| Pyu | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Pyu city-states, Pagan Kingdom |
| Extinct | 13th century |
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pyx |
The Pyu language (Burmese: ပျူ ဘာသာ, IPA: [pjù bàðà]; also Tircul language) is an extinct Tibeto-Burman language, mainly spoken in present day central Burma (Myanmar) in the first millennium CE. It was the vernacular of the Pyu city-states which thrived between the second century BCE and the 9th century CE. Its usage declined, starting in the late 9th century when the Mranma (Burmans) of the Nanzhao Kingdom began to overtake the Pyu realm. The language was still in use, at least in royal inscriptions of the Pagan Empire, if not in popular vernacular, until the late 12th century. It became extinct in the 13th century, completing the rise of Burmese language, the language of the Pagan Empire, in Upper Burma, the former Pyu realm.[1]
The Pyu script was based on a number of Brahmi scripts. Latest scholarship, though yet not settled, suggests that the Pyu script may have been the source of the Burmese script.[2]
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The Pyu language was a Tibeto-Burman language, believed to be related to Old Burmese[3] though the degree of proximity is still debated. The language is tentatively classified within the Lolo–Burmese languages by Matisoff, and thought to most likely be Luish by Bradley. Van Driem feels it is best treated as an independent branch of Tibeto-Burman pending further evidence.
The Pyu writing system was based on the Brahmi-based scripts of both north and south India. The best available evidence suggests that the Pyu script gradually developed between the 2nd and 6th centuries CE. The Pyu script's immediate precursor appears to be the Kadamba script of southwest India. The early period Pyu inscriptions always included interlinear Brahmi scripts. It was not until the 7th and 8th centuries that Sri Ksetra's inscriptions appeared all in the Pyu script, without any interlinear Brahmi.[4]
Many of the important inscriptions were written in Sanskrit and/or Pali, alongside the Pyu script. The Pyu sites have yielded a wide variety of Indian scripts from King Ashoka's edicts written in north Indian Brahmi and Tamil Sangam literature, both dated to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, to the Gupta script and Kannada script dated to the 4th to 6th centuries CE.[4][5]
The language was the vernacular of the Pyu states. But Sanskrit and Pali appeared to have co-existed alongside Pyu as the court language. The Chinese records state that the 35 musicians that accompanied the Pyu embassy to the Tang court in 800–802 played music and sang in the Fan (Sanskrit) language.[4]