For the first time, this work treats in a comprehensive manner the Rasn
Yast, or 'Hymn to Justice'. The Rasn Yast stands in praise of the
Zoroastrian deity Rasnu 'Justice' and belongs to the group of religious
texts known as the Avesta - a collection of compositions in the ancient
Iranian language of Avestan. Although the Rasn Yast, like all of the
Avesta, is generally assumed to have been committed to writing either
during or shortly after the Sasanian era (224-651 CE.), its verses were
probably composed during the early first millennium BCE. The present
monograph contains an English translation of the Rasn Yast supported by
a critical edition of the Avestan text. The latter is based on the
testimony of thirteen manuscripts, of which nine were newly collated.
Variant readings from the manuscripts are recorded in a detailed and
easy to read apparatus. Matters of a philological or text critical
nature are taken up for discussion in an accompanying commentary and all
forms appearing in the Rasn Yast are parsed in the text's glossary. In
addition, this book includes three introductory chapters that aim to
elucidate the key themes of the Rasn Yast. The first chapter concerns
the titular divinity Rasnu and explores his role as a judicial figure,
both in this world and the hereafter. The second chapter explicates the
cosmographic scheme which is uniquely preserved in the Hymn to Justice
and argues this map of the universe encodes numerical and spatial
patterns. The third chapter draws upon Avestan and Middle Persian
sources to give an in depth account of the use of ordeal rituals in
ancient Iran - a practice with which Rasnu is intimately associated and
which is repeatedly mentioned in the Rasn Yast. This work is intended
for specialist and more general audiences alike, and is principally
aimed at those with interests in Indo-Iranian philology, Zoroastrianism,
ancient Iran and comparative religion.
