Avesta people. The term "Avesta" is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian "abestāg", Book Pahlavi "ʾp(y)stʾkʼ". In that context, "abestāg" texts are portrayed as received knowledge, and are distinguished from the exegetical commentaries (the "zand") thereof. The literal meaning of the word "abestāg" is uncertain; it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The widely repeated derivation from *"upa-stavaka" is from Christian Bartholomae ("Altiranisches Wörterbuch", 1904), who interpreted "abestāg" as a contraction of a hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian
Invading the Sacred lead to a longterm process impacting the study of Hinduism in the USA," and notes that the real debate should not be a political debate, but a debate on the one-sidedness of text-based Indological studies. Invading the Sacred Invading The Sacred: An Analysis Of Hinduism Studies In America is a critical work published in 2007 by Rupa & Co. which argues that there are factual inaccuracies in Hindu studies. The editors of the book are Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas, and Aditi Banerjee. The book has contributions from Arvind Sharma of McGill University, S. N. Balagangadhara of Ghent University, psychoanalyst