative. For other possibilities, see below.
2. Darmesteter interprets this unique passage, in which Ahura Mazda himself sacrifices to a lesser deity, as the "heavenly prototype of the Mazdean sacrifice as later shown to mankind by Zarathustra".
3. Sources for the different localizations are provided in the description of the image.

Citations

1. Benveniste 1934.
2. Vogelsang 2000.
3. Witzel 2000, p. 9: "Among the various countries known to Old Persian and Avestan texts, it is Airiianəm Vaẽjah that has captured the imagination of scholars most. Many regard it as the "mythical homeland" of the Aryans ...".
4. Vogelsang 2000, p. 9: "The land of Airyanem Vaejah, which is described in the text as a land of extreme cold, has often been identified with ancient Choresmia.".
5. Gnoli 1980.
6. Skjaervø 1995.
7. Grenet 2005.
8. ^ MacKenzie 1998.
9. ^ Alemany 2000, p. 3.
10. Witzel 2001, p. 2: "At the outset, it has to be underlined that the term Ārya (whence, Aryan) is the self-designation of the ancient Iranians and of those Indian groups speaking Vedic Sanskrit and other Old Indo-Aryan (OIA) languages and dialects. Both peoples called themselves and their language årya or arya:".
11. Gershevitch 1968, p. 1: "Since Aryana means 'Iranian', the modern term Indo-Aryan has been coined to denote those Arya tribes who had penetrated to the Punjab, there to develop the literature of the Rig Veda.".
12. Andreas 1932, p. 38.
13. Benveniste 1934, pp. 266-267.
14. Humbach 1991, p. 33.
15. Gershevitch 1967, p 79.
16. Gnoli 1966, p 73: "A questo punto sono possibili due interpretationi dell'intero passo, secondo che si conferisca all'espressione airyo.shayanem della stanza 13 un significato o generico o restrittivo. Nel primo caso, se essa significasse l'intero paese in cui abitano tutti gli Iranici, l'espressione vispem airyo.shayanem sarebbe evidentimente comprensiva di cio che segue: essa costituirebbe, sinteticamente, tutto l'insieme che verrebbe poi analizzato nella stanza seguente nei termini Ishkata, Paruta etc.: nel secondo caso, pero, se essa equivalesse all'espressiono abbreviata di aryanam vaêjõ e a quella di airyanam dahyunam, in quanto contrapposte alle pur sempre iraniche tuiryanam dahyunam, airyo.shayanem costituirebbe il primo elemento dell'enumerizio geografica, il primo dei paesi guardati da Mithra, il primo e, nello stesso tempo, il piu importante, un paese, soprattutto, ricco di acque, di laghi, di canali.".
17. Darmesteter 1882, p. 57.
18. Darmesteter 1882, pp. 57, 78.
19. Darmesteter 1880, pp. 4-5.
20. ^ Vogelsang 2000, p. 50.
21. Humbach 1991, p. 36.
22. MacKenzie 2011.
23. Gnoli 2011, "DĀITYĀ, (VAŊHVĪ) (lit., “the (good) Dāityā”; Mid. Pers. Weh Dāitī), the name of a river connected with the religious "law" (Av. dāta-, Mid. and NPers. dād), frequently identified in scholarly literature with the Oxus or with rivers of the northeastern region .".
24. Benveniste 1934, p. 272: "Quand le centre de l'Empire s'est déplacé vers l'Ouest, il s'est produit parallèlement, à l'époque sassanide, un transfert dans la nomenclature géographique on a reporté dans l'Iran occidental une grande partie du répertoire des noms orientaux conservés par l'Avesta.".
25. Boyce 1996, p. 144: "Another local name which is evidently traditional, and is also used at times with mythical connections, is Airyanem Vaejah, in Pahlavi Eranvej.".
26. Vogelsang 2000, p. 50: "An additional problem is the question whether all the lands that are mentioned in the list refer to an actual geographical location, or whether in at least some cases we are dealing with mythical names that bear no direct relationship to a specific area. Such a point has often been brought forward as regards the first and the last names in the list: Airyanem Vaejah (No. 1) and Upa Aodaeshu Rahnghaya (No. 16).".
27. Boyce 1996, p. 144: "But just as the name Hara is used both of a mythical mountain (home of Mithra and Aredvi Sura and supporter of the Cinvat Bridge) and also of various local ranges, so the name Airyanem Vaejah appears to have been used both of a mythical land at the centre of the world, and also of wherever the "Airyas" or Avestan people found themselves living.".
28. ^ Witzel 2000, pp. 47-48.
29. Darmesteter 1880, p. 3.
30. Grenet 2005, p. 31: "As can be seen, almost all identified countries are situated beyond the present borders of Iran, to the east and northeast.".
31. Witzel 2000, p. 10: "Since the evidence of Young Avestan place names so clearly points to a more eastern location, the Avesta is again understood, nowadays, as an East Iranian text, whose area of composition comprised -- at least -- Sīstån/Arachosia, Herat, Merw and Bactria.".
32. Vogelsang 2000, p. 58: "The land of Airyanem Vaejah, which is described in the text as a land of extreme cold, has often been identified with ancient Choresmia.".
33. Geiger 1884.
34. Markwart 1901.
35. Benveniste 1934, p. 271.
36. Vogelsang 2000, p. 58: "The concept of Choresmia as the original 'homestead of the Aryans' is connected to the so-called Choresmian hypothesis by Henning.".
37. Spiegel 1887, p. 123.
38. von Prášek 1906, p. 29.
39. Christensen 1943, pp. 66-67.
40. Boyce 1996.
41. Homayoun 2004.
42. Daniel 2012.
43. Vogelsang 2000, p. 60.
44. Grenet 2005, pp. 35-36.
45. Witzel 2000, p. 48: "The Vīdēvdað list obviously was composed or redacted by someone who regarded Afghanistan and the lands surrounding it as the home of all Aryans (airiia), that is of all (eastern) Iranians, with Airiianem Vaẽjah as their center.".
46. Skjaervø 1995, p. 166: "I regard the question of the identity of airiianam vaëjô "the Aryan expanse" as insoluble".

