Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T10:46:39.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Iranian loanwords in Syriac*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Nicholas Sims-Williams
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses two Syriac words which have been understood in many different ways by both ancient and modern scholars. The translations and etymologies previously proposed are evaluated and new explanations are offered, according to which both words, sāsgaunā “red” and syānqā “hemi-drachm”, are loanwords from Middle Persian, though unattested in that language.

Keywords

Syriac lexicographySyriac etymologyIranian loanwords in SyriacSyriac sāsgaunā “red”Syriac syānqā “hemi-drachm”
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 485 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Agnes Korn, who kindly allowed me to read her article “Arménien karmir, sogdien krmʾyr et hébreu karmīl «rouge»”, BSOAS 79/1, 2016, 1–22, in advance of publication and thus provided the impetus for the first of these notes, and who also provided valuable comments on its first draft. See also Agnes Korn and Georg Warning, “Armenian karmir, Sogdian karmīr ‘red’, Hebrew karmīl and the Armenian scale insect dye in antiquity”, in Marie Louise Nosch, Cécile Michel et al. (eds), Textile Terminologies – from the Orient to the Mediterranean 1000 BC–AD 1000 (forthcoming).

References

1 Sokoloff, Michael, A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum (Winona Lake and Piscataway, 2009)Google Scholar; Brock, Sebastian P. and Kiraz, George A., Gorgias Concise Syriac–English, English–Syriac Dictionary (Piscataway, 2015)Google Scholar.

2 Smith, J. Payne, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903)Google Scholar.

3 Ciancaglini, Claudia A., Iranian Loanwords in Syriac (Wiesbaden, 2008), 224Google Scholar.

4 Duval, Rubens, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule, II (Paris, 1901), col. 1365–6Google Scholar.

5 Shaked, Shaul, “Iranian loanwords in Middle Aramaic”, in Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.), Encyclopædia Iranica, II/3 (London, 1986), 259–61Google Scholar (where the Aramaic form is misprinted šsgwnʾ with initial š-, p. 261a); “Items of dress and other objects in common use: Iranian loanwords in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic”, in Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer (eds), Irano-Judaica, III, Jerusalem, 1994, 106–17, esp. 112–4.

6 Thus Philippe Gignoux apud Ciancaglini, Iranian Loanwords, 224.

7 Shaked, “Items of dress”, 114, refers rather vaguely to the “assimilation and dissimilation of consonants involving sibilants” but it is hard to see the relevance of the words he cites in this connection: Aramaic ṭas “plate”, Arabic ṭass “cup” < Middle Persian tašt (or perhaps rather from its expected by-form *tast); Middle Persian tis “someone” beside Parthian čiš, both ultimately from Old Iranian *čisčit. Sogdian has several examples of s assimilating to š ( Gershevitch, Ilya, A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian (Oxford, 1954), §450Google Scholar), but not of the reverse.

8 Dalley, Stephanie, “Hebrew taḥaš, Akkadian duhšu, faience and beadwork”, Journal of Semitic Studies 45, 2000, 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Feliks, Jehuda, “Taḥash”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills and Detroit, 2007), XIX, 435Google Scholar. See also Dalley, “Hebrew taḥaš”, 2.

10 Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine period, 2nd ed. (Ramat-Gan and Baltimore, 2002), 384Google Scholar.

11 Shaked, “Items of dress”, 112 n. 57.

12 On the former see Jehuda Feliks, “Tekhelet”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., XIX, 586–7, and in particular I.I. Ziderman, “First identification of authentic Tĕkēlet”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 265, 1987, 25–33, though it should be noted that Ziderman's claims gave rise to considerable debate: see McGovern, P.E. et al. , “Has authentic Tĕkēlet been identified?”, BASOR, 269, 1988, 81–90 Google Scholar.

13 See Korn, “Arménien karmir”.

14 Lorsbach, Georg Wilhelm, Archiv für die Biblische und Morgenländische Literatur, II (Marburg, 1794), 304–6Google Scholar, which is cited by Smith, R. Payne, Thesaurus Syriacus (Oxford, 1879–1901)Google Scholar, col. 2682, with an incorrect page reference.

