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On Pāzand: Philological Comparison with Pahlavi Hamid Moein a Thesis

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On Pāzand: Philological comparison with Pahlavi Hamid Moein A Thesis in the Special Individualized Program Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (SIP - Classics, Language, and Literature) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada August 2012 © Hamid Moein, 2012 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Hamid Moein Entitled: On Pāzand: Philological comparison with Pahlavi. and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Historical Linguistics) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final Examining Committee: ______________________________ Chair Bradley Nelson _______________________________ Examiner Charles Reiss _______________________________ Examiner Madelyn Kissock _______________________________ Supervisor Mark Hale Approved by _______________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director _______ 2013 _______________________________ Dean of Faculty Table of Contents Abstract.........................................................................................................................................................i Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iii List of Pahlavi and Pāzand (Avestan) characters.......................................................................................... iv Introduction to Pāzand ................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 - From Pahlavi/Pāzand to New Persian (Dari)? .......................................................................... 10 Chapter 2 - Observations on Pāzand and Pahlavi text comparison ............................................................ 19 Chapter 3 - Enclitics and Ezafe .................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 4 - The text analyzed, “Mainiiō-i Xraṯ” .......................................................................................... 40 4.1 Sample of an Original manuscript .................................................................................................... 48 4.2 Partial transcription of L19 manuscript ........................................................................................... 51 4.3 Interlinear Pāzand / Pahlavi transcription ....................................................................................... 83 4.4 Pāzand glossary .............................................................................................................................. 122 4.5 Pahlavi glossary .............................................................................................................................. 162 Summary ................................................................................................................................................... 204 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 207 Apendix 1 – Translation of the text........................................................................................................... 211 Apendix 2 - Transcription of the MX manuscript D42 .............................................................................. 231 ABSTRACT On Pāzand: Philological comparison with Pahlavi Perhaps sometime around the 10th century Pāzand manuscripts started to appear among the Zoroastrian communities in India even though the oldest surviving original manuscripts date back to as early as 15th century. Many philologists such as Friedrich Von Spiegel and E.W. West in the 19th century thought of them as being in a different language than Pahlavi when they first found these texts. However, later in the 20th century scholars dismissed Pāzand as being a different language. This thesis will analyze a portion of one of these Pāzand texts and determine whether the language of this text was a later regional variety of Pahlavi, another language, or perhaps just a wrong transcription of Pahlavi. In order to do so a Pāzand text will be compared to the exact same text (word by word) in Pahlavi and try to record and analyze all philological differences. In addition I have created a glossary list for both Pāzand and Pahlavi words that occur in the text analyzed. The text chosen for this philological comparison is the Mēnōg- ī Xrad (Spirit of Wisdom), a Zoroastrian religious text. As part of this project, it will be very important to do a brief comparison with New Persian, since it could be relevant to understand the relationship between Pāzand and Pahlavi. This comparison will try to also answer the question of whether New Persian really is a direct descendant of Pahlavi or not. i One of the most interesting and less ventured grammatical units in these languages is the Ezafe enclitic, a form of a suffix often not written. This thesis would try to also provide a new explanation about Ezafe and how stress patterns could affect the semantic value of it. Finally, there will be an attempt to establish a rough date for the Mēnōg- ī Xrad text as well as to determine whether the Pāzand version was copied from the Pahlavi version or vice versa. ii Acknowledgement It gives me great pleasure to take this opportunity to express sincere gratitude to my supervisory committee Professor Charles Reiss and Professor Madelyn Kissock. I am truly indebted and thankful to Professor Mark Hale for his unconditional support and encouragement over the years, since the day I took my first lesson in introduction to Linguistics back in 2003, and also for being a great source of inspiration. I would like to thank Ursula Sims Williams for helping me get access to the original manuscript L19 in the British library of London. I would like to also thank Dr. Nawaz Mody from the K.R.Cama Oriental Institute in Mumbai who facilitated me access to the original manuscripts D41 and D42. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to the SIP department for providing me with a grant so that I could travel to India and UK in order to better conduct my research and work closely with original manuscripts. iii List of Pahlavi and Pāzand (Avestan) characters The following is an inventory of the Pahlavi characters: Pahlavi character Transliteration Arameogram a ’, a, ā A a h - x H b b B ! i, ī, e, ē -- ! * d - g - ǰ – y Y, D, G n u, ū, o, ō O n n - w - r N, W, R z z Z k k K K ɣ K l r, l L M m M, Q p p P c č C s š Š t t T j l -- F s S ! + ! s -- u -yt -- C -ty -- h m + n/w/r E * Since the character - ! – can be read as four different consonants (d - g - ǰ – y), in the later Pahlavi texts such as Psalters, the scribes invented few diacritics to distinguish between them as shown here: !+ [y] , !^ [d], !` [ǰ], !* [g]. iv The following is an inventory of the Avestan characters used for writing Pāzand: Pāzand characters Transcription a ā i ī u ū e ē o ō ə ą k x g ɣ č ǰ v t ṯ θ d ð p f b β n m y r l v s š ʂ ś / ṧ vi z ž h xᵛ šc št vii Introduction to Pāzand What is Pāzand? Is it just transcribed Pahlavi in to an Avestan alphabet? Is it a dialect or something else? It is difficult to know when the word Pāzand came to be used or what exactly is its etymology since there has been many interpretation and suggestions of this word by several scholars. According to Mary Boyce the word 'pa-zand' means ‘by interpretation’.1 As she mentions: “He (Neryosang) further transcribed the original Middle Persian into the clear Avestan alphabet, for the ambiguous Pahlavi script had become additionally difficult for Parsis to read, because the Middle Persian language which it enshrined, though still readily comprehensible to speakers of New Persian, was a dead church language now for them. Since this rewriting in Avestan characters was a form of interpretation, it came to be referred to as 'pa-zand' that is, 'by interpretation', and then simply as Pāzand.” E.W. West provides us another etymology by stating what Pāzand could mean:2 “When the Pahlavi translation or Zand became obsolete it was necessary to interline it with a more modern explanation, which was called Pāzand, probably from being written beneath, or at the foot (pâ) of, the Zand “. In a paper by Professor Albert de Jong titled; Pāzand and “retranscribed” Pahlavi (2003, footnote 8), he mentions two other suggestions on the etymology of the word by other scholars 1 Mary Boyce (1979), Zoroastrians Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2 edition Routledge Publisher. 2 E.W. West (1871), A Sketch of Pāzand Grammar, and an Introduction, Messrs. Trübner and CO. 1 which are; the Avestan word pa -zai , and the other would be *pati zan- “to recognize”.3 Furthermore, Professor de Jong adds” To add yet another attempt, I believe the long [ā] in the first syllable suggests a connection with the Avestan - which is known from the compound maṯ- -, ‘ together with the commentary ’ , and specially refers to a commentary on sacred texts. One could suggests that maṯ- - itself is the origin of the word or think of a word like - - “. I personally believe that this last interpretation of the word is the best etymology so far. Nowadays, it is considered by most scholars that Pāzand is just Pahlavi transcribed into an Avestan alphabet and that is why philologists have shown very little interest
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