History of Persian Language

By: Fariborz Rahnamoon

ORIGIN:

Parsi or Persian was the language of the Parsa people who ruled Iran between 550 – 330 BCE. It belongs to what scholars call the Indo-Iranian group of languages. It became the language of the Persian Empire and was widely spoken in the ancient days ranging from the borders of India in the east, Russian in the north, the southern shores of the Persian Gulf to Egypt and the  Mediterraneanin the west.Over the centuries Parsi has changed to its modern form and today Persian is spoken primarily in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and parts
of Uzbekistan. It was the language of the court of many of the Indian kings till the British banned its use, after occupying India in the 18
century. The Mogul kings of India had made Persian their court language. Engraved and filled with gold on walls of Delhi’s Red Fort is
the sentence “Agar Ferdows dar jahan ast hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast”; – ‘If there is a paradise on earth it is here it is here it is here.’

Although the name of the language has been maintained as Persian or Parsi or its Arabic form Farsi (because in Arabic they do not have the letter P) the language has undergone great changes and can be categorized into the following groups.
Old Persian
Middle Persian
Classical Persian
Modern Persian

Old Persian is what the original Parsa tribe of the Hakahmaneshinian (Achaemenid) era spoke and they have left for us samples carved on stone in cuneiform script.Middle Persian is the language spoken during the Sasanian era also known as Pahlavi. We have plenty of writings from that era in the
form of religious writings of the Zarathushti religion, namely the Bundahish, Arda Viraf nameh, Mainu Khared, Pandnameh Adorbad Mehresfand etc.

Classical Persian the origin of this language is not very clear. Words have their roots in different languages spoken in various parts of the country but the majority of the words have their roots in Old Persian, Pahlavi and Avesta. They are represented in classical writings and poems.

It is noteworthy that every country that the Arabs conquered lost its civilization, culture and language and adopted the Arabic language
and way of life. For example Egypt whose people could build Pyramids, were good astronomers and possessed the art of mummification
lost their culture and language to the Arabs and started living like them. It was only Iran that broke the trend and stood against the Arabs and preserved its culture and language and even adopted their own version of Islam by creating Shiaism. Later when the Moguls invaded Iran the Iranians converted them into ambassadors of Iranian language, culture and art. The Moguls made Parsi their court language in India.

[Even to this day the Zoroastrian Mobeds in India memorize the whole Avesta, which runs into volumes as part of their training to become Mobeds and as for a living example of a language without script, the Zarathushties of Iran have been speaking the Dari language for centuries without writing it.]After the Persian came to power and with the expansion of the Empire and the inclusion within their realm, of various cultures that used writing to communicate, the need for communication by writing arose. The scribes of Elam and Babylon were recruited and for the first time the language of the Persians were written in the Cuneiform script. Had they had their own script we would have some proof of it by way of archeological evidence.

Using their mind and using it in a good way -VohuMana- was their principle in life. This fact has been recognized even in the Bible by always calling the Persian ‘Wise’. Even the act of predicting the time and location of the birth of Jesus Christ is not considered a prophecy but an act of wisdom.So when the Iranians entered the business of writing they used their wisdom and started improving on existing methods and forms of writing.

Initially they used the clay tablets, as was the practice among the scribes, like the ones found at Sush (Susa), which contains the Old Persian text of the foundation charter of the palace of Dariush (Darius). Although the scribes were using cuneiform script for centuries it, never occurred to them before, and it was under the Iranians that it was developed into an alphabet denoting sound. Thus the second generation of Old Persian was written in forty-three signs or alphabet and wrting became easy and less tedious.The Assyrian scribes used the Aramaic script. An Assyrian bas-relief shows two scribes, one of whom holds a tablet and stylus for writing in cuneiform and the other a papyrus for writing Aramaic in Ink.

The Aramaic script written with ink on papyrus and skin was, gradually adopted by the Iranians. A few records in the Armanic script have been found to prove its use from Egypt to India. One of the versions, on the tomb of Dariush is drawn up in the Old Persian and written in the Armanic script.

The use of Papyrus, skin and ink made writing, storing and transportation of written material more practical, compared to the wet clay on which the cuneiform script was to be written and then dried. The extent of the Empire, the need for messages and records of trade and commerce to be taken from one place to another, all this weighed in favour of the Armanic script on papyrus or skin.We know from the Bible that records were well maintained by the Iranians in those days. (Ezra 6: 1-3)
‘Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasure were laid up in Babylon. And there was found in Achmetha (Hamadan) in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written.