Parthian language
| Parthian | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Ancient Iran | |
| speaker | none ( language extinct ) | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-3 |
xpr |
|
The Parthian is an extinct Middle Iranian language . It was the language of Parthian ( old Pers. Partθava ), the historical landscape that roughly corresponds to the regions of Khorasan and Golestan as well as today's Turkmenistan . History said the Parthian as has farm and - the language of administration of the Arsakiden - Dynasty (247 .. BC .. To 224 AD) dominated Empire gained importance (→ Parthian ).
material
The most important and most reliable language testimonies of Parthian do not come from the Arsakid period, but from the Sassanian period, as poetry and religious tradition were primarily passed down orally, and the coins carried Greek legends for a long time, up to the middle of the 1st century AD and the evidence actually written in Parthian script still contains so much Aramaic that one can hardly gain anything for Parthian. This assessment applies equally to the few rock inscriptions in Parthian script and language (for example from Sar-e-pol-e-Zohab in the Zāgros Mountains ) as to the small vessel inscriptions; but in principle it also applies to the documents on ostraka from Shahr-i Qumis (north-east Iran) and those from the archive of Nisa (Turkmenistan) with well over 2000 ostraka fragments from the 1st century BC. BC, which concern wine deliveries and food allocations, as well as for the parchment deeds from Hawraman (Western Iran).
In the Sassanid period, the earliest royal inscriptions by Ardaschir I , Shapur I and Narseh were accompanied by a Parthian version in addition to the Middle Persian (and partly a Greek) version, in particular the most extensive and historically significant texts, Shapur's deed of the so-called Kaʿbe-ye Zartuscht in Naqsch-e Rostam and the Narseh inscription from Paikuli . Various Parthian texts (wall inscriptions and a letter on parchment) from Dura Europos on the Euphrates also date from this epoch, namely from the time of the Persian occupation of the city . At the top in terms of volume, however, are the fragments of Manichaean texts in the Parthian language that have been found in Turfan (Chinese Turkestan) and come from the Sassanid or more recent post-Sassanid times. In the Manichaean communities of Central and Central Asia, Parthian was the church language before it was superseded by Old Turkish Uighur and New Persian , namely long beyond the heyday of Parthian Manichaeism, presumably until the 13th century had long since perished in the motherland.
The Parthian controversial poem Draxt-i Asurig has been handed down .
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The interpretation of these Manichaean-Parthian texts is - and this explains their primacy - facilitated by the fact that, like the Manichaean texts of the other Iranian peoples , they are written in the script created by Mani especially for Middle Persian on a Palmyrenian-Aramaic basis, which is written by the heterographic tradition is free and therefore allows the actual sound of the words (in the 3rd century AD) to be recognized more precisely.
meaning
There are only indirect traces of literature written in the Parthian language, as two works of Middle Persian literature from the late or post-Assanid period have been proven to be based on Parthian models that can still be grasped in the preservation of Parthian words. These two works are the rank dispute poem Dracht i asuirig "The Assyrian Tree" (i.e. the palm tree that argues with the goat over who is the more useful and the "better" creature) and the "Czarer's memorial work" ( Ayadgar i Zareran ) , a book of epic character that also has many hallmarks of oral epic such as fixed epithets or stereotypical repetitions.
The dominant position of Parthian in Iran and its neighboring regions during the Arsacid rule, which played an important role here as a bearer of Iranian culture in the entire Middle East, has led to Parthian words penetrating other languages in large numbers: into Central Persian (from there into the New Persian ) and the Sogdian language , outside the Iranian area into the Aramaic (including Syriac and Mandaean ) and especially into the Armenian . There, as a result of centuries of direct political dependency, these foreign elements, which are extremely numerous, constitute an essential part of the language, which affects not only the vocabulary, but also certain word formation elements, phraseology and names of all kinds. This rich secondary tradition of Parthian in many languages (but especially in Armenian with its script clearly identifying the vowels) made it possible to determine the sound level of the older (Middle) Parthian, which was determined by the heterographic writing system and the extremely historicizing graphics of the in Parthian (Pahlavik) script is hidden. The Parthian texts of the Manichaeans (in Manichaean script), on the other hand, offer a very precise picture of the sound level of the later language.
The striking similarity with today's Zaza language
According to a thesis of the German Iranist Friedrich Carl Andreas from 1906, the Dailemi (Dêlemî) of Parthian origin living in the South Caspian region were ancestors of the Zazas , which could explain one of the current names for the Zaza, namely "Dimili". This thesis was previously represented independently by the Armenian historian Antranig in 1900 and later found support from the Russian orientalist Wladimir Minorski and the German Iranists Oskar Mann and Karl Hadank. In his article on the historical development of Zaza, the Indo-Europeanist Jost Gippert explained its diachronic proximity to Parthian. The following table is taken from his article.
Similarities between Parth and Zaza in the Zaza alphabet:
| Parthian | Zazaisch | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bermāden | oversized | cry |
| vād | va | wind |
| vāxten | vatene | say |
| men vāxtehēndē | mı vatêne | I said |
| ez vājān | ez vacan | that I say |
| ez kerān | ez (bı) keran | that i do |
| wxerden | becoming | eat |
| wxeş | weş | well, well |
| wxār | wae | sister |
| ber | ber | door |
| hrē | hirê | three |
| çefrest | çewres | Fourty |
literature
- Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: Grammar of West Middle Iranian (Parthian and Middle Persian) (= Austrian Academy of Sciences. Session reports of the philosophical-historical class 850, publications on Iranian Studies 73, Grammatica Iranica 1). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2014. ISBN 978-3-7001-7556-8
- A. Ghilain: Essai sur la langue parthe. Son système verbal d'après les textes manichéens du Turkestan Oriental. Louvain 1939.
- Philippe Gignoux: Glossaire des Inscriptions Pehlevies et Parthes (= Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum , Supplementary Series I). Lund Humphries, London 1972.
- Jost Gippert: The historical development of the Zaza language, in: Ware - magazine of the Zaza language and culture 1996, Baiersbronn. Online: http://zazaki.de/deutsch/aufsaezte/gippert-entwicklung%20zaza.pdf
- Rüdiger Schmitt : Parthian language and name tradition from the Arsakid time, in: The Parthian Empire and its testimonies (= Historia, individual writings 122), ed. by Josef Wiesehöfer. Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 163-204. ISBN 3-515-07331-0
- Werner Sundermann : Parthisch, in: Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum , pp. 114-137.