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Iranian Literature
Iranian literature, or Iranic literature, refers to the literature, literary traditions of the Iranian languages, developed predominantly in Iran and other regions in the Middle East and the Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, Asia Minor, and parts of western Central Asia and northwestern South Asia. These include works attested from as early as the 6th century BC. Modern Iranian literatures include Persian literature, Ossetian literature, Kurdish literature, Pashto literature and poetry, Pashto literature, and Balochi literature, among others. Classical and medieval eras Avestan The earliest surviving literary works in an Iranian language are that of the religious texts of the Avesta, written in Avestan, an Iranian languages#Old Iranian, Old Iranian sacred language. The oldest part of these are the Gathas (, , "hymn"), that are a collection of hymns believed to be composed by Zoroaster, the reformer of the ancient Iranian religion and the founder of Zoroastrianism, dating to the 6t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacred Language
A sacred language, liturgical language or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Some religions, or parts of them, regard the language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Ecclesiastical Latin in Roman Catholicism, Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Avestan in Zoroastrianism, Sanskrit in Hinduism, and Punjabi in Sikhism. By contrast Buddhism and Christian denominations outside of Catholicism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves. Concept A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in the society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí, a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Khotan
The Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhism, Buddhist Saka kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin (modern-day Xinjiang, China). The ancient capital was originally sited to the west of modern-day Hotan at Yotkan. From the Han dynasty until at least the Tang dynasty it was known in Chinese as Yutian. This Buddhism, largely Buddhist kingdom existed for over a thousand years until it was conquered by the Islam, Muslim Kara-Khanid Khanate in 1006, during the Turkic settlement of the Tarim Basin, Islamization and Turkicization of Xinjiang. Built on an oasis, Khotan's mulberry groves allowed the production and export of silk and carpets, in addition to the city's other major products such as its famous nephrite jade and pottery. Despite being a significant city on the Silk Road as well as a notable source of jade for ancient China, Khotan itself is relatively small – the circumference of the ancient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saka
The Saka, Old Chinese, old , Pinyin, mod. , ), Shaka (Sanskrit (Brāhmī): , , ; Sanskrit (Devanāgarī): , ), or Sacae (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples, Eastern Iranian peoples who lived in the Eurasian Steppe and the Tarim Basin from the 9th century BC to the 5th century AD. "Modern scholars have mostly used the name Saka to refer specifically to Iranians of the Eastern Steppe and Tarim Basin" "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan to distinguish them from the related Massagetae of the Aral region and the Scythians of the Pontic steppes. These tribes spoke Iranian languages, and their chief occupation was nomadic pastoralism." The Saka were closely related to the Scythians, and both groups formed part of the wider Scythian cultures. However, they are distinguished from the Scythians by their specific geographical and cultural traits. The Saka la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saka Language
Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan, Kashgar and Tumshuq in the Tarim Basin, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language. The two kingdoms differed in dialect, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese. The Saka rulers of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent, such as the Indo-Scythians and Western Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language. This has however been questioned by more recent research. Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ''ys'' for ''z''. The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese, but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. The Khotanese dialect is believed to share features with the mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parthian Language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg, is an extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language once spoken in Parthia, a region situated in present-day northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Parthian was the language of state of the Arsacid Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD), as well as of its eponymous branches of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, and the Arsacid dynasty of Caucasian Albania. Parthian had a significant impact on Armenian, a large part of whose vocabulary was formed primarily from borrowings from Parthian, and had a derivational morphology and syntax that was also affected by language contact but to a lesser extent. Many ancient Parthian words were preserved and now survive only in Armenian. The Semnani or Komisenian languages may descend from Parthian directly or be a Caspian language with Parthian influences, but the topic lacks sufficient research. Classification Parthian was a Western Middle Iranian lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manichaeism
Manichaeism (; in ; ) is an endangered former major world religion currently only practiced in China around Cao'an,R. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''. SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century CE by the Parthian prophet Mani (216–274 CE), in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism teaches an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Mani's teaching was intended to "combine", succeed, and surpass the teachings of Platonism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Marcionism, Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism, Gnostic movements, Ancient Greek religion, Babylonian and other Mesopotamian religions, and mystery cults.Arendzen, John (1 October 1910).Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Persian Literature
Middle Persian literature is the corpus of written works composed in Middle Persian, that is, the Middle Iranian dialect of Persis, Persia proper, the region in the south-western corner of the Iranian plateau. Middle Persian was the prestige dialect during the era of Sasanian dynasty. It is the largest source of Zoroastrian literature. The rulers of the Sasanian Empire (224–654 CE) were natives of that south-western region, and through their political and cultural influence, Middle Persian became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. Following the Muslim conquest of Persia, Arab conquest of the Sassanian Empire in the 7th century, shortly after which Middle Persian began to evolve into New Persian, Middle Persian continued to be used by the Zoroastrian priesthood for religious and secular compositions. These compositions, in the Aramaic-derived Book Pahlavi script, are traditionally known as "Pahlavi literature". The earliest texts in Zoroastr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Persian
Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, the official language of Iran (also known as Persia), Afghanistan ( Dari) and Tajikistan ( Tajik). Name "Middle Iranian" is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects. The middle stage of the Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper, which lies in the south-western Iran highlands on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Language
Persian ( ), also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Farsi (, Fārsī ), is a Western Iranian languages, Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible standard language, standard varieties, respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari, Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964), and Tajik language, Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate society, Persianate history in the cultural sphere o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (Iranian).''cf.'' , p. 2. Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era ( to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania ( Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Administrative Archives at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. Orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism ( ), also called Mazdayasnā () or Beh-dīn (), is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion centred on the Avesta and the teachings of Zoroaster, Zarathushtra Spitama, who is more commonly referred to by the Greek translation, Zoroaster ( ). Among the world's oldest organized faiths, its adherents exalt an Creator deity, uncreated, Omnibenevolence, benevolent, and List of knowledge deities#Persian mythology, all-wise deity known as Ahura Mazda (), who is hailed as the supreme being of the universe. Opposed to Ahura Mazda is Ahriman, Angra Mainyu (), who is personified as a List of death deities#Persian-Zoroastrian, destructive spirit and the adversary of all things that are good. As such, the Zoroastrian religion combines a Dualism in cosmology, dualistic cosmology of good and evil with an eschatological outlook predicting the Frashokereti, ultimate triumph of Ahura Mazda over evil. Opinions vary among scholars as to whether Zoroastrianism is monotheistic, polyth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
