CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE AND WRITING.
It has been intimated in the account of the Median Empire which was given in a former-volume that the language of the Persians, which was identical, or almost identical, with that of the Medes, belonged to the form of speech known to moderns as Indo-European. The characteristics of that form of speech are a certain number of common, or at least widely spread, roots, a peculiar mode of inflecting, together with a resemblance in the inflections, and a similarity of syntax or construction. Of the old Persian language the known roots are, almost without exception, kindred forms to roots already familiar to the philologist through the Sanscrit, or the Zend, or both; while many are of that more general type of which we have spoken—forms common to all, or most of the varieties of the Indo-European stock. To instance in a few very frequently recurring words—“father” is in old Persian (as in Sanscrit) pitar, which differs only in the vocalization from the Zendic patar, the Greek [ ], and the Latin pater, and of which cognate forms are the Gothic fadar, the German voter, the English father, and the Erse athair.
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The ordinary Persian writing was identical with that which has been described in the second volume of this work as Median. A cuneiform alphabet, consisting of some thirty-six or thirty-seven forms, expressive of twenty-three distinct sounds, sufficed for the wants of the people, whose language was simple and devoid of phonetic luxuriance. Writing was from left to right, as with the Arian nations generally. Words were separated from one another by an oblique wedge; and were divided at any point at which the writer happened to reach the end of a line. Enclitics were joined without any break to the words which they accompanied.
The Persian writing which has come down to us is almost entirely upon stone. It comprises various rock tablets, a number of inscriptions upon buildings, and a few short legends upon vases and cylinders. It is in every case incised or cut into the material. The letters are of various sizes, some (as those at Elwend) reaching a length of about two inches, others (those, for instance, on the vases) not exceeding the sixth of an inch. The inscriptions cover a space of at least a hundred and eighty years, commencing with Cyrus, and terminating with Artaxerxes Ochus, the successor of Mnemon. The style of the writing is, on the whole, remarkably uniform, the latter inscriptions containing only two characters unknown to the earlier times. Orthography, however, and grammar are in these later inscriptions greatly changed, the character of the changes being indicative of corruption and decline, unless, indeed, we are to ascribe them to mere ignorance on the part of the engravers.
There can be little doubt that, besides the cuneiform character, which was only suited for inscriptions, the Persians employed a cursive writing for common literary purposes. Ctesias informs us that the royal archives were written on parchment; and there is abundant evidence that writing was an art perfectly familiar to the educated Persian. It might have been supposed that the Pehlevi, as the lineal descendant of the Old Persian language, would have furnished valuable assistance towards solving the question of what character the Persians employed commonly; but the alphabetic type of the Pehlevi inscriptions is evidently Semitic; and it would thus seem that the old national modes of writing had been completely lost before the establishment by Ardeshir, son of Babek, of the new Persian Empire.