Airyaman - Scholastic Issues

Scholastic Issues

In relationship to Vedic aryaman-

The common meaning of airyaman/aryaman as "member of community" is preserved in both Avestan and Vedic sources, as in both cultures the common noun airyaman/aryaman defines "a type of social group."

However, the respective divinities do not have a common primary attribute: While the RigVedic Aryaman is apparently the " by] hospitality," Avestan Airyaman is unambiguously a divinity of healing. Attempts to explain this anomaly range from an alternate interpretation of the masculine form of the Vedic noun, for example, as "protector of aryan men," to a reinterpretation of "healing", for example, "he also exists in the Avesta, under the name Airyaman, and there also is he the helper, the benefactor of man, inasmuch as he is a healing god"

Name versus Function

Zoroastrian divinities are – Airyaman being a solitary exception – hypostases of the common nouns that their names represent. Why this is not so for airyaman/Airyaman is generally accepted to be a secondary development:

One hypothesis dates the identification with healing to before the composition of the Gathic airyaman ishyo. Here, (following a well established meaning) "member of (the) community," is interpreted to signify a member "of the fellowship of priests (sodalis)." Accordingly, Airyaman came to be understood as the divinity of healing (and the prayer came to be considered a charm against sickness) because in antiquity priests were repositories of medicinal knowledge and "the healer among healers was he who healed by the holy WORD."

According to a "strict philology" methodology that relies only on etymological and grammatical evidence, the genenis of Airyaman lies in a Younger Avestan exegesis of the Gathic airyaman ishyo prayer. The proper noun was misconstrued to be an invocation of a divinity named Airyaman, who became the yazata of healing because the prayer was identified with healing (for example, eulogized in Yasna 3 as "the greatest of manthras against sickness"). While it was accepted that the Avestan common noun airyaman and Vedic aryaman- both indicate a type of social group, that 'Avestan Airyaman is a chimera ... would have been determined long ago if a Vedic divinity of this name .'