Middle Persian
Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, the official language of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Name
"Middle Iranian" is the name given to middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects. The middle stage of Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian peoples of Persia proper, which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia. The Persians called their language Parsik, meaning "Persian".Another Middle Iranian language was Parthian, i.e. the language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper, which lies along the southern/south-eastern edge of the Caspian sea and is adjacent to the boundary between western and eastern Iranian languages. The Parthians called their language Parthawik, meaning "Parthian". Via regular sound changes Parthawik became Pahlawik, from which the word 'Pahlavi' eventually evolved. The -ik in parsik and parthawik was a regular Middle Iranian suffix for "pertaining to". The New Persian equivalent of -ik is -i.
When the Arsacids came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they inherited the use of written Greek as the language of government. Under the cultural influence of the Greeks, some Middle Iranian languages, such as Bactrian, also had begun to be written in Greek script. But yet other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in a script derived from Aramaic. This occurred primarily because written Aramaic had previously been the written language of government of the former Achaemenids, and the government scribes had carried that practice all over the empire. This practice had led to others adopting Imperial Aramaic as the language of communications, both between Iranians and non-Iranians, as well as between Iranians. The transition from Imperial Aramaic to Middle Iranian took place very slowly, with a slow increase of more and more Iranian words so that Aramaic with Iranian elements gradually changed into Iranian with Aramaic elements. Under Arsacid hegemony, this Aramaic-derived writing system for Iranian languages came to be associated with the Parthians in particular, and thus the writing system came to be called pahlavi "Parthian" too.
Aside from Parthian, Aramaic-derived writing was adopted for at least four other Middle Iranian languages, one of which was Middle Persian. In the 3rd-century CE, the Parthian Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids, who were natives of the south-west and thus spoke Middle Persian as their native language. Under Sassanid hegemony, the Middle Persian language became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. In the 7th-century, the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs. Under Arab influence, Iranian languages began be written in Arabic script, while Middle Persian began to rapidly evolve into New Persian and the name parsik became Arabicized farsi. Not all Iranians were comfortable with these Arabic-influenced developments, in particular, members of the literate elite, which in Sassanid times consisted primarily of Zoroastrian priests. Those former elites vigorously rejected what they perceived as 'Un-Iranian', and continued to use the "old" language and Aramaic-derived writing system. In time, the name of the writing system, pahlavi "Parthian", began to be applied to the "old" Middle Persian language as well, thus distinguishing it from the "new" language, farsi. Consequently, 'pahlavi' came to denote the particularly Zoroastrian, exclusively written, late form of Middle Persian. Since almost all surviving Middle Persian literature is in this particular late form of exclusively written Zoroastrian Middle Persian, in popular imagination the term 'Pahlavi' became synonymous with Middle Persian itself.
The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal, which reflects the post-Sasanian era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script.
Transition from Old Persian
In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE up to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE.The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period to an analytic form:
- nouns, pronouns, and adjectives lost their case inflections
- prepositions were used to indicate the different roles of words.
- many tenses began to be formed from a composite form
- the language developed a split ergative morphosyntactic alignment
Transition to New Persian
- Sound changes, such as
- *the dropping of unstressed initial vowels
- *the epenthesis of vowels in initial consonant clusters
- *the loss of -g when word final
- *change of initial w- to either b- or
- Changes in the verbal system, notably the loss of distinctive subjunctive and optative forms, and the increasing use of verbal prefixes to express verbal moods
- a transition from split ergative back to consistent nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment
- Changes in the vocabulary, particularly the establishment of a superstratum or adstratum of Arabic loanwords replacing many Aramaic loans and native terms.
- The substitution of Arabic script for Pahlavi script.
Surviving literature
Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of Zoroastrianism, which was the state religion of Sasanian Iran before the Muslim conquest of Persia. The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sasanian times, although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition. However, most texts, including the translated versions of the Zoroastrian canon, date from the ninth to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect the state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies. Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian, used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns, and the Middle Persian of the Church of the East, evidenced in the Pahlavi Psalter ; these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia, including Turpan and even localities in South India. All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sasanian-era pronunciation of the former.
