Maharashtra SSC Pahlavi L2/L3 (MSBSHSE) common mistakes
Maharashtra SSC Pahlavi L2/L3 (MSBSHSE) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Reading Pahlavi letters as if they were their Modern Persian (Arabic-script) descendants - for example treating the Pahlavi letter that looks like a small 'y' as the Arabic ye, or confusing the Pahlavi 'g'/ 'k' shapes with Arabic kaf - and so mis-transliterating whole words.
Most candidates come to Pahlavi through Modern Persian and unconsciously map the familiar Arabic-script letter inventory onto the 14-odd Pahlavi letter shapes. The Pahlavi script is Aramaic-derived and has far fewer letters than Arabic, with several letters serving multiple phonemes, so this mapping produces systematic, not random, errors.
What to do instead
Drill the Pahlavi alphabet as a closed set of letter shapes with their standard transliteration values (ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s p c r š t), writing each by hand from memory until recognition is automatic. Practise reading short words letter-by-letter without converting to Arabic script, and keep a personal error log of shapes you confuse (especially g/k, d/y, w/n, r/l).
Ignoring or misapplying the heterogram (ideogram / huzwārišn) convention - reading a word like MLKʾ as if it were to be pronounced 'mlkā' rather than recognising it as the Aramaic graph for 'king' to be read as the Iranian word šāh, or failing to spot that a cluster of letters is a heterogram at all.
Heterograms are the single most distinctive feature of the Pahlavi writing system and have no analogue in Modern Persian, so learners either do not recognise them or, once told about them, over-apply the rule and treat genuine Iranian spellings as heterograms. The standard lists are also learned by rote and quickly forgotten.
What to do instead
Memorise the high-frequency heterograms that dominate exam texts - e.g. MLKʾ (šāh, king), KRA (kay, king/giant), BRʾ (pus, son), BRH (duxt, daughter), AYK (kū, that), ZK (ēn, this), ʾL (ō, to), MN (az, from), BYTʾ (xānag, house), YMʾ (daryā, sea), ŠMʾ (nām, name) - together with their Iranian readings. When preparing any passage, make a two-column list: what is written vs. what is read aloud. Check ambiguous cases against a glossary rather than guessing.
Treating every written vowel as pronounced, or conversely omitting vowels that the transliteration system requires - e.g. reading the final -ī/-ē of a word as a full long vowel in every position, or failing to supply the short vowels that Pahlavi does not write, producing an unreadable consonant skeleton.
Pahlavi writes consonants and only some long vowels, and the same letter (especially w and y) can mark a long vowel, a consonant, or a historical spelling. Candidates who have only read vocalised Modern Persian find it hard to accept that most short vowels must be supplied from knowledge of the word.
What to do instead
Learn vocabulary with its full vocalised pronunciation attached (e.g. gōw-, gōwēd; kardan, kard; mard, mardōm), so that the unwritten vowels come from lexical memory rather than guesswork. Practise the standard transliteration conventions (ā ē ī ō ū, and the treatment of final -ī/-ē) on the same ten words until consistent. In exam answers give the transliteration and the pronunciation separately when asked.
Confusing the several letters that share one shape or are written identically in a given position - in particular the 'g' and 'k' forms, the 'd' and 'y' forms, and the 'w', 'n' and 'r' shapes - and thereby producing a wrong word that still looks plausible.
The Pahlavi script is famously ambiguous: several distinct phonemes are represented by the same letter shape, and some letters are distinguished only by a small diacritic or by context. Learners who read quickly by shape-recognition rather than by context and vocabulary fall into these traps repeatedly.
What to do instead
Build minimal-pair word lists (e.g. pairs differing only in g/k or d/y) and read them aloud daily. When a word does not yield a known lexeme, stop and re-parse the ambiguous letter before continuing. Use context - the surrounding known words and the grammatical ending - as the primary disambiguator, and always verify a doubtful reading against a dictionary entry.
Misidentifying the grammatical category of a word because the Pahlavi ending is ambiguous - e.g. taking a plural in -ān or -īhā as a singular, or reading an abstract noun in -īh as an adjective, or failing to recognise the oblique/plural forms of pronouns and nouns.
Pahlavi morphology uses a small set of endings (-ān, -īhā, -īh, -īg, -ak, etc.) that overlap in form and are often written without vowels, and candidates transfer Modern Persian endings (which behave differently) onto Pahlavi forms.
