1 According to Kümmel (2000, 646), who cites Narten’s translation for this stanza (645), perfect forms of Av. dā all belong to *d^hā, not to *dā. However, the Vedic evidence suggests that the contexts here speak more for Ved. prá-dā “hold out, present” than prá-dhā “place in front, position (appoint)”.

2 If this is the case, it may belong to the type of the medium tantum with the active only in the aor. subj.; see Gotō 2013, 92 (references in n. 213).

3 445f. “sich etwas [Akk.] ins Gedächtnis rufen, recordari” only for Y40,1 and “Jemanden, etwas [Akk.] machen zu — [Akk.]”.

4 See the translation above, which is explained in 1991, 149: “tourne ton attention vers (nous)” and “rends abondante la récompense que…” (with hiiat̰ mīždәm), with the proviso that “Notre traduction est aventureuse comme toutes les autres”.

5 II 129: “a zeugma…, in which the one verb kәrәšuuā is used in two different constructions”, which, they say, is “the result of an elaboration, using pleonastic -cā, from *mazdąm būirī kәrәšuuā ‘assume knowledge largely’”; likewise already Geldner 1885, 240 + Anm. 4.

6 “betätige deine Aufmerksamkeit” and “betätige deine Fülle”.

7 RV I 165.14, V 42.13, VII 104.6, VIII52.9, IX 26.3; 65.16, cf. Konow 1973, 217, Oldenberg 1967, II 1161, Dōyama 2014, 13f.

8 Dōyama 2019, particularly § 6.

9 Cf. Grassmann 1873, 1161 2) “Gabe, Geschenk, geschenktes oder zu schenkendes Gut, …”.

10 RV VIII 64.1 út tvā mandantu stómāḥ ^| kr̥ṇuṣvá rā́dho adirvaḥ | áva brahmadvíṣo jahi. 2 padā́ paṇī́ṁr arādháso ^| níbādhasva… “Let the praise songs intoxicate you! Obtain the gifts for/ on your own, O you [armed] with stones! Strike down those who hate poetic formulations!” 2. “With your foot, trample the enemies who do not give gifts (for rituals)!”, likewise I 10.7cd gávām ápa vrajáṃ vr̥dhi ^| kr̥ṇuṣvá rā́dho adirvaḥ “Open the pen of the cows! Obtain the gifts for/on your own, O you…!”

11 Because the concrete gifts from Indra always need to be taken in battle or in raid.

12 Also the cases, for which Grassmann 1873, 332 assumes “jemandem [D… .] etwas [A.] erweisen, leisten, ausrichten” such as práśastim kar (mid.) “make his praise (for…)” (RV I 181.1), all are to be understood with the usual functions of the middle voice.

13 Narten 1986, 270 “Adjektivabstraktum”, Hintze 2007a, 286 “adjectives being used as abstract substantives”.

14 Hintze 2007a, 286 regards this possibility as “less likely from a semantic point of view because in Y40,1 Ahura Mazdā is asked to dispense from his wealth”.

15 Sacrifice (yajñá-), Soma, ghee (ghr̥tá-), speech (vácas-), recitation (ukthá-), poetic formulation (bráhmaṇ-), welcome song (gír-), praise song (stóma-), mánman- (thought, i.e. poetry), reverence (námas-). In particular, bráhmaṇ- as várdhana- is frequently encountered in the RV with the fixed expressions: “bráhmaṇ- (nom.) is/becomes (as/bhavⁱ) várdhana- for someone (dat.)/as someone’s (gen.)” or “make (kar) bráhmaṇ- (acc.) [as] várdhana- for someone/as someone’s”, e.g. V 73.10ab imā́ bráhmāṇi várdhanā- ^|_aśvíbhyāṁ santu śáṃtamā “Let these poetic formulations be the most beneficial várdhana-s for Aśvins!”, VII 22.7ab túbhyéd imā́ sávanā śūra víśvā ^| túbhyam bráhmāṇi várdhanā kr̥ṇomi “Just for you are all these [Soma-] pressings here, O hero. For you I make (now) poetic formulations (as) várdhana-s”.

