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The Sasanian period

The Sasanian kingdom started as early as 209 A.D. from the heartland of the Achaemenian kingdom around Staxr with the establishment of the sacred fire of Ardašēr son of Pābag in the temple of Anāhitā at Staxr. Ardašēr drew on both kingdom (Pers. x^vadāyīh) and religion (Pers. dēn):

He projected himself as heir of the (Kavi-)Achaemenian kingdom, thereby implying that he could restore the Aryan land (Pers. erān-šahr). Sāsān, eponym of the Sasanian dynasty, was reputed to have descended from a certain Sāsān son of Artaxšaçā «who is called Vohu-manah son of Spəņtōδāta. »

He entrusted Tōsar with the task of collecting and revising sacred texts, and reducing them to some sort of canon of scripture.  

Tōsar

The priestly teacher Tōsar (third century A.D.) was himself of the royal-Parthian house who became Ardašēr’s counsellor and helped him to overthrow many local rulers and re-establish the Aryan kingdom in the Aryan land with undivided rule by a monarch. He collected many Avesta manuscripts and prepared a standard edition of the Avesta comprising 21 books as an authoritative text of the Daēnā. He also wrote treatises about both political and religious affairs. Rōzveh (Ibn al-Muqaffa˓) translated (with some interpolations) some of them into Arabic: Letter to Māhgušnasp king of Pedišx^vārgar, Letter to the king of India, etc. Mas˓ūdī and Berōnī cited short passages of the Arabic version of the Letter to Māhgušnasp. A certain scribe, Ibn Isfandiār, when residing in X^vārazm (around 1215 A.D.), came on, in the book-market, a codex containing the Arabic versions of some Sanskrit texts and the Arabic version of the letter to (Māh-)gušnasp by Ibn al-Muqaffa˓. He translated this letter into Persian and embodied in his History of Tabarestān.  

Sasanian Period.pdf

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