The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of

the Parthians: A Review of the Evidence

from Central Asia
1
JOHN SHELDON
(Division of Humanities, Macquarie University, Sydney)
Herodotus lists the Parthians, along with the Chorasmians, the Sogdians and the Arians in
the sixteenth satrapy of the Persian Empire at the time of Darius I. Although Parthava is
mentioned several times in the Old Persian Achaemenian inscriptions, its exact, or even
comparative, locality cannot be established from these owing to dierent orders of
enumeration. From later Classical sources we can piece together a picture of this Iranian
people, but evidence is also available from Manichaean texts discovered in Central Asia in
the early part of the nineteenth century. The rst positive identication of one of the
languages in the texts as Parthian was made by Tedesco in 1921. Since then the term has
usually been adopted by scholars working on this language. The justication for and
implications of this identication from an ethnic and linguistic point of view are discussed
in this article.
Keywords: Parthian, Middle Persian, ethnicity, Manichaean, Arsacid, Sassanian
The Parthians are probably best known for the resounding defeat they inicted upon
the Romans at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE. The term Parthian shot, possibly the
origin of parting shot, was coined from their ability to re their arrows with deadly
eect at their foes as they retreated. At this time a Parthian dynasty ruled the Persian
Empire. This dynasty had taken control of the country after its conquest by Alexander
the Great and the subsequent administration of the Seleucids. Although the period of
their dynastic control of the Empire marks the apogee of Parthian power, its origins can
be traced to a considerably earlier period. Our sources are principally Greek and
Roman and are one-sided and defective in many ways. From texts relatively recently
discovered in Central Asia another light is shed on the linguistic and ethnic origins of
the Parthians, as I hope to show in what follows.
Textual and Linguistic Evidence for Parthian History
Although there are references to them in earlier Babylonian records, four cuneiform
letters p r y w in the Old Persian inscription of Darius at Behistun bring the Parthians
onto the world stage. Their country is listed several times among the peoples of Persia
1 An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper to the Australasian Society for Classical Studies
Conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 2 February 2005.
Asian Ethnicity, Volume 7, Number 1, February 2006
ISSN 1463-1369 print; 1469-2953 online/06/010005-13 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14631360500498361
in the inscriptions but its exact or even comparative locality cannot be established from
these, since the order of the lists does not clearly indicate the geography of the regions
involved. Soon afterwards, the Parthians are attested in Herodotus where our texts
present their name as Pryoi. Whether this is an error of the paradosis or, much
less likely, it represents a genuine variant of the word, we nd the texts of later writers
rendering their name in a seemingly more correct form. For Strabo and Arrian the
name of the people is spelt Paryuai ^oi that of the country Paryuaa. Polybius speaks of
Paryuaa and ParyuuZ (for the ending ZnZ see Tarn, 1938 [1951], pp. 2 4).
The w sound occurs in all attestations of the name in Iranian sources (Bartholomae,
1904, p. 869 and 1906, p. 190; Andreas and Henning, 1933, p. 303; Ghilain, 1939, p. 36
and p. 36, note 17; and Sundermann, 1981, p. 39). It would be more correct therefore to
anglicise the name as Parthawans, but the Latin tradition we inherit followed the less
correct Greek version reected in Herodotus. In any case Herodotus is the rst writer to
locate the Parthians for us. In his list of the satrapies of the Persian Empire the
Parthians, along with the Chorasmians, the Sogdians and the Arians comprise the
sixteenth satrapy (Herodotus III, 93 and 117). Adding information gleaned from later
sources (see Tarn, 1938 [1951], pp. 2 4) we can place the Parthians geographically
between Hyrcania in the northwest, Chorasmia in the north, Sogdia in the northeast,
Bactria in the east, Aria in the southeast and Carmania in the south; that is just to the
southeast of the Caspian Sea. In the invading Persian army of Xerxes in 481 BCE
the Parthians, like the Bactrians, are equipped with bows and javelins, and ranked with
the Chorasmians under the command of Artabazus, son of Pharnaces (Herodotus VII,
64 and 66). In Arrians description of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, we nd the
Parthian cavalry under the leadership of the same chief as the Hyrcanians and
Tapurians, but they are ranked with the Saka for the battle of Gaugamela (Arrian
Anabasis III 8,4; 11,4). It is in the country of the Parthians that Darius III, last of his
dynasty, is hunted down and killed by a satrap (Arrian Anabasis III, 20 22).
In about 250 BCE, while the Seleucids still held sway in Alexanders Persian
