PERSIA 



' ancient ' or ' classical Zend ' ), which died out in 

 the 3d century B.C.^one of the most highly 

 developed idioms, rich in inflections, in the verbs 

 as well as in the nouns, and in the former almost 

 completely agreeing with Vedic Sanskrit ; yet such 

 as we find it in the small remains which have 

 survived it is no longer in the full vigour of life, 

 Imt almost decaying, and grammatically some- 

 what neglected. (Jeographically, this idiom may 

 be placed in northern Persia. Its alphabet is of 

 Semitic origin, and the writing goes from right 

 to left (see ZEND, ZEND-AVESTA). (2) Ancient 

 Persian, the chief remnants of which are found in 

 the cuneiform inscriptions of the time of the 

 Acha-menides, discovered in the ruins of Persepolis, 

 on the rock of Behistun, and some other places of 

 Persia (see CUNEIFORM). Some relics, chiefly 

 consisting of proper names for gods and men, and 

 terms for vessels and garments, have survived in 

 the writings of the classical period, and in the 

 Bible, chiefly in Daniel. This idiom is much 

 nearer to Zend and Sanskrit than to modern 

 Persian. (3) Pehlevi ( West Iranian, Median, and 

 Persian ), in use during the period of the Sassanides 

 < ,'iil in 7th century A. D. ), an idiom largely mixed 

 with Semitic words, and poorer in inflections and 

 terminations than Zend. Its remnants consist of 

 a certain number of books relating to the Zoro- 

 astrian religion, of coins and inscriptions ; and the 

 language is not quite the same in all cases accord- 

 ing to the larger or smaller infusion of foreign 

 u.iriU. The non-Iranian element is known as 

 Huzvaresh, and is simply Chaldee ; while the 

 Iranian element is but little different from modern 

 Persian. There are three distinct idioms to \>e 

 distinguished in Pehlevi, and the writing varies 

 iruingly, yet it is not certain whether the 

 difference arises from their lielonging to different 

 districts or periods. When, however, Pehlevi ceased 

 to \>e a living language, and the restoration of the 

 pure Iranian had l>eg!in, people, not daring to change 

 the writings (chiefly of a sacred nature, as having 

 descended to them from the Sassanian times ), l;gan 

 tu substitute in reading the Persian equivalents 

 for the Hiizvaresh words. At last a new form of 

 commentaries to the sacred writings sprang up, in 

 which more distinct and clear Zend characters were 

 used, where each sign had but one phonetic 

 value, mill where all the foreign Huzvaresh words 

 were replaced by pure Persian ones; and this new 

 form was called (4) Pdzencl. The transition from 

 the ancient to the modern Persian is formed by the 

 I'arsee, or, as the Arabs and the modern Persians 

 themselves call it, Farsi l in use from 700 to 1100 

 A.D., once the language purely of the south-western 

 provinces, and distinguished cbielly by a peculi- 

 arity of style, rigid exclusion of Semitic words, 

 anil certain now olmolete forms and words retained 

 in liturgical formulas. It is the Persian once written 

 by the Parsees or fire-worshippers, and is in other 

 respects very similar to the present or modern 

 Persian ( which also is'invariably called Farsi by the 

 modern Persians), the language of .hi mi. Nizami, 

 and Hiifix from 1100 to the present time with 

 its numerous dialects. The purest dialect is said 

 to lie that spoken in Shiraz and Ispahan and their 

 Migfaboorhoml. In general, the language is pro- 

 nounced by universal consent to be the richest and 

 must elegant of those spoken in modem Asia. It 

 is the most sonorous and muscular, while at the 

 i" time it is the most elegant and most flexible 

 nf idiom- ; and it is not to be wondered at that in 

 .Moslem and Hindu realms it should have become 

 the language of the court and of the educated 

 world in general, as French used to be in Europe. 

 Its chief characteristic, however, is the enormous 

 Intermixture of Arabic words, which, indeed, 

 make up almost half its vocabulary. Respecting 



its analytical and grammatical structure, it exhibits 

 traces only of that of the ancient dialects of Zend 

 and Achitmenian, of which it is a direct descend- 

 ant. The elaborate system of forms and inflec- 

 tions characteristic of those dialects has been 

 utterly abandoned for combinations of auxiliary 

 words, which impart fullness and an incredible ease 

 to speech and composition. Tiie grammar of the 

 Persian language has been called ' regular ; ' but 

 the fact is that there is hardly any grammar worth 

 mentioning. Thus, there is no gender distinguished 

 in declension ; the plural is always formed in the 

 same manner, the only distinction consisting in 

 animate beings receiving the affix (in, while the 

 inanimate are terminated in /id. Imported Arabic 

 nouns, however, invariably take their Arabic 

 plural. Not even the pronouns have a gender of 

 their own ; the distinction between masculine and 

 feminine must be expressed by a special word, 

 denoting male or female. There is no article, 

 either definite or indefinite. The flexion of the 

 verb is equally simple. As to syntax, there is 

 none, or, at all events, none which would not come 

 almost instinctively to any student acquainted 

 with the general laws of speech and composition. 

 The time of its greatest brilliancy may be desig- 

 nated as that in which Firdausi wrote, when 

 Arabic words had not swamped it to the vast 

 degree in which they have since done, and were 

 still, as far as they had crept in, amenable to 

 whatever rules the Persian grammar imposed upon 

 the words of its own language. 



In the history of the Persian writing three epochs 

 are to be distinguished. First, we have the Cunei- 

 form (q.v. ), by the side of which there seems, 

 however, to have been in use a kind of Semitic 

 alphabet for common purposes. This, in the second 

 period, appears to have split into several alphabets, 

 all related to each other, and pointing to a common 

 Svriac origin (such as the different kinds of Pehlevi 

 characters and the Zend alphabet ) cleverly adapted 

 to the use of a non-Semitic language. In the third 

 period we find the Arabic alphabet enlarged for 

 Persian use by an addition of diacritical points and 

 signs for such sounds as are not to be found in 

 Arabic (p, ch, zh, g). The writing is but slightly 

 different from the usual Arabic Neskhi. 



Of the literature of the Persians before the 

 Mohammedan conquest we shall not speak here, 

 but refer to the article ZEND. The literary 

 period now under consideration is distinguishable 

 by the above-mentioned infusion of Arabic words 

 into the Persian language, imported together 

 with the Koran and its teachings. The writers 

 are one and all Mohammedans. With the fan- 

 aticism peculiar to conquering religions, all the 

 representatives of old Persian literature ami 

 science, men and matter, were ruthlessly perse- 

 cuted by Omar's general, Saad Ibn Abi Waltkas. 

 The consequence was that for the first two or three 

 centuries after the conquest all was silence. The 

 scholars and priests who would not bow to Allah 

 and his Prophet took with them what had not 

 lieen destroyed of the written monuments of their 

 ancient culture, while those that remained at home 

 were forced to abandon their wonted studies. Yet, 

 by slow degrees, as is invariably the case under 

 such circumstances, the conquered race transformed 

 the culture of the conquerors to such a degree that 

 native influence soon became paramount in Persia, 

 even in the matter of theology. It is readily 

 granted by later Mohammedan writers that it was 

 out of the body of the Persians exclusively that 

 sprang the foremost, if not all, the greatest scholars 

 and authors on religious as well as grammatical 

 subjects, historians and poets, philosophers and 

 men of science j and the only concession they made 

 consisted in their use of the newly-imported Arabic 



