Two Hand-Copies of a Pahlavi Colophon Line
At a district-level Pahlavi heritage club, 14 students are preparing a one-metre wall chart for a school open day. They have two hand-copied versions of the same short blessing from a Pahlavi manuscript colophon. Copy A ends one word with a stroke that Copy B lacks; Copy B uses a letter the students call 's' where Copy A uses one they call 'š'. The teacher has ruled out displaying a photograph because the original is not available and the club has no facsimile. The chart must include (i) a line in Pahlavi letters, (ii) a transliteration, and (iii) a transcription. A parent has already asked, 'Why not just write the sounds?' The group has 40 minutes and one dictionary; no member reads Pahlavi fluently.
1. What should the group do first to decide between Copy A and Copy B, and what should they not do? Give a short decision procedure.
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First, do not choose the version that 'looks nicer' or silently correct one copy. Treat the difference as a textual problem. (1) Check whether the disputed word is a heterogram: if it is, the letters are not read as sounds, so an s/š difference may be a copying error in the Aramaic-shaped spelling, not a pronunciation difference. (2) Compare both copies with the dictionary's headword and with any standard edition or parallel text the teacher can supply. (3) Test the context: does either reading yield a known word and a grammatical phrase? (4) If the evidence is inconclusive, print the better-supported reading and add a note such as 'one copy reads ...; reading uncertain'. Do not invent a third reading. The decision procedure is: identify heterogram or phonetic spelling -> check standard reference -> test grammar/context -> mark uncertainty. This is safer than presenting a guess as fact.
2. Explain why the parent's suggestion 'just write the sounds' is not straightforward in Book Pahlavi.
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Book Pahlavi is not a sound-by-sound alphabet. It uses Aramaic-derived letters that cover more than one sound, historical spellings that preserve older forms, and heterograms (Aramaic-looking words read as Middle Persian, for example BYTʾ for xānag). Vowels are often not written, and some letter shapes are ambiguous. A transcription such as xānag is therefore an interpretation by a reader who knows the vocabulary and grammar; it is not a simple decoding. That is why the chart separates transliteration (letter-by-letter representation of what is written) from transcription (the presumed pronunciation). 'Just write the sounds' would hide the script's ambiguity and could teach visitors a false one-to-one rule.
3. Draft a three-line label policy, not the actual phrase, that the group should use for every line on the chart.
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Line 1: 'Written in Pahlavi letters:' followed by the Pahlavi line as checked. Line 2: 'Transliteration (letters):' followed by a letter-by-letter form, preserving heterograms such as BYTʾ. Line 3: 'Transcription (probable reading):' followed by the standard transcription with vowel length marked, plus a short note: 'Book Pahlavi spelling is often historical or ambiguous; transcription is a scholarly reading, not a simple sound code.' If a sign is uncertain, put [ ] or a note rather than filling it in. This policy keeps description, reading, and interpretation visibly separate.