confederacy, the Parthians emerge as a signicant power in the Hellenistic World. In
their later calendar the Parthians treated 247 BCE as the foundation date (Tarn, 1938
[1951], pp. 64 6). The eponymous Arsaces was, according to the tradition, one of
two brothers who forcibly occupied the Greek-ruled satrapy of Parthia (Wolski, 1945,
pp. 13 55 and 1956 1958, pp. 35 58; Bivar, 1983, pp. 21 24 and pp. 28 31;
Ghirshman, 1961, pp. 243 5; Tarn, 1932 [1951], p. 574). Strabo, to whom we are
beholden for information on these points, used diering sources about the origins of the
Arsacid dynasty. According to Strabo (xi. 515) the Parni emigrated from the Southern
Russian steppes. Justin (xi. 515) gives a dierent account. If it is true that the Arsacids
were members of a steppe family which conquered Paryuaa at the head of nomads
called Prnoi or #Aparnoi belonging to the Scythian Dai, no evidence has survived to
suggest that they spoke a Scythian rather than a Persian dialect. The Parthian language
shows elements of East Iranian in its vocabulary and this could well be explained by
the inuence of invaders and conquerors. Incursions of nomad Iranians and other
people from the steppe were a common feature of those centuries. The language spoken
by the Arsacid invaders, if such they were, may have been akin to Sogdian rather than
to any Scythian dialect. Such is the view of Shahbazi (2000, p. 525) who states: On the
whole, then, onomastic, numismatic and epigraphic considerations point to the
conclusion that the Parthian dynasty was local Iranian by origin.
It should be noted that evidence for Sogdian comes from Central Asian texts of the
fourth to tenth centuries. Khotanese of the same provenance is thought to give evidence
6 John Sheldon
for linguistic features of Scythian. It is tempting to connect Prnoi or #Aparnoi with an
Iranian word for arrow established by H.W. Bailey for Avestan from Khotanese, thus
showing that it existed in both West and East Iranian.
2
Archers would seem an
appropriate name for such a people. The link, though not impossible, would require
some phonological justication.
3
No other convincing derivation of the name has yet
been proposed (see Lecoq, 2000, p. 151 where attention is drawn to traces of the East
Iranian Aparna language in Parthian loan-words in Armenian and Henning, 1958,
pp. 93 4).
The Arsacids quickly assumed the dress and manners of native Parthians, and most
probably their religion (Justin xli. 3). They associated themselves with the Achaemenid
kings, and, according to Arrians Parthica preserved in quotations in Photius, there was
a claim of descent from Artaxerxes II. The parts played by Mithradates I (c. 171 138/7
BCE) and Mithradates II (c. 123 88/87 BCE) in the foundation of a Parthian state
have been compared to those of Cyrus and Darius in the Achaemenid Empire: the
former the founder, the latter the consolidator who brought the nation to its greatest
power (Ghirshman, 1961, pp. 243 245). Mithradates II was followed by subsequent
rulers in describing himself on the Greek legends on his coins as dikai ^o& kai
jilllZuo&. A fuller coin legend of Mithradates II has king of kings, Arsaces,
benefactor, just, famous, Philhellene. From Vologeses I (51/2 79/80 CE) onward we
have legends in Parthian e.g. rsk wlgsy MLKYN MLK, Arsaces Vologeses s ahans ah
i.e. king of kings. Arsaces is used as a title by all kings. The word is to be connected
with Old Iranian arsan man (Bartholomae, 1904, pp. 203 4).
The distinguished Iranian scholar Ghirshman (1961, p. 263) has the following to say
about Arsacid rule:
The rise to power of the Arsacids, who derived their support mainly from a few noble
families of the Parni, was a triumph of the northern Iranians over those of the south. This
movement represented the supremacy of outer and nomadic Iran over sedentary Iran, which
was permeated with the older civilization of Western Asia on to which the conquest of
Alexander had grafted Hellenism. . . . The links between these nomads and the Arsacid
dynasty were never severed, and this may be one of the reasons why eastern chronicles,
particularly those of the Armenians, connect the Parthian family with the Kushan dynasty,
which also sprang from Iranian nomads.
The Kushans spoke Bactrian, as we are now discovering; this language is closely related
to Parthian, though the two are a long way from being mutually intelligible. To a
distant observer who knew neither language there are enough similarities to confuse
them. Our records of Bactrian are, of course, in the Greek alphabet. Ghirshman
suggests that the kinsmen of the Parthians over whom they ruled in the more civilised
Media and Persia would have viewed them with marked hostility and that the Parthian
government was more inclined in times of crisis to turn for help to their relatives in the
steppes to the east of the Caspian. While these assumptions may be in part correct they
should, I believe, be tempered to some extent by the linguistic evidence which shows
that Parthian, if perhaps a little uncouth-sounding to the people of Pars, achieved
considerable status in the empire. Not long after the fall of the Arsacids, S

