Bactrian language

This is a text of a lecture by Dr. Sims of SOAS, following discovery
of an inscription of Kaniska in 1993.

It also throws new light on the extent of Kushan rule in India.

I thought some may find it interesting

Best regards

Ravi


Bactrian Documents from Ancient Afghanistan
Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams of the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS), University of London, who is the leading
expert of the Sogdian and Bactrian languages, gave a lecture on the
discovery and decipherment of Bactrian documents, written in the
little-known Iranian language of Ancient Afghanistan in modified
Greek script, at the Ancient Orient Museum in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, on
September 23.


Prior to the talk he was awarded, jointly with his colleague Dr Joe
Cribb of the British Museum, this year's Hirayama prize from
Professor HIRAYAMA Ikuo, Director of the Institute of Silk Road
Studies in Kamakura for their work on the decipherment and
interpretation of the newly discovered Rabatak inscription in
Northern Afghanistan.

The text of the lecture follows:


New Findings in Ancient Afghanistan
--- the Bactrian documents discovered from the Northern Hindu-Kush
Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams (University of London)
Bactrian, the ancient language of Bactria in northern Afghanistan, is
unique among the Iranian languages in being written by means of the
Greek alphabet --- a legacy of the conquest of Bactria by Alexander
the Great in the 4th cent. B.C. From this period onwards the Greek
language, written in the Greek script, was for a long time the
exclusive language of culture and administration in Bactria. When
Bactria was overrun by nomadic peoples from the north, its new
rulers, the Kushans, at first continued the use of the Greek language
for administrative purposes, but soon they came to use the Greek
script to write the local language, Bactrian. A crucial moment in the
history of this language was the decision of the Kushan ruler
Kanishka to adopt Bactrian as the language of his coinage. After the
first issues of Kanishka, Greek disappears from the coinage once and
for all, to be replaced by Bactrian.

During the first centuries of the Christian era, Bactrian could
legitimately have been ranked amongst the world's most important
languages. As the language of the Kushan kings, Bactrian must have
been widely known throughout a great empire, in Afghanistan, Northern
India and part of Central Asia. Even after the collapse of the Kushan
empire, Bactrian continued in use for at least six centuries, as is
shown by the ninth-century inscriptions from the Tochi valley in
Pakistan [Slide 1 9KB] and the remnants of Buddhist and Manichean
manuscripts found as far away as the Turfan oasis in western China.
(This slide, for instance [Slide 2 12KB], shows the unique fragment
of a Bactrian text written in Manichean script, which forms part of
the Turfan collection in Berlin.) The career of Bactrian as a
language of culture thus lasted for close to a thousand years.
Until forty years ago virtually nothing was known of the Bactrian
language except for the legends on the coins of the Kushans and their
successors. The Kushan coins are inscribed in Greek letters of an
angular type, apparently imitating a style of writing used for
monumental inscriptions. In principle these legends are not
particularly difficult to read, but their content is limited to the
names and titles of kings and deities. The coins of the later rulers
of Bactria --- Kushano-Sasanians, Kidarites, Hephthalites, Turks, and
so on --- are written in a cursive script, imitating manuscript
styles, which has proved much more difficult to decipher. Some tiny
scraps of manuscripts in a similar cursive script were also known,
but they were too few and too incomplete to offer any realistic
prospect of interpretation.
These prospects were transformed in 1957 by the discovery at Surkh
Kotal near Baghlan of the first substantial Bactrian inscription
[Slide 3 23KB]. The text, written in the monumental script already
known from the Kushan coins, could be read without much difficulty;
its interpretation was much more problematic, since the names and
titles known from the coins provided only a minimal vocabulary and
hardly a hint of the grammatical structure of the language.
Nevertheless, the essential points were immediately recognized by W.
B. Henning: the text refers to the foundation of a sanctuary by the
emperor Kanishka, its abandonment as a result of problems with the
water-supply, and its re-establishment by a high official named
Nukunzuk in the year 31 of the era of Kanishka, that is, early in the
reign of his successor Huvishka.
