Parthian had been the official language under the Parthians, and the third-century Sasanian kings had their inscriptions written in both Middle Persian and Parthian, some also in Greek. Both Parthian and Middle Persian were written using local Iranian scripts based on Aramaic and were difficult both to read and to write.[1] The Manichean script is based on Syriac scripts, but is not identical with any of the three common ones (Jacobite, Nestorian, and Estrangelo), so today it is usually just called the Manichean script. This script was used to write Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian, as well as Bactrian (one Manichean fragment survives) and some other languages in Xinjiang.
[1]. Notably because of historical spellings (as English and French) and the use of arameograms (also called heterograms), i.e., Aramaic words to be read in Iranian (e.g., YDH̱ spelling dast “hand”). A later version of this script is used in a fragment of the Psalms of David, also found at Turfan, and a still later version is found in the Zoroastrian literature from the ninth century and later, commonly called Pahlavi.
<idle musing>
Interesting. I wasn't aware of the use of arameograms (and, yes, it's lower case!). It's sort of like Akkadian, with its Sumerograms, or Hittite, having Sumerograms and Akkadograms. Miscellaneous tidbit there: In some cases we don't even know the underlying Hittite word because it's never written, just the case endings appear, attached to the Sumerogram or Akkadogram. We know the declension it belongs to and the gender, but not the word itself!
</idle musing>
No comments:
Post a Comment