Thirdly, we have the fact of the complete disappearance of the whole Aramaic or Huzvárish element in even the earliest specimens of Persian written in the Arabic character, which could hardly have occurred if these words had ever been used in speech, but which was natural enough if they belonged to the script only, and were mere ideograms.
Fourthly, we have the tradition surviving amongst the Zoroastrians to the present day, a tradition faulty enough in detail, as we have already seen, but quite clear on the general principle that Huzvárish words ought to be read as Persian. Hence the so-called Pázend and Pársí books, which are merely transcriptions of Pahlawí books into the unambiguous Avestic and Arabic characters respectively, all the Huzvárish, or Aramaic, words being replaced by their Persian equivalents, or supposed equivalents.
It may be well that we should conclude this chapter with Definition of terms. a recapitulation of the various terms that have been used in speaking of the ancient languages of Persia, an explanation of their precise meaning, and a statement of their etymology, where this is known.
Medic, the language of Media, i.e., the western part of what Medic. we now call Persia, the Máda of Darius's inscription, the Máhát (plural of Máh, which occurs as a prefix in Máh-Baṣra, Máh-Kúfa, Mah-Naháwand, &c.) of the early Arabian geographers, a region having for its capital the ancient Ecbatana (Hagmatána of the inscriptions), now called Hamadán. Of this language we have no remains, unless we accept Darmesteter's view, that it is identical with the language of the Avesta, or Oppert's, that it is the language which occupies the second place (between the Old Persian and the Assyrian versions) in the Achæmenian trilingual inscriptions. It was in all probability very closely akin to Old Persian, and certain words of it preserved by writers like Herodotus make it appear likely that from it are descended some of the modern dialects of Persian.
Avestic, the language of the Avesta, often improperly called
“Zend,” sometimes also termed “Old Bactrian,” a most
Avestic.
undesirable name, since it is, as we have seen,
quite as likely that its home was in Atropatene
(Ázarbáyján) in the north-west as in Bactria in the
north-east. In it is written the Avesta, and the Avesta
only; of which, however, certain ancient hymns called Gáthás
are in a different dialect, much more archaic than that in
which the remaining portions of the book are composed. A
special character, constructed from, but far superior to, the
Pahlawí script, is used for writing it. The word Avesta can
scarcely be traced back beyond Sásánian times, though Oppert
believes it to be intended by the word abastám in Darius's
Behistun inscription (iv, 64). It appears in Pahlawí as
Avisták (Darmesteter, Apasták), in Syriac as Apastágá, in
Arabic as Abastáq. Andreas is inclined to derive it from
the Old Persian upastá (“help, support”) and to interpret
it as meaning “ground-text.” This, at any rate, is its
“Zend.”
signification in the term “Avesta and Zend,”
which gave rise to the misleading “Zend-
Old Persian is the term which denotes the ancient language of Persia proper (Persis, Fárs), the official language of the Old Persian. Achæmenian inscriptions, and without doubt the speech of Darius, Xerxes, and the other kings of this house. It is known to us by the inscriptions, and by them only.
Pahlawí, as shown by Olshausen, properly means Parthian; for as the ancient mithra, chithra, go into mihr, chihr, so Pahlawí. Parthava, the Old Persian name for Parthia, goes through the analogous but hypothetical forms Parhav, Palhav, into Pahlav, a term applied, under its Arabic form Fahlav, by the old Arabian geographers to a certain region of Central and Western Persia said to include the towns of Isfahán, Ray, Hamadán and Naháwand, and a part of Ázarbáyján. As has been already said, we know but little of the Parthians from native sources; so little that it is not certain whether they were an Íránian or a Túránian race; the national legend takes so little account of them—whom it calls Mulúku'ṭ-ṭawá'if, “tribal kings”—that one single page of the Sháhnáma amply suffices to contain all that Firdawsí (who speaks of them as illiterate barbarians unworthy of commemoration) has to say of them; and the Sásánian claim to have revived the national life and faith crushed by Alexander is to some extent borne out by the Greek inscriptions of the earlier Parthian coins, and the title “Phil-Hellenes” which it pleased their kings to assume. Yet the name of the “Pahlavas” was known in India, and survives to the present day in Persia as an epithet of the speech and the deeds of the old heroic days—the days of the pahlawáns, “heroes,” or mighty warriors. As applied to the language, however, it has a much less precise signification in Persia than in Europe, where its application is definitely restricted to Sásánian or “Middle” Persian written in its appropriate script with the Aramaic or Huzvárish element of which we have spoken. But the “Pahlawí” in which Firdawsí's legendary monarchs and heroes indite their letters, the “high-piping Pahlaví” of 'Umar Khayyám and Háfiz, the Fahlaviyyát, or verses in dialect, cited in many Persian works, and the “Pahlawí” mentioned by Ḥamdu'llah Mustawfí of Qazwín, a historical and geographical writer of the fourteenth century, as being spoken in various parts of Persia, especially in the north-west, is a much less definite thing. Tahmúrath, “the Binder of Demons” (Dív-band), was the first, according to Firdawsí, to reduce to writing “not one but nearly thirty tongues, such as Greek (Rúmí), Arabic (Tází), Persian (Pársí), Indian, Chinese and Pahlawí, to express in writing that which thou hearest spoken.”* Now Tahmúrath was the predecessor of Jamshíd, the Yima of the Avesta and Yama of the Hindú books, an entirely mythical personage belonging to the common Indo-Íránian Legend, that is to say, to the remotest Aryan times, long before Avestic or Old Persian, let alone Middle Persian, were differentiated from the primitive Aryan tongue. When, on the other hand, a writer like the above-mentioned Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí says that “Pahlawí” is spoken in a certain village, he means no more than did a villager of Quhrúd (a district in the mountains situated one stage south of Káshán) who, in reply to the writer's inquiry as to the dialect there spoken, described it as “Furs-i-qadím,” “Ancient Persian.” With the Persians themselves (except the Zoroastrians) the term Pahlawí, as a rule, means nothing more precise than this; but in this book it is, unless otherwise specified, employed in the narrower acceptation of “Middle” or “Sásánian Persian.” It is only so far Parthian that the earliest traces of it occur on the 'Abd Zohar and sub-Parthian coins of the third and fourth centuries before Christ, that is, during the Parthian period.
*Huzvárish, Zawárish, or Zawárishn has been already explained, but the derivation of the word itself is more doubtful. Huzvárish. Many rather wild etymologies have been proposed, such as Dastúr Húshangjí's huzván-ásúr, “tongue of Assyria,” and Derenbourg's “há Súrsí,” “this is Syriac”; but Haug's explanation, that it is a Persian verbal noun from a verb zuvárídan, “to grow old, obsolete,” or a similar verb, supposed by Darmesteter to have “grown old and obsolete” to such an extent that it is only preserved in its original sense in the Arabic zawwara (verbal noun tazwír), “he forced, concealed, distorted, or falsified [the meaning of a text], he deceived, tricked, misled,” is the most probable. Anyhow a graphic system which writes, for example, “aêtûno yemalelûnt aigh” for words intended to be read “êtûn goyand ku” (which is the Pázend or Pársí equivalent of the Huzvárish) may fairly be described as a “forcing,” “concealing” or “distorting” of the speech which it is intended to represent.