Bactrian language


Bactrian is an extinct Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria and used as the official language of the Greco-Bactrian, Kushan, and the Hephthalite empires.

Name

It was long thought that Avestan represented "Old Bactrian", but this notion had "rightly fallen into discredit by the end of the 19th century".
Bactrian, which was written predominantly in an alphabet based on the Greek script, was known natively as αριαο . It has also been known by names such as Greco-Bactrian, Kushan or Kushano-Bactrian.
Under Kushan rule, Bactria became known as Tukhara or Tokhara, and later as Tokharistan. When texts in two extinct and previously unknown Indo-European languages were discovered in the Tarim Basin of China, during the early 20th century, they were linked circumstantially to Tokharistan, and Bactrian was sometimes referred to as "Eteo-Tocharian". By the 1970s, however, it became clear that there was little evidence for such a connection. For instance, the Tarim "Tocharian" languages were "centum" languages within the Indo-European family, whereas Bactrian was an Iranian, thus "satem" language.

Classification

Bactrian is a part of the Eastern Iranian areal group, and shares features with the extinct Middle Iranian languages Sogdian and Khwarezmian and Parthian, as well as with the modern Eastern Iranian languages Pashto, Yidgha, and Munji. Its genealogical position is unclear. According to another source, the present-day speakers of Munji, the modern Eastern Iranian language of the Munjan Valley in northeast Afghanistan, display the closest possible linguistic affinity with the Bactrian language.

History

Following the conquest of Bactria by Alexander the Great in 323 BC, for about two centuries Greek was the administrative language of his Hellenistic successors, that is, the Seleucid and the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms. Eastern Scythian tribes invaded the territory around 140 BC, and at some time after 124 BC, Bactria was overrun by a confederation of tribes belonging to the Great Yuezhi and Tokhari. In the 1st century AD, the Kushana, one of the Yuezhi tribes, founded the ruling dynasty of the Kushan Empire.
The Kushan Empire initially retained the Greek language for administrative purposes but soon began to use Bactrian. The Bactrian Rabatak inscription records that the Kushan king Kanishka discarded Greek as the language of administration and adopted Bactrian. The Greek language accordingly vanished from official use and only Bactrian was later attested. The Greek script however remained and was used to write Bactrian.
The territorial expansion of the Kushans helped propagate Bactrian in other parts of Central Asia and North India.
In the 3rd century, the Kushan territories west of the Indus River fell to the Sasanians, and Bactrian began to be influenced by Middle Persian. Besides the Pahlavi script and the Brahmi script, some coinage of the period is still in the Greco-Bactrian script.
From the mid-4th century, Bactria and northwestern India gradually fell under the control the Hephthalite tribes. The Hephthalite period is marked by linguistic diversity; in addition to Bactrian, Middle Persian, Indo-Aryan and Latin vocabulary is also attested. The Hephthalites ruled these regions until the 7th century when they were overrun by the Ummayad Caliphate, after which official use of Bactrian ceased. Although Bactrian briefly survived in other usage, that also eventually ceased, and the latest known examples of the Bactrian script, found in the Tochi Valley in Pakistan, date to the end of the 9th century.

Writing system

Among Indo-Iranian languages, the use of the Greek script is unique to Bactrian. Although ambiguities remain, some of the disadvantages were overcome by using heta for and by introducing sho to represent. Xi and psi were not used for writing Bactrian as the ks and ps sequences do not occur in Bactrian. They were however probably used to represent numbers.

Records

The Bactrian language is known from inscriptions, coins, seals, manuscripts, and other documents.
Sites at which Bactrian language inscriptions have been found are Afrasiyab in Uzbekistan; Kara-Tepe, Airtam, Delbarjin, Balkh, Kunduz, Baglan, Ratabak/Surkh Kotal, Oruzgan, Kabul, Dasht-e Navur, Ghazni, Jagatu in Afghanistan; and Islamabad, Shatial Bridge and Tochi Valley in Pakistan.
Of eight known manuscript fragments in Greco-Bactrian script, one is from Lou-lan and seven from Toyoq, where they were discovered by the second and third Turpan expeditions under Albert von Le Coq. One of these may be a Buddhist text. One other manuscript, in Manichaean script, was found at Qočo by Mary Boyce in 1958.
in the Kushan script.
Over 150 legal documents, accounts, letters and Buddhist texts have surfaced since the 1990s, the largest collection of which is the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents. These have greatly increased the detail in which Bactrian is currently known.

Phonology

The phonology of Bactrian is not known with certainty, owing to the limitations of the native scripts.

Consonants

A major difficulty in determining Bactrian phonology is that affricates and voiced stops were not consistently distinguished from the corresponding fricatives in the Greek script.
The status of θ is unclear; it only appears in the word ιθαο 'thus, also', which may be a loanword from another Iranian language. In most positions Proto-Iranian *θ becomes , or is lost, e.g. *puθra- > πουρο 'son'. The cluster *θw, however, appears to become, e.g. *wikāθwan > οιγαλφο 'witness'.
ϸ continues, in addition to Proto-Iranian *š, also Proto-Iranian *s in the clusters *sr, *str, *rst. In several cases Proto-Iranian *š however becomes or is lost; the distribution is unclear. E.g. *snušā > ασνωυο 'daughter-in-law', *aštā > αταο 'eight', *xšāθriya > χαρο 'ruler', *pašman- > παμανο 'wool'.

Vowels

The Greek script does not consistently represent vowel length. Fewer vowel contrasts yet are found in the Manichaean script, but short and long are distinguished in it, suggesting that Bactrian generally retains the Proto-Iranian vowel length contrast.
It is not clear if ο might represent short in addition to, and if any contrast existed. Short may have occurred at least as a reflex of *a followed by a lost *u in the next syllable, e.g. *madu > μολο 'wine', *pasu > ποσο 'sheep'. Short is also rare. By contrast, long, are well established as reflexes of Proto-Iranian diphthongs and certain vowel-semivowel sequences: η < *ai, *aya, *iya; ω < *au, *awa.
An epenthetic vowel is inserted before word-initial consonant clusters.
Original word-final vowels and word-initial vowels in open syllables were generally lost. A word-final ο is normally written, but this was probably silent, and it is appended even after retained word-final vowels: e.g. *aštā > αταο 'eight', likely pronounced.
The Proto-Iranian syllabic rhotic *r̥ is lost in Bactrian, and is reflected as ορ adjacent to labial consonants, ιρ elsewhere; this agrees with the development in the western Iranian languages Parthian and Middle Persian.

Orthography

Greek LetterIPAGreek LetterIPAGreek LetterIPA
α, ηρ
α/οθσ,
βι, τ
β/ββκυ
γ, λφ
δμχ
δ/δδνχο
εο,, ω
ζ,, πϸ

Footnotes