Alphabet Letters
Avestan Ii 𐬍
Avestan Letters
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Origin Devised in the Sasanian period, commonly placed in the fifth or sixth century CE, long after the Avestan texts themselves were composed.
Ii writes the long close front vowel, the held counterpart of I. Length in Avestan changes words, and the script marks it in every vowel it has. Because the alphabet was drawn up for a text that priests already knew by heart, the distinctions it records are those a reciter maintained rather than those a reader would need in order to guess at an unfamiliar word. The tradition calls the script din dabireh, the religion writing. It serves the Avesta and little else, which is why its repertoire tracks the sounds of that language and no other. The encoded repertoire runs to fifty-four letters, sixteen vowels followed by thirty-eight consonants, a larger inventory than the neighbouring scripts of its region and period.
Facts
Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet in the strict sense: its vowels are full letters standing in the line, not marks hung on a consonant, which is the sharpest break it makes with the Book Pahlavi writing it was drawn from. 1Tradition: The Avestan script PositionFourteenth of the sixteen vowel letters of the Avestan alphabet, which are set out in pairs of short and long before the consonants begin 2Tradition: The Avestan script How the Letter JoinsWritten right to left, with each sound kept to its own distinct sign. The Book Pahlavi hand behind it had let several sounds fall together into shared shapes, and undoing that ambiguity is what the Avestan alphabet was made for. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Attributions
Associated SoundLong close front i 1Tradition: Avestan phonology Origins
Origin PeriodDevised in the Sasanian period, commonly placed in the fifth or sixth century CE, long after the Avestan texts themselves were composed. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Place of OriginSasanian Iran, where the Zoroastrian priesthood assembled the written Avesta. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Origin of the NameNamed directly for the long close front vowel it writes, ii, the held partner of I, following the same convention rather than an inherited word. 1 Sense of the Namethe long vowel i 1Tradition: The Avestan script Transmission
Manuscript TraditionNo Avestan manuscript survives from earlier than the thirteenth century CE, so every witness to the script is many centuries younger than the script itself, and the script is younger again than the words it carries. 4Tradition: Zoroastrianism Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleThe script exists to fix the sound of the Avesta, which is recited in Zoroastrian worship, a living practice with a small community. Its precision serves the requirement that the recited word be pronounced as it has been received. 3Tradition: Zoroastrianism Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceEncoded at U+10B0D AVESTAN LETTER II in the Avestan block, which lies wholly above the Basic Multilingual Plane. 2Tradition: The Avestan script Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Avesta was transmitted orally by priests for centuries before any script existed to hold it. This alphabet records a recitation, not a composition, and the gap between the two is the central fact about it. 4Tradition: Zoroastrianism Learn More
Avestan Ii: The Letter in the Avestan Alphabet
This is the long close front i, the same high forward tongue position held. Avestan distinguishes words by vowel length, so the difference between this letter and its short partner is a difference of meaning rather than a nicety of delivery. The sixteen vowel letters come first in the sequence, before any consonant, and they are set out in pairs of short and long. The arrangement is inherited from nowhere. The tradition that supplied the letterforms had no such vowel series and no reason to order one this way, so the pattern comes from an analysis of the language the script was built to hold. It stands fourteenth in the alphabet as a whole and fourteenth of the sixteen vowel letters, between Avestan I and Avestan U. That position is not arbitrary. The sequence follows a scheme, vowels before consonants and consonants by place of articulation, and each letter's place in it is a statement about the sound.
Zoroastrian worship treats the correct sounding of the Avesta as part of the act itself. A priest is expected to produce the words as they have been received, and a sign that could stand for either of two sounds would put that in doubt. The size of this letter list follows from the requirement and not from any love of complication.
Avestan Ii and the Words That Turn on Length
A long i differs from a short one in duration alone, and Avestan words turn on that difference. The alphabet therefore writes it, in the same way and with the same consistency as it writes the other seven length distinctions. The gap between the words and the writing is the central fact about this alphabet, and it runs in both directions. The Avesta is far older than the script, and every surviving manuscript is far younger, so the script sits between two long stretches of transmission and belongs wholly to neither.
The Zoroastrian communities that carried these manuscripts, in Iran and in western India, are small, and the copying was sustained by priestly families rather than by any large institution. That the texts survive at all is a consequence of that continuity. In the digital record the letter is encoded at U+10B0D AVESTAN LETTER II. The Avestan block sits wholly in the supplementary planes, and every letter in it takes four bytes in the encoding most of the web runs on. That is the practical reason Avestan text is still uncommon online, and why a page carrying it depends on the reader having a font that covers the range. What this alphabet holds is a performance. The atlas describes it and does not instruct in it: the recitation belongs to the community that maintains it, and the interest here is in what the script was built to do and how well it did it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
The short and long close front i. Vowel length distinguishes words in Avestan, so the pair marks a difference of meaning rather than of delivery.
The long and short close front i. Vowel length distinguishes words in Avestan, so the pair marks a difference of meaning rather than of delivery.
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