Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various
Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are:
*the use of a specific
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
-derived script;
*the incidence of
Aramaic words used as
heterograms (called ''
hozwārishn'', "archaisms").
Pahlavi compositions have been found for the
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...
s/
ethnolect
An ethnolect is generally defined as a language variety that mark speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety. According to another definition, an ethnolect is any speech variety (language, di ...
s of
Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Med ...
,
Persis
Persis ( grc-gre, , ''Persís''), better known in English as Persia ( Old Persian: 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿, ''Parsa''; fa, پارس, ''Pârs''), or Persia proper, is the Fars region, located to the southwest of modern-day Iran, now a province. T ...
,
Sogdiana
Sogdia ( Sogdian: ) or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empi ...
,
Scythia
Scythia ( Scythian: ; Old Persian: ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) or Scythica (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Pontic Scythia, was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BC in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
...
, and
Khotan.
Independent of the
variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, the written form of that language only qualifies as Pahlavi when it has the characteristics noted above.
Pahlavi is then an admixture of:
*written
Imperial Aramaic
Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower (dialectologica ...
, from which Pahlavi derives its script, logograms, and some of its vocabulary.
*spoken
Middle Iranian, from which Pahlavi derives its terminations, symbol rules, and most of its vocabulary.
Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to (but not unique for) a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the characteristics of a distinct language, but is not one. It is an exclusively written system, but much Pahlavi literature remains essentially an oral literature committed to writing and so retains many of the characteristics of oral composition.
Etymology
The term Pahlavi is said
[.] to be derived from the
Parthian language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg, is an extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language once spoken in Parthia, a region situated in present-day northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Parthian was the language of ...
word ''parthav'' or ''parthau'', meaning
Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Med ...
, a region just east of the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central A ...
, with the ''-i'' suffix denoting the language and people of that region. If this etymology is correct, ''Parthav'' presumably became ''pahlaw'' through a
semivowel glide ''rt'' (or in other cases ''rd'') change to ''l'', a common occurrence in language evolution (e.g. Arsacid ''sard'' became ''sal'', ''zard''>''zal'', ''vard''>''gol'', ''sardar''>''salar'' etc.). The term has been traced back further
to
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
''pərəthu-'' "broad
s the earth, also evident in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
''pŗthvi-'' "earth" and ''parthivi'' "
ordof the earth". Common to all Indo-Iranian languages is a connotation of "mighty".
History
The earliest attested use of Pahlavi dates to the reign of
Arsaces I of Parthia Arsaces or Arsakes (, , Graecized form of Old Persian ) is the eponymous Greek form of the dynastic name of the Parthian Empire of Iran adopted by all epigraphically attested rulers of the Arsacid dynasties. The indigenous Parthian and Armenian ...
(250 BC) in early
Parthian coins Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
with Pahlavi scripts. There are also several Pahlavi texts written during the reign of
Mithridates I (''r.'' 171–138 BC).
[.] The cellars of the treasury at Mithradatkird (near modern-day
Nisa) reveal thousands of pottery sherds with brief records; several
ostraca
An ostracon (Greek language, Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeology, archaeological or epigraphy, epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer ...
that are fully dated bear references to members of the immediate family of the king.
[ ''cf.'' .]
Such fragments, as also the rock inscriptions of Sassanid kings, which are datable to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, do not, however, qualify as a significant literary corpus. Although in theory Pahlavi could have been used to render any Middle Iranian language and hence may have been in use as early as 300 BC, no manuscripts that can be dated to before the 6th century AD have yet been found. Thus, when used for the name of a literary genre, i.e.
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 ...
, the term refers to Middle Iranian (mostly
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 Per ...
) texts dated near or after the fall of the
Sassanid Empire
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
and (with exceptions) extending to about AD 900, after which Iranian languages enter the "modern" stage.
The oldest surviving example of the Pahlavi literature is from fragments of the so-called "
Pahlavi Psalter
The Pahlavi Psalter is the name given to a 12-page non-contiguous section of a Middle Persian translation of a Syriac version of the Book of Psalms.
The Pahlavi Psalter was discovered in 1905 by the second German Turpan expedition under Albert ...
