The Vīdēvdād Project is a long term project
of a small Iranistic
team in the
section of Indoeuropean Linguistics of the
Department of Classical Philology and Indoeuropean Studies
at the
University of Salamanca. It is supported with the financial
aid of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and of the
Junta de Castilla y León. Formerly this project has been carried
out in the
Institut für Iranistik of the Freie Universität Berlin with
the collaboration of Maria Macuch and with funds of the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft.
The main aims of the Vīdēvdād Project
are two:
-
a complete edition, translation and
commentary of the Avestan and Pahlavi versions of Vīdēvdād.
-
the carrying out of two glossaries: an
Avestan glossary with includes the Pahlavi translation of
every Avestan word in each passage; and a complete Pahlavi
glossary of the Pahlavi version of Vīdēvdād.
At the beginning of the Project our interest was focused on the
edition of the Pahlavi version considering Geldner's as reliable.
Nevertheless the comparison of the Avestan text of the Pahlavi
manuscripts with the data of Geldner has shown that it is
an urgent necessity also a new edition of the Avestan text.
Therefore we have started to collect and digitalize copies from
as much Vīdēvdād manuscripts as possible. This is a difficult
task that we have not finished yet. However we have now a
considerable amount of manuscripts. Some of them are of great
value and were not used by Geldner (for example
E4).
Furthermore, it seems very possible that the stemma of Geldner
has to be corrected in several points.
We consider that it is very important that the Avestan
manuscripts are available to the researcher of the Avesta and
that it is the only way to achieve a new edition of the Avesta
that replaces Geldner's edition. One way for it is the
publication of facsimiles, which is without doubt very useful. But
the number of Avestan manuscripts is very high and this
procedure very expensive. Therefore it should be limited to very
special and important manuscripts. In the digital era new
possibilities arise. For example, digital copies in CD should be
by far cheaper than facsimile. But also other possibilities that
allow to see at the same time the same passage in several
manuscripts are to be considered. However we stand before the
copyright problem. Until now it is not possible to give a
definitive answer that allows an easy and comfortable research
and solves the copyright problem. In the private part of this
web, which is restricted to registered users, we have tried a
possible solution.
On the other hand, as far as the lexicographical work regarding the
Pahlavi version is concerned, we are happy to collaborate with the
international project Middle Persian Dictionary Project under
the leadership of Shaul Shaked.
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