An Introduction to Aesthetics of Yašts

Yašts represent the tradition of oral poetry of Iranian herders and farmers’ community in the ancient period, which despite having Iranian national feature; they have also preserved elements of the poetic literature of their Indo-European ancestors. The praise and legendary Hymns of Yašts present poetic and symbolically the most important cultural needs of an ancient community. Panegyric style with symbolic expression of deities and heroes are two fundamental characteristics of the Yašts that cooperate with other Indo-European literary heritage. In this paper, along with showing the literary position of Yašts among in traditional poetry, it has been studied the artistic devices which have formed their poetic and literary structure. The most obvious artistic device that can be seen in Yašts, is repetition, and beside it, epithet, that usually a combination of these two devices has formed the outer structure of Yašts. The artistic devices such as simile, metaphor, metonymy and kenning, that sometimes obvious, and sometimes implicit, have completed the outer structure. Literary figures in Yašts and the advanced way to express epic and alive images show that poetry in ancient Iran had a strong background, and the poets had achieved pure experiments in poetry.