", a 6th- or 7th-century-AD translation of a Syriac Psalter found at
Bulayïq
Bulayïq ( zh, t=葡萄溝, s=葡萄沟, first=t, p=Pútáogōu) is a locality and archaeological site in central Xinjiang province in western China. It is located 10km north of Turpan city in the foothills of the Tien-shan Mountains. It is also k ...
on the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
, near
Turpan
Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015).
Geonyms
The original name of the cit ...
in north-west China. It is in a more archaic script than
Book Pahlavi
Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Iranian languages, Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are:
*the use of a specific Aramaic script, Aramaic-derived script;
*the incidence of Aramaic lang ...
.
[.]
After the
Muslim conquest of Persia
The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, was carried out by the Rashidun Caliphate from 633 to 654 AD and led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire as well as the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion.
Th ...
, the Pahlavi script was replaced by the
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
, except in
Zoroastrian sacred literature.
The replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the
Tahirids
The Tahirid dynasty ( fa, طاهریان, Tâheriyân, ) was a culturally Arabized Sunni Muslim dynasty of Persian dehqan origin, that ruled as governors of Khorasan from 821 to 873 as well as serving as military and security commanders in Ab ...
in 9th century
Khurasan
Greater Khorāsān,Dabeersiaghi, Commentary on Safarnâma-e Nâsir Khusraw, 6th Ed. Tehran, Zavvâr: 1375 (Solar Hijri Calendar) 235–236 or Khorāsān ( pal, Xwarāsān; fa, خراسان ), is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plate ...
.
Modern times
In the present day, "Pahlavi" is frequently identified with the
prestige dialect
Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.)
Prestige may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
* ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnett ...
of south-west Iran, formerly and properly called ''
Pārsi'', after
Pars (Persia proper). This practice can be dated to the period immediately following the Islamic conquest.
Script
The Pahlavi script is one of the two essential characteristics of the Pahlavi system (see above). Its origin and development occurred independently of the various
Middle Iranian languages for which it was used. The Pahlavi script is derived from the
Aramaic script
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
as it was used under the
Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
s, with modifications to support the phonology of the Iranian languages. It is essentially a typical
abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
, where, in general, only long vowels are marked with
matres lectionis (although short /i/ and /u/ are sometimes expressed so as well), and vowel-initial words are marked with an
aleph
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez .
These letter ...
. However, because of the high incidence of
logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
s derived from Aramaic words, the Pahlavi script is far from always phonetic; and even when it is phonetic, it may have more than one transliterational symbol per sign, because certain originally different Aramaic letters have merged into identical graphic forms – especially in the Book Pahlavi variety. (For a review of the transliteration problems of Pahlavi, see
Henning.) In addition to this, during much of its later history, Pahlavi orthography was characterized by historical or archaizing spellings. Most notably, it continued to reflect the pronunciation that preceded the widespread Iranian
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...
processes, whereby postvocalic voiceless
stops
Stop may refer to:
Places
*Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
and
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
s had become voiced, and voiced stops had become
semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
s. Similarly, certain words continued to be spelt with postvocalic and even after the consonants had been
debuccalized
Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspira ...
to in the living language.
The Pahlavi script consisted of two widely used forms: Inscriptional Pahlavi and Book Pahlavi. A third form, Psalter Pahlavi, is not widely attested.
Inscriptional Parthian
Although the
Parthian Arsacids generally wrote in Greek, some of the coins and seals of the Arsacid period (mid-3rd-century BC to early 3rd-century AD) also include inscriptions in the
Parthian language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg, is an extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language once spoken in Parthia, a region situated in present-day northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Parthian was the language of ...
. The script of these inscriptions is called inscriptional Parthian. Numerous clay fragments from Arsacid-era Parthia proper, in particular a large collection of fragments from Nisa that date to the reign of
Mithridates I (''r.'' 171–138 BC), are likewise inscribed in inscriptional Parthian. The bilingual and trilingual inscriptions of the early (3rd-century AD)
Sassanids
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...
include Parthian texts, which were then also rendered in inscriptional Parthian. The Parthian language was a Middle Iranian language of Parthia proper, a region in the north-western segment of the Iranian plateau where the Arsacids had their power base.