ap ur I has his
2 The phrase dru ca paruua n ca which occurs in Avestan [at Yas t 13.99 and Yas t 19.85] is explained by
Bailey as meaning from bow and arrow. Here Khotanese sheds light on a previously obscure phrase by
providing the words durna- bow and p urna- arrow (Bailey, 1959 [1960], pp. 71 115).
3 I note that a distinctively Parthian word for arrow ph/pah/ has been found by Werner Sundermann and
related by him to pdd/pay arrow attested in Buddhist Sogdian (Sundermann, 1973, p. 130).
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 7
achievements recorded in a trilingual inscription on which Parthian is accorded equality
with Greek and S

ap urs own Middle Persian. Early Manichaean writings also make

Parthian one of its sacred languages; it was used liturgically long after it ceased to be a
living language, as Latin was in the Catholic Church. The speakers of such a language
cannot have been as uncivilised as Ghirshmans remarks would imply (for a dierent
perspective see Boyce, 1983, p. 1163).
Although the Arsacids did not display the same amboyant nationalism as the
Sassanians, they had a claim also to be considered the heirs to the Achaemenid kings.
Arrians Parthica made this claim and it has been argued that the specic purpose of the
work was to glorify the kings in this way, so that one is reminded of Augustuss descent
from Aeneas according to Virgils Aeneid. The Persian nation was a composite of
Iranian peoples and not the monopoly of the tribes of Pars and the southwestern
districts. The Achaemenid rulers regarded their subject Medes with the veneration
owing to ancestors. The Medes were now Persians, and so were the Parthians. For
Western observers, such as the Romans, the large country on their Eastern frontier was
Persia, whether it was ruled by Seleucids, Arsacids or Sassanians. It is customary to
speak, for example, of Trajans Parthian wars, though they could also be fairly
described as Persian wars. In other words, our fuller linguistic picture helps us to ll out
the historical one and the Persianness of the Parthians needs to be armed. Mary
Boyce argues in her authoritative writings on the Zoroastrians for the strong and
continuing presence of the Mazdaean religion in Parthia, at least until the invasion of
Alexander. The Iranian tradition encapsulated in the ninth-century Pahlavi D enkard
(Acts of the Religion) claims that under Vologeses I a systematic attempt was made to
assemble the canon of Zoroastrianism: in each province, whatever had survived in
purity of the Avesta and Zand, as well as every teaching derived from it, whether in oral
or written transmission. This statement has been impugned by many Iranian scholars
and the exact history of the written Avesta remains a matter of much controversy (see
Andreas, 1903; Henning, 1942, pp. 40 65; Morgenstierne, 1942, pp. 30 82; Bailey,
1943; Homann and Narten, 1989).
After the rise of the Sassanians, the Parthians resumed their pre-Arsacid obscurity
and we hear little more of them. The appearance of religious texts in their language in
Central Asia belonging to the following six centuries came as an eye-opener when the
discoveries were made in the rst decade of the twentieth century. The story has
gradually unfolded during the past hundred years; in fact, 2004 marked the centenary of
the rst publication of a Central Asian Middle Iranian text. From the very inception of
the religion in the middle of the third century CE, the disciples of the Persian prophet
Mani were sent on missionary journeys both east and west. In the west they converted
St Augustine but were nally suppressed by the Catholic Church; in the east the
favoured status accorded them by the Sassanian monarchy soon gave way to
persecution, as the national revival required the re-instatement of Zoroastrianism as
the state religion. Owing to the geographical proximity of their country to the great
eastern trade routes,
4
it would not be surprising if Parthians, like their enterprising
Sogdian neighbours, had a role to play as middlemen. Parthian was, as we have seen,
one of the earliest languages to enshrine the scriptures of Mani and his followers, and
4 Paryuaa is at the junction of two roads one of which goes from Media to Babylon and proceeds from
there to the northeast across Sogdiana to the borders of Alexanders empire. This is the road which
established the contact with China in the time of the Arsacids and was taken in Sassanian times by the
Manichaean missionaries (Ghilain, 1939, p. 3).
8 John Sheldon
no doubt the Parthians cherished these writings in their native tongue. That they should
be found in such plentiful supply in sites excavated in the very centre of the Silk Road is
therefore explained.
Within the last twenty years an important discovery has been made by a German
scholar at the forefront of research into the Turfan collection of Middle Iranian texts
in Berlin. Werner Sundermann has drawn attention to the hitherto unnoticed pheno-
menon that a high proportion of Manichaean texts in Parthian can be traced back to
Syriac rather than Middle Persian originals. In the latter language we nd a distinctive
vocabulary showing Zoroastrian inuence, whereas Parthian texts contain translitera-
tions and translations of Syriac terms as well as borrowings from the religious literature
of Christianity. This is possible evidence that the Mazdaean religion was not as rmly
established in Parthia as in other parts of Iran (Sundermann, 1979).
A common Syriac origin also explains why there are a number of striking parallels and
