Bactrian (, , meaning "Iranian") was an Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

n region of

Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...

(present-day Afghanistan) and used as the official language of the

Kushan ''Kushan'' or Kushana may refer to: * Kushan Empire The Kushan Empire (– CE) was a Syncretism, syncretic empire formed by the Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of what is now Afghanistan ...

and the

Hephthalite The Hephthalites (), sometimes called the White Huns (also known as the White Hunas, in Iranian as the ''Spet Xyon'' and in Sanskrit and Prakrit as the ''Sveta-huna''), were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, ...

empires.

Name

It was long thought that

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

represented "Old Bactrian", but this notion had "rightly fallen into discredit by the end of the 19th century". Bactrian, which was written predominantly in an alphabet based on the

Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...

, was known natively as (" Arya"; an

endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

common amongst Indo-Iranian peoples). It has also been known by names such as Greco-Bactrian or Kushan or Kushano-Bactrian. Under Kushan rule, Bactria became known as ''Tukhara'' or ''Tokhara'', and later as ''

Tokharistan Tokharistan (formed from "Tokhara" and the suffix ''-stan'' meaning "place of" in Persian) is a historical name used by Islamic sources in the early Middle Ages to refer to the area which was known as Bactria in Ancient Greek sources. By the 6 ...

''. When texts in two extinct and previously unknown Indo-European languages were discovered in the

Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, Northwestern China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, Ch ...

of China, during the early 20th century, they were linked circumstantially to Tokharistan, and Bactrian was sometimes referred to as "Eteo-Tocharian" (i.e. "true" or "original" Tocharian). By the 1970s, however, it became clear that there was little evidence for such a connection. For instance, the Tarim "Tocharian" languages were " centum" languages within the Indo-European family, whereas Bactrian was an Iranian, thus "

satem Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

" language.

Classification

Bactrian is a part of the

Eastern Iranian languages The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages, having emerged during the Iranian languages#Middle Iranian, Middle Iranian era (4th century BC to 9th century AD). The Avestan, Avestan language is often classified as early E ...

and shares features with the extinct Middle Iranian languages Sogdian and Khwarezmian (Eastern) and Parthian (

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

), as well as sharing affinity with the modern Eastern Iranian languages such as

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

and the Pamir subgroup of languages like Munji and Yidgha which are part of the same branch of the Pamir languages. Its genealogical position is unclear. According to another source, the present-day speakers of Munji, the modern Eastern Iranian language of the Munjan Valley in the Kuran wa Munjan district of the

Badakhshan province Badakhshan Province (Dari: بدخشان) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bordered by Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan in the north and the Pakistani regions of Lower and Upper C ...

in northeast

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, display the closest possible linguistic affinity with the Bactrian language.

History

Bactrian became the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

of the Kushan Empire and the region of Bactria, replacing the Greek language. Bactrian was used by successive rulers in Bactria, until the arrival of the

Umayyad Caliphate The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a member o ...

Historical development

Following the conquest of Bactria by

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

in 323 BC, for about two centuries

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

was the administrative language of his

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

successors, that is, the

Seleucid The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great, a ...

and the

Greco-Bactrian kingdom The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom () was a Ancient Greece, Greek state of the Hellenistic period located in Central Asia, Central-South Asia. The kingdom was founded by the Seleucid Empire, Seleucid satrap Diodotus I, Diodotus I Soter in about 256 BC, ...

s. Eastern

Scythian The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC fr ...

tribes (the

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 ...

, or Sacaraucae of Greek sources) invaded the territory around 140 BC, and at some time after 124 BC, Bactria was overrun by a confederation of tribes belonging to the Great Yuezhi and ''Tokhari''. In the 1st century AD, the Kushana, one of the Yuezhi tribes, founded the ruling dynasty of the

Kushan Empire The Kushan Empire (– CE) was a Syncretism, syncretic empire formed by the Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of what is now Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbe ...

. The Kushan Empire initially retained the

Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), south ...

for administrative purposes but soon began to use Bactrian. The Bactrian

Rabatak inscription The Rabatak Inscription is a stone inscribed with text written in the Bactrian language and Greek script, found in 1993 at Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan. The inscription relates to the rule of the Kushan emperor Kanishka, and gives ...

(discovered in 1993 and deciphered in 2000) records that the Kushan king

Kanishka Kanishka I, also known as Kanishka the Great, was an emperor of the Kushan dynasty, under whose reign (–150 CE) the empire reached its zenith. He is famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements. A descendant of Kujula Kadp ...

() discarded Greek ("Ionian") as the language of administration and adopted Bactrian ("Arya language"). The Greek language accordingly vanished from official use and only Bactrian was later attested. The

, however, remained and was used to write Bactrian. The territorial expansion of the Kushans helped propagate Bactrian in other parts of

and

North India North India is a geographical region, loosely defined as a cultural region comprising the northern part of India (or historically, the Indian subcontinent) wherein Indo-Aryans (speaking Indo-Aryan languages) form the prominent majority populati ...

