The Sogdian language is usually assigned to a Northeastern group of the Iranian languages. No direct evidence of an earlier version of the language ("Old Sogdian") has been found, although mention of the area in the Old Persian inscriptions means that a separate and recognisable Sogdia existed at least since the Achaemenid Empire (559–323 BCE).
Like Khotanese, Sogdian may have possessed a more conservative grammar and morphology than Middle Persian. The modern Eastern Iranian language Yaghnobi is the descendant of a dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana, a region to the south of Sogdia.
The economic and political importance of Sogdian guaranteed its survival in the first few centuries after the Muslim conquest of Sogdia in the early eighth century.[11] A dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana (capital: Bunjikat, near present-day Istaravshan, Tajikistan), a region to the south of Sogdia, developed into the Yaghnobi language and has survived into the 21st century.[12] It is spoken by the Yaghnobi people.
Aurel Stein discovered 5 letters written in Sogdian known as the "Ancient Letters" in an abandoned watchtower near Dunhuang in 1907, dating to the end of the Western Jin dynasty.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] The finding of manuscript fragments of the Sogdian language in China's Xinjiang region sparked the study of the Sogdian language. Robert Gauthiot, (the first Buddhist Sogdian scholar) and Paul Pelliot, (who while exploring in Dunhuang, retrieved Sogdian material) began investigating the Sogdian material that Pelliot had discovered in 1908. Gauthiot published many articles based on his work with Pelliot's material, but died during the First World War. One of Gauthiot's most impressive articles was a glossary to the Sogdian text, which he was in the process of completing when he died. This work was continued by Émile Benveniste after Gauthiot's death.[24]
Various Sogdian pieces have been found in the Turfan text corpus by the German Turfan expeditions. These expeditions were controlled by the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.[24] These pieces consist almost entirely of religious works by Manichaean and Christian writers, including translations of the Bible. Most of the Sogdian religious works are from the 9th and 10th centuries.[25]
Dunhuang and Turfan were the two most plentiful sites of Manichean, Buddhist, and Christian Sogdian texts. Sogdiana itself actually contained a much smaller collection of texts. These texts were business related, belonging to a minor Sogdian king, Divashtich. These business texts dated back to the time of the Muslim conquest, about 700.[25]
As in other writing systems descended from the Proto-Sinaitic script, there are no special signs for vowels. As in the parent Aramaic system, the consonantal signs ’ y w can be used as matres lectionis for the long vowels [a: i: u:] respectively. However, unlike it, these consonant signs would also sometimes serve to express the short vowels (which could also sometimes be left unexpressed, as they always are in the parent systems).[26] To distinguish long vowels from short ones, an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel.[26]
^Jacques Gernet (31 May 1996). A History of Chinese Civilization. Cambridge University Press. pp. 282–. ISBN978-0-521-49781-7.
^Sigfried J. de Laet; Joachim Herrmann (1 January 1996). History of Humanity: From the seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. UNESCO. pp. 467–. ISBN978-92-3-102812-0.
^"Sogdian Language and Its Scripts | The Sogdians".
^Barthold, W. "Balāsāg̲h̲ūn or Balāsaḳūn." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2008. Brill Online. Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden. 11 March 2008 <http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-1131>
^Hanson, Valerie (2012). The Silk Road: A New History. Oxford University Press. p. 136.
^Richard Foltz, A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East, London: Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 4-5.
^Paul Bergne (15 June 2007). The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. I.B.Tauris. pp. 6–. ISBN978-1-84511-283-7.
^Sims-Williams, N. (December 15, 1985). "ANCIENT LETTERS". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. II. Encyclopædia Iranica. pp. 7–9.
^Keramidas, Kimon. "SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER II". NYU. Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/Sackler Digital Exhibition Project.
^"The Sogdian Ancient Letters 1, 2, 3, and 5". Silk Road Seattle - University of Washington. translated by Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Norman, Jeremy. "Aurel Stein Discovers the Sogdian "Ancient Letters" 313 CE to 314 CE". History of Information.
^Sogdian Ancient Letter No. 3. Reproduced from Susan Whitfield (ed.), The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (2004) p. 248.
^"Ancient Letters". THE SOGDIANS Influencers on the Silk Roads. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
^Keramidas, Kimon. "SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER III: LETTER TO NANAIDHAT". NYU. Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/Sackler Digital Exhibition Project.