Inscriptional Parthian script had 22 letters for sounds and 8 letters for numerals. The letters were not joined. Inscriptional Parthian has
its own Unicode block.
File:Shapur Kabe Zartosht (cropped).png, Parthian version of Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht
Shapur I's Ka'ba-ye Zartosht inscription (shortened as Shapur-KZ, ŠKZ, SKZ), also referred to as The Great Inscription of Shapur I, and ''Res Gestae Divi Saporis'' (RGDS), is a trilingual inscription made during the reign of the Sasanian king Sh ...
File:Naqsh-e Rajab - Shapur parade - detail of inscription.jpg, Parthian (above), along with Greek (below) and Middle Persian was being used in inscriptions of early Sassanian
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
kings. Shapur inscription in Naqsh-e Rajab
Naqsh-e Rajab ( fa, نقش رجب, ) is an archaeological site just west of Istakhr and about 5 km north of Persepolis in Fars Province, Iran.
Together with Naqsh-e Rustam, which lies 2.5 km away, the site is part of the Marvdasht ...
Inscriptional Pahlavi
Inscriptional Pahlavi is the name given to a variant of the Pahlavi script as used to render the 3rd6th-century
Middle Persian language
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 Per ...
inscriptions of the
Sassanid kings and other notables. Genuine Middle Persian as it appears in these inscriptions was the Middle Iranian language of Persia proper, the region in the south-western corner of the Iranian plateau where the Sassanids had their power base.
Inscriptional Pahlavi script had 19 characters which were not joined.
[.]
File:Gold-Münze Ardaschir I Sassaniden.jpg, Coin of Ardashir I (r. 224–242) with Inscriptional Pahlavi writings.
Image:Taq-e Bostan - Pahlavi writing.jpg, Inscriptional Pahlavi text from Shapur III
Shapur III ( pal, 𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩 ), was the Sasanian Empire, Sasanian King of Kings () of Iran from 383 to 388. He was the son of Shapur II () and succeeded his uncle Ardashir II ().
His reign was largely uneventful; to the west, ...
at Taq-e Bostan
Taq-e Bostan ( fa, طاق بستان, ) is a site with a series of large rock reliefs from the era of the Sassanid Empire of Persia (Iran), carved around the 4th century CE.
This example of Persian Sassanid art is located 5 km from the ...
, 4th century
File:Naqshe Rajab Darafsh Ordibehesht 93 (1).jpg, Kartir
Kartir (also spelled Karder, Karter and Kerdir; Middle Persian: 𐭪𐭫𐭲𐭩𐭫 ''Kardīr'') was a powerful and influential Zoroastrian priest during the reigns of four Sasanian kings in the 3rd-century. His name is cited in the inscriptions ...
's inscription at Naqsh-e Rajab
Naqsh-e Rajab ( fa, نقش رجب, ) is an archaeological site just west of Istakhr and about 5 km north of Persepolis in Fars Province, Iran.
Together with Naqsh-e Rustam, which lies 2.5 km away, the site is part of the Marvdasht ...
File:MIK - Sassaniden Pahlavi-Monogramm.jpg, Sasanian relief with Inscriptional Pahlavi monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series o ...
.
Psalter Pahlavi
Psalter Pahlavi derives its name from the so-called "
Pahlavi Psalter
The Pahlavi Psalter is the name given to a 12-page non-contiguous section of a Middle Persian translation of a Syriac version of the Book of Psalms.
The Pahlavi Psalter was discovered in 1905 by the second German Turpan expedition under Albert ...
", a 6th- or 7th-century 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 a ...
book of psalms. This text, which was found at Bulayiq near
Turpan
Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015).
Geonyms
The original name of the cit ...
in northwest China, is the earliest evidence of literary composition in Pahlavi, dating to the 6th or 7th century AD. The extant manuscript dates no earlier than the mid-6th century since the translation reflects liturgical additions to the Syriac original by
Mar Aba I
Aba I (or, with his Syriac honorific, Mar Aba I) or Mar Abba the Great was the Patriarch of the Church of the East at Seleucia-Ctesiphon from 540 to 552. He introduced to the church the anaphoras of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius beside t ...
