Mādayān ī Wīrāzagān: a newly discovered Middle Persian text: transliteration, transcription, and translation

Abstract

In 2017, the editio princeps of a newly discovered Middle Persian text, the “Mādayān ī Wīrāzagān” or simply “Wīrāzagān”, was published by Raham Asha. This text, which is important not only from a literary and religious perspective, but also from a mythological point of view, was previously unknown to the scholarly community. The Middle Persian original of the text is found in the Codex TD 26 (49r-62v), preserved in the library of the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai. The manuscript was first discovered and studied by R. Asha in March 2011. The preliminary remarks on the Mādayān ī Wīrāzagān and other texts contained in the Codex TD 26 (Ms. R 494) were published in 2012 in the journal of the same institution. Here I present a translation (accompanied by the transliteration and transcription) of the original text published on pages 3–16 of Asha's book.