Tag: Philology

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Books

Deciphering the Illegible

Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber (Iranica 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

The commemorative publication Deciphering the Illegible is dedicated to Dieter Weber, one of the most important scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, who is best known for his work on deciphering original documents in the extremely ambiguous Pahlavi cursive script, which was long considered ‘illegible’. In addition to an appreciation of his research and a bibliography of his publications, the volume contains twenty-eight contributions by renowned experts, reflecting the broad spectrum of the dedicatee’s academic interests and research work. The articles cover a wide range of topics and offer many new insights and original perspectives on religious, linguistic and historical problems, including several editions of previously unpublished texts.

Abstract

Table of Contents

  • Dieter Weber — A Scholarly Profile
  • Publications of Dieter Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  • Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: Three Zoroastrian Manuscripts in Armenia
  • Thomas Benfey: Windādag’s Orders: Ten Unpublished Middle Persian Ostracafrom Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād
  • Adam Benkato: A Manichaean Remedy for Headaches
  • Alberto Cantera: The Passive Suffix -ī̆h̆– in Middle Persian
  • Carlo G. Cereti: From the Zamyād Yašt to the Seventh Book of the Dēnkard, Some Notes on Sistan and Zoroastrian Eschatology
  • Iris Colditz: How to Make Clarified Butter in Sogdian
  • Touraj Daryaee: The Owl in the Zoroastrian Tradition: Contribution to Iranian Bestiary I
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: Hübschmann and the Middle Iranian Part on Armenian Loanwords
  • Shervin Farridnejad and Arash Zeini: “Who Will Protect the Cattle”? On Dogs and the Sin of Meat Consumption in Zoroastrianism
  • Ela Filippone: A Contribution to Pahlavi Lexicography: The Case of ⟨twk(‘)⟩ and ⟨twp(‘)⟩ in the Pahlavi Corpus and their Possible Cognates in Modern Iranian Languages
  • Philippe Gignoux †: Sur l’argenterie sassanide, relectures et nouveautés
  • Rika Gyselen: Le y final et le trait final en moyen-perse: le cas des sceaux des administrations territoriales
  • Almut Hintze: The Pahlavi Psalter in its Historical Context
  • Philip Huyse: Klimawandel und die spätantike Pest im sasanidischen Reich
  • Götz König: Notizen zur Überlieferung und zum Gebrauch der Yašts
  • Pavel B. Lurje and Boris Zheleznyakov: “Let Buyruq Sangun Live Long and be Divinely Blessed” Another Sogdian Dedicatory Inscription
  • Maria Macuch: Trading with Infidels: A Balancing Act in Zoroastrian Legal Reasoning
  • Mauro Maggi: Blowing out saṃsāra in Khotan.
  • Jaime Martínez Porro: A Brief Note on an Avestan Quotation in the Wizī̆rgerd ī̆ Dēnī̆g
  • Enrico Morano: Fragments from a Sogdian Cosmogonical Manuscript in Manichaean Script.
  • Antonio Panaino: The ‘starred’ Frawahr and the ‘Katasterization’ of Humanity
  • Anna-Grethe Rischel: Studies of ‘Watermarks of Technology’ from the Turfan Collection in Berlin
  • Adriano V. Rossi: Minima Iranica for Dieter
  • Nikolaus Schindel: Zur Bronzeprägung des Ohrmazd IV.
  • Martin Schwartz: Mnemonica Iranica
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams: Further Notes on Sogdians in Khotan
  • Yutaka Yoshida: Training of Scribes along the Silk Road: A Case from Manichaean Sogdian
  • Arash Zeini: The Covenant that Binds: Ownership of Life in Late Antique Zoroastrianism
Categories
Articles

Lost Turfan Fragments

Benkato, Adam. 2024. Lost Turfan fragments from the Nachlass of W.B. Henning. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, FirstView. 1–17.

During the Second World War, a number of manuscript fragments in Iranian languages from the Berlin Turfan collections were lost. Photographs of these fragments preserved in the Nachlass of Walter B. Henning bring to light their contents and fill gaps in the record of Turfan texts. These photographs are published here for the first time, together with a description of the fragments and their contents.

Abstract
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Books

Studies in Iranian Philology

Barbera, Gerardo, Matteo De Chiara, Alessandro Del Tomba, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, Federico Dragoni & Paola Orsatti (eds.). 2024. Siddham. Studies in Iranian philology in honour of Mauro Maggi. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.

