On the Etymology of the Avestan Personal Name pourušaspa -

This article discusses the formation and meaning of the Avestan personal name of Zarathuštra’s father, pourušaspa -. Taking side with the current scholarly view on the etymology and meaning of the word, i.e., * pourušāspa - → pourušaspa - ‘one who has grey horses’, it is argued here that the shortening of the vowel can be explained by an analogical model in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2, where pourušaspa - m. is described as pouru.aspa - ‘having many horses’. The article also challenges the view that Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 is a recent text.


Introduction
While the names of Zarathuštra's parents are absent from the Old Avestan texts, the Young Avesta attests Pourušaspa as the name of his father and Duγdōuuā as that of his mother.1According to Bartholomae (1883: 28;idem 1885: 312; Iran and the Caucasus 28 (2024) 72-86 idem 1904: 903),2 the name of pourušaspa-m.means 'one who has grey horses' , and this view is still widely accepted in the secondary literature, including Mayrhofer (1979 i/1: 72, N266).In what follows, I provide a critical analysis of the scholarly suggestions on pourušaspa-as meaning 'one who has grey horses' .I will then discuss a passage in the Wištāsp Yašt, where the name pourušaspam.is accompanied by the adj.pouru.aspa-'havingmany horses' , and analyse the second possibility that pourušaspa-might mean 'one who has many horses' .Finally, based on the Wištāsp Yašt's text, I put forward a new argument in favour of the former interpretation: pourušaspa-means 'one who has grey horses' .

2
Scholarly Perspectives and Rules Explaining the Form of pouruša-aspa-as 'One Who Has Grey Horses' Bartholomae (1904: 903) translates pourušaspa-as 'one who has grey horses' , although he rightly points out the problem that the expected form would then be *pourušāspa-(pouruša-'grey' + aspa-'horse')3 rather than the attested pourušaspa-.To justify the short -a-, Bartholomae (1883: 28) regards it as a spelling error ("wohl blosser Schreibfehler").He further supports (ibid.)his analysis by providing parallel phonetic examples, where originally long vowels are shortened.These words include anuxti-, instead of anūxti-, formed of anuuxti-, and aiβiti-, replacing aiβīti-, composed of aiβi-iti-.4However, these two examples are explicable, based on rules governing the development of Avestan vowels.In words such as anuxti-, the short vowel can be explained as being due to the influence of the preverb anu° (de Vaan 2003: 301).The short -i-in aiβiti-5 follows a known pattern: the short -i-rather than its expected long counterpart appears when the preverbs/prepositions aiβi, aipi, and ni form the first term of compounds with nouns featuring an initial i-as the second term (de Vaan 2003: 205, fn. 159).
name of Zarathuštra's mother occurs only in Fragment Darmesteter 4 (Bartholomae 1904: 748).For an overview of the time and life of Zarathuštra, see Hintze 2015. 2 Bartholomae's views on this matter will be discussed in the present paper.3 I found one exceptional example in the manuscript 5010_G18a, where the personal name appears as the gen.sg.paōru.šsšāspahewith the long vowel while °šs-is omitted.Although this form could bear witness to the stem pourušāspa-, its existence, as discussed in the present article, is uncertain.Hence, an asterisk is provided above pourušāspa-here.4 Bartholomae (1883: 28) transcribes the words as anuƕtaiaẹkȧ (= normalised as anuxtaiiaeca?) and aiwitem (= normalized as aiβitәm).However, their actual declined variants are anūxtǝē and aiβitaēδaca, respectively.5 For a discussion of aiβiti-, see Hintze 1994: 87-88 Kellens (2006: 269) agrees with Bartholomae's view on the personal name as consisting of pouruša-'grey' and aspa-'horse' and provides a phonetic explanation for the shortening of -ā-to -a-in the name.With reference to the metre of the Avestan hymns, including the Yašts and Y 9-11, where octosyllabic verselines prevail,6 Kellens (2006: 269) proposes that the mechanism of vowel reduction in the hexasyllabic pourušāspahe (pouruša'aspahe) to the pentasyllabic pourušaspahe maintains the octosyllabic metre of Y 9. Then he, the righteous Haōma who is hard to kindle, answered me: 'Pourušaspa was the fourth mortal to press me for his corporeal world.That reward was granted to him, that boon came to him that you were born to him.You O upright Zaraϑuštra, who belong to the house of Pourušaspa, who reject demons, accept the lord's doctrine ' .7By way of comparison between the vowel shortening of *pourušāspa-→ pourušaspa-in nmānahe pourušaspahe (8 syllables) and vowel deletion of dat.sg.gaēϑaiiāi → gaēϑiiāi in astuuaiϑiiāi hunūta gaēϑiiāi (8 syllables), Kellens (2006: 269) suggests that through a similar mechanism, the octosyllabic metre of the verse-line astuuaiϑiiāi hunūta gaēϑiiāi is also preserved.8 Iran and the Caucasus 28 (2024) [72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86] Proposing that gaēϑaiiāi → gaēϑiiāi is developed by analogy with astuuaiϑiiāi, Reichelt (1909: 197, fn. 1) provides a different logical view for the variant gaēϑiiāi.Hence, Kellens's explanation for the deletion of -a-in gaēϑaiiāi → gaēϑiiāi is uncertain.Kellens's suggestion is also problematic for the reason that even with the vowel reduction, the verse-line pourušaspō mąm tūiriiō maṣ̌ iiō in Y 9.13 still contains more than eight syllables (see Kellens 2007: 55).Furthermore, vowel reduction is not necessarily needed to maintain the originally assumed metre of the verse-lines.For example, Kellens (2006: 269) regards the name kərəsāspa-in Y 9.11 yim upairi kərəsāspō and naire.manā̊kərəsāspō as having a hiatus.Although Kellens is silent as to Yt 19.39 yā upaŋhacat̰ kərəsāspəm, the long vowel of kərəsāspəm in Yt 19.39 must be contracted, or count three syllables, in order to maintain the octosyllabic metre of the verse-line.9 It is worth noting that any arguments that are based on preserving the octosyllabic metre of the Avestan hymns generally suffer from the inherent problem that there are many exceptions to this structure.Moreover, while the intervening PrIE laryngeal prevents the merger of adjacent vowels in Old Avestan when the second term of a compound originally had an initial laryngeal consonant, as in the case of aspa-> PrIE *h1ekŵo-,10 there is no evidence that laryngeals still had this role in Young Avestan syllabification.
In the occurrences of the personal name, the unexpected short vowel appears either in the penultimate (pourušaspō and pourušaspəm) or in the antepenultimate (pourušaspahe) syllables.Shortening of the penultimate syllable occurs only in a small number of words, whose expected vowel length is often attested in some manuscripts (de Vaan 2003: 128).Such shortenings usually take place by analogy, for example the long vowel of the acc.sg.f. bipaitištanąm of bipaitištāna-adj.'two-footed' is shortened based on analogy with the gen.pl.ending -anąm.There are also instances where the original length of ā is unknown because the etymology of the word in question is uncertain, for example uštā na-.11By contrast, the closest analogical model for the shortening of ā in pourušaspa-in the penultimate syllable is the acc.sg.m. aurušāspǝm, attested in Yt 10.102, from the stem aurušāspa-adj.'having white horses' , which has the long vowel -ā-.12 a discussion on the occurrences of gaēϑiiāi and gaēϑaiiāi in Yasna 9, see Khanizadeh (forthcoming).9 On the metre of Yt 19.39, see Hintze 1994: 209. 10 On the role of the laryngeals in forming the hiatus in Old Avestan, see Monna 1978: 97 f. andBeekes 1981: 48. 11 For a review of the shortening of ā in the penultimate syllable, see de Vaan 2003: 128-132. 12 For an edition of Yt 10.102, see Gershevitch 1959: 122.The adj. aurušāspa-is derived from The shortening of -ā-to -a-in the antepenultimate syllable of the gen.sg.pourušaspahe is also inexplicable according to the established rules governing the development of the Avestan vowels.Such shortenings occur, for instance, in the antepenultimate open syllables of ar-stem agent nouns, in the sequence of nom.*-āras/acc.*-āram, in n-stems, or in a few other examples, all of which feature the enclitic -ca/-cit̰ .Moreover, the vowel ā is shortened before ii and uu, or in the ablative case, when the thematic ending -āt̰ is followed by haca.13 It should be added that comparable personal names with aspa-as the second term, in particular (dǝ)jāmāspa-, (from (dǝ)jāma-+ aspa-), kərəsāspa-, (from kərəsa-+ aspa-), and vištāspa-, (from vi-hita-+ aspa-),14 consistently occur with the long vowel -ā-.In the case of split compounds, both vowels are correctly written, e.g., kadruua.aspa-'havingbrown horses'15 and yūxta.aspa-'havingput horses into harness' .16 The postulated shortening in Av. pourušāspa-could be supported with reference to the noun spitāma-, where spitāma-< spita-+ ama-in the voc.sg., voc.pl., and dat.pl.declensions appears as spitama, spitamā ŋhō, and spitamāi, respectively.However, the shortening of the vowel in the aforementioned examples is associated with the retraction of the accent in the vocative cases, and the dissimilation of ā in the dative case because of the -ā-in the following syllable (de Vaan 2003: 134).
