A note on Pahlavi lexicography: Middle Persian hassār, hassārīh (original) (raw)

Contributions to Middle Persian Lexicography

2020

This article is the first issue of a series of “Contributions to Middle Persian Lexicography”. In this Issue: * The 2nd chapter of Dēnkard 3 is read and translated. This Chapter was left unread and untranslated in Jean de Menasce’s Translation of Dēnkard 3. He thought that this part is badly damaged and it is not possible to make a coherent translation of it. I think it is a complicated and difficult piece, which may be described as ornate prose. *A new translation is proposed for Pahlavi Riwāyat 48.74. * The word ābāstan ‘to fall, to collapse, to cast, …’ is introduced to Middle Persian Lexicography. * Some almost new definitions are introduced for Middle Persian words pūč, xwurdag, xwurdag-nigerišnīh, hu-bōy-gar, kālbod kardan. * It is shown that the reading and definition of a Pahlavi word as pa(č)čībāgīh ‘deceit, hypocrisy’ (as in MacKenzie’s dictionary) is incorrect. * Conjectures are made about two Middle Persian compound-words. * A suggestion is made about a passage of Luγat i Furs

Marginal Remarks on the History of Some Persian Words

Iran and the Caucasus, 2012

The paper includes historical comments on several Persian words from classical texts and vernacular language, particularly the lexical group denoting 'mandrake', some other plant-names ('water-cress', 'fenugreek'), adjectives and social terms ('bald', 'prostitute', 'lame'), names of body-parts…

FROM OLD TO NEW PERSIAN

From Old to New Persian, In The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, A. Sedighi and P. Shabani-Jadidi eds., Oxford, 2018, pp. 7-51 (sections 2.4 and 2.12-2.22, on New Persian, by P. Orsatti).

This chapter looks at the evolution of Persian, the only language to be substantially documented in all three periods of Old, Middle, and New Iranian on account of its close association with political centres over the centuries: Old and Middle Persian with the Achaemenids and the Sasanians, New Persian with Islamic powers. The chapter includes two parts, preceded by a survey of research on the three stages of Persian. The first part presents the documentation of Old and Middle Persian, discusses the innovations of Old Persian, and considers the transition from Old to Middle Persian. The second part deals with the rise of New Persian by taking into account Early Judaeo-Persian, Persian in Syriac script, Manichaean New Persian, and the early texts in Arabic script. It then discusses the main changes of the language in its literary and non-literary varieties until Contemporary New Persian.

Some Remarks on the Proto-Middle Persian Inscription Persis 2 and the Oblique Case

Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 2023

This article deals with a pre-Sasanian inscription written in Middle Persian script recently published by N. Sims-Williams, who named it 'Persis 2'. First, some observations on the reading and interpretation of the text are proposed. Then, it is argued that the instances of final-y in this inscription could correspond to a phonetic notation of the oblique singular ending-ē, hitherto only reconstructed for proto-Middle Persian. Finally, a discussion on the origin of heterographic writing with respect to the graphical representation of Iranian morphological endings is proposed, in the attempt to explain why a final-y for the ending -ē is not regularly noted in all the comparable documents from the middle Arsacid period.

Contributions to Iranian Etymology I. Some Iranian Words in Greek Sources

Orientalia, 2023

This article deals with the identification and explanation of several Iranian words and names preserved in Greek sources (απομεναμα < OP *apām vauvīnām māha ‘Month of the Good Waters’; πισάγας < OIr. *pisanga- ‘leper, spotted’; Τέασπις < OP *Θiyāvāspi-; ψιττάκη < OIr. *xšviftakā̆- ‘sweet, nectarous (bird)’; *τίγρης < OIr. *tigra- ‘sharp, pointed’). For each of them, a thorough discussion is provided on the problems connected to the transmission within the Greek tradition and to the ultimate Iranian etymology.