Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
View full book text
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310
SOGDIAN ALPHABET
The Sogdians were an ancient population speaking an eastern dialect of middle Persian or Iranian, who formerly inhabited eastern Turkestan; some groups penetrated as far as northern India and Mongolia, Sogdiana (Early Persian
APLAN ON SJONS
Ciba if Carava
مله موشه
fexandznah
gie aangebran MOONs tring thirig 3000aif Gaf
نداده ام
Si eni
بن ما
THE ALPHABET
Janez & TefalAcom
mysit WARNING angachian & fize
((:41:34:5
Us
Mo
1137 3 1 4
ID :
1.333
Fig. 143-1, Specimen of Sogdian writing. 2. Specimen of cursive Kök Turki; three lines of Kök Turki letters (consisting of 19 signs) with their phonetic values in Manichæan script, written below each line
Sughuda, Avestic Sughda, Gr. Sogdiane, Lat. Sogdiana), was a province of the Achæmenid empire, corresponding roughly to Samarkand and Bukhara, now Uzbekistan, in the U.S.S.R. In Hellenistic times it was united with Bactria.
Sogdian was nothing but a name until the beginning of the twentieth century. In the first seven or eight centuries of the Christian era, the Chinese province of Sinkiang, or Eastern Turkestan, now almost wholly a sandy waste, was "a land of smiling cities with rich sanctuaries and monasteries stocked with magnificent libraries." This ancient "melting-pot" of peoples of quite different forms of speech (Iranian, Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Turki, etc.), script, and religion (Manichæan, Nestorian, Buddhist, and others) is now inhabited by a sparse population mainly of Turkish tongue and Moslem religion.
