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308
THE
ALPHABET
as a; w as v; y as consonant y or vowel i; g was given two forms, one for g, and the other for gh (); both the letters / and r could denote either the /or the r; p represented either the p or the f; the samekh was adopted for the sounds, and the shin for the sound sh. The sade (emphatic s) was adopted for the sound ch. The letters he, teth and 'ayin appear only in Semitic words. The g used as gh was distinguished from the original form by the addition of the so-called aspiration-stroke. This alphabet was, obviously, not sufficient to express all the Iranian consonants; therefore, some letters were used also for related sounds, the p for w; the t also for d, dh, and sometimes for th (in some instances a modification of the samekh was used as th); the ch was employed also as j (zh), but sometimes the letter sh was used for the same sound. The het was adopted for the sound / or 7 (kh).
Final consonants were followed by a re (in good manuscripts, only after b, p, t, ch, k, w and g). In the inscriptions, a peculiar sign, read by some scholars as a long e, is used as closing vowel. Long vowels in the middle of the words were denoted by aleph, or yod (with two "sublinear" points) or w, but the yod and the waw could denote also the short i or u, respectively, whereas the sound a was marked almost only before aleph. Out of the compounds +p, and e+b, two special Avesta letters were formed to distinguish the aspirant w from the sound .
Through a steady modification of sounds, when at the same time the script was preserved, the Pahlavi writing became more historical than phonetic.
The Avesta
The most famous of the Persian indigenous scripts is the Pazand or Avesta alphabet, the script of the sacred Persian literature. It is a most cursive script of fifty signs (Fig. 141). Its origin is uncertain. In my opinion, unlike the Pahlavi scripts, it is an artificial creation, in which the inventor used both Pahlavik and Parsik elements, and his knowledge of the Greek alphabet.
The Iranian or Persian or Zoroastrian sacred literature is called Atesta; this term comes from the Middle Persian or Pahlavi form avistak, which some scholars prefer to read apastak; the Pazand form is avasta, and the Sanskrit term, avista. Avistavak or Avistavani denotes "Avesta-speech." The origin of the word is uncertain; F. C. Andreas, the German authority on the subject, suggested a derivation from upasta, meaning "foundation," "foundation-text." Zand denotes the traditional explanation of the Avesta texts handed down by the traditional schools, which served as the foundation of the Pahlavi translation reduced to writing. The term "Zendavesta," still popularly used (applying the term "Zend" to the language in which the sacred writing Avesta was composed) is a misnomer.
