SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article discusses various proposal for analysing the enigmatic form auuǝ̄mīrā, which constitutes the last word of the Gathic stanza Yasna 49.10. It is then proposed that the word is best understood as *a-u̯i-mī-ra- ‘undiminishing’. Being a compound with privative a- and the preverb *u̯i ‘apart’, it is argued that the word provides a further attestation for the root mī ‘to dwindle, diminish’, which is poorly documented in Iranian languages but well attested in Vedic and other Indo-European languages. The phrase mązā.xšaϑrā vazdaŋhā auuǝ̄mīrā, an attribute of īžā- ‘fat-offering, refreshment’, is translated as ‘(the refreshment) which grants dominion through undiminishing nourishment’. The expression ‘through undiminishing nourishment’ is interpreted as referring to the regularly recurring ritual performances, whose ‘refreshments’ Ahura Mazdā preserves in his ‘house’ and with which the soul of the righteous is welcomed when it arrives there after death.