Frahang-i Pahlavig (meaning Pahlavig dictionary) is a dictionary of (mostly)
Aramaic languageAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
ideograms with
Middle PersianMiddle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as Western Iranian language...
translations (in Pahlavi script) and transliterations (in Pazend/
AvestanThe Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sassanid era to render the Avestan language.As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for the Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta...
script). The glossary was previously known to Indian
ZoroastriansZoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster , after whom the religion is named. The term Zoroastrianism is, in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, i.e...
(the Parsis) as the
mna-xvatay (traditionally pronounced
mona khoda), a name derived from the first two words of the first entry/lemma. The
Frahang-i Pahlavig should not be confused with the
Frahang-i Oim-evakFrahang-i Oim-evak is an old Avestan-Middle Persian dictionary. It is named with the two first words of the dictionary: Oim in Avestan means 'one' and evak is its Pahlavi equivalent. It gives the Pahlavi meanings of about 880 Avestan words, either by one word or one phrase or by explaining it....
, which is a glossary of
Avestan languageAvestan is an Eastern Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name. The language must also at some time have been a natural language, but how long ago that was is unknown...
terms.
The oldest surviving example of a
Frahang-like text is a one-page fragment discovered at Turpan that is believed to date to the 9th or 10th century CE.
Frahang-i Pahlavig (meaning Pahlavig dictionary) is a dictionary of (mostly)
Aramaic languageAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
ideograms with
Middle PersianMiddle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as Western Iranian language...
translations (in Pahlavi script) and transliterations (in Pazend/
AvestanThe Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sassanid era to render the Avestan language.As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for the Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta...
script). The glossary was previously known to Indian
ZoroastriansZoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster , after whom the religion is named. The term Zoroastrianism is, in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, i.e...
(the Parsis) as the
mna-xvatay (traditionally pronounced
mona khoda), a name derived from the first two words of the first entry/lemma. The
Frahang-i Pahlavig should not be confused with the
Frahang-i Oim-evakFrahang-i Oim-evak is an old Avestan-Middle Persian dictionary. It is named with the two first words of the dictionary: Oim in Avestan means 'one' and evak is its Pahlavi equivalent. It gives the Pahlavi meanings of about 880 Avestan words, either by one word or one phrase or by explaining it....
, which is a glossary of
Avestan languageAvestan is an Eastern Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name. The language must also at some time have been a natural language, but how long ago that was is unknown...
terms.
Manuscripts and interpretations
The oldest surviving example of a
Frahang-like text is a one-page fragment discovered at Turpan that is believed to date to the 9th or 10th century CE. Several more complete manuscripts exist in Bombay, Oxford, Paris, and Copenhagen, but the oldest of these dates to the 15th century and is missing a second folio and all of folio 28 onwards. In the earliest edition made available to European scholarship, the
Frahang is arranged serially; that is, according to the shape of the Aramaic characters. That edition, obtained by
Abraham Anquetil-DuperronAbraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Du Perron , French orientalist, brother of Louis-Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris. He stayed in India for seven years , where Parsi priests taught him Persian, and translated the Avesta for him...
in the mid-1700s, is today in the
Bibliothèque nationaleThe Bibliothèque nationale de France is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
, Paris. In 1867, Hoshangji Jamaspji Asa and
Martin HaugMartin Haug , German Orientalist, was born at Ostdorf, today belonging to the Balingen municipality, Württemberg....
published a transcript of a manuscript that was arranged thematically by chapter.
The existence of similar glossaries from Akkadian times (there explaining
SumerianSumerian was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BCE . It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE , but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary...
ideograms) led an Assyriologist, Erich Ebeling, to explain that many of the words in the
Frahang were derived from Sumerian or Akkadian. This led to a number of "far-fetched interpretations," which were then subsequently incorporated into a number of later interpretations, including those of Iranists, so effectively making even these unreliable.
Structure and content
The glossary encompasses approximately five hundred (not counting variations) Semitic language ideograms (
huzvarishn, "probably mean[ing] 'obsoleteness, antiquity, or archaism'"), "in the form used by Zoroastrians in writing Middle Persian (Book Pahlavi), each explained by a "phonetic" writing of the corresponding Persian word." Besides ideograms of Aramaic origin, the
Frahang also has a handful of pseudo-ideograms from "Arabic words coined by later scribes" and "scattered examples of historical spellings of
IranianThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
words, no longer recognized as such." Altogether about 1300 words (including word forms) are represented, "but its original extent appears to have been only 1000 words, excluding the appendices." Several ideograms are not attested in any other text.
While the one-page Turpan fragment lists various forms for verbs followed by one Middle Persian translation (in the infinitive), other manuscripts list at most three verb forms, but then provide Middle Persian equivalents of each. The primary elements (ideogram(s) and translation) "are then transcribed interlinearly, and more or less corruptly, into
Avestan lettersThe Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sassanid era to render the Avestan language.As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for the Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta...
, i.e., into Pāzand, whereby the ideograms appear in their traditional mnemonic pronunciation. Because of the ambiguity of the Pahlavi script this is often far removed from the original Aramaic spellings." In the manuscript examined by Asa and Haug, the
huzvarishn and translations are in black, and the Pazend transliterations are in red (the first chapter is an exception, and is entirely in black).
Substituting Latin characters (and written left-to-right) for Pahlavi and Pazend ones (which are written right-to-left),
Frahang glosses look like this:
Thus, "king" would be written
but understood in Iran to be the
sign for 'shāh'.
In the Asa and Haug manuscript, the
Frahang is organized thematically, divided into (approximately) thirty chapters. Eighteen of these chapters have titles (listed below in italics), the others do not. West ends his description at chapter 23 as "no further chapters are indicated." The last section/chapter is a collection of older Iranian language words (and variant spellings), with more modern words explaining the older terms.
| 1. |
In the name of the Creator OhrmazdAhura Mazda is the Avestan language name for a divinity exalted by Zoroaster as the one uncreated Creator.The Zoroastrian faith is described by its adherents as Mazdayasna, the worship of Mazda. In the Avesta, "Ahura Mazda is the highest object of worship", the first and most frequently invoked...
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| 2. |
worldly things |
| 3. |
waters |
| 4. |
grains, fruits |
| 5. |
drinking |
| 6. |
vegetables |
| 7. |
quadrupeds |
| 8. |
birds |
| 9. |
animals |
| 10. |
parts of the body |
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|
|
| 11. |
details (of the family?) |
| 12. |
superiors |
| 13. |
inferiors |
| 14. |
riding |
| 15. |
writing |
| 16. |
metals |
| 17. |
assignments |
| 18. |
verbs 1 |
| 19. |
verbs 2 |
| 20. |
verbs 3 |
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| 21. |
verbs 4 |
| 22. |
the end of praise "(?, verbs of being and dying)" |
| 23. |
written correspondence |
| 24. |
pronouns |
| 25. |
(mostly) adverbs |
| 26. |
adjectives |
| 27. |
divisions of the year |
| 28. |
names of days and months |
| 29. |
numerals |
| 30. |
spelling variants |
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