Pahlavi Psalter
The Pahlavi Psalter is the name given to a 12-page non-contiguous section of a
Book of Psalms
.
The Pahlavi Psalter was discovered in 1905 by the second German Turpan expedition under Albert von Le Coq. Together with a mass of other fragmentary Christian manuscripts discovered in the ruins of the library of Shui-pang at
for analysis, where the fragments remain today.The Pahlavi Psalter is the oldest surviving example of
Patriarch of the Church of the East c. 540–552. Maʿna, a 6th-century East Syriac metropolitan of Pars and a noted Pahlavi writer, is generally attributed with the translation of the Pahlavi Psalter.[1][2][3]
The script of the psalter, like that of all other examples of Pahlavi literature, is also an
Book Pahlavi script, which is a later but more common form of the consonantary and has 12 or 13 graphemes, the script of the psalms has 5 symbols more. The variant of the script used for the psalter was for almost a century the only evidence of that specific variant, which consequently came to be referred to as Psalter Pahlavi script. More recently however, another sample of the writing was discovered in the inscriptions on a bronze processional cross found at Herat (in present-day Afghanistan
). Due to the dearth of comparable material, some words and phrases in both sources remain undeciphered.
See also
References
- ^ Kenneth J. Thomas & Ali Asghar Aghbar (2015), p. 37–9.
- ISBN 9783110335880.
- ^ Kenneth J. Thomas & Fereydun Vahman, p. 209-213.
- Andreas, Friedrich Carl (1910). "Bruchstücke einer Pehlewi-Übersetzung der Psalmen aus der Sassanidenzeit". Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, Philosophisch-historische Klasse. XLI (4). Berlin: PAW: 869–872.
- Gignoux, Philippe (2002). "Pahlavi Psalter". Encyclopedia Iranica. Costa Mesa: Mazda.
- Kenneth J. Thomas; Ali Asghar Aghbar (2015). A Restless Search: A History of Persian Translations of the Bible. ISBN 9781944092023.
- Kenneth J. Thomas; Fereydun Vahman. "BIBLE vii. Persian Translations of the Bible". Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. IV/2. pp. 209–213.