Middle Persian

Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224–654 CE) became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions of the empire as well. Middle Persian is classified as a Western Iranian language. It descends from Old Persian and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian.

Middle Persian consisted of several dialects and variants. One of these variants was called Pahlavīk (Pahlavi) which stands for Parthian, and refers to the Middle Persian that was the language of the Arsacid Dynasty. Another variant of Middle Persian, known locally as Pārsik, was the official language of the Sasanian Dynasty. Most scholars refer to the latter variant when using the term "Middle Persian".^[2][3]

The native name for Middle Persian was Pārsīk^[2][4] (later Pārsīg) translating to "language of Pārs". It consists of Pārs (local name of the Persis province) + adjective suffix -īk^[5] ("having to do with"; from PIE -(i)ko and related to Greek –ikos, French –ique, Slavic –isku;^[6] e.g. Āsōrik "Assyrian", etc.). The word is consequently the origin of the native name for the Modern Persian language—Parsi or Fārsī.

Traces of Middle Persian, or Parsik, are found in remnants of Sassanian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri, coins and seals, fragments of Manichaean writings, and treatises and Zoroastrian books from the Sasanian era, as well as in the post-Sassanian Zoroastrian variant of the language sometimes known as Pahlavi, which originally referred to the Pahlavi writing system,^[7][8] and that was also the preferred writing system for several other Middle Iranian languages. Aside from the Aramaic-derived Pahlavi script,^[9] Zoroastrian Middle Persian was occasionally also written in Pazend, a system derived from Avestan that, unlike Pahlavi, indicated vowels and did not employ Aramaic logograms. Manichaean Middle Persian texts were written in Manichaean script, which also derives from Aramaic but in an Eastern Iranian form via Sogdian.

The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is 'pal', which reflects the post-Sassanid era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script.

Transition from Old Persian

In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from the fall of the Achaemenids in the 4th century BCE up to the fall of the Sassanids in the 7th century CE.

The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period (Old Persian and Avestan) to an analytic form:

• nouns, pronouns, and adjectives lost their case inflections
• prepositions were used to indicate the different roles of words.
• many tenses began to be formed from a composite form

Transition to New Persian

The modern-day descendant of Middle Persian is New Persian. The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in the 10th-11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century:

• Sound changes, such as
  • the dropping of unstressed initial vowels
  • the epenthesis of vowels in initial consonant clusters
  • the loss of -g when word final
  • change of initial w- to either b- or (gw- → g-)
• Changes in the verbal system, notably the loss of distinctive subjunctive and optative forms, and the increasing use of verbal prefixes to express verbal moods
• Changes in the vocabulary, especially the substitution of a large number of Arabic loanwords for words of native origin
• The substitution of Arabic script for Pahlavi script.

Surviving literature

Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of Zoroastrian literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of the Zoroastrian religion, which was the state religion of Sassanid Iran (224 to c. 650) before Iran was invaded by the Arab armies that spread Islam. The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sassanid times (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition.^[10] However, most texts, including the translated versions of the Zoroastrian canon, date from the 9th to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect the state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies.^[7] Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian, used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns (3rd–9th, possibly 13th century), and the Middle Persian of Nestorian Christians, evidenced in the Pahlavi Psalter (7th century); these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia, including Turfan and even localities in Southern India.^[11] All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sassanian-era pronunciation of the former.^[12]

Samples

^[13]

Poetry

A sample Middle Persian poem from manuscript of Jamasp Asana:

Other sample texts

Vocabulary

Affixes

There are a number of affixes in Middle Persian that did not survive into Modern Persian:^[14][15][16]

Location Suffixes

Comparison of Middle Persian and Modern Persian vocabulary

There are a number of phonological differences between Middle Persian and New Persian. The long vowels of Middle Persian did not survive in many present-day dialects. Also initial consonant clusters were very common Middle Persian (e.g. spās 'thanks'). However New Persian does not allow initial consonant clusters, whereas final consonant clusters are common (e.g. asp 'horse').

¹ Since many long vowels of Middle Persian did not survive, a number of homophones were created in New Persian. For example šir and šer, meaning 'milk' and 'lion' respectively, are now both pronounced as šir. In this case, the correct pronunciation has been preserved in Kurdish and Tajiki languages.^[17]

Middle Persian loanwords in other languages

There is a number of Persian loanwords in English, many of which can be traced to Middle Persian. The lexicon of Classical Arabic also contains many borrowings from Middle Persian. In such borrowings Iranian consonants that sound foreign to Arabic, g, č, p, and ž, have been replaced by q/k, j, š, f/b, and s/z. Here is a parallel word list of such terms:^[15][18][19]

Comparison of Middle Persian and Modern Persian names

See also

• Avestan language
• Old Persian language
• Parthian language
• Persian language
• History of Persian language
• Pahlavi literature
• Iranian languages vocabulary comparison table

References and bibliography

• Lessons in Pahlavi-Pazend by S.D.Bharuchī and E.S.D.Bharucha (1908) at the Internet Archive - Part 1 and 2
• Middle Persian texts on TITUS
• Scholar Raham Asha's website, including many Middle Persian texts in original and translation
• An organization promoting the revival of Middle Persian as a literary and spoken language (contains a grammar and lessons)
• Edward Thomas (1868). Early Sassanian inscriptions, seals and coins. Trübner. p. 137. Retrieved 2011-07-05. 
• Edward Thomas (1868). Early Sassanian inscriptions, seals and coins. Trübner. p. 137. Retrieved 2011-07-05. 

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