MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN

Although the Middle Persian (MP) verb xuastan: xuah- ‘(1) to wish, desire; (2) to call, summon; (3) to ask, demand; (4) to seek, search' belongs to the basic lexical stock of that language, its etymology is still obscure. Nyberg in his Manual1 limits himself to proposing as its origin the hypothetical Old Iranian root *hvaz- and does not adduce any Old Indian counterpart for it. His commentless reference to the two other scholars, Bailey2 and Henning3, who dealt with this problem before him and proposed two mutually excluding explanations indicates that he regarded it as not yet definitively solved. To this author's knowledge no new attempts at an explanation of this word have been made after the publication of Nyberg's book. Bailey's proposal to derive both the MP verb in question and its cognates in other Middle and Modern (including the north-western forms with present stem in -z-) from OInd. svad-, svadate, svatta- ‘be sweet, please; relish, enjoy'4 repeats Horn's etymology of New Persian (NP) xvastan given in the latter's etymological dictionary5 published before the Turfan discoveries. After the linguistic materials discovered there brought to light the important differences between the south-western and north-western Middle Iranian dialects, the phonetic contrast between MP xuast: xuah- and its Parthian counterpart uxast: uxaz- made Horn's etymology implausible. Its chief difficulty lies in it not explaining why the Parthian verb did not follow the regular pat- tern of development of d-roots as exemplified by, e.g., the Parthian verb }mb}st: }mbd- ‘zusammenstürzen' (from *ham-pad-, cf. Turfan MP hmb}stn: hmbh-)6 or the substantive p}d ‘foot' (OP. pada-, Av. pada-)7.

1 H.S. NYBERG, A Manual of Pahlavi (abbrev. Manual), Part II Glossary, Wiesbaden 1974, p. 222-223 s.v. 2 H.W. BAILEY, To the Zamasp-Namak, in BSOS VII, 1930-32, p. 74. 3 W. HENNING, Das Verbum des Mittelpersischen der Turfanfragmente (abbrev. Ver- bum), in ZII 1933, p. 187 (= AI [Acta Iranica] 14, 1977, 94), s.v. *xvaz-. 4 C. CAPPELLER, A Sanskrit-English , Strassburg 1891, p. 649 s.v. 5 P. HORN, Grundriß der neupersischen Etymologie, Strassburg 1893, p. 110, Nr 497. 6 ANDREAS - HENNING, Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan, III, in SPAW, 1934, p. 894 (= AI 4, 1977, p. 321); cf. A GHILAIN, Essai sur la langue parthe, Louvain-Leuven 1939, p. 53. 7 M. BOYCE, A Word-List of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, in AI 9a, 1977, p. 66 s.v. 78 W. SKALMOWSKI

Although Bailey in his article does not discuss the *xuaz-forms in detail, the fact that he quotes them next to his explanation of MP xuah- makes it obvious that he regards them as special variants of the root *svad- with -z- representing the spirantized -d-. Henning has chosen the oppo- site approach.8 His proposal may be recapitulated as follows: the Parthian stem in -z- represents the original Iranian root *xvaz-, while MP xuah- developed via an intermediate dialectal *xuad- in which the dental spirant had evolved from the original voiced sibilant. Although Henning does not specify the Indo-European origin of the proposed root *xvaz-, his reference to the supposedly analogical development in MP ray- ‘ordnen' (according to him representing rad = Ir. raz from the IE root *reg)9 indicates that he regarded the Parthian -z- in the discussed word as a continuant of IE *-g- and, consequently, as a counterpart of OInd. -j-. However, since the only Indian verb which corresponds phonetically to the postulated Iranian *xvaz-, namely OInd. svaj-, svajate, svakta-, means only ‘embrace, encircle'10 Henning's explanation must be rejected on semantic grounds. This paper proposes a solution which is not only in clear agreement with the semantic nuances of the MP xuastan but also explains the phonetic difference between the northern and southern forms of its present stem in a natural way. According to this author the verb from which MP xuastan was derived was a haplologically shortened compound consisting of the reflexive-possessive OIr. hva, OInd. sva ‘one's own, one's self' and of the causative of the IE verbal root *uegh- (Av. vaz- ‘fahren'11, OInd. vah-, vahati ‘conduct, carry', causative vahayati / vahayate ‘cause to conduct; guide, drive'12). In the Indian garb the proposed reconstruction would have the form *sva-vahayate > *svahayate and would mean approximately ‘to let