This volume is a tribute to Mauro Maggi, celebrating his distinguished career and significant contributions in the fields of Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Central Asian philology and linguistics. It features a diverse collection of papers presented by colleagues, former students, and friends, reflecting the broad spectrum of Mauro Maggi’s research interests. This collection not only honours Mauro Maggi’s extensive scholarly contributions but also serves as a valuable resource for researchers in Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Central Asian studies. It will be of interest and value to scholars of Iranian philology and linguistics, as well as those in Indo-European linguistics, Central Asian philology, and Buddhist literature. Through this comprehensive tribute, the volume underscores the lasting impact of Mauro Maggi’s work and his enduring legacy in the field.

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Journal

Ricerche Linguistiche

Ricerche Linguistiche is a new journal, giving new life to an older version of itself. It is published annually and aims to provide ‘a venue for contributions in the fields of diachronic and historical linguistics concerning all levels of linguistic analysis, with a special focus on ancient Indo-European and Semitic languages, as well as Romance languages and varieties’. You can read more about the journal, its history and goals here. Sadly, the journal does not seem to be open access.

It’s first issue has two articles of interest:

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Articles Journal

On the Etymology of pourušaspa-

Volume 28, Issue 1, of Iran and the Caucasus has been published. We would like to point out Mehrbod Khanizadeh’s contribution in the issue:

Khanizadeh, Mehrbod. 2024. On the etymology of the Avestan personal name pourušaspa-. Iran and the Caucasus 28(1). 72–86.

This article discusses the formation and meaning of the Avestan personal name of Zarathuštra’s father, pourušaspa-. Taking side with the current scholarly view on the etymology and meaning of the word, i.e., *pourušāspa– → pourušaspa– ‘one who has grey horses’, it is argued here that the shortening of the vowel can be explained by an analogical model in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2, where pourušaspa– m. is described as pouru.aspa– ‘having many horses’. The article also challenges the view that Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 is a recent text.

Abstract
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Articles

Lād: A Bactrian loanword

Halfmann, Jakob. 2023. Lād “law”: A Bactrian loanword in the Nuristani languages. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 86(3). 505–510.

This article proposes a new etymology for the Nuristani word family of Katë lod ~ lot, Nuristani Kalasha lād, etc. It is argued that these are best understood as early borrowings from Bactrian λαδο “law”.

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Articles

On Middle Persian hassār and hassārīh

Fattori, Marco. 2023. A note on Pahlavi lexicography: Middle Persian hassār, hassārīh. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 1–12.

This article deals with the identification and interpretation of two rare Middle Persian words. Firstly, some attestations of the as yet unrecognized word <hs’lyh> hassārīh are discussed, showing that it means “direction”. Then, a semantic analysis of its underived counterpart hassār is carried out, as a basis for an etymological proposal. Finally, it is argued that hassār descends from Old Persian *haçā-sāra- “(having the head) in the same direction”, and a possible reconstruction of the semantic development of the word is provided.

Article’s abstract
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Articles

Towards a Manifesto for Middle Iranian Philology

Zeini, Arash. 2023. Towards a manifesto for Middle Iranian philology. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 0. 1–12.

The purpose of this manifesto is to raise broad questions about philological inquiry as a background to the purpose of this occasional journal. It reflects both on general questions of philology (Section 2) and delves into an example from the Middle Persian translations (Zand) of the Avesta in which can be seen a clash between the traditional approach in that field and the type of inquiry that I advocate here (Section 3).

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Books

Studies inspired by Agnes Korn

Suleymanov, Murad & Dorian Pastor (eds.). 2022. Tous les chemins menent a Paris: Studies inspired by Agnes Korn. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

This volume is a collection of nine papers by various authors focussing on issues of etymology, historical language contact, morphology and syntax, typological modelling, and folk practices in the Caucasus–Iran–Central Asia area and its immediate vicinity. The volume is a humble token of appreciation offered by the authors to Dr Agnes Korn to honour her continuing support for young researchers during her time in Paris and to highlight her wide array of research interests.

For the table of contents, see here.

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Events

Current Trends in Avestan Studies

This lecture discusses the major progress made in our understanding of the Avestan corpus/texts in the last years. Based on her recent publication co-written with Jean Kellens, L’introduction à l’Avesta, Céline Redard introduces the new vision of the Avesta, leading to the new editions currently undertaken. The important ritual aspect will also be underlined, with some concrete examples taken from her books The Srōš Drōn – Yasna 3 to 8, and The Gujarati Ritual Directions of the Paragnā, Yasna and Visperad Ceremonies (co-written with Kerman Daruwalla).

From the lecture’s poster

This lecture is scheduled for 16 February 2022. For more details, see the poster of the lecture.