16 Cf. Humbach 1991 I 138 “(Thou) who (art) the strongest Ahura and the Wise One, and (You who are) Right-Mindedness and…” (with ahurō and mazdā̊s as different divinities), which interpretation finally goes back to Humbach 1957, 87f. with n. 20, where he criticizes previous studies that had taken this stanza, more or less, like my translation. His argument, however, that *yascā sәvištō ahurō mazdā̊s should have been required for the translation like above, because “cā pflegt… hinter dem ersten Worte des aus mehreren Wörtern bestehenden verbundenen Gliedes zu stehen”, seems ungrounded. It is quite possible that an appositive relative clause, which belongs to a noun (here mazdā̊s), is posited forwards at the sentence initial for emphasis, whereas a sentence like *yascā… mazdā̊s, with no inversion, would be a normal complex sentence with a preceding relative clause from the start. Narten (1982, 43) connects ahurō and mazdąscā as predicative nominatives of the relative clause: “Der (du) der mächtigste Herr und der Weise (bist), (du) und…” Structurally, this is certainly another possibility, except that this interpretation arises from the understanding of mazdā- as an adjective “wise”, with which we do not agree (see below under excursus). — It is also doubtful that the relative clause as well as the following series of attributes in the nominative stand in place of vocatives (Humbach loc. cit. and Humbach 1991, II 101). It is a frequently encountered construction in Indo-Iranian that the subject of an imperative is named in the nominative within a sentence.

17 The offering from humans to the god, but Narten 1986, 268f., followed by Hintze 2007a, 284, assumes a quite opposite direction.

18 On “Aspect Theory”, see Smith 1929, 23ff.

19 Irrespective of the degree to which these two in the Gāϑā represent concrete offerings in ritualistic contexts; cf. Narten 1982, 47f. 135ff., Humbach 1991, I 93.

20 On 47.1, see Narten 1982, 49.

21 Klingenschmitt 1982, 187 Anm. 32, Kellens 1984a, 171 n. 11.

22 For the interpretation of the last line, see Hoffmann 1954/1961, 47 Anm. 6.

23 For apiuuaⁱtī aⁱpī-vat pass.-aor. (= Ved. api-vat “sich etw. geistig aneignen”) that has been rendered variously, see Narten 1982, 45 Anm. 66 with references (but Humbach 1991, II 160 assume *ā-piuuaiti “holds on to”). In view of the Vedic api-vat, the correct meaning would be “take… in oneself, conceive [as revelation, inspiration]”.

24 As all the translators render, hī most probably stands for the two divine attributes. That means, it can be the f. acc. du. of the 3rd pers. pronoun (not listed in Hoffmann & Forssman 2004, 162).

25 I follow mostly Narten 1982, 45 with fnn. (where also references): the subject is amәr^әtā̊s and ha^uruuatās. But the predicate dātā concords only with the first (or each) of them, cf. also Humbach 1991, II 98.

26 Cf. for example the unique facets of xšaϑra- compared to other attributes; see Kellens 1980, 161ff., Narten 1982, 46.

27 However, asuratvá- (3 ×) and asuryà- (12 ×) are not suggestive for our discussion, although they would have a closer relationship with Ahura Mazdā.

28 The asura-hood belongs not only to asura-s, i.e. Ādityas, but also to deva-s such as Indra, Agni, and Rudra. Suffice it to quote some of these examples below.

29 It is not clear if these are godly or human clans, cf. Witzel & Gotō 2007, 609 (Dōyama), but at any rate the clause refers to when the priest = the speaker performs a ritual; cf. quite a different interpretation for the second half in Jamison & Brereton 2014, 192 with comm. (on their Website) ad loc. (Jamison).

30 Sometimes ná as well as iva can be better understood as prepositions to introduce an appositive noun “as”; see Witzel & Gotō (Gotō) 2007, 245.

