فصلنامه پازند
پیاپی 32-33 (بهار و تابستان 1392)

A collection of texts known as "The Persian Christian Martyr's Acts" are amongst significant written sources for reconstruction of Sassanian period in the history of Iran. They contain some unique data which no other source can provide. Unfortunately, these texts have neither been considered adequately nor employed in comparison with other classical sources about Sassanian history. The first part of the article reviews the background of the scientific researches that has been done on these sources up to now. The Second part aims firstly to study the short Syriac text known as "Martyrs of Karkha de Beth Selok" and secondly to provide a Persian translation.

Scribes usually used a specific pattern in creating different inscriptions and using particular expressions in antiquity. These patterns must have been respected as written regulations in inscriptions for some communities. The aim of this paper is to recognize Urartian written rules in different written patterns that Urartian scribes used in royal inscriptions. The prayer to a great deity -mostly Haldi- at the beginning of the inscription and a curse in the end and help request from the deities are among most respected patterns in most Urartian royal inscriptions. “for the sake of Haldi”, “through the greatness of Haldi”, “Haldi ordered me to …”, “I conquered …”, “King built …”, “I did these in one year”, help request from deities and the name of  the king along with his father’s name, who was the previous king, were mentioned.

A large part of the Zoroastrian religious texts were written in New Persian, Avestan and Pahlavi languages. Since the fourth and fifth centuries onwards H., the Zoroastrian religious texts have been quoted to new Persian. Although religious literature in Persian Zoroastrian have been reproduced again from Avesta and Pahlavi texts, but they are counted as important sources for studying alive Zoroastrian tradition in Iran after Islam. In this paper, 11 Zoroastrian manuscripts are introduced that now are kept in the National Library of Iran. Five of which have been written in Iran and the rest in India.

The story of "Burzoya’s voyage to India" has a variety of narratives which can be classified and compared in two groups: the longer story and the shorter one. In the longer story Burzoya, the physician of the time of Xosrow I, Anōšīrvān, goes to India to find Kalīla wa Demna and bring it to Iran. In the Shorter story an allegory is narrated: Burzoya has read in a book that, a plant which is grown on the mountains of India, revives the dead; so he goes to India to find the plant but he can’t find it despite an exhaustive search. Finally he realizes that the source of this mystery is an allegory, thus the plant is knowledge which brings unwise (=dead) man back to life. Then he tries to collect the books of wisdom and bring them to Iran. In this article, we quote an allegory story from a Zoroastrian religious book, Vijarkard ī dēnīg, which is parallel to the shorter story; in this tale the Wise Ōšnar narrates the allegory of the plant of life.

Persepolis Fortification archive texts dated from 509 to 493 B.C of Darius I (13–28). They document the intake, production, storage and redistribution of locally produced food commodities; recipients included gods, royals, nobles, officers and troops, officials and craftsmen, travellers, labourers and animals. The Fortification Archive is the prime source for the local administration of the Achaemenid heartland (Fars and Part of Khuzestan) and bear witness to a highly complex institutional administration. These Tiny and mundane texts by their individual and official content offer precious glimpses into social, economic and administration of imperial universe. Hallock based on their content classified texts to 32 categories. In this paper we focused on Q texts (travel rations), 719 texts and moreover we used texts in other categories that are somehow related to our subject. Our research indicates how the administrative procedure is in the travel texts, supplier and their official ranking, how the supplier and seals are related to each other, whether texts have seals or not, and how it is related to category of tablets, also geographical area, office and official ranking of each supplier and seals are indicated. However, we cannot reach a certain recognition of official situation of suppliers and seals in some cases.

The discovery of autochthonous documents in the region of Khotan and the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, on Chinese high-quality paper and by Western and Chinese discovery team at the end of 19th century and early 20th, has inaugurated a new chapter in the history of Khotan. The study of these documents which were written in a less-known Iranian language and contained Sanskrit and Prakrit terminology of literature, science, administration, politics, medicine etc; has shed light to the historical and cultural background of Khotan. The Chinese pilgrims in the 5th century have mentioned rituals that are Indian and Buddhist. However ancient Iranian beliefs were popular before the start of Buddhism and especially Mahāyāna school. Khotanese literature demonstrates traces of this progression.