The "Vendidad" but not really in Avestan

"The Vendidad" is a text of several dozen pages, written in Avestan, an ancient language of Persian. It's a foundational text of Zoroastrianism, also known as the religion of the Parsis. I've know a few Parsis in my life, almost all were Indian citizens who were living in Delhi, although Mumbai is the main center of their religion and culture in India.

As with the Behistun inscription, there's a lot of repetition, and, as with the text from Behisturn, this helps rather than hurts the novice. But there's less repetition in the "Vendidad" and a far larger vocabulary, so, for the moment, I'm reading it in English but just playing around with some of the first verses in Avestan.

It begins, as does Genesis, with an account of Creation. This version, however, relies more on coziness and boosterism than does Genesis. There are steps in the process, just as in the Bible, but these aren't organized from day to day nor from the cosmic down to the human. The first verse tells us that Ahura Mazda (the title for God) has "made every land dear (to its people)" even in cases when that land offers no attractions to outsiders. He goes on to say he did this because otherwise all the nations of the world would have invaded the beautiful and amazing land of Iran, which, clearly, is the best in all the world.

There follows a catalogue of creation but this account doesn't move from the heavens to the earth to the life in contains, as is the case with Genesis, but from one "good land and country which I, Ahura Mazda, created" to another. All of these are lands near the home of the ancient Persians, and each seems uniformly pleasant. Variety is provided in the actions of Angra Mainyu, described as "full of death" who at each stage, makes a counter creation: locuts, sin, pride, disease, unbelief, the "Unnatural sin".