Bibliography

• Alemany, Agustí (2000). Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-11442-5.
• Andreas, Friedrich C. (1932). Henning, Walter B. (ed.). Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan. Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter u. Company. ISBN 9783112023723.
• Benveniste, Émile (1934). "L'Ērān-vēž et l'origine légendaire des Iraniens". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (in French). 7 (2): 265–274. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00085207. S2CID 162555518.
• Boyce, Mary (1996). A History Of Zoroastrianism: The Early Period. Brill.
• Christensen, Arthur (1943). Le premier chapitre du Vendidad et l'histoire primitive des tribus iraniennes (PDF). Historisk-filologiske meddelelser (in French). Ejnar Munksgaard.
• Darmesteter, James (1880). The Zend-Avesta Part 1 The Vendidad. Oxford at the Clarendon Press.
• Darmesteter, James (1882). The Zend-Avesta Part 2. Oxford at the Clarendon Press.
• Daniel, Elton L. (2012). The History of Iran. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0313375095.
• Geiger, Wilhelm (1884). "Vaterland und Zeitalter des Awestā und seiner Kultur". Sitzungsberichte der königlichen bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 2: 315–385.
• Gershevitch, Ilya (1967). The Avestan Hymn to Mithra. Cambridge University Press.
• Gershevitch, Ilya (1968). "Old Iranian Literature". In Spuler, B. (ed.). Handbuch der Orientalistik. Brill. pp. 1–32. doi:10.1163/9789004304994_001. ISBN 9789004304994.
• Gnoli, Gherardo (1980). Zoroaster's Time and Homeland: A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems. Istituto universitario orientale.
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• Gnoli, Gherardo (2011). "DĀITYĀ, VAŊHVĪ". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VI. Iranica Foundation. pp. 598–599.
• Grenet, Frantz (2005). "An Archaeologist's Approach to Avestan Geography". In Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh; Stewart, Sarah (eds.). Birth of the Persian Empire Volume I. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-0-7556-2459-1.
• Homayoun, Nasser T. (2004). Kharazm: What do I know about Iran?. Cultural Research Bureau. ISBN 964-379-023-1.
• Humbach, Helmut (1991). The Gathas of Zarathustra and the Other Old Avestan Texts. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
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• MacKenzie, David N. (1998). "Ērān-Wēz". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VIII. Iranica Foundation. p. 536.
• Markwart, Josef (1901). Ērānšahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenacʿi. Mit historisch-kritischem Kommentar und historischen und topographischen Excursen. Schwabenverlag. ISSN 0342-1430.
• von Prášek, Justin Václav (1906). Geschichte der Meder und Perser bis zur makedonischen Eroberung I. F.A. Perthes.
• Skjaervø, P. Oktor (1995). "The Avesta as source for the early history of the Iranians". In Erdosy, George (ed.). The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia. De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110144475.
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• Witzel, Michael (2000). "The Home of the Aryans". In Hinze, A.; Tichy, E. (eds.). Festschrift für Johanna Narten zum 70. Geburtstag (PDF). J. H. Roell. pp. 283–338. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000114.
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External links

• Avesta terminology: Eranvej
• Encyclopedia Iranica: ĒRĀN-WĒZ

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