نامه فرهنگستان
سال یازدهم شماره 4 (بهمن 1389)

The term پهلوي (Pahlavī) is originally related to پهله (Pahla), a region in northwestern Iran (Khorasan), identified, in the Achaemenid and early Parthian periods, with the territory extending from Qumis to Marv and parts of southern Turkmenistan. Towards the end of Parthian era, its reference point shifted to a region in western Iran extending from Rey and Isfahan to Hamadan and Azerbaijan, what is historically designated as the Median territory. According to the Arabic sources of early Islamic centuries, in the course of time the term پهلوي acquired a range of other meanings and overtones, some quite different from the original: 1) Middle-Persian, that is, the official language of Sassanian period which eventually led to the formation of Persian (Dari) language; 2) Parthian language, that is, the official language of Arsacids; 3) local dialects of the western Iran; in this sense, the term is generally applied in its Arabicized form فهلوي (also فهلویه, pl. فهلویات) to the poetry produced in those dialects; 4) a generic term for any local dialect; 5) Iranian; 6) old or ancient, not in the general meaning of the word but in the sense of ‘ancient Persian’ (Fārsī-yi bāstānī) as the authors of a number of dictionaries phrased it. There is, however, a seventh meaning of the word پهلوي that has, hitherto, been overlooked by the scholars of Persian studies: ‘the archaic Persian of early Islamic centuries, free of Arabic words’. Contrary to those scholars who developed the opinion that the references made in classical Persian texts to a particular Pahlavī language in connection with certain Persian words ought to be identified as referring to the Middle-Persian language (No. 1 of the foregoing list), it can be said with reasonable confidence that what the authors of those texts meant was, to repeat, the archaic Persian of the early Islamic centuries. One ample evidence comes from the introductory chapter of Vis u Rāmin of Fakhraddin Gorgani (fifth century H. Q. / eleventh century A. D.) where the author identifies the language of his base text as پهلوي: wa līkin Pahlavī bāšad zabānaš / nadānad har ke bar xwānad bayānaš “but its language is Pahlavi; (therefore) not all those who read it understand what it says”. Here, in deed, the author is referring to the archaic Persian. A host of other examples from Arabic and Persian sources attests to this proposition.

The entries in the pre-eighth (fourteenth A. D.) century Persian-Arabic dictionaries for the Persian infinitive هشتن (hištan) display, along with other, more ordinary, meanings such as ‘to put’, ‘to let’, ‘to abandon’, ‘to leave’, etc., the rare meaning طلاق, ‘to divorce’, which is surprisingly absent from the later Persian dictionaries. Similar semantic attribution to its derivatives is also found in certain Arabic legal texts as well as in a number of classical Persian texts of the same period. The origin of this peculiar meaning for هشتن goes back to the Middle Iranian era when the term was commonly employed, as the Middle Persian legal text of Mādayān i Hazār Dādistān ‘The Book of A Thousand Judgments’, where the word is attested, bear witness to such practice. The term continued to be used long after the advent of Islam, though with slight differences, in some regions by Iranian Moslems who could not readily employ the corresponding Arabic term whenever they tended to their customary rites of divorce. However, the term was later abandoned in favor of the Arabic طلاق, fell out of use and was in this sense eventually forgotten, while it survived in its other meanings, at least in the poetic diction, down to the recent times.

There are a great many phrasal words in the Persian language consisting of a prepositional phrase combined with a simple verb, the meaning of which is not compositional but as a whole, a single semantic unit. The authors of Persian dictionaries have employed different variety of methods in entring these phrasal words. At the outset, the present article offers certain criteria, which serve to identify this category of phrasal words and distinguish between them and similar constructions. Then, a select group of Persian dictionaries is reviewed in terms of their methods of registering these phrasal words as entries. Finally, a specific methodology is introduced for such entries.

Kitāb al-Bulγa is, so far, the oldest known Arabic-Persian dictionary extant from the fifth century (eleventh A. D.) authored by Abu Yusif Ya‘qub Ibn Ahmad Ibn Mohammad Ibn Ahmad Qārī Kurdī Nishābūrī (d. 474 H/1082 A. D.). The dictionary contains close to 6000 entries of Arabic words, majority of which are provided with corresponding Persian definition and meaning. Some years after the appearance of the book, Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Ahmad Fanjgirdi Nishābūrī (d. 513 H/1120 A. D.), a pupil of the author, wrote a concise supplement to his master’s dictionary entitled Tatimma-yi Kitāb al-Bulγa, comprising about 500 Arabic entries along with their corresponding Persian words, which were overlooked by his master. The sole manuscript of Tatimma is preserved as part of a collection in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, a microfilm of which is held in the Central Library of Tehran University under No. 3433 along with its facsimile under No. 6578. In the present article, the author produces a critical edition of Tatimma based on its only available manuscript. In the introduction, he deals, briefly, with the style and the arrangement of al-Bulγa and similar dictionaries, the description of its available manuscripts, the comparative assessment of the content of al-Bulγa and its Tatimma, the short reference to their authors, the examination of the orthographic and phonetic characteristics of the text of Tatimma, and finally the overview of a number of notable Persian words and their Arabic equivalents cited in the latter book. Examples of the entries are as follows: الجانَ: پِذَرِ پریان, ‘father of fairies’; الآنسۀُ: گُستاخ, ‘rude, ill-mannered’; حبل الورید: رگجان, ‘vein of life’; الستَخرِج: خَراج ستان, ‘tax-collector’.