Samples
Below is transcription and translation of the first page of the facsimile known as Book of Arda Viraf, originally written in a Pahlavi script.''
Poetry
A sample Middle Persian poem from manuscript of Jamasp Asana:Other sample texts
Vocabulary
Affixes
There are a number of affixes in Middle Persian that did not survive into Modern Persian:| Middle Persian | English | Other Indo-European | Example |
| A- | Privative prefix, un-, non-, not- | Greek a- | a-spās 'ungrateful', a-bim 'fearless', a-čār 'inevitable', a-dād 'unjust' |
| An- | Prevocalic privative prefix, un-, non- | English -un, German ant- | an-ērān 'non-Iranian', an-ast 'non-existent' |
| -ik | Having to do with, having the nature of, made of, caused by, similar to | English -ic, Latin -icus, Greek –ikos, Slavic -isku | Pārsīk 'Persian', Āsōrik 'Assyrian', Pahlavik 'Parthian', Hrōmāyīk/Hrōmīk 'Byzantine, Roman', Tāzīk 'Arab' |
Location suffixes
| Middle Persian | Other Indo-European | Example |
| -gerd | Mithradatgerd "Mithridates City", Susangerd, Darabgerd "Darius City", Bahramjerd "Bahram City", Dastgerd, Virugerd, Borujerd | |
| -vīl | Ardabil "Holy City", Kabul and Zabol | |
| -āpāt | Ashkābād > Ashgabat "Land of Arsaces" | |
| -stān | English stead 'town', Russian stan 'settlement', common root with Germanic stand | Tapurstan, Sakastan |
Comparison of Middle Persian and Modern Persian vocabulary
There are a number of phonological differences between Middle Persian and New Persian. The long vowels of Middle Persian did not survive in many present-day dialects. Also, initial consonant clusters were very common in Middle Persian. However, New Persian does not allow initial consonant clusters, whereas final consonant clusters are common.| Early Middle Persian | English | Early New Persian | Notes | Other Indo-European |
| Drōd ???? | Hello | Dōrūd | ||
| Pad-drōt ??? ???? | Goodbye | Bē dōrūd, later bedrūd | ||
| Spās ???? | Thanks | Sipās | Spās in kurdish | PIE |
| Pad ??? | To, at, in, on | Bē | ||
| Az ?? | From | Az | ||
| Šagr???, Šēr1 | Lion | Šēr | From Old Persian *šagra-. Preserved as Tajiki šer and Kurdish šēr | |
| Šīr??? 1 | Milk | Šīr | From Old Persian **xšīra-. Tajiki šir and Kurdish | from PIE *swēyd- |
| Asēm ???? | Iron | Āhan | Āsin in Kurdish | German |
| Arjat | Silver | seem | floodlike "silvar" | Latin argentum, Armenian arsat, Old Irish airget, PIE h₂erǵn̥t-, an n-stem |
| Arž | Silver coinage | Arj 'value/worth' | Same as Arg 'price' in Ossetian | |
| Ēvārak | Evening | Extinct in Modern Persian | Survived as ēvār in Kurdish and Lurish | |
| Tābestān ??????? | summer | Tābestān | ||
| Hāmīn ????? | Summer | Extinct | Hāmīn has survived in Balochi, and Central Kurdish. Survived as Hāvīn in Northern Kurdish. | |
| Stārag ?????, Star ??? | Star | Setāre | Stār, Stērk in Northern Kurdish | Latin stella, Old English steorra, Gothic stairno, Old Norse stjarna |
| Fradom | First | Extinct | Preserved as pronin in Sangsari language | First, primary, Latin primus, Greek πρίν, Sanskrit prathama |
| Fradāk | Tomorrow | Fardā | Fra- 'towards' | Greek pro-, Lithuanian pra, etc. |
| Murd ???? | Died | Mōrd | Latin morta, English murd-er, Old Russian mirtvu, Lithuanian mirtis | |