unique common features between Manichaean texts in Coptic and Parthian. It also explains
the presence of the large number of Syriac loan-words in Parthian texts, words which are
rarely found in Middle Persian forms. (Lieu, 1998, p. 39)
5
When fully studied, the ramications of this will be considerable and suggest a
strong link with Syriac-speaking communities. It also arms the status of Parthian as a
literary language well diused throughout the Persian Empire. Among the nds in
Central Asia are Christian texts in Sogdian. It now seems that, if there are to be further
discoveries, we should not be surprised to nd Christian texts in Parthian among them.
A related phenomenon to which Sundermann has drawn attention is the fact that,
unlike Middle Persian documents, Parthian texts contain a signicant number of
Buddhist expressions (Sundermann, 1982, pp. 99 113; Heuser and Klimkeit, 1998,
pp 239 49).
Identication of the Parthian Language
Writing in 1953 about the publication of a new Parthian inscription, Walter Henning
said (1953, pp. 409, 412): The scantiness of Parthian inscriptional material enhances
the importance of any new nd . . . The chief importance of these inscriptions lies in the
proof they aord that the language now generally described as Parthian was used in
fact in (at least part of) Parthia. According to A.D.H. Bivar (1983, p. 27):
It is plausible to assume that the North-West Iranian dialect that is known in a later period
as Parthian was the original dialect of the Iranian cultivators of the province of Parthia or,
as it is called in the Old Persian of the inscriptions, Parthava. To the incoming Parni or
Aparni may rather be ascribed a form of speech showing a stronger East-Iranian element,
resulting from their proximity on the steppe to the East Iranian Sakas.
Traditionally called the Scythians, the Sakas were a nomadic people whose
presence is later recorded in the important Silk Road city of Khotan where con-
siderable quantities of one of their languages, now called Khotanese, were discovered
by early twentieth-century explorers (Bailey, 1958, pp. 131 54). Although the Saka
5 See also Sundermann, 1986a, pp. 40 92; 1986b, pp. 239 317; 1987, pp. 41 107; Andreas and Henning,
1934, pp. 900, 907, 910 11.
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 9
languages are of Iranian origin, the ethnicity of their speakers is not Iranian in the
accepted meaning of that term. Henning (1958, pp. 100 4) was able to identify and
discuss East Iranian elements in Parthian. All this accords well with the ancient
testimony of Justin, one of our principal sources for Parthian history: their language
is midway between Scythian and Median and is a mixture of both (Justin xli 1).
The oldest stage of the language in Achaemenid times can be recovered in a small
way from certain forms of words appearing in the Old Persian inscriptions of Darius
and Xerxes (Ghilain, 1939, pp. 8 9). Throughout the Achaemenid period and for a
considerable time thereafter the standard manner of written communication was the
use of other languages, notably Elamite in the earlier period, and forms of Aramaic in
all periods. Indeed Aramaic could be described as the literary lingua franca of the
Persian Empire for at least four centuries. The use of the Old Persian language in
ocial inscriptions may well have been an idea of Darius himself and there is no
evidence to suggest that it was adopted more generally. When Iranian vernaculars
came to be written down they employed not only the Aramaic scripts but also the
Aramaic words which would be read out as Persian (Gershevitch, 1979, pp. 114 90).
Iranian terminations were added to and actual words were gradually inserted among
the Aramaic writing. It is for this reason that Pahlavi, as late as the ninth century CE,
presents the appearance of, and was once thought to be, two languages rather than
one. In time the Aramaic words became fossilised as ideograms. The rst substantial
records of the Parthian dialect of Middle Persian come from the end of the rst
century BCE. The document of Avroman, a Greek text of a contract dated 88 CE,
contains some Parthian words which have been added later. There is another contract
of which the date is unclear, though probably contemporary, written entirely in
Parthian. The interpretation of this text is dicult owing to the number of ideograms
as in Pahlavi. The rst interpreters used Middle Persian forms rather than Parthian in
their transcriptions. One of these scholars, H.S. Nyberg, believed that intervocalic k, t
and p are preserved in the writing of Iranian names in Greek in these contracts
(Nyberg, 1923, p. 185). In the Arsacid period we have the end of a Parthian text on a
bas relief at Sarpoul, which can be dated to the second half of the rst century CE.
Around this time appear the rst Parthian legends on coins, which help us to trace
the development of Parthian script and show certain features of the language. For
example, r is still written before t in the name of Artabanus, though later evidence
indicates its disappearance in pronunciation. There are a few Sogdian coins from this
time with Parthian legends and Parthian words can be traced in the Armenian
vocabulary, no doubt owing to the fact that Arsacids ruled over that country from 66
to 387 CE.
In the Sassanian period we have some more extended Parthian texts. These are the
inscriptions of the rst kings which contain a Parthian as well as a Persian and Greek
version in some cases. By far the most important of these is the great inscription of
S

