Bactrian language
Bactrian is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken until the early Middle Ages in Central Asia of the Bactrians. It belongs to the Northeastern branch of the Iranian languages , but also has similarities with the languages of the western group and there especially with the geographically neighboring Parthian on.
Distribution area
In the South Sogdia and north of the Hindu Kush ( Amu- Daryā ) was located on both sides of the Oxus River, the ancient landscape Bactria, whose capital Zariastes, among the Greeks as Bactria ( Βάκτρα ) known to the present city of Balkh ( northern Afghanistan ) corresponds. The language of this country owes its survival in written sources, especially the fact that it was in the realm of Kuschankönige the official language of government, while the Greek alphabet and language, which had been the Great officially used there since Alexander, were abandoned in favor of the native idiom.
Font
The going back to the Greco - Bactrian rule use of Greek but acts goes further, and the Bactrian was almost invariably written in Greek ( italic ) font: under the Kushan rulers in a very carefully written monumental characteristic style, and later, in nachkuschanischer time, in a much kursiveren and not always unambiguous form. ( The main difference between italic and tersely or Monumental writing is whether the individual characters are connected in practice with each other or not. ) This " Graeco - Bactrian " writing includes the additional symbol Ϸ ϸ Sho that for the [ ʃ ] - According stands, conversely to Ξ ξ Xi and Ψ ψ psi and uses some strange spellings ( such as when υ represents h). This document was incidentally also the Chinese traveler Xuanzang ( 7th century AD ) is known, the reports that the language of this country shall be written in a font with 25 characters.
Material
The Bactrian was worn during the Kushan rule in the 1st to 3rd century AD, well over Bactria out into other parts of the Empire and its successor states under Sassanids, Huns and Hephthalites peoples and n at least to the 9th century AD be used. Witnessed therefore it is in a wide field of coins and seals, inscriptions, and, from a later period, probably the 7th to the 9th century, by manuscript fragments, especially from the Tuyoq ( Turfanoase ) derived the so-called " Hephthalitenfragmente ". The most recent dated inscriptions from the years around 860 AD date from the Totschi Valley (Pakistan ), including one each with a bilingual Sanskrit and Arabic parallel text. But the size and importance after all published texts of any kind and origin, dwarfed by the large, fully readable and largely understandable 25-line inscription of Surkh Kotal ( at Baglan, northern Afghanistan ). This is the restoration of the local Kushan sanctuary under the rule Huvischkas the subject. From the Scriptures, there are two shorter parallel versions. Also of importance is the approximately the same size, not quite so well-preserved, 1993 found limestone inscription of Rabatak (northwest of SURCH - Kotal ), in the events of the first year of the reign of Kanishka I, and especially the expansion of the Kushan rule over North India is portrayed be. Besides this, further building inscriptions from the area of Balch and from Termez on the northern Oxusufer. Rich finds come from the Buddhist cave monastery from Kara -Tepe in Termez, in addition to vessel inscriptions also Freskenbeischriften ( graffiti), which are apparently due to visitors of the monastery. Similar "tourist inscriptions " we know from Afrasiab (now in Uzbekistan ) and the upper Indus valley ( northern Pakistan ). Surpassed all this but by nearly 100 written on leather, obviously from the provinces of Bamiyan and Samangān ( northern Afghanistan ) documents originating, for the most part letters, but also partly legal texts contents. A position all to take a program written in Manichaean script journal of the "Berlin Turfan texts " one that contains a fragment of a Manichean Homilientextes in Bactrian (or at least the Bactrian very closely associated ) language. It apparently comes from a Bactrian " colony " in Turfangebiet ( in Chotscho ) and shows that there Manichaeans have as well as some other languages also wrote the Bactrian in their own writing, while the Buddhists used those writing that for even in secular purpose Write served.