8 Henning's explanation has been repeated without comment by A. GHILAIN, op. cit., p. 69 s.v. xvaz-. 9 W. HENNING, Verbum, l.c., s.v. raz-. Actually, for phonetic and semantic reasons, MP rayen- ‘ordnen', rast ‘gerade, recht', NP payrastan: payray- ‘ausschmücken' should be derived from Ir. *rad-, OInd. radh-, radhnoti ‘succeed; accomplish', caus. radhayati ‘bring about, satisfy', s. C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 448; cf. especially the past participle raddha- ‘accomplished, ready, perfect' (ibid. s.v.). Consequently one cannot regard these forms — as Henning did — as cognates of NP afraxtan/afrastan: afraz- ‘erheben' which represents the IE *reg-, OInd. rajati, cf. P. HORN, op. cit. p. 22, Nr 93. 10 C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 649 s.v. 11 Chr. BARTHOLOMAE, Altiranisches Wörterbuch, Strassburg 1904, col. 1386 s.v. 12 C. CAPPELLER, op. cit. p. 480f, s.v. vah-. MIDDLE PERSIAN XUASTAN 79

(somebody/something) come/move toward oneself'; cf. the actual OInd causative (with the preposition a- ‘to, towards') avahayati/-te ‘to call near, to invite'. The Iranian forms of this verb perfectly account for the difference between the MP and Parthian present stems: OP *h(va)va- dayatai/-ti must result in MP xuahed (cf. MP dahed from *dadayati) while north-western Iranian *h(va)vazayatai (cf. Av. vazaite ‘dahin- fährt') accounts for the Parth. ux'z-. According to this etymological hypothesis the semantic structure of MP xuastan resembles that of sub-monere and thus its original meaning should have been ‘to summon (somebody), to strive (after something)'. This sense is indeed still well preserved in Book Pahlavi. The following examples may serve as illustrations: Kn. I,12 (s. Manual 2, 2-3:)13 u-s danagan ud xwamn-wizaran o pes xwast, ‘and he summoned the sages and the interpreters of dreams'; Kn. III,4 (s. Manual 5, 6) roz-e Ardawan danagan ud axtarmaran … o pes xwast ud pursid, ‘one day A. summoned the sages and the astrologers and asked'; Kn. IV,1 (s. Manual 6, 25) ka roz bud Ardawan kanizag xwast ud kanizag pad gyag ne bud, ‘when day(light) came A. summoned/ called the girl and the girl was not at (her) place'; Kn. IV,5 (s. Manual 7, 3) u-s axtarmaran sardar xwast ud guft, ‘and he summoned the chief of the astrologers and said'. As is shown by the last two examples, the prepositional phrase o pes lit. ‘to the front/before (oneself)' is not an obligatory part of a sentence with xwastan, apparently because the indication of direction was already inherent in the original OP *h(va)-vad-tanaiy. lit. ‘to let come/move toward oneself'. The use of this phrase in the first two examples was probably influenced by sentences in which the discussed verb was applied in the already enlarged sense ‘call, summon (somewhere)', a generalization requiring an explicit specification of the goal as, e.g., in o dar xuast ‘he was summoned to the court'.14 The meaning ‘to wish, desire' which was originally expressed in MP by the verb kamistan: kam- must have developed gradually through the

13 The division of the text of Kn. (= Karnamak i Artaxser i Papakan) into chapters and sections follows E.K. Antia's edition (Bombay 1900); the transcribed sections were taken from: O.M. CUNAKOVA, Kniga dejanij Ardasira syna Papaka, Moskva 1987; the corresponding passages in Nyberg's Manual, I, in parantheses. 14 s. Manual, I, p. 109,2. 80 W. SKALMOWSKI intermediary sense ‘to seek, search, look for'.15 This last sense is well visible in the following Parthian example: (M 572 V.) cw}gwn hw smn qnycg wx}st }ws gwrg wynd}d, ‘So wie jener Mönch das Mädchen suchte und den Wolf fand'.16

The final stage of the semantic development towards the meaning ‘to wish' which later became dominant in NP xvastan must have been the growing stress on the performative aspect of the act of ‘seeking', i.e., on the means providing the desired result (‘demanding, asking, praying') as may by seen in another Parthian example: (M 177 V.) kwm }}g}dg cym }c hw wx}st … [hwyc pdgryft], ‘(because) my wish, which-by-me was asked of him … [by-him-indeed was accep- ted]'.17

Although no actual form of the here proposed hypothetical OIr. compound *h(va)vadaya- is attested in the surviving and texts, it appears to be a better candidate for the etymon of MP xuastan than the phonetically and semantically unsuitable OInd. svad- or the phantomlike ‘root' *hvaz-.

Kruisdagenlaan 103 W. SKALMOWSKI B-1200 Brussel

15 The semantic difference between these two verbs (‘passive' wishing vs. ‘active' seeking) has also been reflected in the choice of roots underlying their hetero- grams: Y∑BHn-stn' (Aram. Ò-b-h ‘to wish, want') for kamistan vs. B`YÎWN-stn' (Aram. b-`-Ì ‘to search, seek, ask, pray') for xuastan, s. Manual, II, p. 111 and 221, resp., and F. ROSENTHAL, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Wiesbaden 1968, s.vv. 16 W. SUNDERMANN, Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer, Berlin 1973, p. 93, §27, l.1823-4 (Sundermann's translation). 17 M. BOYCE, A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, in AI 9, § g, 2 (Boyce's translation).