ap ur I found at Naqs -i Rustam on the Kaba-yi Zardus t. The other long royal
inscription is the bilingual monument of Paikuli. Set up to commemorate the
accession to the throne of Narseh in 293 CE, it is very poorly preserved (Skjaervo,
1983). From what little can be read it has been noted that the Parthian here shows
Middle Persian inuence (Boyce, 1983, p. 1165). The rst excavations of the Kaba-yi
Zardus t in 1936 unearthed a text in Middle Persian. The initial part was badly
preserved but enough could be read to show that it recorded the victories and
conquests of the king, and most importantly, his capture of the Roman Emperor
Valerian. Walter Henning brilliantly proposed a number of restorations which were
10 John Sheldon
proved correct when the rest of the monument was uncovered in 1939 to reveal the
same text well-preserved in Parthian and Greek (Henning, 1939, pp. 823 49). It is
noteworthy that a dierent form of writing is used for Parthian and Persian,
including the ideograms. In the case of Parthian,
words written phonetically suer from the dearth of alphabetic signs: f and # are written
as p and t; c is written as h; z serves for z; the letter s serves for the unvoiced aricate
while the voiced aricate is rendered by ds ; long a is often left out. This orthography
cannot be used as evidence for the development of Parthian sounds in the third century
AD. Some of it is traditional and archaic features, which would not reect current
pronunciation, such as preservation of nal vowels and use of # intervocalically, are
written. The vowels in personal verbal terminations are not recorded in writing. Verbal
roots always appear as ideograms and the system used is specically Parthian. (Ghilain,
1939, pp. 13 4 [trans.])
The following sample (Huyse, 1999, p. 47) exemplies the dierence between the
two languages; it comes from the better preserved second part of the text which is a
Deed of Settlement establishing re-temples in various places; the Greek version
follows:
Middle Persian with vocalised transcription and English translation
AHRN NWRA I hwslwbshpwhry S

