Airyanam Vaejah near Kazakhstan?

[Bjarte Kaldhol]

Dear listmembers,

Manfred Hutter discusses the plausible geographical origin and date of
Zarathustra and the Gathas in RELIGIONEN IN DER UMWELT DES ALTEN
TESTAMENTS, vol. I, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart/Berlin/Koeln, 1996. A few of his
conclusions might be interesting.

1. Airyanam Vaejah is to be localized north of Khwarezm, it could have
extended as far as Kazakhstan (p. 195).

2. He bases his dating on linguistic, "avestisch-textinterner", and
archaeological evidence, and concludes (p. 197): "Fasst man linguistische,
textinterne und archaeologische Indizien zusammen, so hat folgender
Zeitansatz die groesste Wahrscheinlichkeit: Als maximale Obergrenze fuer
das Auftreten Zarathustras ist die Mitte des 2. Jts. v. Chr. anzusetzen,
eine Untergrenze ist um das Jahr 1100 zu ziehen, wobei eine Datierung ins
12. Jh. am guenstigsten sein duerfte." So, Hutter dates Zarathustra to the
twelfth century BC, while the EB, 15th edition (s.v. Zoroaster) still has
"born c. 628 BC, probably Rhages (Rayy), Iran - d. c. 551, site unknown"
(Micropaedia, vol. 12, p. 934). This article in EB appears to have no
references to literature later than 1970, and may have been written about
thirty years ago (by F.K., = the Most Rev. Franz Cardinal Koenig,
Archbishop of Vienna 1956-85). On the other hand, the Macropaedia article
(s.v. Zoroastrianism and Parsiism)  by J. Duchesne-Guillemin, obviously
written somewhat later, does not attempt to date Zarathustra at all: "All
that may safely be said is that Zoroaster lived somewhere in eastern Iran,
far from the civilized world of western Asia, before Iran became unified
under Cyrus II the Great."

Should I now regard Hutter's dating as more reliable than Koenig's? What is
the general opinion among modern Iranologists?

Best wishes,
Bjarte Kaldhol