Textbooks for Ancient Iranian Languages

One of the most challenging aspects of studying any ancient language is the shortage of teaching materials, textbooks, and dictionaries for students to use. Older forms of Persian (like Pahlavi) certainly has this issue and if you're not familiar with reading linguistic descriptions of grammar, you may be desperate for more simple explanations as to how this language works. As much I loved studying Pahlavi, I struggled with it-- spending up to 5 or 7 hours on 15 lines of text only to come to class with a third or more of it totally wrong. What tripped me up was deciphering the letters. It wasn't until the end of last semester did I discover the textbooks of Prods Oktor Skjærvø-- a Norwegian-born linguist and scholar of Iranian languages at Harvard University (NELC dept). He has written learning materials for Avestan (young and old), Old Persian cuneiform, Middle Persian, and Manichaean Sogdian. All of these publications are free and available for download on his website. The Pahlavi Primer can be downloaded here. Thanks to Dr. Skjærvø for sharing his work with the online community! Here is a short interview with him by Pars Times:

Sassanian Seals

This semester my Middle Persian-Pahlavi language class has decided to finish deciphering a collection of Sassanian seals that was sent to my department for consultation. I'm in charge of providing our group with play-doh in order to 'stamp' the seals which can show us details that are difficult to see on the quartz surface. Many of the seals have Pahlavi inscriptions and our goal is to try to translate them into English. Translating may sound straightforward-- but if anyone has ever looked at the 'modified Imperial Aramaic' alphabet that Pahlavi uses, it's rarely straightforward because the shapes of the letters all look alike and tend to change over time. With play-doh, magnifying glasses, individual reading lights, and an enormous stack of reference books-- we could not look more nerdy. I love it, and below are some examples (from the internet) of what these artifacts look like.

Shabaviz Publishing Company - Iran

Shabaviz Publishing, based in Tehran, is one of the most amazing children's book companies that I've ever encountered.  The artistic quality of their publications is phenomenal and frequently the recipient of many international book awards. Nearly all of Shabaviz's books are available for reading on the International Children's Digital Library website, where readers can zoom-in on the text of each page. I've read a few of their books with my Persian class at IU and with the aid of a dictionary, any student of Farsi can work through the texts. It's a great resource for learning idiomatic phrases and colloquial styles of narration. Here are a few of my favorite book covers to give you a sense of their creative spirit.

Blossoms

Shabaviz Covers

Central Eurasian Studies & CEUS Pride

Since I've started graduate school at IUB, many people have asked me-- "why did you pick Indiana?" and "what's Central Asia?". I'd like to share some information regarding my department's program and highlight the unique opportunities at Indiana University when compared to other academic programs in the United States:

The Central Eurasian Studies Department, abbreviated as CEUS at Indiana University-Bloomington, is the premier program for the study of Central Asia in the United States. It is the only department that offers specialized M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Central Asian Studies in the U.S. and offers training in a number of less-commonly taught languages that are not taught anywhere else in the country. For example, this fall semester includes: Persian, Middle Persian/Pahlavi, Pashto, Dari, Turkish, Old Turkic, Tibetan, Old Tibetan, Mongolian, Classical Mongolian, Uzbek, Uyghur, Kazakh, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian.
Since a number of these languages suffer from a lack of textbooks, the CeLCAR (Center for Languages for the Central Asian Languages) at IU develops their own. For example, CeLCAR has written textbooks for Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, Uyghur, and Tajik.

While there are other departments in the US and in Europe which offer classes on "Central Asia" and a select number of Eurasian/Near Eastern languages, Indiana University's program is premier because of its consistency to offer multiple levels of less commonly taught languages regardless of enrollment size. At many universities "Central Asia" does not warrant its own department as "Near Eastern Studies","East Asian Studies", and "South Asian Studies" so often does in the U.S..

As far as I can tell, IU is the only American university currently teaching Pahlavi/Middle Persian alongside the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Additionally, CEUS balances rigorous language training with requiring their students to to become specialists in regional history, literature, and politics. Graduates from CEUS are well-equipped to continue in academia or pursue careers in government and consulting.

