Parthian language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region situated in present-day northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Parthian was the language of state of the Arsacid Parthian Empire, as well as of its eponymous branches of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, and the Arsacid dynasty of Caucasian Albania.
This language had a significant impact on Armenian, a large part of whose vocabulary was formed primarily from borrowings from Parthian. Many ancient Parthian words were preserved, and now can be seen only in Armenian.
Classification
Parthian was a Western Middle Iranian language. Language contact made it share some features of the Eastern Iranian language group, the influence of which is attested primarily in loanwords. Some traces of Eastern influence survive in Parthian loanwords in Armenian. Parthian loanwords appear in everyday Armenian vocabulary; nouns, adjectives, adverbs, denominative verbs, and administrative and religious lexicons.Taxonomically, Parthian, an Indo-European language, belongs to the Northwestern Iranian language group while Middle Persian belongs to the Southwestern Iranian language group.
Written Parthian
The Parthian language was rendered using the Pahlavi writing system, which had two essential characteristics: First, its script derived from Aramaic, the script of the Achaemenid chancellery. Second, it had a high incidence of Aramaic words, rendered as ideograms or logograms, that is, they were written Aramaic words but understood as Parthian ones.The Parthian language was the language of the old Satrapy of Parthia and was used in the Arsacids courts. The main sources for Parthian are the few remaining inscriptions from Nisa and Hecatompylos, Manichaean texts, Sasanian multi-lingual inscriptions, and remains of Parthian literature in the succeeding Middle Persian. Among these, the Manichaean texts, composed shortly after the demise of the Parthian power, play an important role for reconstructing the Parthian language. These Manichaean manuscripts contain no ideograms.
Attestations
Attestations of the Parthian language include:- Some 3,000 ostraca found in Nisā in southern Turkmenistan.
- A first century AD parchment dealing with a land-sale from Awraman in south-west Iran.
- The first century BC ostraca from Shahr-e Qumis in Eastern Iran.
- The poem Draxt i Asurig
- Inscription of on the coins of Arsacid Kings in the first century AD.
- The bilingual inscription of Seleucia on the Tigris.
- The inscription of Ardavan V found in Susa.
- Some third century documents discovered in Dura-Europos, On the Euphrates.
- The inscription at Kal-e Jangal, near Birjand in South Khorasan.
- The inscriptions of early Sassanian Kings and priests in Parthian including Ka'ba-ye Zartosht near Shiraz and Paikuli in Iraqi Kurdistan.
- The vast corpus of Manichaean Parthian which do not contain any ideograms.
- In North Pakistan, Indo-Parthian culture in Taxila with Gondophares 20 BC–10 BC and Abdagases, Bajaur, Bajaur, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and down in to Sistan, Balochistan.
Samples
| Parthian | English |
| Āγad hēm Parwān-Šāh, u-m wāxt ku: Drōd abar tō až yazdān. Šāh wāxt ku: Až ku ay? – Man wāxt ku: Bizišk hēm až Bābel zamīg. ud pad hamāg tanbār hō kanīžag društ būd. Pad wuzurg šādīft ō man wāxt ku: Až ku ay tū, man baγ ud anǰīwag? | I came to the Parwan-Shah and said: "Benidictions ⟨be⟩ upon you from the gods !" The Shah said: "From where are you?" I said: "I am a physician from the land of Babylon." and in ⟨her⟩ whole body the handmaiden became healthy ⟨again⟩. ⟨The Shah⟩ in great joy said to me: "From where are you, my lord and saviour?" |
Differences from Middle Persian
Although Parthian was quite similar to Middle Persian in many aspects, we can still observe clear differences in lexical, morphological and phonological forms. In the text above, the following forms can be noticed:- ⟨āγad⟩, came, instead of Middle Persian ⟨āyad⟩.
- ⟨wāxt⟩, said, instead of ⟨gōft⟩. This form for the verb to say can still be found in many contemporary Northwestern Iranian languages, e.g. Mazandarani ⟨vātεn⟩ or Zazaki ⟨vatış; vaten⟩. It is also common in Tati and Talysh, though not in Gilaki, Kurmanji or Sorani.
- ⟨až⟩, from, instead of ⟨az⟩. Observe also in ⟨kanīžag⟩, handmaiden, instead of ⟨kanīzag⟩ and even in ⟨društ⟩, healthy, instead of ⟨drust⟩. The rendering of the Persian sound /z/ as /ʒ/, /tʃ / or /dʒ/ is also very common in Northwestern Iranian languages of today.
- ⟨ay⟩, you are, instead of ⟨hē⟩.
- ⟨zamīg⟩, land, instead of ⟨zamīn⟩. The form ⟨zamīg⟩ can be found in Balochi. The form ⟨zamin⟩ can be found in Persian.
- ⟨hō⟩, that or the, instead of ⟨ān⟩.
- The abstractive nominal suffix ⟨-īft⟩ instead of ⟨-īh⟩, as in ⟨šādīft⟩, joy, Middle Persian ⟨šādīh⟩.