^"Sogdian letters". ringmar.net. History of International Relations.
^Vaissière, Étienne de la (2005). "CHAPTER TWO ABOUT THE ANCIENT LETTERS". Sogdian Traders: A History. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 8 Uralic & Central Asian Studies. Vol. 10. Brill. p. 43–70. doi:10.1163/9789047406990_005. ISBN978-90-47-40699-0.
^Livšic, Vladimir A. (2009). "SOGDIAN "ANCIENT LETTERS" (II, IV, V)". In Orlov, Andrei; Lourie, Basil (eds.). Symbola Caelestis: Le symbolisme liturgique et paraliturgique dans le monde chrétien. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. p. 344-352. ISBN9781463222543.
^ abUtz, David. (1978). Survey of Buddhist Sogdian studies. Tokyo: The Reiyukai Library.
^ abClauson, Gerard. 2002. Studies in Turkic and Mongolic linguistics. P.103-104.
^Gershevitch, Ilya. (1954). A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian. p.1. Oxford: Blackwell.
Further reading
Bo, Bi, and Nicholas Sims-Williams. "The Epitaph of a Buddhist Lady: A Newly Discovered Chinese-Sogdian Bilingual". In: Journal of the American Oriental Society 140, no. 4 (2020): 803–20. doi:10.7817/jameroriesoci.140.4.0803.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sogdian language.
Listen to this article (3 minutes)
This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 2 January 2006 (2006-01-02), and does not reflect subsequent edits.
by P. Oktor Skjærvø
April 26, 2023
sogdian, language, eastern, iranian, language, spoken, mainly, central, asian, region, sogdia, capital, samarkand, other, chief, cities, panjakent, fergana, khujand, bukhara, located, modern, uzbekistan, tajikistan, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, also, spoken, some, . The Sogdian language was an Eastern Iranian language spoken mainly in the Central Asian region of Sogdia capital Samarkand other chief cities Panjakent Fergana Khujand and Bukhara located in modern day Uzbekistan Tajikistan Kazakhstan 4 and Kyrgyzstan 5 6 it was also spoken by some Sogdian immigrant communities in ancient China Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages along with Bactrian Khotanese Saka Middle Persian and Parthian It possesses a large literary corpus Sogdian s eg ʷdi k ᵊzba k s eg ʷdya u 𐼑𐼇𐼄𐼌𐼊𐼋 𐼀𐼈𐼂𐼀𐼋 swgdyk ʾzbʾk 𐼼𐼴𐼶𐼹𐼷𐼸 𐼰𐼵𐼱𐼰𐼸 swgdyk ʾzbʾk 𐼼𐼲𐼴𐼹𐼷𐼰𐼴 sgwdyʾw 𐫘𐫇𐫄𐫔𐫏𐫀𐫇 swgdyʾwNative toSogdiaRegionCentral Asia ChinaEra1st millennium BCE 1000 CE 1 developed into modern YaghnobiLanguage familyIndo European Indo IranianIranianEastern 2 NorthernSogdianWriting systemSogdian alphabet Syriac alphabet 3 Manichaean alphabetLanguage codesISO 639 2 span class plainlinks sog span ISO 639 3 a href https iso639 3 sil org code sog class extiw title iso639 3 sog sog a Glottologsogd1245This article contains Sogdian text Without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols instead of Sogdian characters The Sogdian language is usually assigned to a Northeastern group of the Iranian languages No direct evidence of an earlier version of the language Old Sogdian has been found although mention of the area in the Old Persian inscriptions means that a separate and recognisable Sogdia existed at least since the Achaemenid Empire 559 323 BCE Like Khotanese Sogdian may have possessed a more conservative grammar and morphology than Middle Persian The modern Eastern Iranian language Yaghnobi is the descendant of a dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana a region to the south of Sogdia Contents 1 History 2 Discovery of Sogdian texts 3 Writing system 4 Morphology 4 1 Nouns 4 1 1 Light stems 4 1 2 Heavy stems 4 1 3 Contracted stems 4 2 Verbs 4 2 1 Present indicative 4 2 2 Imperfect indicative 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksHistory Edit Seal with two facing busts and Sogdian inscription Indamic Queen of Zacanta Kushano Sasanian period 300 350 CE British Museum 119999 7 Sogdian text from a Manichaean creditor letter from around 9th to 13th century Manichaean priests Uyghur Turks writing Sogdian manuscripts in Khocho Tarim Basin c 8th 9th century AD During the period of the Chinese Tang dynasty ca 7th century CE Sogdian was the lingua franca in Central Asia of the Silk Road 8 9 along which it amassed a rich vocabulary of loanwords such as tym hotel from the Middle Chinese