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Istālif and other place-names of Afghanistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Georg Morgenstierne
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Extract

How long did Greek continue to be spoken in north-eastern Afghanistan ? We shall probably never know. Till now Greek inscriptions have only been found on the outskirts of Afghan territory and from pre-Christian times, at Kandahar and at Ai Khanum (second century B.C.). The latter must have been a thoroughly Hellenistic city, and Kandahar also must have had an element in its population speaking or understanding Greek for Aśoka to have inscriptions written there in this language. On coins Greek continued to be used long after the Graeco-Bactrian kings, by the Indo-Parthian and the first Kusana kings. And the position of Greek was at any rate strong enough to induce the Kusānas to use Greek, and not Indian or Aramaic, script for their own language, a script which persevered, in a debased form, down into the ninth century A.D.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 350 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1970

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References

1 cf. the Arabic-Bactrian inscription from Tochi dated A.D. 866, v. Humbach, , Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler, I, Wiesbaden, 1966, 112 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 ‘A Greek crossing on the Oxus‘, BSOAS, xxx, 1, 1967, 45–53Google Scholar.

3 v. Acta Or., VII, 1929, 200Google Scholar. Phalūra mēcini from Psht. has probably a secondary, not an original -i. Phal. can hardly have been in contact with Psht. at a time when the - i was still being pronounced.

4 But I have not been able to trace the source, and none of my colleagues whom I have asked could help me.

5 The names of the villages and hamlets, counted from above, are, according to Dr. Farhadi: Aw-zāwa (Par. āw(a) ‘water’, possibly + zāwồ ‘ was born ’) ; Estūfālö ; Ruy-darra (Prs.); Sang-e Laxšān (Prs.); Gāmondi (?) ; Seγa-wār (‘Sandy’, Par. seγα ‘sand’, probably < sikakā, + Prs. wār) ; Māra (?) ; Andrāw-sāt (Prs. andarāb + Par. sāt ‘village’) ; Deh-kalān (Prs.) ; Böstan (Prs.) ; Čēlānak (cf. Prs. čēlān ‘jujube’). The Parachis are said to have come to Shutul from Nijrau a few generations (or ‘600–800 years’!) ago. Eventual earlier inhabitants may have been speakers of Pashai, but the only Pashai (Laurowani) place-names in any way resembling Māra or Gāmondi are Gāma, Panda-gāmā (said to mean ‘Road-hill’) and Sēl-gāma (cf. IIFL, 111, 3, 211, 216, 218).

6 v. Turner, , CDIAL, 6628Google Scholar.

7 Le premier chapitre du Vendidad, Copenhagen, 1943, 35Google Scholar.

8 Henning, , BSOS, IX, 1, 1937, 87Google Scholar.

9 Sogdijskie dokumenty s gory Mug, II, Moscow, 1962, 194Google Scholar; III, 1963, 102.