Indo-Aryan migration

Iranian Avesta

The religious practices depicted in the Rgveda and those depicted in the Avesta, the central religious text of Zoroastrianism—the ancient Iranian faith founded by the prophet Zarathustra—have in common the deity Mitra, priests called hotr in the Rgveda and zaotr in the Avesta, and the use of a hallucinogenic compound that the Rgveda calls soma and the Avesta haoma. However, the Indo-Aryan deva, meaning 'god,' is cognate with the Iranian daeva, meaning 'demon'. Likewise, the Indo-Aryan asura, meaning 'demon,' is cognate with the Iranian ahura, meaning 'god,' suggesting that, at some point, a rivalry between Indo-Aryans and Iranians that found religious expression, as the Indologist Thomas Burrow has proposed.

Two alternative dates for Zarathustra can be found in Greek sources: 5000 years before the Trojan War, i.e. 6000 BCE, or 258 years before Alexander, i.e. the 6th century BCE, the latter of which used to provide the conventional dating but has since been traced to a fictional Greek source. Linguists such as Burrow argue that the strong similarity between the Avestan language of the Gathas—the oldest part of the Avesta—and the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rgveda pushes the dating of Zarathustra or at least the Gathas closer to the conventional Rgveda dating of 1500–1200 BCE, i.e. 1100 BCE, possibly earlier. Boyce concurs with a lower date of 1100 BCE and tentatively proposes an upper date of 1500 BCE. Gnoli dates the Gathas to around 1000 BCE, as does J.P. Mallory, with the caveat of a 400 year leeway on either side, i.e. between 1400 and 600 BCE. Therefore the date of the Avesta could also indicate the date of the Rigveda.

There is mention in the Avesta of Airyanem Vaejah, the legendary homeland of the Aryans as well as Zarathustra himself. Gnoli's interpretation of geographic references in the Avesta situates the Airyanem Vaejah in the Hindu Kush. For similar reasons, Boyce excludes places north of the Syr Darya and western Iranian places. With some reservations, Skjaervo concurs that the evidence of the Avestan texts makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were composed somewhere in northeastern Iran. Michael Witzel points to the central Afghan highlands. Humbach derives Vaejah from cognates of the Vedic root "vij," suggesting the region of a fast-flowing river. Gnoli considers the lower Oxus region, south of the Aral Sea to be an outlying area in the Avestan world. However, according to Mallory and Mair, the probable homeland of Avestan is, in fact, the area south of the Aral Sea, which just happens to be the region of a fast-flowing river.