, 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. Its use is peculiar to Christians in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, given its use in a fragmentary manuscript of the Psalms of David.
The script of the psalms has altogether 18 graphemes, 5 more than Book Pahlavi and one less than Inscriptional Pahlavi. As in Book Pahlavi, letters are connected to each other. The only other surviving source of Psalter Pahlavi are 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 Safēd ...
, in present-day Afghanistan. Due to the dearth of comparable material, some words and phrases in both sources remain undeciphered.
Of the 18 characters, 9 connect in all four traditional abjad positions, while 9 connect only on their right or are isolated. Numbers are built from units of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 20, and 100. The numbers 10 and 20 join on both sides, but the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 only join on the right, and if they are followed by an additional digit, they lose their tail, which is visually evident in their isolated forms. There are 12 encoded punctuation characters, and many are similar to those found in Syriac. The section marks are written in half-red and half-black, and several documents have entire sections in both black and red, as a means of distinction.
Book Pahlavi
Book Pahlavi is a smoother script in which letters are joined to each other and often form complicated
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s. Book Pahlavi was the most common form of the script, with only 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 representing 24
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
s. The formal coalescence of originally different letters caused ambiguity, and the letters became even less distinct when they formed part of a ligature.
In its later forms, attempts were made to improve the consonantary and reduce ambiguity through
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
marks.
Book Pahlavi continued to be in common use until about AD 900. After that date, Pahlavi was preserved only by the Zoroastrian clergy.
File:Eranshahr.svg, The word '' Ērān-šahr'', spelled ʾylʾnštr', in Book Pahlavi.
File:Ispahbod Xurshid's coin-1.jpg, Coin of Ispahbod Khurshid (r. 740–760) with Book Pahlavi writings. Book Pahlavi, instead of Inscriptional Pahlavi, was used in late Middle Persian inscriptions.
File:Stone cross with Pahlavi inscription.jpg, Stone cross with Book Pahlavi writings. Valiyapalli Church in Kottayam, Kerala, India.
Logograms
In both Inscriptional and Book Pahlavi, many common words, including even pronouns, particles, numerals, and auxiliaries, were spelled according to their
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
equivalents, which were used as logograms. For example, the word for "dog" was written as (Aramaic ''kalbā'') but pronounced ''sag''; and the word for "bread" would be written as Aramaic (''laḥmā'') but understood as the sign for Iranian ''nān''. These words were known as ''huzvārishn''. Such a logogram could also be followed by letters expressing parts of the Persian word phonetically, e.g. for ''pitar'' "father". The grammatical endings were usually written phonetically. A logogram did not necessarily originate from the lexical form of the word in Aramaic, it could also come from a
declined or
conjugated Aramaic form. For example, ''tō'' "you" (singular) was spelt (Aramaic "to you", including the preposition ''l-''). A word could be written phonetically even when a logogram for it existed (''pitar'' could be ''or'' ), but logograms were nevertheless used very frequently in texts.
Many ''huzvarishn'' were listed in the lexicon ''
Frahang-i Pahlavig
''Frahang-ī Pahlavīg'' (Middle Persian: 𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭭𐭢 𐭯𐭧𐭫𐭥𐭩𐭪 "Pahlavi dictionary") is the title of an anonymous dictionary of mostly Aramaic logograms with Middle Persian translations (in Pahlavi script) and translitera ...
''. The practice of using these logograms appears to have originated from the use of Aramaic in the
chancelleries of the
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...
. Partly similar phenomena are found in the use of
Sumerograms and Akkadograms in
ancient Mesopotamia
The history of Mesopotamia ranges from the earliest human occupation in the Paleolithic period up to Late antiquity. This history is pieced together from evidence retrieved from archaeological excavations and, after the introduction of writing i ...
and the
Hittite empire
The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centra ...
, and in the adaptation of
Chinese writing
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally r ...
to
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
.