tem Chinese 店 10 The economic and political importance of Sogdian guaranteed its survival in the first few centuries after the Muslim conquest of Sogdia in the early eighth century 11 A dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana capital Bunjikat near present day Istaravshan Tajikistan a region to the south of Sogdia developed into the Yaghnobi language and has survived into the 21st century 12 It is spoken by the Yaghnobi people Discovery of Sogdian texts Edit Sogdian Christian text written in Estrangelo discovered at Turpan 9th 11th century Aurel Stein discovered 5 letters written in Sogdian known as the Ancient Letters in an abandoned watchtower near Dunhuang in 1907 dating to the end of the Western Jin dynasty 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 The finding of manuscript fragments of the Sogdian language in China s Xinjiang region sparked the study of the Sogdian language Robert Gauthiot the first Buddhist Sogdian scholar and Paul Pelliot who while exploring in Dunhuang retrieved Sogdian material began investigating the Sogdian material that Pelliot had discovered in 1908 Gauthiot published many articles based on his work with Pelliot s material but died during the First World War One of Gauthiot s most impressive articles was a glossary to the Sogdian text which he was in the process of completing when he died This work was continued by Emile Benveniste after Gauthiot s death 24 Various Sogdian pieces have been found in the Turfan text corpus by the German Turfan expeditions These expeditions were controlled by the Ethnological Museum of Berlin 24 These pieces consist almost entirely of religious works by Manichaean and Christian writers including translations of the Bible Most of the Sogdian religious works are from the 9th and 10th centuries 25 Dunhuang and Turfan were the two most plentiful sites of Manichean Buddhist and Christian Sogdian texts Sogdiana itself actually contained a much smaller collection of texts These texts were business related belonging to a minor Sogdian king Divashtich These business texts dated back to the time of the Muslim conquest about 700 25 Writing system EditLike all the writing systems employed for Middle Iranian languages the Sogdian alphabet ultimately derives from the Aramaic alphabet Like its close relatives the Pahlavi scripts written Sogdian contains many logograms or ideograms which were Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones The Sogdian script is the direct ancestor of the Old Uyghur alphabet itself the forerunner of the Traditional Mongolian alphabet As in other writing systems descended from the Proto Sinaitic script there are no special signs for vowels As in the parent Aramaic system the consonantal signs y w can be used as matres lectionis for the long vowels a i u respectively However unlike it these consonant signs would also sometimes serve to express the short vowels which could also sometimes be left unexpressed as they always are in the parent systems 26 To distinguish long vowels from short ones an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel 26 The Sogdian language also used the Manichaean alphabet which consisted of 29 letters 27 In transcribing Sogdian script into Roman letters Aramaic ideograms are often noted by means of capitals Morphology EditNouns Edit Light stems Edit Case masc a stems neut a stems fem a stems masc u stems fem u stems masc ya stems fem ya stems pluralnom i u a e a a i ya ta ist y avoc u u a i u u iya ya te ist e y aacc u u u a u u iy i ya yi tya isti an u gen dat e ye ya uy i uya iy i ya yi tya isti an u loc ya ya ya uy i uya iy i ya yi tya isti an u instr abl a a ya uy i uya iy i ya yi tya isti an u Heavy stems Edit Case masc fem pluralnom tvoc a e teacc i i ti angen dat i i ti anloc i i ti aninstr abl i i ti anContracted stems Edit Case masc aka stems neut aka stems fem aka stems pl masc pl fem nom e ō e a et et atvoc a e ō e a ate ete ete ateacc ō e ō e e eti an eti atigen dat e e e eti an eti atiloc e e e eti an eti atiinstr abl a e a e e eti an eti atiVerbs Edit Present indicative Edit Person Light stems Heavy stems1st sg am am2nd sg e e3rd sg ti t1st pl em an em an 2nd pl 8a ta 8 a t a 3rd pl and andImperfect indicative Edit