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Baβri = Babylon in Avesta (1)

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02 Religious and ideological symbols and iconographic motifs


 		Keywords
Babylon
Baβri
dragons
identifications
Period
No period specified 		Channel
Iranian culture

Text
Avesta, Khorda Avesta, Yašt 5.29:
Baβri is an Avestan word (hapax) in Ābān Yašt (Yašt 5.29) where it is a description of the three-mouthed dragon Azhi Dahāka, who sacrificed “in the land of Babylon (Baβri)” to the goddess Ardvī Sūrā Anāhitā. It is not likely that Baβri originally signified Babel or Babylon in Avesta, but it is understandable that the Iranians, who came into contact with Mesopotamian culture, located this big dragon in Babylon, which must have been notorious for its dragons, in literary and artistic representations. So the Avestan Baβri became to be understood as referring to Babylon, probably from Median and Achaemenid periods onwards.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Avesta, Khorda Avesta, Yašt 5.29

Bibliography

Skjaervø 1988, 194Skjaervø, P. O. “Azhdaha, I. In Old and Middle Iranian.” Encyclopaedia Iranica 3 (1988) 191-199. [Encyclopaedia Iranica]
Skjaervø 1996, 609Skjaervø, P. O. “Zarathustra in the Avesta and in Manicheism.” In: La Persia e l'Asia Centrale da Alessandro al X secolo. Atti dei convegni lincei 127. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 1996, 597-628.

Andrea Piras


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000607.php

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