| Rōz ??? | Day | Rūz | From rōšn 'light'. Kurdish rōž, also preserved as rōč in Balochi | Armenian lois 'light', Latin lux 'light' |
| Sāl ??? | Year | Sāl | Armenian sārd 'sun', German Sonne, Russian солнце | |
| Mātar ???? | Mother | Mādar | Latin māter, Old Church Slavonic mater, Lithuanian motina | |
| Pidar ??? | Father | Pēdar | Latin pater, Old High German fater | |
| Brād,Brādar ????? | Brother | Barādar | Old Ch. Slavonic bratu, Lithuanian brolis, Latin frāter, Old Irish brathair, O. H. German bruoder | |
| Xwāh ???? | Sister | Xāhar | Armenian khoyr | |
| Duxtar ????? | Daughter | Dōxtar | Gothic dauhtar, O. H. German tohter, Old Prussian duckti, Armenian dowstr, Lithuanian dukte | |
| Ōhāy ???? | Yes | ārī | ||
| Nē ?? | No | Na |
1 Since many long vowels of Middle Persian did not survive, a number of homophones were created in New Persian. For example, šir and šer, meaning "milk" and "lion", respectively, are now both pronounced šir. In this case, the correct pronunciation has been preserved in Kurdish and Tajiki.
Middle Persian loanwords in other languages
There is a number of Persian loanwords in English, many of which can be traced to Middle Persian. The lexicon of Classical Arabic also contains many borrowings from Middle Persian. In such borrowings Iranian consonants that sound foreign to Arabic, g, č, p, and ž, have been replaced by q/k, j, š, f/b, and s/z. The exact Arabic renderings of the suffixes -ik/-ig and -ak/-ag is often used to deduce the different periods of borrowing. The following is a parallel word list of such terms:| Middle Persian | English | Other Languages | Possible Arabic Borrowing | English |
| Srat | Street | Latin strata 'street', Welsh srat 'plain'; from PIE root stere- 'to spread, extend, stretch out' | Sirāt | Path |
| Burg | Tower | Germanic burg 'castle' or 'fort' | Burj | Tower |
| Tāk | Arch, vault, window | Borrowed into Anatolian Turkish and Standard Azerbaijani in taqča 'a little window, a niche' | Tāq | Arch |
| Nav-xudā | Master of a ship, captain | From PIE root *nau-; cognates with Latin navigia | Nāxu?ā | Captain |
| Nargis | Narcissus | Narjis | Narcissus | |
| Gōš | Hearer, listener, ear | Of the same root is Aramaic gūšak 'prognosticator, informer' | Jāsūs | Spy |
| A-sar; A- + sar | Infinite, endless | A- prefix in Greek; Sanskrit siras, Hittite harsar 'head' | Azal | Infinite |
| A-pad; a- + pad | Infinity | Abad | Infinity, forever | |
| Dēn | Religion | From Avestan daena | Dīn | Religion |
| Bōstān | Garden | Bustān | Garden | |
| Čirāg | Lamp | Sirāj | Lamp | |
| Tāg | Crown, tiara | Tāj | Crown | |
| Pargār | Compass | Firjār | Compass | |
| Ravāg | Current | Rawāj | Popularity | |
| Ravāk | Current | Riwāq | Place of passage, corridor | |
| Gund | Army, troop | Jund | Army | |
| Šalwār | Trousers | Sirwāl | Trousers | |
| Rōstāk | Village, district, province | Ruzdāq | Village | |
| Zar-parān | Saffron | Zaʿfarān | Saffron | |
| Sādag | Simple | Sa?ij | Simple | |
| Banafšag | Violet | Banafsaj | Violet | |
| Pahrist | List, register, index | Fihris | List, index | |
| Tašt | Basin, washtub | Tašt | Basin, washtub | |
| Dāyak | Nurse, midwife | Daya | Midwife | |
| Xandak | Ditch, trench | Xandaq | Ditch, trench |