Regarding the use of red ink in Avestan manuscripts

Abstract

While Avestan manuscripts are consistently written with black ink, sometimes they present us with red scripts used for titles or for some special signs of interpunction; however, it seems that in certain circumstances, bilingual manuscripts (see for instance J9) distinguished the sacred language (i.e. the Avestan text) by writing its version with a red ink. To the contrary, the extant manuscripts do not attest any consistent use of real rubricae in order to mark the beginning of an Avestan text, as it was done in the standard Geldner’s edition. In any case the documented use of the red ink, although limited in the mss, cannot be the fruit of a later ornamental trend, but it should probably date back - through the Basic Manuscript of the IXth-Xth century A.D. - to the Sasanian Achetype. The present tradition attributing a special function to the red colour results to have been not isolated, but it was paralleled by various traditions: in the Pahlavi Psalter, in the Manichaean documents (where we find texts written in different colours but frequently in red, and with flowers and points like signs of punctuation according to a tradition partly paralleled in the Avestan mss), and more generally in Late Antiquity, for instance, in Byzantium, where such a colour was considered an emanation of the King (sacrum encaustum). An very useful Appendix by Werner Sundermann about the use of red ink in Turfan Texts is appended at the end of this contribution.