While the above-mentioned explanations on the shortening of -ā-in pourušaspa-have been unsatisfactory, an alternative solution is sought in the next chapter.

3
The Name pouruš-aspa-Means 'One Who Has Many Horses' By placing the attribute 'having many horses' next to the name pourušaspa-, the Young Avestan text of Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 (~Āfrīn ī Zardušt 4), describes Pourušaspa as 'having many horses': auruša-'white' and aspa-'horse' .In agreement with Gershevitch's edition, aurušāspǝm (with variae lectiones) occurs with the long -ā-in the manuscripts that I have checked.13 For a review of the shortening of ā in the antepenultimate syllable, see de Vaan 2003: 109-122. 14 The corresponding word in Old Persian, spelled as v-š-t-a-s-p, also appears with long vowel (Mayrhofer 1979  Although the Wištāsp Yašt's description does not necessarily indicate that pourušaspa-was analysed as 'one who has many horses' , some scribes of Avestan manuscripts have held the view that the first term of the compound is pouru-'many' .In most of the Avestan codices, pourušaspa-is written as an unsplit compound.However, a compositional dot is occasionally observed in some codices, where this interpunct is usually placed before the °š-.The form pouru.šaspa-(with variae lectiones) indicates that the scribes of these manuscripts considered the first element to be pouru°'many' .Pakhalina (1987: 157) also suggests that the first element of pourušaspa-is pouru-'many' , while she derives the second element from a word which she reconstructs as PrIr *šaśvaand derives from a PrIE root she posits as 2*sekʷ 'to see, to feel, to notice, to speak' .According to Pakhalina, her reconstructed *paru-šaśva-> pouru-šaspameans 'much-seer, foreteller, prophet' .The problem is that the root 2*sekʷ is absent from the Indo-Iranian languages although it may have originally been identical with 1*sekʷ 'to join, to connect' that is attested in the Indo-Iranian languages (Rix et al. 2001: 525-526 and 526 fn. 1).Moreover, the outcome of *sekʷe/o-in Avestan is haca-or °šaca-(the latter after ruki) and not šaspa-(after ruki), as Pakhalina postulates.Therefore, it is more likely that the second element of pourušaspa-is the noun aspa-'horse' < *h1ekŵo-, which was productive as the second element of bahuvrīhi compounds, for example vištāspa-, dǝjāmāspa-, auruuat̰ .aspa-,and arǝjat̰ .aspa-.
I have also found two examples in the Indian Yasna manuscripts 130_O1 (folio 35r lines 12-13) and 234_G26 (folio 46r lines 3-4), in which the variants pōuruš.aspaheand paōuruš.aspōoccur, respectively.From the variants of these two manuscripts, it might be concluded that the -š°is taken as either the compositional consonant or the nom.sg.ending of the first term of the bahuvrīhi compound in them, and that the personal name was interpreted as pouruš.aspa-'onewho has many horses' by their scribes.This view will be critically analysed later in this section.* aš.amərəcō because "aš-does not stand before the negative a-".Based on its Pahlavi translation, ahlāyīh, I cautiously suggest that aṣ̌ əm may be considered to be a corrupt form of the stem aṣ̌ auua-.It is worth stating that alongside °mərəcō, the variant °mərəṇcō is also found in the manuscripts.Kellens (1974: 60-62) Bartholomae (1904: 903) also believes that the passage in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 (Ā frīn ī Zardušt 4) interprets pourušaspa-as meaning 'one who has many horses' .However, he takes this interpretation as a pseudo-etymological explanation of the name ("ein misslungener Deutungsversuch des Names") (Bartholomae 1904: 903).His judgement of Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 reflects the outdated scholarly belief that the text of the Wištāsp Yašt, exhibiting several grammatical and textual issues, is late.Contrariwise, Cantera (2013: 85-110) argues that these issues and transmission errors do not indicate its young age; instead, the textual and philological issues of the Wištāsp Yašt result from its infrequent performance.
