Maharashtra SSC Pahlavi L2/L3 (MSBSHSE) cheat sheet

Pahlavi is written right-to-left in a consonantal Aramaic-derived script; short vowels are normally not written, so the same letter group can be read with different vowels.

Several letters share one shape and are distinguished only by position or convention: the classic homographs are w/n/r, y/d/g, and k/g (in Book Pahlavi the g/k pair is written alike).

Book Pahlavi has about 14 distinct letter signs for roughly 20+ phonemes; Inscriptional Pahlavi (Sasanian inscriptions) uses clearer, more separated forms and is read letter by letter.

The letter aleph (ʾ) marks vowel-initial words and long ā in some spellings; it is not a glottal stop in the Arabic sense.

Ideograms (Aramaean heterograms) are written in Aramaic letters but read as the Iranian word: e.g. MLKʾ is written but read šāh, and KRA is read kardan.

A ideogram is often followed by a phonetic complement or a final -ʾ/-ē that signals the Iranian reading ending; the complement belongs to the reading, not the Aramaic form.

The standard transliteration uses letters with diacritics (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, š, č, ž, x) and a raised ʾ for aleph; transcription (the Iranian reading) is written in italics.

Punctuation is minimal: a single dot or small circle can separate phrases, and the end of a sentence is often marked by a wedge or by spacing rather than a modern full stop.

Nouns distinguish direct case (unmarked, used for subject and for the object of a transitive verb in many texts) and oblique case, marked by -ē/-ī in the singular and -ān in the plural.

The plural is regularly formed with -ān (oblique) and -īhā or -ān in direct use; inanimate plurals frequently take -īhā.

The ezāfe (connecting -ī/-ē between noun and adjective or possessor) links a head noun to its modifier: šāh-ī īrān 'king of Iran'.

Pronouns: personal an 'I', amāh 'we', tō 'you', ašmāh 'you (pl.)', ōy 'he/she/it', ōyān 'they'; enclitic -m, -t, -š attach to the first word of the clause.

Verbs are built on a present stem and a past stem; the past stem usually derives from the past participle and the present stem from the Iranian present, so the two must be learned as a pair.

Key verb endings: present indicative -ēm, -ēh, -ēd, -ēm, -ēd, -ēnd; past with the past stem plus -am, -ī, -Ø, -ēm, -ēd, -and.

The subjunctive is marked by -ān/-ād endings after the present stem (e.g. kunān 'that I may do'); the imperative singular is the bare present stem.

Vocabulary is heavily Aramaean in writing but Iranian in reading: learn the heterogram and its Iranian reading together (e.g. YM 'sea' read daryā; ŠM 'name' read nām).

Read a clause by first identifying the verb (usually final), then the subject (direct case), then the object (often marked by the oblique or by -ī).

Resolve homograph letters from context and from known words; if w/n/r is ambiguous, test each reading against the surrounding vocabulary before committing.

Treat ideograms as whole words: translate the Iranian reading, not the Aramaic letters, and keep the phonetic complement out of the translation.

Watch for the ezāfe chain: a sequence noun-ī adjective-ī noun is a single possessive or descriptive phrase, not three separate items.

Numbers are written with Aramaic ideograms plus Iranian complements; read the complement for the value and the ideogram for the category (e.g. 'three' from TLTA with its ending).

Middle Persian word order is typically subject–object–verb; subordinate clauses are introduced by ka 'when/that', kē 'who/which', and čiyōn 'as/how'.

Translate transparently: give the Iranian reading in transliteration, then a literal gloss, then a fluent rendering; do not silently smooth over uncertain words.

Passages in the same text often repeat formulaic phrases (pad nām ī dādār 'in the name of the creator'); recognizing formulas speeds comprehension and confirms readings.

The surviving Book Pahlavi corpus is mostly Zoroastrian and was largely written down in the 9th–10th centuries CE, though it preserves older oral material.

Major genres: the Dēnkard (encyclopedic theology), Bundahišn (cosmogony and cosmology), and the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (apologetic theology).

Narrative and wisdom texts include the Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšīr ī Pābagān (foundation legend of the Sasanian dynasty) and the Andarz literature of counsels and maxims.

The Mādayān ī Hazār Dādestān is a Sasanian legal digest and a principal source for Middle Persian legal vocabulary and procedure.

Pahlavi is the language of Sasanian Iran (3rd–7th centuries CE); after the Arab conquest it continued as a literary and priestly language into the Islamic period.

The script's Aramaean heterograms reflect the historical borrowing of Aramaic writing; they are a writing convention, not evidence that the texts were composed in Aramaic.

Manichaean Middle Persian, written in a different script, preserves parallel vocabulary and is useful for comparison but is not Book Pahlavi.

Zoroastrian calendrical and ritual terms (gāh, yasna, dēn) recur throughout the literature and should be recognized as cultural keywords, not translated mechanically.