Maharashtra SSC Pahlavi L2/L3 (MSBSHSE) flashcards

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Book Pahlavi script

The right-to-left Aramaic-derived script used for most surviving Middle Persian texts; it writes consonants and long vowels, leaves short vowels unwritten, and uses many homograph letters.

Homograph letters

Letter shapes in Book Pahlavi that stand for more than one phoneme, notably w/n/r and y/d/g; the correct reading is decided from context and known vocabulary.

Ideogram (heterogram)

An Aramaic word written in Pahlavi letters but read as its Iranian equivalent, such as MLKʾ written for šāh 'king'; the reader supplies the Iranian reading.

Phonetic complement

A small added letter after an ideogram that signals the Iranian reading's ending, for example a final -ʾ or -ē; it is not part of the Aramaic spelling.

Transliteration versus transcription

Transliteration reproduces the written letters with diacritics; transcription gives the Iranian reading in italics. Both are needed to present a Pahlavi text clearly.

Inscriptional Pahlavi

The clearer, more separated letter forms used in Sasanian royal inscriptions, read letter by letter; it contrasts with the cursive and heavily homographic Book Pahlavi.

Aleph in Pahlavi

The letter ʾ marks vowel-initial words and some long ā spellings; it functions as a vowel support rather than as a consonantal glottal stop.

Direct and oblique case

Pahlavi nouns have an unmarked direct case for subjects and a marked oblique case, singular -ē/-ī and plural -ān; the oblique also marks objects and possessors.

Ezāfe construction

A connecting -ī/-ē linking a head noun to a following adjective or possessor, as in šāh-ī īrān 'king of Iran'; chains of ezāfe form one phrase.

Enclitic pronouns

Short pronoun forms -m, -t, -š that attach to the first word of a clause and mark possessor or object, such as -š 'his/her' or 'him/her'.

Present and past stems

Every Pahlavi verb has a present stem for present, subjunctive, and imperative forms and a past stem for past forms; the two are learned as a pair.

Past tense endings

Past stem plus -am, -ī, -Ø, -ēm, -ēd, -and for the six persons, for example kard-am 'I did' and kard-ēm 'we did'.

Present indicative endings

Present stem plus -ēm, -ēh, -ēd, -ēm, -ēd, -ēnd; the same endings also serve the subjunctive after -ān/-ād forms in many texts.

Subjunctive marker

The endings -ān and -ād added to the present stem to express purpose, wish, or reported command, as in kunān 'that I may do'.

Plural in -īhā

A frequent direct-case plural ending, especially with inanimate nouns, as in dēn-īhā 'religions'; oblique plurals instead use -ān.

Middle Persian word order

Clauses normally run subject–object–verb, with the verb last; subordinate clauses are introduced by particles such as ka, kē, and čiyōn.

Reading a Pahlavi clause

Locate the final verb, then the direct-case subject, then the object, often oblique or marked with -ī; resolve ambiguous letters from the resulting sense.

ka and kē

ka introduces temporal or conditional clauses meaning 'when' or 'if'; kē is the relative pronoun 'who, which' and can also mean 'because' in some texts.

Formulaic opening phrases

Texts often begin with set phrases such as pad nām ī dādār 'in the name of the creator'; recognizing formulas confirms readings and speeds comprehension.

Numbers in Pahlavi

Numbers are written with Aramaic ideograms plus Iranian complements; the ideogram gives the category and the complement confirms the value, so both must be read.

Layered translation method

Present a passage in three steps: transliteration of the letters, literal gloss of the Iranian reading, then fluent translation, keeping uncertain words visible rather than smoothing them.

Dēnkard

A large 9th-century Zoroastrian encyclopedic work in Book Pahlavi covering theology, cosmology, history, and apologia; a principal source for Middle Persian prose.

Bundahišn

The 'primal creation' text describing Zoroastrian cosmogony, the struggle of good and evil, and the structure of the world in Middle Persian prose.

Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšīr

A narrative Pahlavi text recounting the rise of Ardaxšīr, founder of the Sasanian dynasty; it is a key example of Middle Persian legendary history.

Andarz literature

A genre of Middle Persian wisdom texts offering counsels and maxims on conduct, often framed as advice from a sage or king to a son.

Mādayān ī Hazār Dādestān

The 'book of a thousand judgements', a Sasanian legal digest in Pahlavi and the main source for Middle Persian legal terminology and procedure.

Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram

A 9th-century Pahlavi theological compilation by Zādspram, organized as selections on creation, humanity, and eschatology; an important apologetic text.

Sasanian period

The Iranian dynasty ruling roughly 224–651 CE, when Middle Persian was the language of state, inscriptions, and Zoroastrian literature.

Survival after the conquest

After the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Pahlavi continued as a priestly and literary language, and most surviving Book Pahlavi manuscripts were compiled in the 9th–10th centuries.

Manichaean Middle Persian

Middle Persian written in a distinct Manichaean script, preserving parallel vocabulary; it aids comparison but is not the same as Book Pahlavi.

Zoroastrian keywords

Terms such as dēn 'religion', yasna 'worship', and gāh 'ritual time' recur throughout Pahlavi literature and should be recognized as cultural vocabulary rather than translated mechanically.

Aramaean writing convention

The use of Aramaic heterograms in Pahlavi reflects the historical adoption of Aramaic writing; it is a scribal convention and does not mean the texts were composed in Aramaic.