Furthermore, Bartholomae's view entails the assumption that either the composers or later exegetes of these Avestan texts understood the name as including the word pouru-'many' while retaining the -š-of pouruša-'grey' .Henceforth, according to Bartholomae, they would have written forms of this name with short -a-as from pourušaspa-rather than with long -ā-as required for *pourušāspa-< pouruša-aspa-'one who has grey horses' .However, this assumption is called into question by the evidence of the Avesta, where the simplex pouruša-clearly has the meaning 'grey' in Wd 7.57 pourušō asti varsō 'the hair is grey' and is translated as pīr 'old' in the corresponding Pahlavi version.This shows that even the Pahlavi-speaking interpreters of the Windēdād could still differentiate between pouru-'many' and pouruša-'grey' .Likewise, the compound pouruša.gaōna-adj.'having grey hair' is correctly translated as pīr mōy 'having old hair' in the Frahang ī Ōīm.21 If the name of Zarathushtra's father means 'one who has many horses' , one would expect pouru.aspa-,or *pouruuaspa-, rather than pourušaspa-.As stated earlier, the emergence of the -š-after pouru-'many' may be explainable by assuming that the -š°is either the compositional consonant or the nom.sg.ending of the first term of the bahuvrīhi compound pouruš-aspa-'one who has many horses' .There are also parallel examples from the Avesta, inserting -š°a t the end of the first terms of the compounds.The closest example is pouruš.xvāθra-adj.'which provides much well-being' , in which the -š°appears after pouru°(see Bartholomae 1904: 903;Hintze 1994: 439).
Another problem with the interpretation of pouruš-aspa-as 'one who has many horses' is that the emergence of the compositional consonant š, based on the model of pouruš.xvāθra-, is absent from other compounds whose first element is pouru°'many' (see Bartholomae 1904: 899-902;Duchesne-Guillemin 1936: 162).26It is worth adding that Mayrhofer (1973Mayrhofer ( : 215, N8.1296) draws attention to the existence of the shortened personal name parruš (spelled as par-ruiš) 'many' in the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury archives.27However, the auslaut -š is the expected ending in parruš nom.sg.from *paru-m. of PrIr *paru-28 'many' .29 Based on these arguments, the sibilant -š-in pourušaspa-cannot be taken as the nom.sg.ending of pouru-.In the following paragraphs, I investigate the possibility of an explanation for the unetymological -š-in pouruš-aspa-.
When a word functions as both a noun or an adjective, on the one hand, and a personal name, on the other hand, its different linguistic roles might 22 For a discussion on the expected outcome of PrIr *s after u, based on the ruki rule, also see Hoffmann 1958: 17. 23 kǝrǝfš.xᵛar-'eatingcorpses' .

25
One example, as provided by Hintze (2009: 129), is aβždāta-'put into water' .26 The first term of the Avestan personal name pourušti-is also pouru°.Nonetheless, the emergence of the consonant -š-is possibly the result of the normal development of s to š in pouru-sti-due to the ruki rule.For pourušti-, see Mayrhofer 1979 i/1: 72, N267.27 The shortened form parruš might not be associated with the Avestan pouruš.xvāθrabecauseits corresponding form, or parrumaturriš, occurs without the sibilant š in the tablets.On parrumaturriš, see Mayrhofer 1973Mayrhofer : 126, N8.1293. 28 . 28 PrIr *paru-develops to pouru-in Avestan.29 Based on the fact that the final a of a word or term in a compound can be omitted in the Elamite orthography (Mayrhofer 1973: 118, N7.5), he does not exclude the second possibility that parruš might also have descended from PrIr *paruša-'grey' (Mayrhofer 1973(Mayrhofer : 215, N8.1296)).Regarding Mayrhofer's second suggestion, the final a has been retained in anparruša (spelled as an-par-ru-ša), whose second term goes back to PrIr *paruša-'grey' (Mayrhofer 1973: 126, N8.72).Therefore, it is more likely to conclude that parruš developed from PrIr *paru 'many' , as in the case of the second possibility, the shortened form of a personal name, containing the term for 'grey' , must have been written as parruša.be expressed in the orthography and pronunciation: for example, yūxta.aspaadj.vs. the personal name yūxtāspa-m.,30 or caϑβarǝ.aspa-ntr.vs. the personal name caϑβarǝspa-masculine.31 In a similar way, it might be argued that pouru.aspa-adj.and the personal name pourušaspa-m.could have been distinguished by introducing an interpunct in the former and adding the ending š to the latter, based on analogy with compounds with -š-after their first terms.
The issue is that yūxta.aspa-adj.(Yt 9.2) vs yūxtāspa-m (Yt 13.14) and caϑβarǝ.aspa-(Frahangī Ōīm) vs. caϑβarǝspa-(Yt 13.122) do not frequently occur in the Avestan literature, and no new edition of these Yašt texts, accompanied by a positive text-critical apparatus of different manuscript readings, is available.Hence, any conclusions based on these variants would be problematic.Moreover, the hypothetical suggestion of the orthographic distinction between the personal names and their adj.or substantive counterparts is not ubiquitous.For example, there is no difference in the spelling of auruuat̰ .aspaadj.'having swift horses' and the personal name auruuat̰ .aspa-'onewho has swift horses' .32Finally, the suggestion of the existence of unetymological -š-in the bahuvrīhi pouruš-aspa-is ad hoc.
