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Page 1 of 2

  • 36 - BACTRIAN LITERATURE

  • from PART 8 - LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE
  • Edited by E. Yarshater
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Iran
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 April 1983, pp 1250-1258

  • Summary

    The study of Bactrian literature, under this name, has only recently emerged from adolescence. There is little text-material, and even it is largely elusive. On much of it no opinion has as yet been expressed that would help to place it within the pan-Iranian context of the present volume. Inevitably, therefore, many views here offered are personal. This is true especially in respect of the main Bactrian text, the Nokonzok inscription, on which the present writer is alone in print with an overall assessment.

    The notion that Bactrian was the language of the Avesta had rightly fallen into discredit by the end of the 19th century. This left the term inapplicable to any known language until 1960, when W. B. Henning identified as Bactrian the language of a Greek-letter inscription discovered three years earlier on Bactrian soil by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan. The inscription was carved in the 2nd century a.d. into a beautiful monolith placed at the entrance of the temple-acropolis of Baghlan at Surkh Kotal, situated at some 25 miles south-west of the present-day town of Baghlan, and approximately 100 miles south-east of where the capital city of Bactra had once stood. The inscription, which consists of some 180 words supplying a vocabulary of about 100, deserves to be named after its main protagonist, Nokonzok, described in it as a high dignitary holding the office of “Lord of the Marches” (kanārang) in the year 31, which year fell early in the reign of the Kushān emperor Huviška.

  • Island-Bay and the lion

  • Ilya Gershevitch
  • Journal:
    Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 33 / Issue 1 / February 1970
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 December 2009, pp. 82-91
    Print publication:
    February 1970

  • The onomasticon of the Elamite Fortification tablets from Persepolis, so generously placed at the disposal of Professor Benveniste and myself by Professor Hallock, keeps yielding precious pearls. Benveniste published in 1966 those which he had recognized. In the following year I sent to the printer a list of additional identifications, giving notice of more to follow. The present tribute to one of the giants of Iranian studies, whose massive work, countless discoveries, immense erudition, and many tokens of personal friendship have been a constant source of inspiration to me for decades, brings a selection of further identifications, as well as some revision of earlier views. The need to select was dictated by space-limit. An article containing what had here to be omitted, is being timed so as to appear in TPS shortly after the present one.

  • Professor Vladimir Minorsky

  • Ilya Gershevitch
  • Journal:
    Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (New Series) / Volume 99 / Issue 1 / January 1967
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 March 2011, pp. 53-57
    Print publication:
    January 1967
    • Article
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  • Sissoo at Susa

  • Ilya Gershevitch
  • Journal:
    Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 19 / Issue 2 / June 1957
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 December 2009, pp. 317-320
    Print publication:
    June 1957

  • One of the few Old Persian words whose precise meaning has not yet been established is yakā-, the name of a material which was used in the building of Darius' palace at Susa. In the Great King's own words ‘it was brought (to Susa) from Gandara and Karmāna’.1 That a timber was meant appears from the Akkadian version (the corresponding Elamite sentence is missing), in which yakā- is translated by GIšMlŠ-MA-KAN-NA. Admittedly the Akkadian word is partly restored; V. Scheil, in his edition,2 printed it as [miš]-má-kan-na. However, both E. Herzfeld3 and F. W. Konig4 thought they could see the determinative GlŠ and a trace of MlŠ; at all events the preserved part of the word leaves scarcely any doubt as to the correctness of the restoration.

  • A Parthian Title in the Hymn of the Soul

  • Ilya Gershevitch
  • Journal:
    Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (New Series) / Volume 86 / Issue 3-4 / October 1954
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 March 2011, pp. 124-126
    Print publication:
    October 1954

  • The recognition that the setting of the story related in the Syriac Hymn of the Soul is Iranian is primarily based on the statement in the poem that its chief character, the Prince who “from the far Hyrcanian mountains” was sent down to Egypt to fetch the unique Pearl, was the son of the king of Parthia. Less obvious Iranian reminiscences are also to be found in the Hymn, some of which have lately been discussed by G. Widengren in Zeitschrift für Religions-und Geistesgeschichte, iv (1952), Heft 2,1 sqq., where, however, one misses a reference to the relationship of srbwg with the Sogdian word for “tower”, v. W. B. Henning, JRAS. 1944, 139 sq. It is proposed in the present note to explain the Iranian origin of a hitherto obscure title in the Hymn, which from the context appears to designate one of the highest officials of the Arsacid court. This is the title of the Prince's elder brother in verse 48, where the MS. has p'rybn “our p.”.

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