15 It is perhaps an open question what connections there may be between such superficially similar terms for “worm, grub, moth” as Akkadian sāsu, Aramaic sās, Arabic sūs, Greek σής, Armenian c̣ec̣, Basque sats, sits.

16 Haïm, S., The One-Volume Persian–English Dictionary (Tehran, 1961)Google Scholar, 431.

17 MacKenzie, D.N., A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary (London, 1971), 74Google Scholar; Williams, A.V., The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg (Copenhagen, 1990)Google Scholar, I, 114–5, 333; II, 46 (where sʾs, 21a17, is an emendation for sʾš).

18 Cited in R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, col. 2682.

19 This form is cited by Gesenius, Guilielmus (Wilhelm), De Bar Alio et Bar Bahlulo, lexicographis syro-arabicis ineditis commentatio, II (Leipzig, 1839), 23Google Scholar, but with an erroneous explanation (“lily-coloured”, from Persian sūsan “lily” and -čarda “coloured”). On Arabic sūsanjird for Persian sōzankard “needle-work”, Niya Kharoṣṭhī su ȷ́ inakirta, see Lüders, Heinrich, Textilien im alten Turkistan (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1936, Nr. 3), 31–2Google Scholar.

20 Bedjan, Paulus, Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, II (Paris, 1891)Google Scholar, 299, line 20.

21 E27 (formerly C2), f. 69v, line 14, ed. Sims-Williams, Nicholas, The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C 2 (Berliner Turfantexte, XII, Berlin, 1985), 146Google Scholar.

22 Luke 10.35, ed. Müller, F.W.K., Soghdische Texte I (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1912, Nr. 2), 36Google Scholar.

23 de Lagarde, P., Praetermissorum Libri Duo (Göttingen, 1879), 58Google Scholar.

24 Duval, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule, II, col. 1344.

25 Gottheil, R.J.H., The Syriac–Arabic Glosses of Īshōʿ Bar ʿAlī, Part II (Rome, 1908), 163Google Scholar.

26 Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic periods (Ramat-Gan and Baltimore, 2002), 802Google Scholar.

27 Drower, E.S. and Macuch, R., A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford, 1963), 324Google Scholar.

28 In Arnoldi, Albrecht Jacob et al. , Museum für biblische und orientalische Litteratur, I/1 (Marburg, 1807), 26–7Google Scholar.

29 Spiegel, Fr., Grammatik der Huzvâresch-Sprache (Vienna, 1856), 77–8Google Scholar; de Lagarde, Paul, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Leipzig, 1866), 71Google Scholar; Hübschmann, Heinrich, Armenische Grammatik, I (Leipzig, 1897), 237Google Scholar.

30 Brockelmann, Carl, Lexicon Syriacum, 2nd ed. (Halle, 1928), 472Google Scholar; Ciancaglini, Iranian Loanwords, 221–2.

31 Telegdi, S., “Essai sur la phonétique des emprunts iraniens en araméen talmudique”, Journal Asiatique, 226, 1935, 177–256 Google Scholar, esp. p. 197; Bernhard Geiger in Krauss, Samuel et al. , Additamenta ad librum Aruch Completum (Vienna, 1937), 171Google Scholar [non vidi].

32 Göbl, Robert, Sasanian Numismatics (Braunschweig, 1971), 27Google Scholar; Schindel, Nikolaus, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Paris – Berlin – Wien, III/1 (Vienna, 2004), 103Google Scholar. Göbl's statement (op. cit., 29) that “the name of the half-drachm piece was … unknown” can now be revised.

33 Hinz, Walther, Islamische Masse und Gewichte (Handbuch der Orientalistik, Ergänzungsband 1, Heft 1, Leiden, 1955), 11Google Scholar.

34 See Yoshida, Yutaka, “Sogdian miscellany”, Studia Iranica, 13, 1984, 145–9Google Scholar, esp. 146 n. 2; Sims-Williams, Nicholas, Biblical and other Christian Sogdian Texts from the Turfan Collection (Berliner Turfantexte, XXXII, Turnhout, 2014), 103Google Scholar.

35 Rather than “double” with Drower and Macuch, Mandaic Dictionary, 100.