Avestan geography

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Avestan geography is the investigation of place names in the Avesta and the attempt to connect them to real-world geographical sites. It is connected to but different from the cosmogony expressed in the Avesta, where place names primarily refer to mythical events or a cosmological order. Identifying such connections is important for localizing the people of the Avesta and is therefore crucial for understanding the early history of Zoroastrianism and the Iranians. Sources for such geographical references are exclusively found in the younger Avestan portion of the text, in particular in the Vendidad and several of the Yashts. The identification of these Avestan places with real locations is often supported by comparisons with references made in later Iranian sources. A major challenge to establish these connections is the fact that the Iranian people often used the same name for different places. As a result, not all Avestan place names can be identified with certainty with present-day locations and therefore remain subject to debate. Modern scholarship, however, agrees that the place names in the Avesta are concentrated in the eastern regions of Greater Iran up to the Indo-Iranian border.