As none of the arguments in sections 2 and 3 regarding the etymology and meaning of the personal name have been convincing, I will endeavor to investigate whether the sequence pouru.aspōyaϑa pourušaspahe in Wyt.1.2 could contribute to solving the riddle concerning the form and meaning of the word.

4
Analogical Role of pouru.aspa-'HavingMany Horses' in the Shortening of -ā-in *pourušāspa-→ pourušaspa-'One Who Has Grey Horses' Duchesne-Guillemin (1936: 14) studies the variant pouru.xvāθra-,which occurs alongside pouruš.xvāθra-.He suggests that pouru.xvāθra-,occurring in nonmetrical texts, is recent.Lubotsky (1999: 312) rejects this suggestion.He reminds his readers that on the one hand, the variants of pouru.xvāθra-areattested in the Elamite, Greek, and Aramaic sources.Therefore, this variant cannot be a recent development (Lubotsky 1999: 312, fn. 20).On the other hand, except one instance in Āfrīn ī Zardušt 7 that pouru.xvāθra-hasno analogical model, pouru.xvāθra-occurstogether with vispā.xvāθra-oraṣ̌ axvāθra-else-where.Hence, the sibilant -š-in pouru(š).xvāθra-islost due to analogy with vispā.xvāθra-andaṣ̌ axvāθra- (Lubotsky 1999: 312).In a similar way, it can be suggested that pouru.aspa-in the phrase Wyt 1.2 pouru.aspōyaϑa pourušaspahe provided an analogical model for the shortening of -ā-in pourušaspa-.It should be noted that analogy can lead to the complete replacement of an original form with a new one.An example includes the emergence of yasna-m.instead of *yašna-by analogy with the verbal root yaz 'to worship, to sacrifice ' .33This suggestion provides the only convincing phonetic argument that can reconcile the coexistence of the consonant -š-and short vowel -a-in pourušaspa-based on my analysis of various phonetic and graphic possibilities aimed at explaining the form and meaning of pourušaspa-.If so, like pouru.xvāθra-,pouru.aspa-isnot a recent variant.34Furthermore, the phrase pouru.aspōyaϑa pourušaspahe in Wyt 1.2 represents an ancient and well-known formulaic structure.The reason is that other texts, featuring the personal name pourušaspa-, likely borrowed the variant with short -a-from the aforementioned phrase or a similar one.This analysis of the phrase also agrees with Cantera (2013: 85-110) who suggests that the Wištāsp Yašt carries an old ritual text in spite of its grammatical and textual issues.
It is worth adding that in the almost 70 manuscripts that I have checked, they consistently write pourušaspa-(with variae lectiones) with short -a-.However, I have encountered one exception in the manuscript 5010_G18a (folio 13v line 11), written in 1647ad,35 which provides Wyt 1.2 paōrō.aspōyaϑa paōru.šsšāspahewith °šs-crossed out.It seems that the scribe first wrote paōru.šs;then, he crossed °šs out and included °šāspahe: © avestan digital archive It is unclear whether the long vowel is etymological or unetymological (dialectical) in this manuscript.If the former is true, paōru.šāspaheprovides the first piece of evidence for the transmission of a variant from pourušāspa-.Furthermore, it shows that the variants from pourušāspa-were not entirely replaced by those from pourušaspa-.

Conclusion
The above arguments, comparing the interpretations of the name pourušaspaas 'one who has grey horses' and as 'one who has many horses' , lend more weight to the former.Critically reviewing various possibilities for the shortening of the vowel in *pourušāspa-→ pourušaspa-, I suggest that long -ā-in *pourušāspa-is shortened due to analogy with the adj.pouru.aspa-'havingmany horses' , which qualifies pourušaspa-m.in Wyt.1.2.Furthermore, it is suggested that Wyt.1.2 pouru.aspōyaϑa pourušaspahe witnesses to an old formulaic structure that provided a model for the pronunciation of the personal name with short -a-in other Avestan texts.Finally, it is reported here that the manuscript 5010_G18a, dating back to 1647 ad, writes the personal name with long -ā-.This might be the sole example for the transmission of the stem pourušāspa-, unless the long vowel is dialectical.