. In the 3rd century, the Kushan territories west of the

Indus River The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...

fell to the

Sasanians The Sasanian Empire (), officially Eranshahr ( , "Empire of the Iranians"), was an Iranian empire that was founded and ruled by the House of Sasan from 224 to 651. Enduring for over four centuries, the length of the Sasanian dynasty's reign ...

, and Bactrian began to be influenced by

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 Sasania ...

. The eastern extent of the Kushan Empire in Northwestern India, was conquered by the

Gupta Empire The Gupta Empire was an Indian empire during the classical period of the Indian subcontinent which existed from the mid 3rd century to mid 6th century CE. At its zenith, the dynasty ruled over an empire that spanned much of the northern Indian ...

. Besides the

Pahlavi script Pahlavi may refer to: Iranian royalty *Seven Parthian clans, ruling Parthian families during the Sasanian Empire *Pahlavi dynasty, the ruling house of Imperial State of Persia/Iran from 1925 until 1979 ** Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878–1944), Shah of ...

and the

Brahmi script Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as ...

, some coinage of this period is still in the Aryo (Bactrian) script. From the mid-4th century, Bactria and northwestern India gradually fell under the control the

and other Huna tribes. The Hephthalite period is marked by linguistic diversity; in addition to Bactrian, Middle Persian, Indo-Aryan and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

vocabulary is also attested. The Hephthalites ruled these regions until the 7th century, when they were overrun by the

, after which official use of Bactrian ceased. Although Bactrian briefly survived in other usage, that also eventually ceased, and the latest known examples of the Bactrian script, found in the

Tochi Valley The Tochi Valley, also known as Dawar (from Middle-Persian, Middle Iranic dātbar, meaning "Justice-giver"), is a fertile area located in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. 2002. ''T ...

in Pakistan, date to the end of the 9th century.

Writing system

Among Indo-Iranian languages, the use of the Greek script is unique to Bactrian. Although ambiguities remain, some of the disadvantages were overcome by using ''

upsilon Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the twentieth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenician alphabet, Phoenician Waw (letter), waw ...

'' () for and by introducing '' sho'' () to represent . '' Xi'' () and ''

psi Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to: Alphabetic letters * Psi (Greek) (Ψ or ψ), the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviat ...

'' () were not used for writing Bactrian as the ''ks'' and ''ps'' sequences did not occur in Bactrian. They were, however, probably used to represent numbers (just as other Greek letters were).

Records

The Bactrian language is known from inscriptions, coins, seals, manuscripts, and other documents. Sites at which Bactrian language inscriptions have been found are (in north–south order) Afrasiyab in

Uzbekistan , image_flag = Flag of Uzbekistan.svg , image_coat = Emblem of Uzbekistan.svg , symbol_type = Emblem of Uzbekistan, Emblem , national_anthem = "State Anthem of Uzbekistan, State Anthem of the Republ ...

; Kara-Tepe, Airtam, Delbarjin,

Balkh Balkh is a town in the Balkh Province of Afghanistan. It is located approximately to the northwest of the provincial capital city Mazar-i-Sharif and approximately to the south of the Amu Darya and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border. In 2021 ...

Kunduz Kunduz (; ; ) is a city in northern Afghanistan and the capital of Kunduz Province. The city has an estimated population of about 268,893 as of 2015, making it about the List of cities in Afghanistan, seventh largest city of Afghanistan, and the ...

, Baglan, Ratabak/Surkh Kotal, Oruzgan,

Kabul Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...

, Dasht-e Navur,

Ghazni Ghazni (, ), historically known as Ghaznayn () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana (), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan with a population of around 190,000 people. The city is strategica ...

, Jagatu in

; and

Islamabad Islamabad (; , ; ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's tenth-most populous city with a population of over 1.1 million and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital Territory. Bu ...

, Shatial Bridge and

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. Of eight known manuscript fragments in Greco-Bactrian script, one is from Lou-lan and seven from Toyoq, where they were discovered by the second and third

Turpan Turpan () or Turfan ( zh, s=吐鲁番) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 693,988 (2020). The historical center of the ...

expeditions under

Albert von Le Coq Albert von Le Coq (; 8 September 1860 in Berlin, Prussia – 21 April 1930 in Berlin, Weimar Republic) was a Prussian/German brewery owner and wine merchant, who at the age of 40 began to study archaeology.''Schatzjagd an der Seidenstraße.'' A fi ...

. One of these may be a

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

text. One other manuscript, in

Manichaean script The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the third century CE. It bears a sibling relati ...

, was found at Qočo by

Mary Boyce Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce (2 August 1920 – 4 April 2006) was a British scholar of Iranian languages and an authority on Zoroastrianism. She was Professor of Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the Un ...

in 1958. Over 150 legal documents, accounts, letters and Buddhist texts have surfaced since the 1990s, the largest collection of which is the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents. These have greatly increased the detail in which Bactrian is currently known.