M PWN shpwhry ZY mysn MLKA ZY LNE BREr

any adur I Husraw-S

abuhr n am, pad S

abuhr M es an s ah am a pusar
another re-temple Husraw-S

abuhr by name for S

abuhr, king of Mes un, our sons

lwbn W-ptnm NWRA I hwslwbnrshy S

M PWN yly mzdysn nrshy MLKA hndy

ruw an ud pann am; adur I Husraw-Narseh n am, pad er mazd esn Narseh, s ah Hind,
soul and fame hereafter; one re-temple Husraw-Narseh by name for Aryan, Mazda-
worshipping Narseh, king of Hindustan,
skstn W-twrstn OD YMA dnby [ZY LNE BREr] lwbn W-ptnm
Sagest an ud T urest an t a dray a damb [am a pusar] ruw an ud pann am
Sagestan and Turan as far as the sea shore, [our sons] soul and fame hereafter.
Parthian with vocalised transcription
AHRN trw HD hwrswshypwrh S

ME pty shypwhr mysn MLKA LN BRY

any adur ew Husraw-S

abuhr n am, pad S

abuhr M es an s ah am a puhr
rwn W psnm trw HD hwsrwnryshw S

ME pty ry mzdyzn nryshw MLKA

arw an ud p asn am; adur ew Husraw-Narseh n am, pad er mazd ezn Narseh s ah
hndy skstn W twrgstn HW OL YMA znb LN BRY rwn W psnm
Hind, Sagestan ud Turgest an yad o zr eh zamb am a puhr arw an ud p asn am.
Greek with translation
6teron purei ^on 6n Xostrosabour kalomenon e& tn Sabour tou^ MZsanZno^n
basilo& uou^ mo^n mnean ka nmato& suntrZsin ka purei ^on 6n XostronarsZ
kalomenon e& tn Arian masdaasnou Narsaou basilo& Inda& SegistZnZ^&
TourZnZ^& 6o& welou& yalssZ& uou^ mo^n mnean ka nmato& suntrZsin
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 11
another re-temple Husraw-S

abuhr by name for the memory and preservation of the

name of our son, S

abuhr, king of Mes un, and one re-temple Husraw-Narseh by name

for the memory and preservation of the name of our son, the Aryan Mazda-
worshipping Narseh, king of Hindustan, Sagestan and Turan as far as the sea shore.
It would seem that the Parthian language and script ceased to be used generally in
Iran from the fourth century CE; therefore we must look for further evidence to the
Manichaean texts from Central Asia which date from the fourth to at least the tenth
centuries CE. In these two forms of Middle Iranian are represented, one closer to
Pahlavi, the second, although a West Iranian dialect, showing northeast features. The
use of ideograms has been greatly reduced, so that we can now read the languages with
much greater exactitude. These languages are so close as to be almost mutually
intelligible.
6
It was P. Tedesco who identied the second language as Parthian in a study
of Iranian dialects published in 1921 (Tedesco, 1921, pp. 184 258). Owing to the
centuries of Parthian domination, this dialect spread throughout Persia and it is not
surprising that in the early missionary expansion of the Manichaean Church it coexisted
with the southwestern dialect of Pars and appears alongside it in the texts. There is
obviously a break in continuity and geography between these and the earlier evidence
from Persia itself and one may well ask for a justication for calling this language
Parthian. In his important study of the subject in 1939 A. Ghilain defended the
attribution on the grounds that the northwest Middle Iranian dialect found in the texts
shares the linguistic features of inscriptional Parthian and that this is the word used by
writers of Manichaean Middle Persian to refer to this language. She adds that there
remains little dierence in age between the Manichaean documents and the ocial
Parthian language and that it would be superuous to call it Middle Parthian as we
possess neither Old Parthian nor Modern Parthian (Ghilain, 1939, p. 27).
7
Her support
for Tedescos attribution has been thoroughly vindicated by the subsequent discovery
of the Parthian version of S