31 It is worth mentioning that sarvátāti- “completeness, integrity” (≈ Av. hauruuatāt-) in the RV is requested only by people from the gods.

32 Narten (1982, 33) points out that stanzas such as Y 33.11 directly served as the source of such a development.

33 One might be tempted to compare *būⁱri- [aṣ̌a-] with RVedic ánr̥ta- bhū́ri- in VII 60.5ab imé cetā́ro ánr̥tasya bhū́rer ^| mitró aryamā́ váruṇo hí sánti “Here are surely the punishers of much untruth, Mitra, Aryaman, Varuṇa”. However, they literally mean much, i.e. widely spreading, untruth. Moreover, “untruth” here, as is often the case, can mean concrete actions of “perjure” being committed as opposed to satyá- (Witzel & Gotō 2007, 845, s.v. satyá-). In both cases, therefore, bhū́ri- here most likely belongs to meaning 1) above.

34 See the translations under 1. above; quite differently, Humbach 1991 (the relative hiiat̰ to xšaϑrәm) “the power which (is) with us” (35.5; for 40.1, see above); for Baunack 1888, see n. 36.

35 The character of this phrase to emphasize the direction of the worshippers to Mazdā is generally assumed in previous studies (see n. 36). Hintze plausibly points out that ahmat̰ hiiat̰ aⁱbī in Y 35.5 and 40.1, namely in the beginning and closing part of YH, represents a “ring-composition” and assumes that what is emphasized by this phrase is that both of transferring xšaϑra- to Mazdā (35.5) and receiving mīžda- from him belong to those present at the ritual, not other people mentioned in the preceding stanza 35.4 (2007a, 19, 78, 289). Our argument differs from hers in that both examples involve the direction from the worshippers to Mazdā.

36 Thus, Baunack 1888, 349 “von uns aus in zugewandter Richtung”, explaining further “… zu abhi ist yushmān, zu aibī 35.5 hukhshathrōtemem, 49.1 thwām zu supplieren”. aⁱbī/abhí as preposition/postposition to the ablative ahmat̰ is unlikely, for such is hardly attested, cf. Kellens & Pirart 1990, 37 with aⁱbī of the meaning “pour ce qui concerne”, Humbach 1991, II 118 with aⁱbī of the meaning “with”.

37 They conclude “soweit es an uns liegt” or “as far as we are concerned” from “so weit von uns aus...” or “from us towards which”, apparently with much abstraction.

38 Cf. YAv. raϑaē-štā- “one who stands on a chariot = warrior”: nom. sg. raϑaē-štā̊ (<*rat^hai̯-štāH-s = Ved. rathe-ṣṭhā́-s) ~ dat. sg. raϑōi-št-e <*˚štH-ai̯ (like mazdāi also raϑaē-št-āi <*˚štā̆H-ai̯), OAv. zraz-dā- “one who puts trust”: nom. pl. zraz-dā̊ (trisyllabic: <*˚d^haH-as); Ved. dhiyaṃ- dhā́- “one who assigns an inspiration”: nom. sg. ˚dhā́-s ~ dat. sg. ˚dh-é; anaḍ-vā́h- “drawing a cart”: acc. sg. ˚vā́h-am (for *˚váh-am) ~ loc. pl. ˚út-su; dasyu-hán- “killing the enemies”: nom. sg. ˚hā́ ~ acc. sg. ˚hánam ~ instr. sg. ˚ghn-ā́, etc.

39 Humbach 1957, 83, n. 7, Hoffmann & Forssman 2004, 124. Or <*ādā-i (Hoffmann & Forssman loc. cit., Kuiper 1957, 94; 1976, 28).

40 The root inflection is still to be seen in Ved. ni-drā́ [-s] “sleep, nap” (nom. sg., RV VIII 48,14: before vowel), pra-pā́ [-s] “drink” (nom. sg., RV X 4,1: before vowel; cf. AV pra-pā́ nom.), pra-m-é “to measure” (dat. sg., RV IX) (cf. inf. prati-m-ái “to measure, copy”), cf. RV X pra-mā́ nom. “measure, metre”; prati-mā́ “model”.

