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PAHLAVI INSCRIPTION FROM BAGHDAD.
AUGUST, 1882.]
shem-i gazûd pavan khûdo ângûn barâ vijâded chigan âtûr
[9] myazd, munat pavan nigîr dûsh-fash, bandag. Denman sitav-khvahîh min li mûnat darid va khap tâsako sitâft.
Translation.
[On the obverse.] The son of Dûshtbakht ('the ill-fated') sent a message to the son of the distracted Khasmbakht' ( the wrathdevoted'), thus:-"My anger is excited;
[on the edge] now without an uprising bend of the knee" I send back a slave-boy and slavegirl for their own beating even from thee. 10 Dispatch the slave11 so that it may not be ruinous to thee, as I seize though it be not mine; and those seven slave-boys and seven slave-girls are sent to see the unworthy of the unworthy, the fully afflicted dog of dogs, and now leap11 at them." The dog Khasmbakht took the message undejected and replied:
18
[on the reverse] "All anger is right while the quest of speech is easy. This trouble should have happened in silence, O evil man! Likewise turn away thy outcry which does not curse me and half of the unaged and aged, and every father-in-law of a youthful" son, from the now-a-day slave unto the lord. And now, in the name of the accursed, curse on so about yourself like a slave of the sacred feast of fire, which in thy sight is evil-diffusing. This request for haste is from me who tore 1 thee and hastened thy silent anxiety."
The inscription, as thus read, contains 474 Pahlavi letters and 84 different words, of which all but 15 (exclusive of the two names) are known to occur in Pahlavi MSS. These fifteen words which have not yet been noticed in the MSS., but which are all readily traceable to Persian or Avesta forms, are as follows;-chuk, varéd, kunped, lag (alag in MSS.), khabih, apîrán, khusurug, tigil, báno, vijádéd, guzud, dúsh-fash, sitáv (aúshtáv in MSS.), khap and tasako. The meaning of all the words in the transcription is,
Or, perhaps, to Khasmbakht with the distracted
son.
Or it may be khirdo, wisdom,' both here and in 1. 5. Or, perhaps, an uprising penis."
10 Better than reading kafo min chad and translating to their own mountain aside' min-ich-at being a true Pahlavi idiom.
11 Or choose the torment' if we read rikhrûn instead of virûn.
1 Or it may be képéd, 'strike;' the verb may, how ever, be 3rd sing. present.
13 That is, anger is justifiable so long as it does not deprive one of speech. Or gash, handsome."
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therefore, nearly certain, and there is little room for emendation without altering the reading of the words which, considering the ambiguity of several of the Pahlavi letters, is a matter that can never be altogether free from doubt.
The date of the inscription may be approximately stated as earlier than the conversion of the Sasanian sh, and later than the conversion of the Sasanian h or kh into the corresponding letters of modern Pahlavi." Now although there was, no doubt, a considerable period during which either the old or new forms might be used, yet it appears from the evidence of dated coins, subsequent to the Muhammadan conquest of Persia, that the modern form of the h came into use about A. D. 670, and that of the sh about A. D. 680. So that the date of this inscription may be reasonably fixed at the latter end of the seventh century. If, therefore, there be any one who still doubts the genuineness of the Pahlavi MSS. preserved by the Parsis, it will be important for him to notice that we have here an inscription of considerable length, which numismatists must admit to be about twelve hundred years old for palæographical reasons, and which, at the same time, is composed in the same style, and uses the same words and phrases, as the said Pahlavi MSS. employ. The only practical conclusion that can be drawn from such facts is that the MSS. are really (as they profess to be) specimens of a written language still current in Persia twelve hundred years ago.
This inscription is also of some interest to philologists from its giving the probably correct form (shedrún) of the Huzvârish verb 'to send' (see note 2), and from its use of the unusual word várún in the sense of 'slave,' which word is the equivalent of verezénu, 'bondsman,' in the Pahlavi translation of the Avesta. But its chief importance lies in its supplying some connecting links between the form of the final" syllable -man of many
15 It is possible to read Garavag-1 Tir instead of khusurig- tigil, and to translate every son of a priest of Tir, but this is unlikely. The whole sentence is as complicated as any of the same length in the MSS., and quite beyond the power of composition of any modern writer of Pahlavi.
16 Speaking ironically as a dog.
17 It may also be noted that out of 42 occurrences of the letter n there are 7 with the old short side-stroke at the bottom.
18 That is, it is always final so far as the Semitic portion of the word is concerned, but Iranian suffixes can be added to it, so as to give it a medial appearance.