Problems in reading Book Pahlavi
As pointed out above, the convergence in form of many of the characters of Book Pahlavi causes a high degree of ambiguity in most Pahlavi writing and it needs to be resolved by the context. Some mergers are restricted to particular groups of words or individual spellings. Further ambiguity is added by the fact that even outside of ligatures, the boundaries between letters are not clear, and many letters look identical to combinations of other letters. As an example, one may take the fact that the name of God, ''
Ohrmazd
Ahura Mazda (; ae, , translit=Ahura Mazdā; ), also known as Oromasdes, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hoormazd, Hormazd, Hormaz and Hurmuz, is the creator deity in Zoroastrianism. He is the first and most frequently invoked spirit in the ''Yasna''. ...
'', could equally be read (and, by
Parsis
Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim co ...
, often was read) ''Anhoma''. Historically speaking, it was spelt , a fairly straightforward spelling for an
abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
. However, had coalesced with ; had coalesced, in the spelling of certain words, with both and ; and had been reduced, in the spelling of certain words, to a form whose combination with was indistinguishable from a , which in turn had coalesced with . This meant that the same orthographic form that stood for could also be interpreted as (among many other possible readings). The logograms could also pose problems. For this reason, important religious texts were sometimes transcribed into the phonetically unambiguous
Avestan alphabet
The Avestan alphabet (Middle Persian: transliteration: ''dyn' dpywryh'', transcription: ''dēn dēbīrē'', fa, دین دبیره, translit=din dabire) is a writing system developed during Iran's Sasanian era (226–651 CE) to render ...
. This latter system is called
Pazend
Pazend () or Pazand ( pal, 𐭯𐭠𐭰𐭭𐭣; ae, 𐬞𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬌 𐬰𐬀𐬌𐬥𐬙𐬌) is one of the writing systems used for the Middle Persian language. It was based on the Avestan alphabet, a phonetic alphabet originally used to ...
.
Literary dialects
From a formal historical and linguistic point of view, the Pahlavi script does not have a one-to-one correspondence with any Middle Iranian language: none was written in Pahlavi exclusively, and inversely, the Pahlavi script was used for more than one language. Still, the vast majority of surviving Pahlavi texts are in Middle Persian, hence the occasional use of the term "Pahlavi" to refer to that language.
Arsacid Pahlavi
Following the overthrow of the
Seleucid
The Seleucid Empire (; grc, Βασιλεία τῶν Σελευκιδῶν, ''Basileía tōn Seleukidōn'') was a Greek state in West Asia that existed during the Hellenistic period from 312 BC to 63 BC. The Seleucid Empire was founded by the ...
s, the
Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Med ...
n
Arsacid
The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conquer ...
s—who considered themselves the legitimate heirs of the
Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...
s—adopted the manner, customs and government of the Persian court of two centuries previously. Among the many practices so adopted was the use of the
Aramaic language
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
("
Imperial Aramaic
Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower (dialectologica ...
") that together with
Aramaic script
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
served as the language of the chancellery. By the end of the Arsacid era, the written Aramaic words had come to be understood as
logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
s, as explained above.
The use of Pahlavi gained popularity following its adoption as the language/script of the commentaries (''Zend'') on the
Avesta
The Avesta () is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.
The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the litu ...
.
[.] Propagated by the priesthood, who were not only considered to be transmitters of all knowledge but were also instrumental in government, the use of Pahlavi eventually reached all corners of the Parthian Arsacid empire.
Arsacid Pahlavi is also called Parthian Pahlavi (or just Parthian), Chaldeo-Pahlavi, or Northwest Pahlavi, the latter reflecting its apparent development from a dialect that was almost identical to that of the Medes.
Sasanian Pahlavi
Following the defeat of the Parthian Arsacids by the Persian Sasanians (
Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
s), the latter inherited the empire and its institutions, and with it the use of the Aramaic-derived language and script. Like the Parthians before him,
Ardeshir Ardeshir or Ardashir ( Persian: اردشیر; also spelled as Ardasher) is a Persian name popular in Iran and other Persian-speaking countries. Ardashir is the New Persian form of the Middle Persian name , which is ultimately from Old Iranian ''*Ar ...
