A literary history of Persia

RECAPITULATION 77so whatever they wish to write, save such things as have no needof a like substitution, which you write as they are pronounced." *Thirdly, we have the fact of the complete disappearance ofthe whole Aramaic or Huzvarish element in even the earliestspecimens of Persian written in the Arabic character, whichcould hardly have occurred if these words had ever been usedin speech, but which was natural enough if they belonged tothe script only, and were mere ideograms.Fourthly, we have the tradition surviving amongst theZoroastrians to the present day, a tradition faulty enoughin detail, as we have already seen, but quite clear on thegeneral principle that Huzvarish words ought to be read asPersian. Hence the so-called Pazend and Parsi books, whichare merely transcriptions of Pahlawi books into the unambiguousAvestic and Arabic characters respectively,all the Huzvarish,or Aramaic, words being replaced by theiror supposed equivalents.Persian equivalents,Itmay be well that we should conclude this chapter withDetwmsno1a recapitulation of the various terms that havebeen used in speaking of the ancient languagesof Persia, an explanation of their precise meaning,and a statement of their etymology,known.where this isMedic, the language of Media, i.e.,the western part of whatwe now call Persia, the Mdda of Darius'sinscription, the Mdhdt (plural of M&h, whichoccurs as a prefix in Mah-Basra, Mah-Kufa, Mah-Nahawand,TSee Haug's Essay on Pahlawi, pp. 37 et scqq. ; Journal Asiatiqtte foi1835 (p. 256) and 1866 (p. 430) ; Fihrist, ed. Fliigel, p. 14. I differ fromHaug's rendering in several particulars, especially as regards the sense ofmutashdbihdt, which he translates " [words] which have the same meaning,"whereas I take it to mean " Persian words which would beambiguous if written in the Pahlawi character," but of which the Huzvarishequivalents are not so ambiguous. Any one who will write nan inPahlawi script, and then consider in how many different ways it can beread, will easily see where the " ambiguity " lies.