Old Avestan: The Archaic Register of the Gathas

Old Avestan is the more archaic of the two historical layers of the Avestan language, preserved specifically in the Gathas, seventeen hymns traditionally attributed directly to the prophet Zoroaster, and in a small number of other liturgical texts including the Yasna Haptanhaiti, and its grammar shows notably closer affinity to Vedic Sanskrit than the language's later Younger Avestan layer does, reflecting Old Avestan's greater antiquity within the broader Indo-Iranian linguistic family.

Old Avestan belongs, like Younger Avestan, to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, and the Gathas' distinctive, often difficult and metrically dense poetic style has made them a persistent subject of scholarly translation debate, since their archaic grammar, compressed syntax and unique theological vocabulary resist straightforward interpretation even for specialists fluent in the language's later Younger Avestan form. Old Avestan, unlike Younger Avestan, shows minimal later linguistic influence, having been fixed in its poetic form at a very early date and preserved essentially unchanged through the subsequent oral transmission that carried the entire Avesta forward for well over a thousand years.