Several further Bactrian inscriptions have been discovered since that
of Surkh Kotal, but most of them are too poorly preserved to add
significantly to our knowledge of the language. However, in 1993 a
new inscription of fundamental importance was discovered by chance at
a site named Rabatak, not far from Surkh Kotal [Slide 4 18KB]. The
inscription of Rabatak describes events of the first year of Kanishka
in words strikingly reminiscent of those of Darius the Great in the
inscription of Bisitun. Since Joe Cribb and I have already published
a detailed study of this inscription in the most recent issue of Silk
Road Art and Archaeology, I will limit my remarks to a few of the
most important points.
The opening lines refer to Kanishka as "the great salvation, the
righteous, just autocrat, worthy of divine worship, who has obtained
the kingship from Nana and from all the gods, who has inaugurated the
year one as the gods pleased". Then comes the significant
statement: "He issued(?) an edict(?) in Greek and then he put it into
the Aryan language". In principle, any of the Indo-European languages
of Iran or India could be called "Aryan"; but when Kanishka refers
to "the Aryan language" he surely means Bactrian, the language of
this inscription, just as Darius meant Old Persian, the language of
his inscription, when he wrote: "By the grace of Auramazda, I made
another text in Aryan, which previously did not exist". It is
difficult not to associate Kanishka's emphasis here on the use of
the "Aryan language" with the replacement of Greek by Bactrian on his
coinage. The numismatic evidence shows that this must have taken
place very early in Kanishka's reign, quite possibly in his very
first year.
Lines 4-7 of the Rabatak inscription give a list of the chief cities
of north India which were controlled by Kanishka. Four of the five
names can be identified: Saketa, Kausambi, Pataliputra, and Champa.
[Slide 5 12KB] The wording of the inscription does not make it clear
whether Champa is mentioned as belonging to the area ruled by
Kanishka or as the first city beyond his eastern border. Even in the
latter case, the statement that he ruled northern India as far as
Pataliputra is sufficiently striking.
The major part of the inscription concerns the foundation of a
temple, perhaps at Rabatak itself, which seems to have been an
extensive site. Lines 9 and 10 name the divinities who are to be
worshipped in the temple. This list is very intriguing. On the one
hand it includes two Zoroastrian deities who are never portrayed on
the Kushan coinage. On the other hand, it omits many names which are
well attested on these same coins, such as Ma, the moon, and
Ardukhsh, the goddess of plenty. Above the list of Iranian divinities
some words have been added in smaller letters [Slide 6 22KB], which
seem to identify some or all of them with Indian equivalents such as
Mahasena and Visakha.
Apparently the temple was intended to contain statues of kings as
well as gods. Kanishka lists four kings: Kujula Kadphises his great-
grandfather, Vima Taktu his grandfather, Vima Kadphises his father,
and himself, Kanishka. This list is extremely informative. In the
first place, it bears witness to the existence of two kings named
Vima, rather than one. Several inscriptions previously attributed to
Vima Kadphises, notably the Bactrian inscription of Dasht-e Nawur
[Slide 7 9KB], can now be ascribed to his father Vima Taktu. In all
probability the coins of the anonymous king Soter Megas "the great
saviour", which come between Kujula and Vima Kadphises in the
numismatic sequence, should also be attributed to this newly-
discovered Vima the First. Moreover, the indication that Kujula
Kadphises was the great-grandfather of Kanishka evidently has a
bearing on the oft-debated issue of the date of Kanishka. The fact
that Kanishka belongs to the third generation after Kujula clearly
imposes certain limits on the manner in which the early chronology of
the Kushans may be reconstructed. Although I would not go so far as
to say that the new facts are only compatible with a single
chronological system, it is clear that the solutions previously
proposed will now have to be reconsidered.
Lines 14-17 mention the officials charged with executing the orders
of Kanishka. Amongst them is a certain Nukunzuk who is probably the
same person who was later responsible for the works described in the
Surkh Kotal inscription. At Rabatak, 30 years earlier, he does not
yet bear the title karalrang "margrave" and seems to occupy a
subordinate position. The last part of the inscription in which a
continuous text can be read contains a wish for Kanishka's health and
happiness and perhaps also --- if my reading is correct --- expresses
the hope that his reign may last for a thousand years.