, the founder of the second Persian Empire, projected himself as a successor to the regnal traditions of the first, in particular those of
Artaxerxes II
Arses ( grc-gre, Ἄρσης; 445 – 359/8 BC), known by his regnal name Artaxerxes II ( peo, 𐎠𐎼𐎫𐎧𐏁𐏂 ; grc-gre, Ἀρταξέρξης), was King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 405/4 BC to 358 BC. He was the son and suc ...
, whose throne name the new emperor adopted.
From a linguistic point of view, there was probably only little disruption. Since the Sassanids had inherited the bureaucracy, in the beginning the affairs of government went on as before, with the use of dictionaries such as the
Frahang-i Pahlavig
''Frahang-ī Pahlavīg'' (Middle Persian: 𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭭𐭢 𐭯𐭧𐭫𐭥𐭩𐭪 "Pahlavi dictionary") is the title of an anonymous dictionary of mostly Aramaic logograms with Middle Persian translations (in Pahlavi script) and translitera ...
assisting the transition. The royalty themselves came from a priestly tradition (Ardeshir's father and grandfather were both, in addition to being kings, also priests), and as such would have been proficient in the language and script. More importantly, being both Western Middle
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped ...
, Parthian was closely related to the dialect of the southwest (which was more properly called ''Pārsi'',
that is, the language of
Pārsā, Persia proper).
Arsacid Pahlavi did not die out with the Arsacids. It is represented in some bilingual inscriptions alongside the Sassanid Pahlavi; by the parchment manuscripts of Auroman; and by certain
Manichaean
Manichaeism (;
in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian Empire, Parthian ...
texts from
Turpan
Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015).
Geonyms
The original name of the cit ...
. Furthermore, the archaic orthography of Sasanian Pahlavi continued to reflect, in many respects, pronunciations that had been used in Arsacid times (in Parthia as well as Fars) and not its contemporary pronunciation.
Sasanian Pahlavi is also called Sassanid Pahlavi, Persian Pahlavi, or Southwest Pahlavi.
It is between 1787 and 1791 that
Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy (; 21 September 175821 February 1838), was a French French nobility, nobleman, linguist and oriental studies, orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.
Life and works
Early life ...
deciphered the Pahlavi inscriptions of the
Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
kings.
Post-conquest Pahlavi
Following the Islamic conquest of the Sassanids, the term ''Pahlavi'' came to refer to the (written) "language" of the southwest (i.e. Pārsi). How this came to pass remains unclear, but it has been assumed
that this was simply because it was the dialect that the conquerors would have been most familiar with.
As the language and script of religious and semi-religious commentaries, Pahlavi remained in use long after that language had been superseded (in general use) by Modern Persian and Arabic script had been adopted as the means to render it. As late as the 17th century, Zoroastrian priests in Iran admonished their Indian co-religionists to learn it.
[ ''R''382]
Post-conquest Pahlavi (or just Pahlavi) is also called Zoroastrian Pahlavi or Zoroastrian Middle Persian.
Unicode
Tables showing the letters and their names or pronunciations are available online.
[ gives pronunciations. The Unicode files give the names]
U+10B60–U+10B7F
U+10B40–U+10B5F
U+10B80–U+10BAF
.
Inscriptional Pahlavi and Inscriptional Parthian were added to the
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2. Psalter Pahlavi was added in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0. There have been three main proposals for encoding Book Pahlavi.
The Unicode block for Inscriptional Pahlavi is U+10B60–U+10B7F:
The Unicode block for Inscriptional Parthian is U+10B40–U+10B5F:
The Unicode block for Psalter Pahlavi is U+10B80–U+10BAF:
See also
*
Imperial Aramaic
Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower (dialectologica ...
*
Middle Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped ...
*
Manichaean alphabet
The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the 3rd century CE. It bears a sibling relation ...
References
Bibliography
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External links
Language and literature
* . Includes extracts from West and Kent.
* : classification of Pahlavi.
* an
2(partly outdated).
* (partly outdated).
* .
Writing system
* .
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* .
{{list of writing systems
Abjad writing systems
Iranian inscriptions
Parthian Empire
Obsolete writing systems
Middle Persian
Persian scripts
Right-to-left writing systems