The oldest known Tūmār (‘scroll’, ‘prompt-book’) of Naqqālī (epic oral storytelling or, literally, ‘transmission’) (dated 1035 H. Q. /1626 A. D.) is a well-preserved manuscript now in the Minovi Library in Tehran. As its date of transcription suggests, the manuscript belongs to Safavid period. A cursory survey of the text reveals certain textual peculiarities that may interest linguists and lexicographers from variety of critical standpoints. For instance, there one encounters a number of words in this Tūmār, fifty-three to be precise, which are absent from similar texts as well as from dictionaries. Some of these terms are extremely puzzling and their probable meaning cannot be easily understood from the context. Some of them are Turkish words, again, not found in the Persian dictionaries. The article offers a listof these words, citing the passages in which they occur. It also briefly alludes to certain uncommon grammatical features of the text that may interest historical grammarians. Samples of the terms indexed in the article are: تن ناك، توجق، دبلقه، زول، طربزه، فروز، کورو، واسیه

Kifāyat al-taclīm fī sa nācat al-tanjīm (‘A Comprehensive Guide to the Art of Astrology’) whose author Abu al-Mahāmid Ghaznawī was a scholar in astronomy, mathematics, literature and philosophy from the sixth century H. Q. (twelfth century A. D.), is a well-known, valuable classical source-book in the field of astrological studies. Virtually next to nothing is known about the life and career of the author. Nor did much of his writings survive, except the present work, of which a few manuscripts are extant (and as yet no critical edition of it is available), and another book entitled Al-Qiyāsāt al-hamliyya (‘The Attributive Syllogisms’) of which only one manuscript survives. As to the exact date of the composition of the present work, several are entered in the text by the author, all of which refer to the year 542 H. Q. (1148 A. D.) when he was writing his book. In addition, the scribe of the oldest extant manuscript states that according to his base text the author completed the book in the year 543 H. Q. (1149 A. D.). Ghaznawi’s Kifāyat is important from variety of aspects, including its general and technical vocabulary, examples of which are: (‘let alone’) «… چه رسد به»: رها کن (‘any alcoholic beverage one third of which is evaporated and one third is remained’) «. باده اي که به سبب جوشش دو سوم آن بخار شده و یک سوم آن باقی مانده باشد»: سیکی (‘the rainbow’) «رنگین کمان، قوس قزح»: کمان رستم (‘one who bestow life’) «قاسم، قاسم الحیاة»: جان بختارSome of the rare words attested in this book are not found in the dictionaries.

