SOURCES

The written sources for the organization of the state in Parthian and early Sasanian times are various and heterogeneous. The historian finds himself dealing with two points of view which rarely coincide. The first of these is represented for the most part by authors writing in Greek and Latin (mainly for the Parthian period), and also in Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Chinese and other languages (mainly for the Sasanian period). Thus, some sections of the history of the Parthian and Sasanian states are known to us only through “a view from the West” or “a view from the Far East”, and it remains dubious what particular Parthian or Sasanian institutions a given writer had in mind when he adapted ideas that he did not fully understand to his own, alien terminology. The second point of view is represented by indigenous sources.

The sources in the Parthian language consist mostly of fragmentary epigraphic material. This principally takes the form of potsherds found by the South-Turkmenistan Archaeological Expedition to Nisā: the archive of a wine storehouse (mdwstn) in the 1st century b.c., containing over 2,000 documents which have survived to the present day. A small number of potsherds, records of issues of corn to the Persian garrison, have been found at Dura-Europos. They belong to the middle of the 3rd century a.d. Some graffiti in various languages (including Parthian) were also found there, together with a few parchments in Parthian and Greek – contracts and business documents.

The place of Sasanian silver in the history of pre-Islamic Near-Eastern art has always been a prominent one. The large collection of vessels housed in the Hermitage Museum and the smaller ones in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum in London, and the Staatliche Museen in Berlin were catalogued in the early 1900s and initiated considerable discussion and controversy. The objects were chiefly accidental finds made in Armenia, the Urals, the Ukraine, Asia Minor and Iran, or purchases on the market in India and Afghanistan. Problems, therefore, existed not only concerning their date but also their place of manufacture. In recent years a large number of related silver vessels have come from clandestine excavations in Iran. Because of the way in which they came to light, they have added little certain information beyond the fact of their Iranian provenance, and they have introduced the new question of authenticity.

As there is no archaeological evidence upon which to base an attribution to the Sasanian period, some of the vessels have been ascribed at one time or another to different periods and regions. Sasanian rock reliefs, stuccos, gems and coins offer parallels for many of the features found on the silver, but they differ significantly in form and design. They do not, therefore, always supply evidence that can establish with certainty the period or the culture to which the vessels should be assigned.

The word “literature” in this chapter heading must be understood to refer to all written documents in the Saka languages, alike the documents of administration and business and the literary texts. Even so the bulk is not large, since much has been lost, though on the literary side of impressive quality.

The name too of the Saka peoples in this chapter has been chosen for its width of application. It has been generally accepted that these documents from Khotan and Tumshuq are from Saka peoples who had become sedentary. The word “Saka”, however, does not appear in the texts themselves. Its justification is the following.

In the Old Persian Achaemenian inscriptions of Pārsa, Darius listed Gandāra Sakā Maka, and wrote hačā Sakaibiš tyaiy para Sugdam “from the Saka who are beyond Sogdiana”; similarly Xerxes has Dahā Sakā. With these is to be joined the statement of Herodotus (VII. 64), oί γàρ Πέρσαι πàντας τoυς Σκυθας καλέoυσι Σακας “for the Persians call all the Skuthas Sakas”. In the 2nd century b.c. the Chinese wrote of Sak (later pronunciation Sö and Sai) to the north-west of Kāshghar. In the second half of the 2nd century b.c. Saka people descended on the Greeks of Bactria and eventually gave their name to ancient Drangiana (Zranka), which has since been called “Land of the Sakas”. Hence this name is found passim. It occurs in a wider sense in the Kharosthī inscription of the Mathurā Lion Capital (mid 2nd century b.c.) as sakastana (k = gh); it is found later in Buddhist Sanskrit as śakasthāna (with ś- replacing s-).