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Aramaic in Iran ARAM, 7 (1995) 283-318 283 ARAMAIC IN IRAN PRODS OKTOR SKJÆRVØ INTRODUCTION This article has a dual purpose. First, I wish to remind Aramaists of a relatively important corpus of Aramaic texts on Iranian ground which has so far received but little and scattered attention. A comprehensive study of this corpus is a desideratum for both Aramaic and for Iranian studies. Second, I need to respond to a recent article by an Aramaist (Toll, “Die aramäischen Ideogramme”, 1990), in which a theory of the origin of the so-called Aramaic heterograms or ideograms (see below) in Iranian is proposed which departs from all previous theories. In my opinion the theory has a deficient material basis and therefore leads to erroneous conclusions. It is, however, the only such study by an Aramaist, and one of prominent academic lineage at that, and miscellaneous doubtful (if not wrong) forms deduced from the heterograms have now found their way into Hoftijzer-Jongeling.1 I was encouraged by the author some time ago (letter of 9 September 1990) to (re)publish my arguments in favor of a modified “standard” theory. This is the first and best opportunity I have had to do so. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS Languages belonging to the Iranian language family were spoken in Central Asia from the 2nd millennium B.C.E. and on the Iranian plateau probably from no later than the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C.E. The first direct evidence for Iranians on the plateau comes from the Assyrian sources, in which the Parsuwas are first mentioned. For instance, on one campaign in 835 B.C.E.. Shalmaneser is said to have received tributes from 27 kings of Parsuwa. Tiglath-Pileser refers to the “mighty Medes” or the “distant Medes". 1 For instance, the forms in -TWN (late Sasanian period) are cited beside those in -TN, early Sasanian period, e.g., sgytwn ~ sgytn, quoted in Hoftijzer-Jongeling, vol. II, 776. 284 ARAMAIC IN IRAN His campaigns against them took him as far as Mount Bikni, which is probably to be identified with Mount Alvand, south of modern Hamadan (ancient Ec- batana). Finally, at the battle of Halule on the Tigris in 691, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.E.) faced an army of troops from Elam, Parsumas, Anzan, and others, and in the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.E.) and elsewhere numerous “kings” of the Medes are men- tioned. The earliest direct evidence for Iranian languages is the corpus of Old Persian inscriptions from the Achaemenid period, the first of which was probably the great inscription of Darius I at Bisotun dating from 520-519 B.C.E. and for the writing of which a cuneiform alphabet was invented by the king’s scribes at his order. Old Persian (the ancestor of Middle and modern Persian) was apparently not used as an administrative language, however, which remained Elamite in the royal administration of Persepolis and Susa, written on permanent mater- ial, and Aramaic presumably for letters and other documents, written mostly on perishable materials. It was therefore during the Achaemenid period that Aramaic started spreading throughout the Iranian territories as scribal lan- guage and the Aramaic script became the primary means of writing. The Achaemenid satraps of Asia Minor inscribed their coins using Aramaic, and so did the Seleucid (after the death of Alexander in 323 B.C.E., with an inter- lude of Greek) and Parthian kings. It reached Bactria (Afghanistan) no later than the 2nd century B.C.E., when we find it used for Iranian translations of Asoka’s rock edicts. In these inscriptions it is also, exceptionally, used for writing Middle-Indic languages (Prakrit). The successors of the Seleucids, the Parthians (Arsacids) used Aramaic script for all writing: coins, letters, inscriptions, etc., and a typical Parthian ductus appears in royal inscriptions from the 2nd century C.E. Further away in Central Asia the Aramaic script was used for writing Sogdian (in the area of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) no later than the 3rd century C.E., as well as for Chorasmian (in the area of modern Turkmenistan). The Sogdian variant of the Aramaic script, the earliest version of which is seen in some letters dating from the 3rd century C.E., later developed into several cursive variants, referred to as the Sogdian and (most cursive) Uigur scripts, as it was also used to write Old Turkish. The farthest extension of the Aramaic script was into the Tarim Basin, modern Chinese Turkestan or Xinjiang, where, in the first centuries of our era, it formed the basis for the development of the KharoÒ†hi script used to write the local Middle-Indic (Prakrit) language. The innovation of the PRODS OKTOR SKJÆRVO 285 KharoÒ†hi script was to express vowels by modification of the basic