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THE ALPHABET
Aramaic "Ideograms" Pahlavi was formerly supposed to be a mixed form of speech and "one of the most enigmatical languages known to have existed" (M. Haug, 1870). Nowadays it is known that the foreign elements found in the Pahlavi inscriptions and other written documents are merely "ideograms," which prove to be obsolete Aramaic words. They were written in evolved ligatures of Aramaic letters, and read not in Aramaic, that is the original language, but in Pahlavi. There are similar instances in English, abbreviated Latin "ideograms" (such as d., £, &, e.g., No., i.e., etc.) being read not in Latin, but in English ("pence," "pound," "and," "for example," "number," "that is," "and so forth"). Sir Ellis Minns reminds me of the "ideogram" vis. commonly employed in English: "In reading aloud usually rendered by 'namely'" (A. H. Murray and others, A New English Dictionary, Oxford, 1928). The term is an abbreviation of Latin videlicet (stem of videre, 'to see,' + licet, 'it is permissible')="that is to say," "namely," "to wit"; the s represents the ordinary mediaeval Latin symbol of contraction for et or -et (Murray). However, the Aramaic "ideograms" are very numerous in Pahlavi documents; all pronomina, conjunctions, as well as many nouns (such as "day," "month"), and verbs are expressed by "ideograms," to which Pahlavi flexional terminations are simply tied on.
A typical example is shah an shah ("king of kings," "great king," "emperor"), which regularly occurs in the titles of the Sasanian kings, and is written with the Aramaic ideogram mlk'n mlk' (malkan malka).
"The Parsis possess, apparently from old times, an almost complete list of these "ideograms," that is the Frahang i Pahlavik, or PahlaviPazand Glossary, a systematic dictionary, in which for every ideogram Iranian pronunciation is given." There are, however, many errors due to the ignorance of the copyists.
Pahlavi Alphabets At the end of the third or during the second century B.C., the Persians created for their own language the alphabet termed Pahlavi or Pehlevi. This term, derived from Parthava of the inscriptions of Darius (Greek Parthyaioi, Latin Parthi), means simply "Parthian," and indicates that both the speech and the script developed in Parthian times. Other linguistic, graphical and historical evidence points the same way.
It is far from clear how the Pahlavi system of writing developed. It cannot have been the creation of an individual, because in that case the system would have been more consistently worked out, and the almost contemporary appearance of two or more varieties would be inexplicable. It may, therefore, be assumed that the Pahlavi scripts were a natural development from local cursive Aramaic scripts.
