Pārsīg

uzvān ī pārsīg : Pahlavi language

Pārsīg Basics

Glossary

The Perso‐Aryan languages are part of the Aryan family of languages, to which the Indic (or Indo‐Aryan) and Gulic (or the so‐called Nuristani) belong. The two languages belonging to the middle west branch of the Perso‐Aryan languages are Pārsīg ‘Persic’ (called also “Pahlavi”, “Middle Persian”) in the south and Pahlavānīg ‘Parthian’ in the north. The Pārsīg (/ Pahlavi) was the language used by the Persae settled in the south‐western part of Persia (erānšahr), From the third century B.C. till the tenth century A.D., and was used during centuries in other regions as well. It is also called Pahlavi (pahlavānīg). But it would be more exact to use the term “Pahlavi” for the Parthian language and literature.

The revival of Pārsīg as a spoken language

    The revival project began with the foundation of the ermān ī uzvān ī pārsīg (The Society of Friends of the Pārsīg language, or in French, La société des amis de la langue pārsīg, or in German, Die Gesellschaft der pārsische Literaturfreunde, or in Persian, جامعهء دوستان ِ زبان ِ پارسيگ) in 2010 (1379 A.Y.). It not only aims to revive Pārsīg as a literary language, but also to enrich and standardize the language in all walks of life.
    The mission of the ermān ī uzvān ī pārsīg is three‐pronged:
    First, it seeks to transform Pārsīg into spoken language in all spheres of life: at home, in schools, in public life, trade, industry, arts, philosophy and sciences.
    Second, it is to safeguard the classical quality of the Pārsīg language and to determine the exact pronunciation of its letters.
    Finally, it also takes upon itself the duty to provide Pārsīg with the required flexibility to make possible the expression of every aspect of human thought.

A Compendious Pārsīg Dictionary

I. English-Persic

II. Pārsīg-Englandīg

A Comprehensive Pārsīg Dictionary

vāz ud mārīgān ī pārsīg

The ermān ī uzvān ī pārsīg aims to give priority to finding and publishing Pārsīg words from Pārsīg texts and to adapt them to modern use. If an ancient Pārsīg word can not be found for a modern concept, the ermān ī uzvān ī pārsīg will step in to fill the gap by creating new words. In the act of invention, it will consider mainly Pārsīg roots; words from the Avesta cognate can be considered if no Pārsīg word is applicable, and even then the Avesta word has to be persicized in pronunciation and spelling. Pārsīg can and should borrow from its cognate languages within the same linguistic family: one, the “Middle” Perso-Aryan languages, Parthian, Sogdian, Khvarazmian, Bactrian, Khotanese; the other, the local dialects and vernacular languages, Persian, Kurdish, Luri, Baluchi, Pashto, Ossetic, Tati, Shughni, Wakhi, Parachi, Gilaki, Kumzari, etc. Next are roots and words from other Aryan languages, especially Sanskrit.

Corpus of old Pārsīg texts

Of the imaginative literature of Persia (ērānšahr) in Sasanian times almost nothing survives in Middle Persian/ Pahlavi, and this has tended to obscure its width, variety and richness. Some survives, however, through Arabic and Persian translations, and a good deal more in Persian recensions and adaptations. The originals were destroyed partly during the Arab-Muslim onslaught and some subsequent foreign invasions, notably the Mongol onslaught, and partly through Muslim fanaticism in Iran itself, down to recent times. After a lull, a new literature – that of New Persian – emerged, which embodied and continued many of the norms and traditions of Sasanian literature and met the literary needs of people. It is to this literature above all that we must turn for an appreciation of Sasanian literary genres and conventions. Apart from religious (Mazdayanian) literature, the most important genres were poetry, fiction, wisdom literature, history, informative and scientific writing. Much of this wealth of secular literature was destroyed, and part of it was absorbed into the literature of Muslim Persia, composed in Arabic or Persian; and the relatively few works which survive in Pārsīg/ Pahlavi represent only those religious and scholastic compositions which could be preserved by an ever-dwindling band of priestly copyists during centuries of poverty and persecution.

The corpus of Extant Pārsīg texts consists mainly of inscriptions, the bulk of Aryan (Mazdayasnian) texts, of the collection of non-Aryan (Manichaean and Christian) texts, and to a lesser extent of official and other documents (papyri, parchments, ostraca, sigla, and bullæ).

Our task is to make available to you the “standard” transcription of the whole corpus of Pārsīg texts.

Corpus of old Pārsīg texts​

Corpus of old Pārsīg texts