letter, e.g., by subscripts, a method adopted from the Indian scripts. The only Iranian languages that did not, apparently, use the Aramaic script, were Bactrian and Khotanese and its relatives. Bactrian was the language spoken in Bactria, which was settled by Alexander’s soldiers in the 3rd century B.C.E., who introduced the use of Greek script. Whether the Bactrians used Aramaic before this time is not known. Khotanese and related languages were spoken in the Tarim Basin, in Khotan on the southern Silk Route and in Kucha and Agni on the northern Silk Route. The populations of these areas early on became Bud- dhist and adopted variants of the Indic Brahmi script for writing their scriptures. On the Iranian plateau the Aramaic script continued to be used in the Sasanian period for writing Parthian and Middle Persian, the descendant of Old Persian and ancestor of modern Persian. The earliest monuments, from the 2nd-3rd century C.E., are in a lapidary ductus, but, parallel to it, there must have existed ductuses more adapted to writing on parchment and papyrus and, later, paper. We may note that the transition from the “classical” Aramaic ductus to the Middle Persian ductus took place ca. 300 C.E., as can be seen from the coins. The earliest non-lapidary ductus is seen in a manuscript containing a part of the Psalms of David (the Pahlavi Psalter) discovered in Chinese Turkestan. This ductus soon developed into a highly cursive one, the Book Pahlavi script, which is the standard script used in the literature of the Zoroastrians, as well as on seals and coins from the later Sasanian period. The latest and most cursive variant of this script is seen on papyri and parchments from the end of the Sasanian period. As an official script, Pahlavi was by then replaced by Arabic, how- ever. It was also in the Sasanian period (ca. 500 C.E.?) that an alphabet based on the Psalter and Book Pahlavi scripts was invented for the writing down of the Avesta, the ancient holy scriptures of the Zoroastrians, composed in Avestan, an Old Iranian language spoken in two different chronological stages, Old and Young Avestan, in Central Asia and (north)eastern Iran around the middle of the 2nd millennium and in the first half of the 1st millennium B.C.E., respectively. The inventors of the Avestan alphabet combined the forms of the letters (ultimately derived from Aramaic) with the principle of phonetic spelling of the Greek script, adding vowels, to produce a phonetically exact script, by which one could record the minutest phonetic details of the liturgical pronunciation of the holy texts. 286 ARAMAIC IN IRAN From the early Sasanian period on two varieties of Syriac script were used to write Iranian languages, as well: the Manichean script, a variant of Estrangelo the invention of which is ascribed to Mani, the founder of Manicheism himself, and the Nestorian script. The Manichean script was especially adapted to Iranian needs and was used to write Parthian, Middle Persian, Bactrian, Sogdian, and even Tokharian (a non-Iranian Indo-European language spoken in several dialects on the northern Silk Route in the areas of Kucha and Agni/Qarashahr) and Old Turkish. The Nestorian script was used in Chinese Turkestan by the Sogdian Christians. In the early Islamic period, Hebrew was used extensively by the Jewish population of Iran to write mostly modern Persian (Judeo-Persian), but also local dialects, for instance, that of Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana). Among modern Iranian languages Persian has a literature written in Arabic script reaching back to the beginnning of the Islamic period. Other literary languages, such as Pashto, Kurdish, and Baluchi, also use (or have used) the Arabic alphabet, with numerous modifications. For a survey of the Iranian variants of the Aramaic and Syriac scripts see Skjærvø, “Iranian Alphabets". ARAMAIC AND ARAMEO-IRANIAN TEXTS FROM IRAN AND THE USE OF ARAMAIC HETEROGRAMS The earliest extant Aramaic texts written by Iranians, or scribes in the service of Iranians, are the Aramaic texts from the Achaemenid period. These comprise the Aramaic texts from Persepolis from the early 5th(?) century B.C.E., mostly short inscriptions on ritual utensils,2 and the Aramaic version of the Bisotun inscription found among the papyri from Elephantine (5th century). The Aramaic texts from Egypt are also heavily influenced by Old Persian official and religious terminology. An Aramaic inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naqs-e Rostam may be from the Seleucid period (3rd-2nd centuries B.C.E.), if Henning’s reading of the name slwk in it is correct (“Mitteliranisch”, 24). Unfortunately, Henning did not specify where in the inscription he saw this name, and nobody has seen it since. No other Aramaic text from Seleucid Iran other than on coins survives.
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