It goes without saying that neither the reign of Kanishka nor that of
the Kushan dynasty approached 1000 years. In about 2Z4 A.D. the
Sasanians came to power in Iran [Slide 8 9KB]. Within a few years the
Sasanians had also conquered Bactria, which they ruled during part of
the following period through a viceroy known as the Kushan-shah 'king
of the Kushans", who was often a prince of the Sasanian royal family.
Subsequently Bactria was invaded several times by nomads from the
north. At different times the invaders are referred to under various
names --- Chionites, Kidarite Huns, Hephthalites --- though it is not
entirely clear whether all these names refer to the same or to
different peoples. The next arrivals were the Turks, who in the
middle of the sixth century allied themselves with the Sasanians to
defeat the Hephthalites; and then finally all the local dynasties
were swept aside by the coming of Islam and the Arabs.
The history of the period from the Sasanian Kushan-shahs to the
arrival of the Arabs is illustrated by a second discovery. In
December 1991, I was shown photographs of a newly discovered Bactrian
document on leather. The document was inscribed on both sides with 28
lines in cursive Bactrian script, making it by far the most
substantial example of cursive Bactrian so far known [Slide 9 12KB].
The document was clearly a letter, beginning with conventional
phrases of address and greeting almost identical to those used in
Sogdian letters: "To your lordship 1,000 and 10,000 times greeting
and homage from so-and-so your servant. Having heard that your
lordship is healthy I am happy; but I should be still happier if I
myself might see your lordship in good health and pay homage ...". To
judge by personal names such as Ohrmuzd and Khwasraw, the document
belonged to the Sasanian period. Another striking name was Purlang-
zin, evidently meaning "the man with the panther's skin" --- a clear
reference to the zin-e palang of Rustam, one of the heroes of the
Persian epic.
One such document was a revelation in itself. But it was as nothing
compared to what was to come. Within five years the corpus of
Bactrian documents had grown to a hundred, most of which are now in
London, in the collection of Dr David Khalili. These documents have
passed through the hands of many different dealers and collectors. In
most cases there is no record of their original provenance, though a
couple of them are said, quite plausibly, to have been found in
Samingan. From internal evidence, especially the recurrence of the
same names in several documents, it seems clear that most if not all
of them ultimately derive from a single source.
Many of the documents are letters, some of them still sealed and
therefore perfectly preserved. This slide [Slide 10 4KB] shows a
letter sealed with a clay bulla, with a few words of address written
on the outside; and here [Slide 11 10KB] is the same letter after
opening, from which you can see the standard layout of the text, with
a wide left-hand margin, and the way the seal is attached to a strip
of leather cut along the bottom edge of the letter without being
completely detached from it.
One of the less well-preserved letters is particularly interesting
because it mentions a Kushan-shah [Slide 12 12KB]. This letter can
hardly be later than the latter half of the fourth century, when the
rule of the Kushan-shahs came to an end. The Kushan-shah here seems
to be named as Warahran, though the reading of the name is not quite
clear [Slide 13 10KB]. Since Warahran (or Bahram) was the name of the
last Kushan-shah --- or the last two Kushan-shahs --- known from the
coins, the letter probably belongs to the very end of the Kushano-
Sasanian period. The sender of the letter was the daughter of a
princess named Dukht-anosh, a Middle Persian name which is attested
on a seal in Paris. The contents are not yet clear, but concern a
eunuch with the remarkable name Dathsh-mareg "servant of the
Creator" --- a compound of the Bactrian mareg "servant" and the
Avestan genitive dathusho "of the Creator", which was probably used
in the Zoroastrian calendar of Bactria to refer to a day dedicated to
the Creator.
The letter illustrated on the next slide [Slide 14 9KB] is important
for two reasons. Firstly, it is written by a representative of the
Shahan-shah or "king of kings", the ruler of Iran, and must therefore
belong to one of the periods when Bactria was under Sasanian control.
Secondly, it is dated, though the era is not specified.
