On the Three Parchments from Avroman in Kurdistan

Abstract

The Gr. documents in questions are, apart from their historical interest, very valuable from the point of Iran, philology. They contain many Iran, names, whose forms truly represent the changes which their Av. or AP. forerunners went through in the early Parthian Pahl. language. Fortunately many of the names occurring in these documents are met with in the ancient Arm. literature. During the Parthian period of the history of Persia, about 250 B.C. to A.D. 226, Armenia was the apple of discord between the Parthians and the Romans, and it formed according to the fortunes of war a part of the Roman or Persian territory, or a kingdom under the suzerainty of Rome or Parthia. In consequence the Armenians came much in touch with the Parthians, from whom they borrowed a considerable number of Persian words for their language and a large number of Persian pr. names as well. Thus it is that in Arm. the intermediate forms of Iran. words, those between the A P. and the MidPers. of the Sasanian period, are to be found fossilized. Again, with an equal amount of certainty the MidPers. words of the Sasanian period are met with in Arm., viz., those which were borrowed during the Sasanian period of the history of Persia, about A.D. 226 to 631. We are thus able to trace all the changes, which the original Iran, vowels and consonants went through, from the very early A v. times down to the dawn of NP. period. Nearly all these pr. names treated in the notes are found in the works of one or more of the following Arm.]