Alphabet Letters
Avestan Ve 𐬬
Avestan Letters
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Origin Devised in the Sasanian period, commonly placed in the fifth or sixth century CE, long after the Avestan texts themselves were composed.
Ve writes the labial glide, transliterated v, the counterpart of Ye at the lips as Ye is at the palate. Together the two glides close the section of the alphabet before the liquids. Their placement here, after the nasals and before r and l, follows the same articulatory logic that orders the rest of the consonants and shows the scheme applied consistently to the end. The Avesta was composed long before any script existed to hold it, and priests carried it in memory. This alphabet was made in Sasanian Iran, centuries later, to fix in writing what recitation had already preserved. Zoroastrianism is a small living religion and the Avesta is its liturgy, recited in worship now. These letters are not an antiquarian matter; they record sounds a priest is still expected to produce.
Facts
Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet in the strict sense: its vowels are full letters standing in the line, not marks hung on a consonant, which is the sharpest break it makes with the Book Pahlavi writing it was drawn from. 1Tradition: The Avestan script PositionTwenty-ninth of the thirty-eight consonant letters of the Avestan alphabet, which are ordered by where in the mouth the sound is made 2Tradition: The Avestan script How the Letter JoinsWritten right to left, with each sound kept to its own distinct sign. The Book Pahlavi hand behind it had let several sounds fall together into shared shapes, and undoing that ambiguity is what the Avestan alphabet was made for. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Attributions
Associated SoundThe labial glide, transliterated v, the counterpart at the lips of the palatal glide 1Tradition: Avestan phonology Origins
Origin PeriodDevised in the Sasanian period, commonly placed in the fifth or sixth century CE, long after the Avestan texts themselves were composed. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Place of OriginSasanian Iran, where the Zoroastrian priesthood assembled the written Avesta. 1Tradition: The Avestan script Origin of the NameNamed directly for the labial glide it writes, ve, following the same convention rather than an inherited word. 1 Sense of the Namethe glide v or w 1Tradition: The Avestan script Transmission
Manuscript TraditionNo Avestan manuscript survives from earlier than the thirteenth century CE, so every witness to the script is many centuries younger than the script itself, and the script is younger again than the words it carries. 4Tradition: Zoroastrianism Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleThe script exists to fix the sound of the Avesta, which is recited in Zoroastrian worship, a living practice with a small community. Its precision serves the requirement that the recited word be pronounced as it has been received. 3Tradition: Zoroastrianism Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceEncoded at U+10B2C AVESTAN LETTER VE in the Avestan block, which lies wholly above the Basic Multilingual Plane. 2Tradition: The Avestan script Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Avesta was transmitted orally by priests for centuries before any script existed to hold it. This alphabet records a recitation, not a composition, and the gap between the two is the central fact about it. 4Tradition: Zoroastrianism Learn More
Avestan Ve: The Letter in the Avestan Alphabet
The sound is the labial glide, made at the lips as its palatal counterpart is made at the palate. Editors transliterate it v, though the articulation is nearer the w of English than the v of the modern European languages. The glides follow the nasals in the sequence. They are the sounds made with the least obstruction of any in the alphabet, and three signs are given to them, two for the palatal glide and one for the labial. It stands forty-fifth in the alphabet as a whole and twenty-ninth of the thirty-eight consonants, between Avestan Ye and Avestan Re. Nothing in that placement was handed down. The sequence was arranged by whoever assembled the alphabet, and it records their view of how the sounds of the language stand in relation to one another.
The people who drew up this alphabet were not recording a language they spoke. Avestan had ceased to be anybody's mother tongue centuries before, and what they had in front of them was a recitation preserved by priests who had learned it by ear. The letters record that recitation, sound by sound, at the level of detail the reciters maintained. A reciter using this alphabet is not being taught the text. The priesthood that used it already knew the Avesta by heart, and the page served as a check on memory rather than as a substitute for it, which is why the script records fine detail a learner would never need.
Avestan Ve and the Limits of Transliteration
The labial glide is the last of the alphabet's approximants and stands beside the palatal one in the sequence. Transliteration writes it v, which understates how near the sound is to an English w and is a reminder that a transliteration is a convention rather than a pronunciation guide. Vowel writing is the innovation that separates this alphabet from everything else written in Iran at the time. The letterforms are Pahlavi and the right to left direction is Pahlavi. The vowels are not: they are full letters, and they come first in the order.
No Avestan manuscript survives from earlier than the thirteenth century of the common era. Every copy in existence is therefore many centuries younger than the alphabet, and the alphabet is many centuries younger again than the words. What reaches a modern edition has passed through both gaps. In the digital record the letter is encoded at U+10B2C AVESTAN LETTER VE. The block covers the letters together with a small set of punctuation marks used in the manuscripts. Standardising it settled, for digital purposes at least, a question the printed editions had answered in several different ways, which is how many letters the alphabet has. Zoroastrianism is a living religion with a small community, and the Avesta is its liturgy rather than its archive. The letters of this alphabet are therefore not an antiquarian matter. They record sounds a priest is still expected to produce.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
The palatal and labial glides, made with the least obstruction of any consonants in the alphabet.
The labial and palatal glides, made with the least obstruction of any consonants in the alphabet.
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