Swennen notes that, while they are compared to birds in the Rigveda, in the Avesta they have epithets otherwise only applied to stars; the flying horse is identified with the sun in the Rigveda, but with the star Tistriia, Sirius, in the Avesta ([section]93).
In the Rigveda the ruler and organizer of the cosmic order is Indra; in the Avesta it is Ahura Mazda, who, apparently, does not fight his own battles, but delegates them to Tistriia and the fravashis ([section]155).
The answer to the question why the Avesta has so little to say about the rituals involving horses and chariot races and avoids the poetic formulas associated with them ([section]296) must be that they disappeared together with the deity with which they were most closely associated, namely lndra, who, Swennen proposes, must have played an important role in Iranian religion down to the historical period, as suggested by the proper name zariasha (i.e., *zari-aspa), which matches Indra's epithet haryasva ([section][section]297-98).
Chapter 15 is devoted to the mythical horse in the Avesta. It is divided into three parts: a close reading of the text of Yast 8 to Tistriia (A: "Tistar Yast: faits textuels et consequences"; running head: Le duel du Tistar Yast; pp.
ix x); Chapter 1, "Das Avesta und dessen Pahlavi-Ubersetzung" (pp.
Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of the meaning of the expressions Abest[a.bar]g ud Zand 'Avesta and Zand', notably the history of attempts to etymologize the term zand in relation to the Avestan word [a.bar]zainti-.
Chapter 2 is a fascinating Forschungsgeschichte of European scholarship's dealings with the Avesta and Pahlavi translations, beginning with Thomas Hyde and Anquetil-Duperron in the eighteenth century, moving on to the giants of the nineteenth century, among them Martin Haug, Karl Geldner, Christian Bartholomae, and James Darmesteter, and those of the twentieth century, up to and including the more recent work on the Avesta and Zand versions of the H[o.bar]m Yast by Judith Josephson.
Chapter 3 is yet another informed survey, this one on the transmissional history of the Avesta and its textual fixation.
