نامه فرهنگستان
سال بیستم شماره 2 (تابستان 1400)

In the study of Yašt 5, Nāhīd Yašt, J. Darmesteter and consequently, a number of researchers, have come to the conclusion that the author of several final verses of Yašt, has contemplated a human-shaped icon of Anāhīd in temple, the way it has been described and attached to the hymn. The preliminaries that led the researchers to draw such a conclusion are: 1. The final verses of the hymn show typical characteristic features of the idolatry tradition; indeed, the poet described the idol that he saw, for nowhere else in Vedic or Avestan literature we have not ever seen a detailed description of a deity’s garments and ornaments, as Anāhīd’s; 2. According to Berossus, Ardashir II, introduced and spread a heretical iconolatry cult throughout the Achaemenid Empire. But in the inference that is based upon these two premises, an obvious principle of logic has not been observed. Therefore, in this case, since the minor and major premises do not have the basic characteristics of a theorem, it is fundamentally impossible to substantiate or refute its hypothesis.

Most of the extant Khotanese texts are translations from other languages such as Sanskrit and Tibetan. Therefore, translation has always played an important role in Khotanese, and correct translation has been one of the most important mental preoccupations of Khotanese translators. Naturally, the style, context, and accuracy of translation vary in religious and secular texts. This paper examines the translation and its techniques in the Jīvaka-Pustaka, which is a translation of a text from Sanskrit into Khotanese. In this paper, I will examine some matters such as the general method of translation, the method of “communicative translation’’ and “semantic translation” and the degree of adherence to these two methods, translation techniques such as borrowing, calque or loan translation, transposition, modulation, etc.

The present article is about the reading of a Sassanian inscription engraved on a gemstone ring unearthed in Māzandarān province. This gem inscription is a sentence asking an inspiring and supportive “king/ruler” for help and hope. In addition to the translation and interpretation of the engraving, the meaning of the word xwadāy in this function has also been discussed.

The narratives of Farnbagh Sorush are collections comprising four answers that Farnbagh Sorush son of Wahrām gave to Hirbed’s questions. The context originally consisted of five questions and answers but without any explanation, at the beginning of the text it is mentioned that “writing one of the questions was not possible”. The compilation of this collection takes place in 1008 AD. The first question deals with the intercalations, the second relates to a statement regarding the appointment of a Magian, the third is about guardianship and the last one deals with marriage.

Dārāb Hormazdyār’s Rivāyāt is the most complete and comprehensive collection of Persian narratives in Zoroastrian religious traditions and also historical, legendary and mythical narratives that was collected by Dārāb Hormazdyār in 1049 Yazdgerdi (1093 AH). Some of these Persian narratives, such as Ardavirafnameh, Sad dar Nasr and Sad dar Bundahishn have been published separately. So far, no comprehensive research has been done on the Persian texts of Dārāb Hormazdyār’s book in the areas of language, grammar and vocabulary. In the present article, an attempt has been made to extract some features of the text and provide them with evidence from the text.

The present paper studies a case of paradigmatic levelling in the Central Plateau Dialects (CPD). Paradigmatic levelling is a kind of analogical change which reduces stem alternations within a paradigm. In most CPD, the verb ڮcomeڰ shows a stem alternation in the non-imperative and imperative moods, that is to say, the present stem [a:j-] has the suppletive stem [ur-/or-] in the imperative mood. But in some CPD, consisting of just four dialects Ardestani, Fasakhodi, Komshechei and Hendu-Abadi, spoken in the Ardestan area, analogical levelling has extended the suppletive stem to the other mood forms. In other words, the [a:j-] ~ [ur-/or-] alternation was eliminated and no longer exists.

Zarvani dialect is a language variety of Larestani which is one of the southwestern Iranian languages. This dialect is spoken in Zarvan village which is located in the south of Fars province. This paper examines the typological status of word order and agreement in Zarvani dialect, the former on the basis of Dryer’s 1992 paper titled “the Greenbergian word order correlations” and the latter based on five typological criteria of Combrie’s1978 article. The results show that Zarvani dialect shares word order parameters of both VO versus OV languages. In spite of that, the dialect tends to be more like a verb medial (VO) language in regard to languages of Eurasia and the world. Agreement in Zarvani is divided into two groups based on transitivity and tense system: (a) nominative- common rule of phoneme change in Tabari language. The second word is būm which is not used in the meaning of ‘land’ and ‘ground’ (as mentioned before) in Mazandarani dialects. There are several cases of its usage in the first meaning ‘land’ in New Iranian languages and dialects but only a few examples of its second meaning ‘ground’ (the surface of the Earth). However, the usage of this word in old Tabari poems in both meanings, especially the second one, is noteworthy. Historical linguistics is our approach to survey both words in this article.

In addition to Persian language, Iranian and non-Iranian dialects and accents, Iran has some lingos which are known as jargon in linguistics and also lowtar or lotara in Persian literary texts. Lotara is an artificial and conventional language that is used in some groups of society. These groups consist of religious and ethnic minorities, business communities and middle and lower classes. Lotara languages can be functionally classified into four groups: ethnic groups, religious cults, occupational groups and common groups. The language studied in this research has never been studied before. It is spoken by coppersmiths and tin workers in Ramsar city. Seleri speakers communicate with each other in their work places and society without any problem. The present research is an overview of the occupation, language and words used by coppersmiths and tin workers in Ramsar city.