azaintis Site
azaintis (Zand) means to comprehend -- the Zoroastrian religion
Comprehending (azaintis) Zoroastrianism
The word Avesta is the Pahlavi avistak meaning to declare -- a revelation going back 3500 years to Zarathustra himself. The word Zand comes from the Pahlavi azaintis meaning to comprehend to finally undersand.
Our religion has a really powerful rational theology, and its liturgical texts and rituals. Over the past millenium and a half it appears to me that our priests and laymen knew a lot about our rituals, but until the mid-1800s very little was known or understood about anything else on Zoroastrianism. We owe a lot to Western and Parsi Scholarship from the mid 1800s onwards, which has given us a golden opportunity to really understand our religion and really appreciate it.
Zoroastrianism has a rich and meanigful set of rituals. Detail about rituals is not currently on this website.
Please view the pdf documents listed below by clicking on them. You will need the Adobe Reader.
The first pdf is the main article in which I have tried to lay out the basic tenets of our faith in a logical manner as I thought possible, and with the idea that readers may find answers to most common questions about our religion. I have relied entirely on interpretations of the Avesta and the Pahlavi texts:
Zoroastrian Tenets, Theology and Links to Ritual Worship.pdf
Some Concepts and Prayers have a deeper meaning.pdf
The following three are for reference and additional information:
Definition and Explanation of Terms used in study of Religion.pdf
ZOROASTRIAN LITURGICAL TEXTS.pdf
