Pahlavi scripts

Pahlavi is an exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages, derived from the Aramaic script. It features Aramaic words used as heterograms (called huzwārišn, "archaisms").

Pahlavi compositions have been found for the dialects/ethnolects of Parthia, Persis, Sogdiana, Scythia, and Khotan. Independent of the variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, the written form of that language only qualifies as Pahlavi when it is both Aramaic-derived and features huzwārišn.

Pahlavi is then an admixture of:^{[citation needed]}

Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to (but not unique for) a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the characteristics of a distinct language, but is not one. It is an exclusively written system, but much Pahlavi literature remains essentially an oral literature committed to writing and so retains many of the characteristics of oral composition.

The term Pahlavi is said to be derived from the Old Iranian word Parθava, meaning Parthia, a region just east of the Caspian Sea, with the -i suffix denoting the language and people of that region. If this etymology is correct, Parθava presumably became Pahlav through a semivowel glide rt (or in other cases rd) change to l, a common occurrence in language evolution (e.g., sāl < sard, zāl < zard, sālār < sardar and so on). The term has also been traced back to Avestan pərəthu- "broad [as the earth]", also evident in Sanskrit pṛthvi- "earth" and parthivi "[lord] of the earth".

The earliest documented use of the Pahlavi language (dialect) dates back to reign of Arsaces I of Parthia (250 BCE) written in greek alphabet . The oldest evidence of Pahlavi script is from the reign of Mithridates I (r. 171–138 BCE). The cellars of the treasury at Mithradatkird near Nisa, Turkmenistan revealed thousands of pottery sherds with brief records; several ostraca that are fully dated bear references to members of the immediate family of the king.

Such fragments, as well as the rock inscriptions of Sasanian emperors, which are datable to the 3rd and 4th centuries, do not qualify as a significant literary corpus. Although in theory Pahlavi could have been used to render any Middle Iranian language and hence may have been in use as early as 300 BC, no manuscripts that can be dated to before the 6th century have yet been found. Thus, when used for the name of a literary genre, i.e. Middle Persian literature, the term refers to Middle Iranian, mostly Middle Persian, texts dated near or after the fall of the Sasanian Empire and (with exceptions) extending to about 900, after which Iranian languages enter the "modern" stage.^{[citation needed]}

The oldest surviving example of the Pahlavi literature is from fragments of the so-called "Pahlavi Psalter", a 6th- or 7th-century translation of a Syriac Psalter found at Bulayïq on the Silk Road, near Turpan in north-west China. It is in a more archaic script than Book Pahlavi.