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
The Sacred Fount the Screw" and "In the Cage", which also feature unnamed and imaginative protagonists. In Chapter 21 of Donna Leon's third Guido Brunetti detective novel, "Dressed for Death" (1994; aka "The Anonymous Venetian"), Paola tells Guido, "I'm reading the master. "The Sacred Fount" is wonderful. "Nothing" happens, absolutely nothing." Later in the conversation, she states: "I'm already eager to finish it so that I can begin it all over again immediately." The Sacred Fount The Sacred Fount is a novel by Henry James, first published in 1901. This strange, often baffling book concerns an unnamed narrator who attempts to discover the