1) The word کیار, spelled both کُیار (kuyār) and کیار (kiyār) in the dictionaries as early as the Luqat-i Furs of Asadi (fifth century H. Q. / eleventh century A. D.) and as late as Burhān-i Qātic (eleventh century H. Q. / seventeenth century A. D.), with the exception of one, that is, Ānandrāj, where it is spelled گُیار (guyār), is generally rendered by the meaning ‘indolence, laziness’. In all its occurrences in Persian verses, it comes with either the prefix بی ‘without’ or the prefix با ‘with’. As to its etymology, it seems that the word kiyār is a variant of guyār, a derivative of the verb guyārdan, itself a variant of guδārdan, guδār-. In Persian texts, the verb guδārdan, in association with terms denoting time such as ‘umr ‘lifetime’ and rūzgār ‘time, days’ and so on, generally implies ‘to pass, to spend’. Thus, one may surmise that the original meaning of guyār can also be ‘passing one’s time’ and by extension ‘laziness, indolence’, as attested in all eight cases of the appearance of bi-kiyār ‘without delay, at once, instantly’ in the Shahnameh of Firdowsi. 2) The word تُنبان (tumbān), generally taken to be the Persian original for the Arabic تُبان (tubbān), is assigned various meanings in early Arabic dictionaries, ranging from ‘short trousers worn by sailors’ to ‘wrestlers trousers’. The common etymology offered for it is the Middle Persian *tanpānak. A more careful investigation, however, reveals that neither تُبان is the Arabicized version of تُنبان nor is the hypothetical Middle Persian origin of this word credible. The correlation is, in fact, quite the opposite. Further, both توبان and تومان are variants of تُبان, extant in classical Persian texts and in Turkish respectively. 3) It is in the Luqat-i Furs of Asadi where the earliest instance of the word چاپلوس (čāplōs) is attested. The meaning assigned to it by Asadi, which also includes the word بلوس (balōs) as its synonym, reads: ‘čāplōs and balōs mean deceitful’. In the extant manuscripts of his dictionary, it appears in various spellings: چابلوس، جابلوس جاپلوس، چپلوس، and, of course, the widely known spelling چاپلوس. The same variants are also attested in later dictionaries as well as in classical texts like the Shahnameh and the Masnavi of Rumi. As it is evident, its oldest spelling appears with Arabic ‘ ب’. So for, no serious attempt has been made on the etymology of چابلوس. To begin with, it may be a compound formed from two verbal elements: چاب and لوس. Asadi defines the verbal noun لوس as ‘humility, deceiving others with glibbery’ which is much the same as what چاپلوسی means today. As for the first element, it is probably a derivative of the infinitive چابیدن (also (چاویدن ‘supplication, self-humiliation’ various verbal derivatives of which are attested in a number of passages of early classical texts. If the above etymological explanation is correct, then چابلوس ought to convey the meaning ‘supplication, self-humiliation, fawning’, not ‘flatterer, bootlicker’, unless one would presume that here a verbal noun has assumed the function of an active participle.

A line in all editions of the Shahnameh reads: ču bar takt bi-nšast u kard āfarīn / zi nēkī-kuniš bar ǰahān-āfarīn. The exact meaning of the line depends on whether the compound nēkī-kuniš, meaning both ‘benevolence’ as well as ‘benevolent’, is properly situated in the context. Puzzled by its unclear function in the sentence, Khaleghi-Motlagh, the latest editor of the Shahnameh, induced himself to, reluctantly, interpret it as: ‘when he ascended the throne and praised the Creator of the world for his benevolence…’. It seems that the key to the puzzle lies in a manuscript variant to nēkī-kuniš which reads nēkī-ǰahiš ‘endowed with good fortune’, an option overlooked by the editors of the Shahnameh. While a rare word in classical Persian, it is found repeatedly in Middle Persian texts in the form of nēkjahišn, ǰahišn i nēk and so on. The second element of the compound is also evident in the compound ǰahišn-ayār ‘fortunate’ (survived in Persian جهِش یار). Thus, once nēkī-kuniš is substituted with nēkī-jahiš, the line in the Shahnameh would read: ču bar takt bi-nšast u kard āfarīn / zi nēkī-ǰahiš bar jahān-āfarīn with a clear meaning ‘when he ascended the throne and praised the Creator of the world for the good fortune he was bestowed upon…’. As to the etymology of ǰahišn, according to M. Shaki, it is a cognate of Av. gata-, from the root gam- ‘to come’, or the root yam- ‘to safeguard, to protect’ as proposed by W. Baily.

The earliest known occurrence of the Persian idiom آب دندان (āb dandān) is in a line from the Shahnameh of Firdowsi which reads: agar āb-i dandān buvad mīzbān / bad-ān šahr-i kurram du hafta bi-mān ‘if you find the host to your liking, you may stay in that pleasant town for two weeks’. Thus, آب دندان conveys the general meaning of ‘to one’s liking, agreeable’. It is also found in the late classical as well as early modern texts with quite diverse meanings, including ‘untrained, conquerable, submissive’, ‘one with white and shining teeth’, ‘a kind of pastry’, ‘a kind of apricot’, ‘a kind of pomegranate’, and ‘a kind of sweetmeats’. It seems that all these meanings are in one way or another related to the literal meaning of آبِ دندان ‘the fluid around teeth, saliva’. For reasons beyond the scope of this short inquiry, a century or so ago the use of this idiom in its first sense was abandoned and replaced with the idiom بابِ دندان, while it continued to be used in its other meanings. Apart from the homonymic affinity of the first element of the latter idiom with the first element of the former, what seems to have made بابِ دندان a suitable candidate to replace آب دندان is the semantic affinity of, again, the first element of the latter idiom with the general sense of the former. Apart from other, unrelated, meanings, the word باب at some point of time must have acquired the meaning ‘suitable, proper, fitting, worthy’.