41 One of the major arguments for *maz-d^haH- as agent noun is the parallelism between zrazdā- “putting trust” <*ǵ^hrád-d^heh₁- (see n. 38) ~ Ved. śraddhā́- “trust”:: mazdā- “x” ~ Ved. medhā́- “wisdom”. However, there is no reason to prioritize such an indirect testimony of an agent noun to the counterexamples of the abstract ā̆dā-, which shows a root character, as well as the existing abstract mazdā-.

42 Two exceptions of YAv. mazdā̊ ahurahe (both in gen.) most likely involve direct introduction from or imitation of some passage of the Gāϑā or YH (Bartholomae 1904, 286, Narten 1982, 81, n. 11).

43 The two words can appear at any distance with | in between.

44 Kuiper’s argument for the adjective mazdā- “wise” (1976, 40, 41f.) is also based on Delbrück (1878, 35–39; 1888, 19f.) that an adjective is placed before a substantive in the Vedic prose, which is in fact compared to the case of YAv. ahura- mazdā- (see below with the next fn.). However, this is only valid when an adjective appears immediately before a substantive. Furthermore, he does not examine the title expression.

45 As with rā́jan- váruṇa- “King Varuṇa”, devá- sávitar- “God Savitar”, pitár- prajā́pati- “Father Prajāpati” (:: dyáv- pitár- “Heaven, the father”), see Delbrück 1888, 19, Gotō 2000, 153f., n. 22.

46 It is not clear how OAv. mazdā- ahura- shifted to YAv. ahura- mazdā-. The above points 2 to 5 demonstrate at least that such a reversal could already occur in OAv, but only with a metric or temporal distance between the two. The three exceptions to 2 (ahura-… mazdā- within a hemistich) probably involve a rhetoric expression wherein Mazdā is revealed step by step (pronoun → title → proper name): Y 51.6 hōi… | ahurō… mazdā̊, Y 32.1 ax́iiā… # ahiiā… | ahiiā… # ahurahiiā… mazdą, Y 33.2 * [ahiiā] # ahurahiiā… mazdā̊ All of these observations suggest that the two words in ahura-… mazdā- lack a fundamental connection, but come from some secondary reason of paraphrasing, inversion, etc. On the other hand, three examples of ahura- alone referring to the god indicate that the representation of Mazdā by ahura- was already being established in the Gāϑā.

47 This explanation is, in fact, not always valid, as pointed out by Narten loc. cit., but is still a tendency. It should be remembered that Delbrück 1878, 37 reports a case in the Vedic prose where plural adjectives are placed after the substantive to which they belong in an independent sentence, while they precede it when the phrase appears in a subordinate clause: ŚB I 6.33.1 tváṣṭur ha vái putráḥ tríśīrṣā ṣaḍakṣá āsa “Tvaṣṭar had a son, three-headed [and] six-eyed” ~ I 2.3.2 sá yátra tríśīrṣāṇaṃ tvāṣṭráṃ viśvárūpaṃ jaghā́na… “When he (Indra) slew the three-headed Tvaṣṭar’s son, Viśvarūpa…”

48 Thieme 1970, 407f.: “Für dieselbe [Konow’s interpretation of mazdā- as an old abstract] spricht, daß sie allein es erlaubt, den Gott Zarathustras durch einen Namen, nämlich ‘Weisheit’, benannt zu verstehen, statt glauben zu müssen, der Prophet habe den von ihm verkündeten ‘Herrn’ nur durch ein Adjektiv, nämlich ‘weise’ — nach Humbach hieße es gar ‘aufmerkend [auf Tund und Lassen der Menschen]’: welche Plattheit in der Formulierung seines für ihn so wichtigen, fast in jedem Vers seiner Gāϑās genannten Gottesbegriffs hätten wir da dem Schöpfer einer großen Religion zuzutrauen — bezeichnet.”