Distillation of Zoroastrianism — Decision Record

Per-tradition entry point for Plan 010. This README fixes which texts and which translations are distilled, and who reviewed the choices. See the Atlas architecture for the cross-tradition layer, and the Buddhist pilot for the format this stack mirrors.

Tradition

• Slug: zoroastrianism
• Tradition / family: Zoroastrianism (Mazdayasna) — the religion of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), the Avestan textual tradition. Living communities: the Parsis (India) and Iranian Zoroastrians.
• Primary frame in one sentence: an ethical monotheism in which the one wise Lord Ahura Mazda is the source of all good, the cosmos is the arena of a real struggle between Asha (truth/right order) and Druj (the Lie), and each person freely chooses a side through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

Text	Included?	Rationale
The Gāthās (Yasna XXVIII–XXXIV, XLIII–LI, LIII)	yes — the doctrinal core	The 17 hymns held to be Zarathushtra's own composition; the oldest, most authoritative, and most liturgically central Avestan text. Distilled in full.
The Yasna (wider) — esp. Y. XII (the Fravarane / confession)	yes (selections)	The chief liturgy; Y. XII is the recited profession of faith. High lived-centrality.
The Vendidad (Vidēvdāt), SBE 4	yes (ethical selections)	Law and purity code; selected where it carries load-bearing ethics (e.g. the sanctity of agriculture, the earth). Much is ritual/purity detail, distilled only where principle-bearing.
The Yashts & Sîrôzahs, SBE 23	yes (selections)	Hymns to the divine beings; the Ormazd Yasht (the Names of Ahura) and the standing Fravarane/Ashem Vohu formulas are cited for lived-centrality.

• Doctrinal-core commitment: the Gāthās first and in full (highest authority + lived-centrality), then principle-bearing selections from the wider Avesta. This follows the brief's instruction to prioritise the Gāthās as the doctrinal core.

Translation policy

• Gāthās & Yasna: Lawrence Heyworth Mills, The Zend-Avesta, Part III: The Yasna, Visparad, Âfrînagân, Gâhs and Miscellaneous Fragments, in The Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXI (Oxford, 1887). Public domain.
  • Access: Internet Archive, zendavesta03darm — raw plain text zendavesta03darm_djvu.txt.
• Vendidad: James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, Part I: The Vendîdâd, SBE vol. IV (Oxford, 1880). Public domain. Internet Archive, zendavesta01darm — zendavesta01darm_djvu.txt.
• Yashts & Sîrôzahs: James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, Part II: The Sîrôzahs, Yasts and Nyâyis, SBE vol. XXIII (Oxford, 1883). Public domain. Internet Archive, zendavesta02darm — zendavesta02darm_djvu.txt.
• Why these translations: unambiguously public-domain, the standard scholarly English SBE set, and a complete Avesta in English.
• Caveat — Mills' Gāthā style: the Gāthās are famously the most disputed text in Indo-Iranian philology; Mills renders them word-for-word and fills lines with parenthetical glosses (e.g. "(the Divine) Righteousness," "(within us)"). The parentheses are Mills' interpretation, not the Avestan text. Where a gloss carries interpretive weight, the bare Avestan term is preserved and the gloss flagged. (sacred-texts.com, the usual mirror, is behind Cloudflare and was not usable by curl; the Internet Archive OCR mirror was used instead — its OCR has minor artifacts that the Phase 7 audit will resolve against clean SBE scans.)
• Citation form: Yasna <ch>:<v> for the Gāthās and Yasna (e.g. Yasna 30:3); Vendidad <fargard>:<v> and Yasht <n>:<v> for the wider Avesta. Chapter numbers given in arabic; the SBE uses roman.

Untranslatable terms to preserve

Asha (truth / cosmic-moral right order / "the Right"), Ahura Mazda (the Wise Lord), Druj (the Lie, the principle of falsehood/disorder), Angra Mainyu (the Hostile/Destructive Spirit; later Ahriman), Spenta Mainyu (the Bounteous/Holy Spirit), Vohu Manah (the Good Mind), Khshathra (Sovereign Power/Kingdom), (Spenta) Armaiti (holy devotion/piety), daēnā (conscience/religion/inner self), Amesha Spentas (the Bounteous Immortals), Saoshyant (the future saviour/benefactor), Frashō-kereti (the final "making-wonderful"/renovation), Humata–Hūkhta–Hvarshta = good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" and the reviewer gap is flagged. The tradition stays in scope per the Plan 010 policy. Care is taken not to over-read later Pahlavi-era systematics (e.g. the fully personified Ahriman, the strict body/purity code) back into the Gāthās, where Mills himself notes the dualism is stated of two spirits/principles before later personification.

Structure for this tradition

• N=1 unit ("books/"): a group of Gāthā chapters or a wider-Avesta selection, distilled per the Buddhist N=1 format (Steps 4–9, claim-vs-warrant flags).
• Internal N=2 layer?: not used. The Gāthās are one authored core; the wider-Avesta files are treated as supporting selections, not a pooled multi-source layer.
• Sensitivity boundaries: the purity/corpse code and the polemic against the Daēva-worshippers are noted but not foregrounded; the compass draws on the ethical/devotional core.

Files

File	Status
00-methodology.md	done
books/00-index-and-traceability.md	done
books/01-ahunavaiti-i.md (Y. 28–30, N=1)	done
books/02-ahunavaiti-ii.md (Y. 31–34, N=1)	done
books/03-ushtavaiti-and-spenta-mainyu.md (Y. 43–48, N=1)	done
books/04-vohu-khshathra-vahishtoishti.md (Y. 49–51, 53, N=1)	done
books/05-wider-avesta-confession-and-ethics.md (Y. 12; Vendidad III; Yashts, N=1)	done
principles-distillation.md (N=3)	done — 12 core principles
structural-analysis.md	done
compass-zoroastrianism.md	done

References

• Plan 010 · Atlas architecture · Methodology v2 · Distillation guides · Buddhist pilot exemplar