It seems very likely that the era used here is the same as that of
the Bactrian inscriptions of the Tochi valley in Pakistan [Slide 15
11KB]. These inscriptions, written in Arabic, Sanskrit, and Bactrian,
contain dates expressed in three different eras. The vital evidence
for determining the starting-point of the Bactrian era is provided by
two bilingual inscriptions, the first being in Arabic and Sanskrit
[Slide 16 13KB]. The Arabic text is naturally dated by means of the
Hijri calendar, which is blessedly unambiguous and enables one to
complete the date of the Sanskrit version, which is expressed in an
abbreviated form omitting the thousands and hundreds. The second
bilingual is in Sanskrit and Bactrian. Again the Sanskrit date is
abbreviated; but, if one assumes that this inscription belongs to the
same century as the Arabic-Sanskrit bilingual, the missing figures
can be reconstructed, giving a date which can be computed as 863 A.D.
The Bactrian version is dated with Greek numerals. Helmut Humbach,
the first editor of the Bactrian texts, read these numerals as 632.
On the basis of newly-discovered materials I would interpret the last
digit as 1 rather than 2, but a difference of one year is of minor
significance. In either case, the Bactrian date indicates the
existence of an era beginning early in the Sasanian period, in 232
(according to Humbach) or 233 A.D. (accord to me). I am inclined to
follow Humbach in regarding this as a "Kushano-Sasanian" era, whose
starting-point was probably the Sasanian conquest of the Kushan
empire.
Let us return to the Bactrian letter, whose date can be read as 239.
If this era began in 233 A.D., the year 239 will correspond to 471
A.D., during the rule of Peroz, who spent much of his reign fighting
the Hephthalites and who eventually perished in battle against them.
Is it a coincidence that the word preceding the title Shahan-shah in
the letter is in fact Piroz? Unfortunately the Middle Persian word
peroz is not only a personal name but also a common adjective
meaning "victorious", so that it is difficult to decide whether one
should translate "Peroz, the king of kings" or merely "the victorious
king of kings".
Only two of the newly-discovered Bactrian documents seem to be
religious in inspiration. Both of them are Buddhist texts containing
invocations to Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and so on. The one illustrated
on this slide [Slide 17 16KB] is particularly interesting. Unusually,
it is written on cloth rather than leather. As you see, it is
illustrated with two drawings, perhaps representing a Buddha and an
ascetic. The text begins with homage to "all the Buddhas" and to five
or six named Buddhas ending with the historical Buddha Shakyamuni.
Then homage is paid to a series of six Bodhisattvas, followed by the
kings of the yakshas, rakshasas, kinnaras, nagas, pishacas, etc. and
finally Shakra, the king of the gods, and the "great Brahma". I have
not succeeded in deciphering all the names, but the outline of the
text is quite clear up to this point. The last three lines are more
obscure, but contain a reference to a Buddhist monastery (vihara} and
a temple.
Apart from a few tears and small holes, some of which appear to have
been made deliberately, the document seems to be complete. I suppose
it to be a kind of votive offering, which would have been tied to a
pole like a banner and fixed in a holy place, or perhaps an amulet.
After the letters, the largest group of texts consists of legal
contracts and similar documents: deeds of sale, leases, guarantees,
receipts, and deeds of gift. One particularly interesting document ---
in fact the earliest of the dated documents --- is a marriage
contract, in which one woman engages herself to marry two brothers at
the same time [Slide 18 26KB]. The practice of polyandry, discussed
by Prof. Enoki Kazuo in his well-known article "On the nationality of
the Hephthalites" and here confirmed by first-hand evidence, was
apparently typical of the region. Another unusual document [Slide 19
20KB], which now belongs to the Institute of Silk-Road Studies here
in Kamakura, is a deed of manumission, recording the freeing of a
slave in return for the purchase of a substitute.
Unlike the letters and Buddhist texts, legal documents such as these
are always dated. So far I know of more than twenty documents with
dates ranging from 110 to 549, that is (if we assume that the
Bactrian era began in 233 A.D.), from 342 to 781 A.D. This span of
more than four centuries covers the Chionite, Kidarite, Hephthalite,
and Turkish periods, and extends well into Islamic times. As we shall
shortly see, the contents of the documents provide many details
against which one can test this chronological framework.