What to do instead
Make a table of Pahlavi nominal endings with one memorised example each (mardān 'men', mardōmīh 'humanity', šādīh 'joy', xwadāyīg 'lordly'), and practise parsing ten authentic short phrases per session, labelling each word's category before translating. In exam answers, state the parsing explicitly - it earns method marks and catches errors.
Translating verb forms without correctly identifying person, number, tense and voice - for example reading a 3rd singular present in -ēd as a 2nd plural, missing the difference between the present stem and past stem, or failing to recognise passive and causative formations.
Pahlavi verbs are built on present and past stems that often look unrelated (e.g. kun-/kard-, gōw-/guft-), the personal endings are written without vowels, and the same ending can be ambiguous. Candidates who memorise only one stem per verb cannot parse forms in context.
What to do instead
Learn every verb as a pair of stems plus infinitive (kun-/kard-/kardan; gōw-/guft-/guftan; baw-/būd-/būdan; dah-/dād-/dādan) and drill the full present and past paradigms aloud. Practise recognising the passive (past stem + -īh-) and causative (present stem + -ēn-) patterns. When translating, state the tense/person before giving the English.
Producing a word-for-word gloss in the wrong word order - leaving the verb at the end and the object before it in the English output - or failing to render the ergative-like construction in which the past tense of transitive verbs takes an agent marked with -š/-šān rather than a nominative subject.
Pahlavi is verb-final and uses a construction in past transitive clauses where the logical subject appears as an enclitic pronoun (e.g. -š) while the verb agrees with the object. Candidates translate morpheme by morpheme and then leave the result in Pahlavi order, producing ungrammatical English.
What to do instead
After a literal parsing pass, rewrite the sentence in natural English word order as a separate step. Specifically drill the past-transitive pattern: identify the enclitic agent (man/š, tō/š, awēšān/šān), identify the object, and render as 'he did X', 'they did X'. Do five such sentences per practice session, checking the agent/object assignment each time.
Translating idiomatic and formulaic phrases literally - e.g. rendering a blessing or a formula such as a title-and-praise sequence word for word - and thus producing English that misses the conventional meaning of the formula.
Pahlavi literature is heavily formulaic (royal titles, blessings, religious formulae, set openings), and these formulae do not mean what their component words suggest. Candidates who have not met the formulae before default to literal glossing.
What to do instead
Keep a running list of formulae encountered in set texts with their conventional English equivalents, and learn them as units rather than as word sums. When a phrase looks odd literally, flag it as a likely formula and check a glossary of idioms. Practise by translating the same passage twice: once literally, once idiomatically, and compare.
Answering literature and cultural-context questions with vague generalities ('it is a religious text about good and evil') instead of naming the work, its genre, its language stage and its approximate setting - or attributing a work to the wrong genre or period.
The literature component rewards specific knowledge of individual texts (e.g. the Dēnkard, Bundahišn, Ardā Wirāz Nāmag, Kār Nāmag ī Ardaxšīr, Draxt ī Āsūrīg, the inscriptions of the Sasanian kings) and their place in Middle Persian writing. Candidates revise language mechanics and leave literature to the last minute, then answer from general impressions.
What to do instead
Build a one-page grid: work - genre (religious/encyclopaedic/epic-and-romance/andarz/wisdom) - language (Middle Persian, Parthian, Pazand) - approximate date or reign - one-line content summary - one memorable phrase or feature. Revise this grid weekly and test yourself by covering columns. In answers, always name the work and genre explicitly rather than describing 'the literature' in general.
Confusing Pahlavi script with the scripts and language stages it is related to - describing Pahlavi as 'old Persian written in Arabic letters', mixing up Book Pahlavi with the Inscriptional Pahlavi of the Sasanian rock inscriptions or with Parthian, or treating Pazand and Persian (New Persian) as identical to Pahlavi.
The exam covers several related but distinct writing systems and language stages that share vocabulary and script ancestry. Candidates who learn only one variety, or who rely on Modern Persian intuitions, collapse these distinctions and lose marks on context questions.
What to do instead
Make a comparison table of the varieties: Inscriptional Pahlavi (monumental, fewer ligatures), Book Pahlavi (the literary manuscript hand with extensive ligatures and heterograms), Parthian (a related but distinct Middle Iranian language with its own heterograms), Pazand (Middle Persian written in Avestan script), and New Persian (Arabic script). Learn one diagnostic example of each, and state the variety explicitly whenever you comment on a text.