1 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.¹ According to Bartholomae (1883: 28; idem 1885: 312; 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 pourušaspa- m. is accompanied by the adj. pouru.aspa- ‘having many 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 anu-uxti-, and aiβiti-, replacing aiβīti-, composed of aiβi-iti-.⁴ However, 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).

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 verse-lines 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 9.13 nmānahe pourušaspahe:

Y 9.13 āat̰.mē aēm paitiiaōxta (8 syllables)

haōmō aṣ̌auua dūraōšō (8 syllables)

pourušaspō mąm tūiriiō maṣ̌iiō (+ 8 syllables)

astuuaiϑiiāi hunūta gaēϑiiāi (8 syllable)

hā ahmāi aṣ̌iš ərənāuui (8 syllables)

tat̰ ahmāi jasat̰ āiiaptǝm (8 syllables)

yat̰.hē tūm us.zaiiaŋha (8 syllables)

tūm ərəzuuō zaraϑuštra (8 syllables)

nmānahe pourušaspahe (8 syllables)

vīdaēuuō ahura.t̰kaēšō (8 syllables)

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’.⁷

By 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

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 maṣ̌iiō 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.manā̊ kərəsāspō 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 *h₁ek̂wo-,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 uštā̆na-.¹¹ By 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

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 (dǝ̄)jāmāspa-, (from (dǝ̄)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- ‘having brown horses’¹⁵ and yūxta.aspa- ‘having put 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, spitamā̊ŋhō, 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’:

Wyt 1.2 xaiiǝ̄uš aṣ̌auua yaϑa zaraϑuštrō

pouru.gāuuō yaϑa āϑβiiānōiš

pouru.aspō yaϑa pourušaspahe

aṣ̌əm.mərəcō yaϑa kauua haōsrauua …¹⁷

(May) you, yourself,¹⁸ (be) as righteous as Zaraϑuštra,

(may you be the one) who has as many cows as Āϑβiiyanide,

(may you be the one) who has as many horses as Pourušaspa

(may you be) as aṣ̌əm.mərəcō¹⁹ as Kauui Haōsrauuah.

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 *šaśva- and 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-šaspa- means ‘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’ < *h₁ek̂wo-, which was productive as the second element of bahuvrīhi compounds, for example vištāspa-, dǝ̄jāmāspa-, auruuat̰.aspa-, and arǝjat̰.aspa-.

The reading pourušspō yaϑa pourušaspahe in Wyt 1.2 of the Wištāsp Yašt manuscript 5102_DY1 (folio 83v lines 5–6), written in the Safavid period,²⁰ is interesting, since here the form pouruš(a)spō, replacing pouru.aspō, indicates that Pourušaspa is explicitly considered to mean ‘having many horses’.

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.aspahe and paōuruš.aspō occur, 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- ‘one who has many horses’ by their scribes. This view will be critically analysed later in this section.

Bartholomae (1904: 903) also believes that the passage in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 (~ Āfrīn 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° at the end of the first terms of the compounds. The closest example is pouruš.x^vāθra- adj. ‘which provides much well-being’, in which the -š° appears after pouru° (see Bartholomae 1904: 903; Hintze 1994: 439).

The problem with the above conclusion is that the insertion of -š° in pouruš.x^vāθra- and similar cases such as paitiš.x^vrǝna- is due to the post-RUKI development of PrIr *-hu̯ to -šxᵛ-/-š.xᵛ- in compounds whose second terms begin with *-hu̯. In these examples, the h of *-hu̯ simultaneously becomes š and develops to x in xᵛ (Bartholomae 1895–1901: 182, N45). The same development is present in PrIr *-h- to šh/š.h after RUKI (Bartholomae 1895–1901: 182, N45).²² Such model is absent from pourušaspa-. Furthermore, as rightly observed by Duchesne-Guillemin (1936: 13–14), the -š- after the first members of the compounds from i- and u- stems typically does not serve as the nom. sg. ending and its occurrences are always linguistically explained. Likewise, Hintze (2009: 129–130) confirms that the -š° is found in compounds whose terms are in accusative,²³ genitive,²⁴ or locative²⁵ relationships.

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.x^vāθra-, is absent from other compounds whose first element is pouru° ‘many’ (see Bartholomae 1904: 899–902; Duchesne-Guillemin 1936: 162).²⁶ It is worth adding that Mayrhofer (1973: 215, N8.1296) draws attention to the existence of the shortened personal name parruš (spelled as par-ru-iš) ‘many’ in the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury archives.²⁷ However, 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 be expressed in the orthography and pronunciation: for example, yūxta.aspa- adj. 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- (Frahang ī 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.aspa- adj. ‘having swift horses’ and the personal name auruuat̰.aspa- ‘one who has swift horses’.³² Finally, 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.aspō yaϑa 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- ‘Having Many Horses’ in the Shortening of -ā- in *pourušāspa- → pourušaspa- ‘One Who Has Grey Horses’

Duchesne-Guillemin (1936: 14) studies the variant pouru.x^vāθra-, which occurs alongside pouruš.x^vāθra-. He suggests that pouru.x^vāθra-, occurring in non-metrical texts, is recent. Lubotsky (1999: 312) rejects this suggestion. He reminds his readers that on the one hand, the variants of pouru.x^vāθra- are attested 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.x^vāθra- has no analogical model, pouru.x^vāθra- occurs together with vispā.x^vāθra- or aṣ̌ax^vāθra- elsewhere. Hence, the sibilant -š- in pouru(š).x^vāθra- is lost due to analogy with vispā.x^vāθra- and aṣ̌ax^vāθra- (Lubotsky 1999: 312).

In a similar way, it can be suggested that pouru.aspa- in the phrase Wyt 1.2 pouru.aspō yaϑa 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’.³³

This 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.x^vāθra-, pouru.aspa- is not a recent variant.³⁴ Furthermore, the phrase pouru.aspō yaϑa 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 1647 AD,³⁵ which provides Wyt 1.2 paōrō.aspō yaϑa paōru.šsšāspahe with °šs- crossed out. It seems that the scribe first wrote paōru.šs; then, he crossed °šs out and included °šāspahe:

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It is unclear whether the long vowel is etymological or unetymological (dialectical) in this manuscript. If the former is true, paōru.šāspahe provides 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-.

5 Conclusion

The above arguments, comparing the interpretations of the name pourušaspa- as ‘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- ‘having many horses’, which qualifies pourušaspa- m. in Wyt. 1.2. Furthermore, it is suggested that Wyt. 1.2 pouru.aspō yaϑa 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.