The Avestan Digital Archive (ADA) is a digital archive that endeavours to make all available Avestan language manuscripts containing Zoroastrian liturgies accessible online. As such, it strives to be a fundamental tool for philological work for the scholars engaging with Avestan texts that complements current and future editions. Furthermore, it provides the most complete overview of Zoroastrian liturgical variety between the 13th and 19th centuries.

ADA gathers digital copies of around 200 Avestan manuscripts (with 164 containing different variants of the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy), hosted in different public and private libraries worldwide. Most manuscripts have been digitised by the ADA team as a result of numerous journeys to India and Iran since 2010. Others have been purchased from public libraries for academic use and display in ADA. Some pictures are generous donations from public and private owners.

Our database of manuscripts , created in collaboration with the Corpus Avesticum Berolinense (CAB), currently gathers information on over a thousand manuscripts. Many of them are either in unknown locations or hosted in libraries that do notallow the publication of digital copies. Currently, the number of manuscripts published onlineis close to 100, but we are working on publishing the remainder of the digitized manuscripts.The collection contains good specimens of all types of manuscripts concerning the texts anddifferent transmission lines. For the Long Liturgy, ADA provides a better sample ofmanuscripts than the standard edition by Karl Friedrich Geldner (Avesta. The Sacred Books ofthe Parsis. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1886). Regarding the Short Liturgies, the goal is to achieve a level of manuscript variety and richness similar to those of the Long Liturgy.

One of the most relevant features of ADA is that it has published online a significant number of Avestan manuscripts produced in Iran. Only a few Avestan manuscripts produced in Iran were known when the standard editions of the Avestan texts were prepared in the 19th century. The situation remained the same throughout the 20 th century. However, Katayoun Mazdapour published a seminal paper ("Čand Dastnewis-e Nouyāfte-Ye Awestā." Nāme-Ye Irān Bāstān 8 (2008): 3–10) in which she brought to light twelve then-unknown manuscripts. Since then, the focus of ADA has been oriented toward the Avestan manuscripts produced in Iran and still preserved there. Fortunately, almost all manuscripts unearthed in the last two decades are available on ADA.

The manuscripts published online are displayed either as complete navigable manuscripts (most of which are accompanied by a transliteration) or by passages. The latter feature shows the corresponding folio of all manuscripts available online in ADA that contain the passage. The results list is ordered according to manuscript classes. The manuscripts are ordered chronologically within each class when the date is known. This way, the user quickly and easily finds a thorough overview of the transmission history for each single passage. Furthermore, ADA has created its own sigla system to classify the manuscripts (also used in CAB), that enables grouping according to the texts they contain, the place of copy (India vs. Iran), typology (liturgical vs. exegetical) and date (see sigla ).

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