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The Pahlavi inscription at Mishkīn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. S. Nyberg
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Extract

Āẕarbāyjān has not hitherto yielded any contribution to Sasanian Pahlavi epigraphy, but now we have a specimen. A Pahlavi inscription, dated in the 27th year of Shāpūr II, has been found outside the little town of Mishkīn, in the centre of Mughān. The history of its discovery and publication is as follows.

1. Dr. Kambakhsh Fard discovers the inscription in the summer of 1966 during a Persian archaeological expedition to Āẕarbāyjān; photographs are taken and sent to Tehran.

Type
Articles and Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 1970 , pp. 144 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1970

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References

1 I am greatly indebted to Professor J. Duchesne-Guillemin who, in the autumn of 1968, left at my disposal this issue of this journal, which I did not know before.

2 Dr. D. Monchi-zadeh (now at the University of Uppsala) tells me that such rock palimpsests' have been common practice in Iran until recent times.

3 Tabarī, I, 836; Nöldeke, , Geschichte der Perser und Araber, 51Google Scholar.

4 The varying forms of the name betray that it is not Iranian. In Islamic times it was confounded with the word nikhwār which the Arabs had early borrowed from Middle Pers. nuxvēr ‘prince’. The name nakhvār(eh) which Nöldeke quotes from the Shāhnāma as the name of the father of Khusrau's treasurer (not found in Wolff's glossary) is certainly due to this confusion. The town Dah Kharraqān is found written Dah Khwāaqān on modern maps. (On the national map of Iran, edited 1340/1960, the town has received a new name: Āzar-shahr.)

5 The optative is a quite living form in the Sasanian official written language, and by no means uncommon in good old Book Pahlavi texts. It occurs in the 3rd pers. sg. and has the ending -ē written in different ways: here in an old-fashioned spelling, later, in the added section (v. below), according to the common use in the books. Dr. Gropp has confused ideas about this mode (AMI, NF, 1, 1968, 157Google Scholar). It is methodically not justified to stretch the archaistic Sasanian official written language on the Proorustean bed of the written Manichaean Middle Persian, which is a radically new creation and not based on the old written language.

6 In itself -'y could be read -āi and signify the Parthian subjunctive 2nd and 3rd pers. sg. (alternating in spelling with -'h) which had penetrated into the Sasanian written language, but the particle ēv decides us in favour of the optative ending -ē.

The little circle of students of Iranology working with me intends to collect and make a thorough analysis of all verb forms in the inscriptions.