Phonology

The phonology of Bactrian is not known with certainty, owing to the limitations of the native scripts, and also its status as an extinct language.

Consonants

A major difficulty in determining Bactrian phonology is that affricates and voiced stops were not consistently distinguished from the corresponding fricatives in the Greek script. *

Proto-Iranian Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Persian, Pashto, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandara ...

*b, *d, *g have generally become spirants, as in most other Eastern Iranian languages. A distinctive feature of Bactrian, shared within the Iranian languages with Munji, Yidgha and Pashto, is the development of Proto-Iranian *d > *ð further to , which may have been areal in nature. Original *d remains only in a few consonant clusters, e.g. *bandaka > ''βανδαγο'' 'servant', *dugdā > ''λογδο'' 'daughter'. The clusters and appear in earlier Bactrian, but revert to , later, e.g. *drauga > ''λρωγο'' (4th to 5th century) > ''δδρωρο'' (7th to 8th century) 'lie, falsehood'. * Proto-Iranian *p, *t, *č, *k have become voiced between vowels, and after a nasal consonant or *r. ** Inside a word, the digraphs ''ββ'', ''δδ'' for original voiceless *p, *t can be found, which probably represent , . The former is attested only in a single word, ''αββο'' 'water'. Manichaean Bactrian appears to only have had in native vocabulary. According to Gholami, instances of single ''δ'' may indicate a fricative pronunciation, . ** ''γ'' appears to stand for both the stop and the fricative , but it is unclear if a contrast existed, and which instances are which. Evidence from the Manichaean script suggests that ''γ'' from *k may have been and ''γ'' from *g may have been . According to Greek orthographic practices, ''γγ'' represents . * ''σ'' may continue both Proto-Iranian *c > *s and *č, and the Manichaean script confirms that it represents two phonemes, likely and . * ''ζ'' may continue similarly on one hand Proto-Iranian *dz > *z, and on the other *ǰ and *č, and it represents at least and . This distinction is again confirmed by the Manichaean script. Also a third counterpart of ''ζ'' is found in Manichaean Bactrian, possibly representing . The status of ''θ'' is unclear; it only appears in the word ''ιθαο'' 'thus, also', which may be a loanword from another Iranian language. In most positions Proto-Iranian *θ becomes (written ''υ''), or is lost, e.g. *puθra- > ''πουρο'' 'son'. The cluster *θw, however, appears to become , e.g. *wikāθwan > ''οιγαλφο'' 'witness'. ''ϸ'' continues, in addition to Proto-Iranian *š, also Proto-Iranian *s in the clusters *sr, *str, *rst. In several cases, however, Proto-Iranian *š becomes or is lost; the distribution is unclear. E.g. *snušā > ''ασνωυο'' 'daughter-in-law', *aštā > ''αταο'' 'eight', *xšāθriya > ''χαρο'' 'ruler', *pašman- > ''παμανο'' 'wool'.

Vowels

The Greek script does not consistently represent vowel length. Fewer vowel contrasts yet are found in the Manichaean script, but short and long are distinguished in it, suggesting that Bactrian generally retains the Proto-Iranian vowel length contrast. It is not clear if ''ο'' might represent short in addition to , and if any contrast existed. Short may have occurred at least as a reflex of *a followed by a lost *u in the next syllable, e.g. *madu > ''μολο'' 'wine', *pasu > ''ποσο'' 'sheep'. Short is also rare. By contrast, long , are well established as reflexes of Proto-Iranian diphthongs and certain vowel-semivowel sequences: ''η'' < *ai, *aya, *iya; ''ω'' < *au, *awa. An epenthetic vowel (written ''α'') is inserted before word-initial

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

s. Original word-final vowels and word-initial vowels in open syllables were generally lost. A word-final ''ο'' is normally written, but this was probably silent, and it is appended even after retained word-final vowels: e.g. *aštā > ''αταο'' 'eight', likely pronounced . The Proto-Iranian syllabic rhotic *r̥ is lost in Bactrian, and is reflected as ''ορ'' adjacent to labial consonants, ''ιρ'' elsewhere; this agrees with the development in the western Iranian languages Parthian and

Orthography

Examples

File:Surkh Kotal inscription in Bactrian, National Museum of Afghanistan.jpg, Surkh Kotal inscription in Bactrian, National Museum of Afghanistan

Notes

References

* * * * * * * *

External links

Bactrian language
at the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

''
Cursive Bactrian
at the Invisible East Digital Corpus (Invisible East is a program of the '' University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education''). {{DEFAULTSORT:Bactrian Language Extinct languages of Asia Languages attested from the 3rd century BC Languages extinct in the 9th century Languages of Afghanistan Languages of Tajikistan Linguistic history of Pakistan Eastern Iranian languages

Name

Classification

History

Historical development

Writing system

Records

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Examples

See also

Notes

References

External links