In the field of Iranian Studies Edward William West (1824-1905) is well known for his contributions to the study of Zoroastrian literature in Middle Persian (Pahlavi). These include his still valuable survey of Pahlavi literature in the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (West 1896-1904) his translation of the Pahlavi Texts in five volumes in the series The Sacred Books of the East (West 1880–1897), and his work on the Arda Wiraf Nāmag in collaboration with Martin Haug (Haug and West 1872).

What is less-known, however, is that West also described, copied and collated Zoroastrian manuscripts—many of which are no longer accessible. This part of West’s—to date unpublished—work is available for consultation in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) in London.

This repository provides internet access to the complete Notebooks 1-55 for the first time, as part of a digitisation and research project carried out by the Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) team at SOAS in collaboration with members of the Royal Asiatic Society.

We are indebted to Edward Weech, Nancy Charley and Alison Ohta of the RAS for making West’s notebooks and papers available, facilitating our work at the RAS and making this new data resource possible.

The Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) was a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) between 2016 and 2023, as part of an Advanced Investigator Grant to Professor Almut Hintze, the Principal Investigator.