The main obstacle to a reconstruction that closely links the western Aryas to the Avestan Airyas is, in my opinion, the one arising from the theories… - Gherardo Gnoli

[the airyo-Sayana refers to] “the vast region that stretches southward from the Hindukus,” ... “from the southern slopes of the great mountain chains towards the valleys of the rivers that flow south, like the Hilmand…” “there is a substantial uniformity in the geographical horizon between Yt.XIX and Yt.X ... and the same can be said for Vd.I … these Avestan texts which contain in different forms, and for different purposes, items of information that are useful for historical geography give a fairly uniform picture: eastern Iran, with a certain prevalence of the countries reaching upto the southern slopes of the Hindukus.” ...

“in the denomination of Ariana, which became known to the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest of the eastern territories of the old Persian empire, there was obviously reflected a tradition that located the Aryan region in the central-southern part of eastern Iran, roughly from the Hindukus southwards, and that considered some of the Medes and the Persians in the west and some of the Bactrians and Sogdians in the north as further extensions of those people who were henceforth known by the name of Ariani. And this, to tell the truth, fits nicely into the picture we have been trying to piece so far. Here too, as in the passages of the Avesta we have studied from the Mihr Yast and the Zamyad Yast, the geographical horizon is central-eastern and southeastern; the northern lands are also completely peripheral, and Chorasmia, which is present only in the very peculiar position of which we have spoken in the Mihr Yast, is not included.” ...

[the attempt to transpose the geography of the Avesta from Afghanistan to western Iran] “was doubtless due to different attempts made by the most powerful religious centres of western Iran and the influential order of the Magi to appropriate the traditions of Zoroastrianism that had flourished in the eastern territories of the plateau in far-off times. Without a doubt, the identification of Raya with Adurbadagan, more or less parallel with its identification with Ray, should be fitted into the vaster picture of the late location of Airyana Vaejah in Adarbayjan.” ...