For example, the next slide [Slide 20 12KB] shows a contract for the
sale of land dated in the year 295, which I interpret as 527 A.D.,
during the period of Hephthalite domination. This agrees well with
the statement of the text that the "Hephthalite tax" due on the
property has been paid. The format of the document is typical, though
this example is exceptionally well preserved. There are two complete
copies of the text. One copy is left open to be read. The other is
tightly rolled, tied with string, and sealed with five bullae. The
first two bear impressions of the fingernails of the vendors; the
others are impressed with the seals of three witnesses. Presumably it
was intended that the sealed copy should be opened in the presence of
a judge in case of a dispute. On the reverse of the document [Slide
21 5KB], the names of the vendors and witnesses are written beside
the holes for the seal-strings.
In addition to dates, many of these legal documents contain place-
names, including the names of the places where they were written
[Slide 22 10KB]. Several documents state that they were written in
Samingan, Rob (modern Ruy), Malr or Madr, or Kah (modern Kah-mard).
All four places are apparently within the jurisdiction of a ruler who
is referred to in many documents as "the khar of Rob". On the other
hand, Tarmid (or Termez), to the north of the Oxus, and Bamiyan,
which is separated from Kah and Madr by a considerable ridge of
mountains, may well have been outside his kingdom. The khar of Rob is
no doubt to be identified with the Ru'b-khan, the ruler of Ru'b and
Siminjan, who helped Qutayba b. Muslim to defeat the Hephthalite
rebel Nezak Tarkhan in the year 91 of the Hijra (710 A.D.), as
mentioned by the historian Tabari.
I suspect that the title khar is an Iranian --- but not necessarily
Bactrian --- dialect form derived from Old Iranian *xshathriya-
"ruler" [Slide 23 11KB]. The true Bactrian form may be sher, which
is mentioned by Muslim writers as the title of the rulers of Bamiyan,
Gharchistan, and other places in the area around ancient Bactria. The
ruler of Rob may at times have controlled a wider area than is
indicated by the place-names mentioned so far. For instance, in a
letter which probably dates from about 480, the khar of Rob is
addressed, somewhat bombastically, as the "Hephthalite yabghu, ...
scribe of the Hephthalite lords, and judge of Tukharistan and
Gharchistan". Tukharistan is the land to the north of the Hindu-kush,
including Rob and Samingan, but covering a considerably wider area;
Gharchistan usually refers to the mountainous area to the west of
Bamiyan, but since the Bactrian form of the name indicates that it
means merely "the land of the mountaineers" it is possible that it
refers more generally to the mountain areas to the south of
Tukharistan.
Yet another document is written in a place named Warnu. This is
surely to be identified with the Aornos; mentioned by Arrian as one
of the two chief cities of Bactria. According to Paul Bernard and
others, Aornos is to be located near Khulm or Tashkurgan, where the
valley of the Khulm river, in which Rob and Samingan are situated,
opens out into the plain. Since the whole collection of Bactrian
documents almost certainly represents the royal archive of the kings
of Rob, the mere presence of this document in the archive would
suggest that Warnu too formed part of their dominions.
The next document which I would like to describe [Slide 24 11KB] is a
contract for the sale of a slave, which begins: "It was the year 446,
the month Ab, the day Wahman, when this sealed document, this
purchase contract, was written here in the district of Samingan, at
Marogan, the court of the khar of Rob". The year 446 should
correspond to 678 A.D. By this time Turkish names and titles are
common, as can be seen from the witness-list which follows: "Under
the protection of the god Ram-set, the granter of favours, the
granter of wishes, the wonderful, who is worshipped here at Marogan,
at the court, under the protection of Zhun-lad son of Shabur, the
successful, prosperous qaghan, the tapaghligh iltabir, the khar of
Rob, and in the presence of Khusaru the tarkhan, and in the presence
of Dev-raz, the brave chief justice of the khars of Rob, and also in
the presence of the other noblemen who were present there amongst
them and who bear witness concerning this matter". This document too
was originally sealed with five seals, whose owners are named on the
back: remarkably, the seals of the witnesses include that of the god
Ram-set, who was presumably represented by his priest. In the same
way, other documents include the god Wakhsh, the deified River Oxus,
amongst the witnesses.
