Avesta of particular manuscripts. A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend and myth. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (i.e. in the so-called "Pahlavi books"). The legends run as follows: The twenty-one "nask"s ("books") of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda and brought by Zoroaster to his patron Vishtaspa ("Denkard" 4A, 3A). Supposedly, Vishtaspa ("Dk" 3A) or another Kayanian, Daray ("Dk" 4B), then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other
Religion with solemnity and gravity. The sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his seminal book "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life", defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are not, however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred".