Reading an Ambiguous Pahlavi Colophon
A student is transcribing a short Pahlavi colophon in transliteration. The line reads: pad dād ī ohrmazd nibēšt. The student must decide whether dād means 'law' or 'gave', and whether the written sign Y is the ezafe particle 'of' or a relative pronoun 'who/which'. The colophon also contains the common phrase pad nām ī yazdān, which the student has already translated as 'in the name of the gods'. The teacher points out that Pahlavi script uses one sign for several sounds and that several Aramaic heterograms are written but not read as Aramaic. The student has no parallel colophon at hand and must use grammar, formulaic convention and the known meaning of the surrounding words to decide.
1. How should the student parse dād and Y in this line? Show the reasoning step by step.
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The student should begin with syntax, not with the shape of the letters. In pad dād ī ohrmazd, the preposition pad requires a noun phrase; if dād is the noun 'law', the phrase means 'by the law of Ohrmazd'. If dād were the past verb 'gave', the line would lack a subject and a natural object, and the following ī ohrmazd would be awkward. The sign Y is therefore best taken as the ezafe particle linking dād to ohrmazd, not as a relative pronoun introducing a clause. The earlier phrase pad nām ī yazdān supports this: there Y clearly marks the ezafe after nām. The student should still note the alternative in a footnote, because Pahlavi Y is genuinely ambiguous in isolation; the decision rests on the prepositional frame and on the colophon formula, not on the sign alone.
2. What does this example show about the limits of reading Pahlavi from transliteration alone?
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It shows that transliteration can hide the very ambiguities the script creates. A sign written Y may stand for the ezafe, a relative pronoun, or part of a heterogram; dād may be a noun or a verb. The student who reads only a Latin transliteration may never see that the same written sign serves several functions. Conversely, the student who reads only the script may over-interpret a sign that the context disambiguates. The correct method is to combine the written form, the grammatical frame, and the formulaic conventions of colophons. The example also warns against treating a heterogram as if it were read with its Aramaic meaning: the written form must be converted to the intended Middle Persian reading before translation.