A literary history of Persia

PAHLAWt INSCRIPTIONS 103III.THE PAHLAWI LITERATURE.The earliest traces of the Pahlawi language (of which, asalready pointed out, the apparent mingling of Semitic andIranian words, brought about by the use ofJthePahlawi legends .on coins (B.C. Huzvarish system, is the essential feature) occur, as300 A.D 695). .'rni-oxnrstpointed out by .Levy of Jtsreslau in IOO7, 1 onsub-Parthian coins of the end of the fourth and beginning ofthe third century before Christ in other words, soon after theend of the Achaemenian period ;and Pahlawi legends are borneby the later Parthian, all the Sasanian, and the Muhammadanearlycoins of Persia, including amongst the latter thecoinsstruck by the independent Ispahbads of Tabaristan, as well asthose of the earlier Arab governors.The Pahlawi coin-legendsextend, therefore, from about B.C.300 to A.D. 695,when theUmayyad Caliph 'Abdu'l-Malik abolished the Persian currencyand introduced a coinage bearing Arabic legends. 2The Pahlawi inscriptions date from the beginning ofSasanian times, the two oldest being those of Ardashir andShapur, the first and second kings of that illustrioushouse (A.D. 226-241 and 241-272) ;and they extenddown to the eleventh century,to which belongthe inscriptions cut in the Kanheri Buddhist caves in Salsettenear Bombay by certain Parsfs who visited them in A.D. 1009and 1 02 r. Intermediate between these extremes are tensignatures of witnesses on a copper-plate grant to the SyrianChristians of the Malabar coast. The grant itself isengravedin old Tamil characters on five copper plates, and a sixth containsthe names of the twenty-five witnesses attesting it,ofwhich eleven are in Kufic Arabic, ten in Sasanian Pahlawi, andfour in the Hebrew character and Persian language.31Z.D.M.G., xxi, pp. 421-465.* See the Arab historians e.g., Dinawarl (ed. Guirgass, 1888), p. 322.See Haug's Essay on Pahlawi, pp. 80-82 ;West's article on PahlawiLiterature in the Gntndriss, vol. ii, p. 79, and the references there given.