A literary history of Persia

SoHISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGYto the language, however,it has a much less precise significationin Persia than in Europe, where its application is definitelyrestricted to Sasanian or " Middle " Persian written in itsappropriate scriptwith the Aramaic or Huzvarish elementof which we have spoken. But the "Pahlawi" in whichFirdawsi's legendary monarchs and heroes indite their letters,the "high-piping Pahlavi " of 'Umar Khayyam and Hafiz, theFah/aviyydt, or verses in dialect, cited in many Persian works,and the " Pahlawi " mentioned by Hamdu'llah Mustawfi ofQazwin, a historical and geographical writer of the fourteenthcentury, as being spoken in various parts of Persia, especiallyin the north-west,is a much less definite thing. Tahmurath,"the Binder of Demons" (Div-band), was the first,accordingto Firdawsi, to reduce to writing " not one but nearly thirtytongues, such as Greek (Rumi), Arabic (Tazi\ Persian ( Tarsi),Indian, Chinese and Pahlawi, to express in writing that whichthou hearest spoken." J Now Tahmurath was the predecessorof Jamshid, the Yima of the Avesta and Yama of the Hinduto the commonbooks, an entirely mythical personage belonging Indo-Irauian Legend, that is to say, to the remotest Aryantimes, long before Avestic or Old Persian, let alone MiddlePersian, were differentiated from the primitive Aryan tongue.When, on the other hand, a writer like the above-mentionedHamdu'llah Mustawfi saysthat " Pahlawi " isspoken in acertain village, he means no more than did a villagerorQuhriid (a district in the mountains situated one stage southof Kashan) who, in reply to the writer's inquiry as to thedialect there spoken, described it as " Furs-i-qadim" " AncientPersian." With the Persians themselves (except the Zoroastrians)the term Pahlawi, as a rule, means nothing more precisethan this ;but in this book it is,unless otherwise specified,employed in the narrower acceptation of " Middle " or" Sasanian Persian." It isonly so far Parthian that the earliesttraces of it occur on the * Abd Zohar and sub-Parthian coins1Shdhndma, ed. Macan, vol. i, p. 18.