The text continues: "Now, I, Yaskul, and I, Yezdgird, the sons of
Kaw, inhabitants of Khwastu, who are now present here in the district
of Samingan, and our brothers and sons, have sold to you, Fanz, and
to you, Winamarg, and to you, Pusk, the sons of Bag-mareg, you whose
estate is called Gabaliyan, and to your brothers, sons and
descendants, a certain boy belonging to us as brothers, this same boy
who is called Khalas, for three Persian drachmas, since we are unable
to keep him in plenty and famine. So now, may the boy mentioned above
belong properly and well to you, Fanz, and to you, Winamarg, with
your brothers, sons and descendants hereafter, from now to eternity".
I hope that these quotations may give you a flavour of the legal
terminology of these documents --- for which, incidentally, one can
find many parallels both in documents written in other Central Asian
languages such as Sogdian and Turkish, and in the 5th cent. B.C.
Aramaic documents from Elephantine in Egypt.
The next document [Slide 25 11KB] is dated in the Bactrian year 478,
that is, 710 A.D., in the month "Second New Year". The document is a
deed recording a gift of land and of a slave girl to the god Kamird
and his ked or priest, apparently in return for the healing of a
member of the donor's family [Slide 26 10KB]. Kamird means
literally "head" or "chief"; it is perhaps the god's title rather
than his name. The word ked is almost certainly the source of the
Chinese term, ji-duo, older kej-ta, mentioned by Xuanzang as the name
of the worshippers of Zhun, the god of Zabulistan, to the south of
the Hindu-kush. This god was also known in the kingdom of Rob, as we
can see from the name of its ruler in the previous document: Zhun-
lad, literally "given by Zhun". In that case it is quite likely that
Zhun is the god referred to by the title Kamird "the chief (god)".
Perhaps he is the mysterious dedicatee of the cave-sanctuary of Nigar
(Dukhtar-e Nushirvan) in the mountains south of Rob? [Slide 27 8KB]
The donor in the present document, the queen of a ruler with the
Turkish name Qutlugh Tapaghligh Bilga Savug "fortunate, possessing
service, wise, beloved", is also referred to as "the princess of the
Khalas". Khalas, which was also the name of the slave-boy in the
previous document, probably represents the Turkish tribal name
Khalach, of which this would be one of the earliest occurrences.
One of the very latest Bactrian documents is a deed of sale dated in
the year 525, that is 757 A.D. [Slide 28 13KB] I just want to draw
attention to a couple of passages in this contract. The first is the
series of clauses which describe the rights of the new owners of the
property: "to have and to hold it, to sell it, to give it away, to
pawn it, to offer it for rent, to exchange it for another piece of
land, to give it for a son's wedding or a daughter's dowry, to make a
monastery or temple, to make a *cemetery or *crematorium ...". Here
the Indian term for a Buddhist monastery, vihara, is contrasted with
the Bactrian word for a "temple", presumably referring to a non-
Buddhist shrine. A similar contrast can be seen between the following
pair of nouns, both of which may refer to places for disposal of the
dead: laxmig would correspond to the Avestan daxma-, Middle Persian
daxmag, terms which usually refer to a structure used for the
Zoroastrian rite of exposure, but sometimes also to a grave, while
laxshatanig, if it derives from the root daxsh- "to burn", would
necessarily refer to a non-Zoroastrian, perhaps Indian, rite of
cremation. These terms, together with the numerous theophoric
personal names found in the documents, give us a glimpse of the
variety of religious belief and practice in this area before the
coming of Islam.
The independence of the kingdom of Rob was nearly at an end, however.
While earlier contracts had expressed prices in gold diners or in
Persian silver, the latest texts refer to "Arab silver dirhams",
which seem to be specified as 'locally *current". In addition, the
present text refers, for the first and last time, to the payment of
taxes to the Arabs. Soon afterwards, Arabic must have replaced
Bactrian as the written language of the area; and indeed, a small
number of Arabic documents have come to light, which appear to form a
continuation of the same archive [Slide 29 12KB].
Although I have only been able to describe a small part of an immense
new body of material, I hope that I have said enough to show that it
will throw new light on many aspects of the history and culture of
ancient Afghanistan. But as yet I have hardly mentioned its
importance for Iranian historical linguistics, though for me
personally this is its chief fascination .
