Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

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Page 311
________________ 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.

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