Person Light stems Heavy stems1st sg u u2nd sg i i3rd sg a 1st pl em u em an em u em an 2nd pl 8a ta 8 a t a 3rd pl and andReferences Edit Sogdian at MultiTree on the Linguist List Jacques Gernet 31 May 1996 A History of Chinese Civilization Cambridge University Press pp 282 ISBN 978 0 521 49781 7 Sigfried J de Laet Joachim Herrmann 1 January 1996 History of Humanity From the seventh century B C to the seventh century A D UNESCO pp 467 ISBN 978 92 3 102812 0 Sogdian Language and Its Scripts The Sogdians Barthold W Balasag h un or Balasaḳun Encyclopaedia of Islam Edited by P Bearman Th Bianquis C E Bosworth E van Donzel and W P Heinrichs Brill 2008 Brill Online Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden 11 March 2008 lt http www brillonline nl subscriber entry entry islam SIM 1131 gt Sogdia Stamp seal bezel British Museum The British Museum Rachel Lung 7 September 2011 Interpreters in Early Imperial China John Benjamins Publishing Company pp 151 ISBN 978 90 272 8418 1 Weinberger E China s Golden Age The New York Review of Books 55 17 Retrieved on 2008 10 19 Hanson Valerie 2012 The Silk Road A New History Oxford University Press p 136 Richard Foltz A History of the Tajiks Iranians of the East London Bloomsbury 2019 pp 4 5 Paul Bergne 15 June 2007 The Birth of Tajikistan National Identity and the Origins of the Republic I B Tauris pp 6 ISBN 978 1 84511 283 7 Sims Williams N December 15 1985 ANCIENT LETTERS Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol II Encyclopaedia Iranica pp 7 9 Keramidas Kimon SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER II NYU Telling the Sogdian Story A Freer Sackler Digital Exhibition Project The Sogdian Ancient Letters 1 2 3 and 5 Silk Road Seattle University of Washington translated by Prof Nicholas Sims Williams a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint others link Norman Jeremy Aurel Stein Discovers the Sogdian Ancient Letters 313 CE to 314 CE History of Information Sogdian Ancient Letter No 3 Reproduced from Susan Whitfield ed The Silk Road Trade Travel War and Faith 2004 p 248 Ancient Letters THE SOGDIANS Influencers on the Silk Roads Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution Keramidas Kimon SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER III LETTER TO NANAIDHAT NYU Telling the Sogdian Story A Freer Sackler Digital Exhibition Project Sogdian letters ringmar net History of International Relations Vaissiere Etienne de la 2005 CHAPTER TWO ABOUT THE ANCIENT LETTERS Sogdian Traders A History Handbook of Oriental Studies Section 8 Uralic amp Central Asian Studies Vol 10 Brill p 43 70 doi 10 1163 9789047406990 005 ISBN 978 90 47 40699 0 https brill com display book 9789047406990 BP000005 xml Livsic Vladimir A 2009 SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTERS II IV V In Orlov Andrei Lourie Basil eds Symbola Caelestis Le symbolisme liturgique et paraliturgique dans le monde chretien Piscataway Gorgias Press p 344 352 ISBN 9781463222543 a b Utz David 1978 Survey of Buddhist Sogdian studies Tokyo The Reiyukai Library a b Iranian Languages 2009 Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved on 2009 04 09 a b Clauson Gerard 2002 Studies in Turkic and Mongolic linguistics P 103 104 Gershevitch Ilya 1954 A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian p 1 Oxford Blackwell Further reading EditBo Bi and Nicholas Sims Williams The Epitaph of a Buddhist Lady A Newly Discovered Chinese Sogdian Bilingual In Journal of the American Oriental Society 140 no 4 2020 803 20 doi 10 7817 jameroriesoci 140 4 0803 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sogdian language Listen to this article 3 minutes source source This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 2 January 2006 2006 01 02 and does not reflect subsequent edits Audio help More spoken articles Iranian Language Family Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian by P Oktor Skjaervo Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian Introduction only Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian full text Sogdian Dictionary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sogdian language amp oldid 1150725028, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
