Zarathustra entre l'Inde et l'Iran: Etudes indo-iraniennes et indo-europeennes offertes a Jean Kellens a l'occasion de son [65.sup.e] anniversaire.

• Author: Jamison, Stephanie W.
• Position: Book review

Zarathustra entre l'Inde et l'Iran: Etudes indo-iraniennes et indo-europeennes offertes a Jean Kellens a l'occasion de son [65.sup.e] anniversaire. Edited by ERIC PIRART and XAVIER TREMBLAY. Beitrage zur Iranistik, vol. 30. Wiesbaden: REICHERT, 2009. Pp. xxx + 359.

One of the three Festschriften published in 2009 in honor of distinguished philologists of pre-Islamic Iranian, this volume is dedicated to the francophone scholar Jean Kellens, who currently occupies the chair in Indo-Iranian languages and religions at the College de France and is a specialist in Avestan, particularly Old Avestan. (The other two honorands were Nicholas Sims-Williams [Exegisti Monumenta, ed. W. Sunderman. A. Hintze, and F. de Blois (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz)] and Prods Oktor Skjaervo [Iranian and Zoroastrian Studies in Honor of Prods Oktor Skjaervo, ed. C. A. Bromberg, N. Sims-Williams, and U Sims-Williams (Bulletin of the Asian institute n.s., vol. 19. 2005 [2009])].)

In the best philological tradition, nothing that touches on the Avestan texts and their context is alien to Kellens. He has published important works on technical linguistic matters (especially his early Les noms-racine de l'Avesta [1974] and Le verbe avestique [1984]); his comprehensive treatment of the Old Avestan texts (in collaboration with Eric Pirart), comprising text and translation (1997), lexicon (1990), and commentary (1991), has been quite influential, stimulating discussion and causing long-held assumptions to be reevaluated; and his work on the religious content of these enigmatic texts continues unabated.

The volume under review is a proper reflection of the breadth of his interests. It contains twenty-seven contributions by twenty-eight contributors; almost all the articles take the Avesta or Avestan as their starting point, though they move in different directions thereafter. Although the following categories are arbitrary, in that most articles straddle the boundaries, the contributions can be classified under the following headings and are approximately equally divided among them: grammar/linguistics (M. de Vaan. J-L. Garcia Ramon, T. Goto, R.-P. Ritter, J. Sakamoto-Goto, and X. Tremblay), textual studies (A. Cantera, H. Eichner, B. Forrsman, E. Pirart, G. Schweiger, P. O. Skjaervo, and E. Tichy), lexicon (A. Griffiths and A. Lubotsky, A. Hintze, M. Janda, G. Lazard, A. Panaino, and N. Sims-Williams), and culture (M. A. Andres-Toledo, A. de Jong, G. Gnoli. C. Herrenschmidt, J...