König, Götz. 2026. Vorarbeiten zu einer Neuedition der Liturgien des Kurzen Avesta (Iranica 35). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Since the first (European) exploration of texts regarded by the Parsis—the Zoroastrians of the Indian communities—as texts of the (Zand-)Avesta by Anquetil-Duperron in the 1760s, these texts have been presented as belonging to two major liturgical units: the long priestly liturgies and the short liturgies, some of which also formed part of the recitation programme of laypeople. In the nineteenth century, however, the latter were increasingly marginalised, primarily through editorial decisions but also through evaluative judgements, and excluded from historical and systematic reconstructions as well as from the interpretations based on them.
Following a critical account of this process, which continued into the late twentieth century, Götz König undertakes a redefinition of the field of the short liturgies. He does so, first, on the basis of a modular analysis of the texts that reveals the compositional unity underlying their structure; and second, through an analysis of the (very numerous) written representations of these liturgies—the manuscripts of the Xorde Avesta (“Short Avesta”)—according to manuscript groups and layers. Finally, a historical and systematic account describes the principal liturgical domains conceptualised in the Xorde Avesta, together with their interrelationships and functions. The Vorarbeiten thus provide readers with a fundamental reference work for understanding and using the liturgies of the Short Avesta in the comprehensive Berlin edition of the Avestan liturgies (Corpus Avesticum Berolinense), which has been under development since 2018.