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The Pahlavi Psalter is the name given to a 12-page non-contiguous section of a
Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Pe ...
translation of a
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages ...
version of the
Book of Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...
. The Pahlavi Psalter was discovered in 1905 by the second German Turpan expedition under
Albert von Le Coq Albert von Le Coq (; 8 September 1860 Berlin, Prussia – 21 April 1930 Berlin, Germany) was a Prussian/German brewery owner and wine merchant, who at the age of 40 began to study archaeology.''Schatzjagd an der Seidenstraße.'' A film by Susann ...
. Together with a mass of other fragmentary Christian manuscripts discovered in the ruins of the library of Shui-pang at Bulayiq (near Turpan, in what is today the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
of China), the documents were sent to Berlin for analysis, where the fragments remain today. The Pahlavi Psalter is the oldest surviving example of
Pahlavi literature Middle Persian literature is the corpus of written works composed in Middle Persian, that is, the Middle Iranian dialect of Persia proper, the region in the south-western corner of the Iranian plateau. Middle Persian was the prestige dialect duri ...
, that is, literature composed using the Pahlavi writing system. The surviving fragments probably date to the 6th or 7th century CE. The translation itself dates to not before the mid-6th century since it reflects liturgical additions to the Syriac original by Mar Aba I, who was
Patriarch of the Church of the East The Patriarch of the Church of the East (also known as Patriarch of the East, Patriarch of Babylon, the Catholicose of the East or the Grand Metropolitan of the East) is the patriarch, or leader and head bishop (sometimes referred to as Catholic ...
''c.'' 540 - 552. The script of the psalter, like that of all other examples of Pahlavi literature, is also an Aramaic-derived script (see Pahlavi for details). However, unlike
Book Pahlavi Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are: *the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script; *the incidence of Aramaic words used as heterograms (called '' ...
script, which is a later but more common form of the consonantary and has 12 or 13
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
s, the script of the psalms has 5 symbols more. The variant of the script used for the psalter was for almost a century the only evidence of that specific variant, which consequently came to be referred to as Psalter Pahlavi script. More recently however, another sample of the writing was discovered in the inscriptions on a bronze processional cross found at
Herat Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safē ...
(in present-day
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
). Due to the dearth of comparable material, some words and phrases in both sources remain undeciphered.


See also

*
Iranians in China Iranian people such as Persians and Sogdians have lived in China throughout various periods in Chinese history. History The Parthian Iranians, An Shigao and An Xuan, introduced Buddhism to China. A village dating back 600 years in Yangzhou in Ji ...


References

* * {{cite encyclopedia, url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pahlavi-psalter, title=Pahlavi Psalter, last=Gignoux, first=Philippe, encyclopedia=
Encyclopedia Iranica An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article ...
, year=2002, publisher=Mazda, location=Costa Mesa


External links


The Pahlavi inscribed processional cross of Herat and Pahlavi crosses of South India
Manuscripts Psalters Middle Persian literature Church of the East in China Nestorian texts