1) In the celebrated classical Persian commentary of the Holy Qur‘an Tafsīr-i Abū al-Futūh-i Rāzī one meets with the word بزیدن bazīdan as the Persian rendering of البغضاء ‘anger, outrage, to become furious’ in Sura Ma’ida: 14, 64. Its derivative in negative past tense na-bazīd is also found in the Farhang-Nama-yi Qur‘ani where it renders the verbal phrase ماقلی ‘did not take as enemy’. Other cognates of bazīdan, attested in several commentaries are: bazandī, baziš, bazišt, bazūmandī, bazumandī and bazištan. The infinitive bazīdan and its cognates are used in the meanings ranging from ‘anger’ and ‘outrage’ to ‘enmity’ and ‘vengeance’. As it is evident, they are all derivatives of the word بزه (bazah) whose original meaning is not ‘anger’ or ‘enmity’ but ‘sin’. The answer to how the semantic change from ‘sin’ to ‘anger’ or ‘enmity’ took place in these words seems to lie in their geographic circulation. The majority of Persian commentaries of the Qur‘an in which the secondary meanings of bazah and its derivatives are attested come from the central regions of Iran including the Rey area. As for the etymology of bazah, Middle Persian bazag, Av. bazda- “ill, sick”, they all belong to the Old Iranian stem ban- “to be ill”. 2) In the glossary entitled Zeyl-e Farhanghā-ye Fārsi there is an entry for a seemingly obscure compound verb نس کوز کردن which is left without transcription, marked with a question mark and defined as ‘to show disregard and to turn one’s back on [something or someone] out of snobbery’. The verb appears in a passage of the Persian translation of Sura Nisa: 62 of the Holy Qur‘an in the Tafsīr-i Shunqushī, a classical Persian commentary on the Qur‘an: ‘čigōna kunand va či cudr ārand ān vaqt ki fā-rasad-šān dard-ī va andōh-ī va cazābī va cuqūbatī bi mukāfāt-i ān-č az pēš kardand bi gardan pīčīdan va نُس کَ وز کردن…’ How could they act in such a manner and then justify themselves when they are struck by a discomfort or a grief or a calamity or a punishment as the retribution for what they committed before, such as insubordination [literally: ‘turning their neck on’] and. … نُس کَوز بکردن The first element of the compound, spelled نُس (nus), is frequently found in the Persian dictionaries with the meaning ‘mouth and around the mouth, ambitus oris’, supported by quotations from the classical verse. According to Henning, it is probably a loanword, borrowed from Sogdian ns ‘nose’, pronounced nus or nas. It is still current in the local dialects of Khorasan, both for ‘nose’ as well as for ‘around the mouth’. The second element, spelled کَوز (pronounced kōz), is a variant of the better known word کژ = کوژ /گوژ (kōž/ gōž = kuž), ‘tilted, croocked, slanting, bent’. It seems that kōž/ gōž belongs to the North-Western branch of Middle-Persian languages and kōz/ gōz to the South-Western branch. Accordingly, the proper meaning for the compound verb nus kōz kardan ought to be ‘to bend one’s mouth’, that is, ‘to give a dirty look, discountenance’, as against ‘to show disregard and to turn one’s back on [something or someone] out of snobbery’, as one finds in the Zeyl-e Farhanghā-ye Fārsi.

The second line in a short piece of poetry from the Dīvān of Mascūd Sacd Salmān, entitled ‘The function of fate and fortune’, according to one edition, reads: ‘yak-ǰāy du kišt-i pukta bēnī/ pukta ba tanūr dar miyāna’ “you may observe two baked bricks, baked together in the brick kiln in the middle”. Seemingly, the last words of the line do not make sense. In another edition, در ميانه dar miyāna is replaced with an obscure word آشنانه āšnāna. The Glossary of Words and Metaphors of Dīvān of Mascūd-i Sacd-i Salmān cites the word āšnāna and identifies it as a variant of آژیانه āžīāna, another obscure word not found in the dictionaries except the Farhang-i Jahāngīrī where it is defined as ‘a pavement built of stone and baked bricks’; but the author of the Glossary citing this dictionary wrongly states that it defines the word as ‘baked brick’. Accordingly, the last part of the line may be revised: “…baked together in the oven and baked brick”. Still nothing much improved. It seems that the solution lies in a variant found in one of the manuscripts consulted by the editor of the latter edition of the divan: داشغانه dāšγāna. It is entered in the dictionaries, explained as a variant of داشخانه dāškāna ‘brickyard’, a compound consisting of two elements: داش dāš (‘brick kiln’) and غانه γāna, a variant of خانه kāna (‘house’). Thus, the amended line would read: ‘: ‘yak-ǰāy du kišt-i pukta bēnī / pukta ba tanūr-i dāšγāna ’ “…baked together in the brick kiln of a brickyard.”