To become a specialist in Iranian/Afghan Studies takes years of training and I'm proud to be a student at IU. While CEUS is a small department, our mission is huge-- which is to maintain scholastic inquiry and to contribute to improving cross-cultural understanding of a region too often neglected.

Pahlavi Begins!

Classes started today at IUB and Pahlavi (Middle Persian) with Dr. Choksy already looks terrific. Pahlavi is an older form of modern Persian (or Farsi) and was officially used from 224-651 AD. It's largely associated with the Sasanian Dynasty and Zoroastrian texts. The Pahlavi writing system uses a modified Aramaic script with a few variants such as "Book Pahlavi" vs. "Inscriptional Pahlavi" which was used on coins and seals. It's written from right to left:

There's not really a 'textbook' for Middle Persian--just a handful of dictionaries from what I can tell.  Here's what we have lined up for the semester:
1) The Kārnāmag-ī Ardaxšīr-ī Pābagān or Book of the Deeds of Ardashir: The book narrates the epic adventures of King Ardashir, the founder of the forth Iranian dynasty, and the second Persian Empire. The story relates how Ardashir's father Papag, dreamed that his father Sasan would be reborn as Ardashir.
(In other words, a mythical genealogy story).

Ardashir's Coin

2)The Shahpur I Inscription: Shahpur I was the son of Ardashir and this is text describes the religious and political condition of the Sansanian Dynasty-- reminiscent of Behistun inscription of Darius I.

Shahpur's Coin

3) A selection of Zoroastrian texts--perhaps something like this: a page from the Pahlavi Denkard (a ninth century encyclopedia of the Zoroastrian religion)

4) The Bundahishn-- the Zoroastrian "creation story" and a source of Zoroastrian cosmogony/cosmology. 

Here's the intro page:

Persian Grammar

The University of Texas at Austin has developed a wonderful website for learning the foundations of Persian. I've used it everyday since class started! The "vocabulary lists" under "resources" are very convenient :)

http://sites.la.utexas.edu/persian_online_resources/

Pashto Dictionary پښتو

This is the cover to a new tri-lingual (English-Pashto-Dari) dictionary I purchased online. I have other Pashto dictionaries but most of them are outdated, difficult to read, or only function as Pashto to English. For my Pashto language classes, I would usually use http://www.qamosona.com/ when I needed English to Pashto translation. But S. Yarzi's book has turned out to be an amazing source! It's easy to use, has good typeset and contemporary vocab. Now that I'm learning Persian I'm always thinking about its Pashto equivalent--and this book has been really helpful. Recommended for anyone learning Afghan languages or anyone interested in Eastern vs. Western Iranian linguistics.

Studying Persia through Scripts

I've had an intense fascination with alphabets and scripts since I was a kid.  My parents were especially encouraging of my interest in languages and often allowed me to experiment (via paintbrush) with Hindi, Burmese, Ukrainian, and Chinese on the walls of our house and refrigerator (it helps that my mom is an artist!). As a visual learner, I can say that studying a new writing system is one of the most exciting aspects of a language course and today, our class reviewed the 33 letters of the Persian Alef-Ba. I find Persia's linguistic history --especially it's varied scripts which are thousands of years old--to be a fun way to connect with Persia's vast  history. One of my favorite websites is: AncientScripts.com. Here are a few images of Persia's many writing systems:

Proto-Elamite 

3300 BCE to 500 BCE

 Elamite

 Old Persian

550 BCE to 400 BCE

 Pahlavi (Middle Persian)

3rd century BCE to 9th century CE

 New Persian

1,000+ years old

New Books

This weekend I purchased two books for my upcoming class. The first is: An Introduction to Persian by Wheeler M. Thackston.  It's a terrific textbook because it immediately introduces the student to a difficult script called Nastaliq. Nastaliq is a calligraphy style which tends to be written on a slant and most Persian manuscripts were written in beautiful nastaliq that wrapped around illuminated miniature paintings.

The second book is a comprehensive dictionary titled: The Combined Persian-English and English-Persian Dictionary by Abbas and Manoochehr Kashani. It's a decent purchase but the typeset tends to be small and blurry. Oh well, at least the cover is a pleasant shade of green.