This slide [Slide 30 17KB] shows a small selection of forms which
illustrate the position of Bactrian amongst the Iranian languages. In
particular I have chosen forms which show the connection between
Bactrian and the languages of the surrounding area: medieval Sogdian
and Choresmian; modern Pashto, Yidgha-Munji, and Ishkashmi. Such
forms support the conclusion which Henning reached on first
acquaintance with the new language that it is "in its natural and
rightful place in Bactria" and justify his decision to name it
Bactrian.
In many cases the new material confirms or contradicts views
originally reached on the basis of limited evidence. For instance,
Gershevitch's controversial interpretation of lruh-minan in the Surkh
Kotal inscription as the plural of a putative *lruh-min "enemy"
receives strong support from the contexts in which the later form
druh-min occurs. It is particularly impressive that the new texts
provide examples of many previously unattested Bactrian words whose
existence had already been postulated by Martin Schwartz on the basis
of their occurrence as loanwords in other languages of Central Asia.
[Slide 31 17KB]
Of course the new texts also attest many forms for which there was
previously no evidence at all. For instance, the only verbs in the
Surkh Kotal inscription are a few forms of the simple past tense and
the present optative. Now one can quote almost complete paradigms not
only of these tenses, but also of the present indicative, subjunctive
and imperative, and even a few forms of the perfect subjunctive and
optative. Some features of Bactrian are quite unexpected, such as the
existence of two types of infinitive as in Sogdian and Khotanese, or
the tendency to fuse sequences of conjunctions, adverbs,
prepositions, and pronouns into complex words such as o-ta-kald-
men "and then when to us". The fact that many texts are dated makes
it possible to trace historical developments in the language. For
instance, in texts of the 7th century and later, where an "l" and
an "r" come into direct contact, the "l" changes to "d", as in the
example quoted before: lruh-min "enemy", later druh-min.
Up to now, Bactrian has been the poor relation amongst the Iranian
languages --- the one with nothing to give and everything to receive.
Now that Bactrian is no longer so obscure, it can start to provide
solutions as well as problems [Slide 32 12KB]. For example, the
traditional translation of Avestan axvareta- by Pahlavi agrift "not
taken", which many scholars have regarded as a mistake, is justified
by its Bactrian cognate. Similarly, the meaning of the much-debated
Middle Persian term bun-xanag, literally "foundation-house", is
clarified by the corresponding expression in Bactrian, which clearly
implies "estate", that is, "house and lands". A place-name mentioned
by the great Muslim scholar al-Beruni, which modern scholars have
emended out of existence, is shown to be correct as it stands. In the
infinitive migd "to exchange", Bactrian even attests an Indo-European
root which is apparently not found in any language more closely
related than Greek.
The complete elucidation of the Bactrian documents and inscriptions
will require many kinds of expertise: in palaeography and epigraphy,
in history, historical geography, history of religions, numismatics,
sphragistics, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese ... Since no one individual
could possibly be competent in so many fields, such a task demands
collaboration between scholars in several disciplines. The starting-
point for this collaboration must be the decipherment of the text and
the drafting of a first, tentative translation. This is the business
of the philologist, who employs his linguistic instinct and his
knowledge of cognate languages to formulate hypotheses about the
meanings of words and the grammatical structure of the language.
Without his preliminary work there is in fact nothing for anyone else
to study. Philology is a branch of scholarship which some regard as
old-fashioned; but I am proud to call myself a philologist and glad
to have had this opportunity to describe to you a body of material
which so well demonstrates both the necessity and the rewards of
philological research.
© N. Sims-Williams 1997

Larger photos of the documents shown in the text above.
· M 1224R (Slide 2) 80KB
· Surkh Kotal (Slide 3) 199KB
· Rabatak (Slide 4) 159KB
· Doc. 1R (Slide 9) 72KB
· Doc. 70R (Slide 11) 57KB
· Doc. 79R (Slide 12) 64KB
· Doc. 2R (Slide 14) 71KB
· The Buddhist Doc. (Slide 17) 102KB
· Doc. of Year 110 (Slide 18) 162KB
· Doc. of Year 247 (Slide 19) 132 KB
· Doc. 7 (Slide 20) 82KB
· Doc. 113 (Slide 24) 71KB
· Doc. 10 (Slide 25) 72KB
· Doc. 116 (Slide 28) 94KB
· Doc. 11 in Arabic (Slide 29) 65KB

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