A literary history of Persia

66 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGYfirst Assyrian, then Aramaic, and lastly Arabian. The Assyrianinfluence is as unmistakable in the sculptures of Persepolisrand Bchistun as in the inscriptions; and, asSpiegel has well shown (Eranische Alterthunukunde^vol. i, pp. 446-485), it can be traced with equalclearness in the domain of religion, probablyalso of politics,social organisation, jurisprudence, and war. "The greatKing, the King of kings, the King in Persia, the King ofthe Provinces," was heir in far more than mere style andtitle to " the great King, the King of Assyria," with whosemight Rabshakch threatened Hezekiah. And this relationperhaps explains the enigma presented by the Huzvirishelement in Pahlawi which so long misled students as to them tnc contemporarytrue character of the latter.Why did the Pahlawi scribe, fully acquainted with the alphabeticaluse of the Pahlawi character, write the old title"Kingof kings" as Malkan-malka when (aswe knowfrhistorian Ammianus Marcellinus)his soldiers and people hailed him (as theystill hail their monarch) as Shahun-shi'ihthe laterequivalent of the old Khshdyathiya Khshayathiy&nam ? Whydid he write bisra for meat and lahma for bread when (as welearn from the author of the Fihrist, and other well-informedwriters of the early Muhammadan period) he read theseAramaic words into Persian as gusht and n&n ? To us itseems unnatural enough, though even we do prettymuch thesame thing when we read " /'.*." as " that"is," e.g." as " forexample," and tf " or " & " as " and." Yet how much easierand more natural was such a procedure to a people accustomedto scripts wholly composed of ideograms and symbolsappealing directly to the intelligence without invoking aid fromthe auditory sense ? If the Assyrian adopted the Akkadianlogogram connoting the idea of " father," and read for it hisown and not the original foreign equivalent, why should thePersian hesitate to treat the Aramaic words malk a, b'nrA tlahmd