apurs trilingual inscription, where despite the obscurity

created by so many ideograms, the two languages can now be seen to correspond to
those found in the texts of the Manichees. A detailed and valuable comparison of
Parthian and Middle Persian will be found in a major article of Henning in which he is
at pains to point out that Middle Persian and Parthian are two dierent languages and
not two dialects of the same language. He lays stress on lexical dierences by comparing
Middle Persian and Parthian versions of the same text (M 842 and M 215) (Henning,
1958, pp. 92 104). Sundermann puts this in balance when he notes that, although
Hennings lexical observations have been borne out by the few bilingual texts
subsequently studied, other considerations of phonology, morphology and syntax
would not support his contention that the two languages are toto caelo voneinander
verschieden. He summarises (Sundermann, 2004, pp. 85 86) by saying that:
Middle Persian and Parthian were two languages so closely related that the speakers of one
language would readily have understood what the other said, were it not for the many
dierent words and idiomatic phrases which made it necessary to learn the lexical
peculiarities of the other language.
6 The main phonetic dierences between Middle Persian and Parthian phonemes are given in Boyce, 1975,
pp. 14 8.
7 In his article Parthisch in Schmitt, 1989, pp. 121 4, Sundermann attempts to distinguish Old Middle,
Middle Middle and Late Middle Parthian. Earlier Bolognesi used the terms paleopartico and
neopartico to distinguish two phases of the language which he postulated (Bolognesi, 1951, pp. 141 62).
12 John Sheldon
Two fragments describing the early missions of the church
8
refer to the Parthian
language. The rst is in Middle Persian and was published by F.C. Andreas and
W.B. Henning in 1933. It tells of how Mani sent his disciple Mar Ammo to preach the
new religion in the east:
dud ka fr estagr osn andar Hulw an sahrest an b ud, xw and o M ar Amm o hamm oz ag, ke
pahlaw ang dibrud izb an d anist . . . u abarsahr fr est ad
Secondly when the Apostle of Light (Mani) was in Holvan, the provincial capital city, he
summoned Mar Ammo the teacher, who knew the art of writing Parthian and its language
. . . and sent him to the North region.
The second is in Sogdian and was rst published by Werner Sundermann in 1981. While
not a translation of the Middle Persian text there are many similarities including this
relevant passage which corresponds exactly (Sundermann, 1981, p. 39):
rtms cnkw ZK rxwsny brystk bg-y mrmny ZKwyh xrwnh wtky skwz rty ZKn mrmw mwz-
k ky ZY ZKw pxlwnk z-bkh ZY dpyrykh g-rb()skwn
And when the Apostle of Light, the Lord (Mani), stayed in the region of Holvan, he
summoned Mar Ammo, the teacher, who knew both the Parthian language and art of
writing.
9
Mani (216 74?) claimed to be a Parthian of noble birth. In his time Parthian
would simply connote Iranian under Parthian rule and would not suggest
association with Parthian kings and nobility sprung from invaders from the steppes.
Mani was born in Babylon about 216 CE and seems to have belonged to an
Elchasite Baptist sect with links to traditional Judaism and Christianity. His
native language would have been Aramaic (Syriac), but he seems to have written at
least one of his canonical works, a treatise addressed to S

apur himself, in
Middle Persian (MacKenzie, 1979, pp. 500 34; 1980, pp. 288 310). Mary Boyce
draws attention to a poem The Hymn of the Pearl which, although preserved in
the Syriac apocryphal Acts of Thomas, is derived from a Parthian original. It
contains Parthian loan-words and was known to Mani, since he applies its
symbolism to himself (Boyce, 1983, p. 1162). The exact details of the passing of rule
in Persia from the Arsacids to the Sassanians is unclear, but after the victories of
Ardashir I coin evidence suggests a brief restoration of Arsacid power.
Bivar (1983, p. 97) notes that this supposed restoration would have been at the
time when Mani, aged thirteen, claimed to have his rst religious revelation.
He continues:
The young prophet may well have been impressed at this desperate attempt to restore the
ancient dynasty, and have resolved to found a world-wide movement which would re-assert
Arsacid values in the spiritual sphere . . . [Hence] Manichaeism can be seen as one of the last
8 The Cologne Mani Codex, a Greek text giving much valuable biographical information about Mani, does
not preserve the section dealing with the missions to the east, hence these Middle Iranian sources have
unique value. The Greek text was rst published by L. Koenen and C. Ro mer in 1988.
9 Sundermann notes in his glossary that Sogdian pxlwnk is a Parthian form in this text transcribing
*phlwng (pahlaw anag) corresponding to Middle Persian phlwnyg ( pahlaw ang) in the passage given
above. Is he implying that the Sogdian passage is translated from a Parthian version of this text?
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 13
manifestations of Arsacid thought, its tinge of profound pessimism related to that dynastys
loss of power.
This is an interesting speculation, but Bivar is on safer ground when he concludes,
The Manichaean scriptures have preserved to modern times, among their rich
and varied linguistic heritage, evidence of the vocabulary and pronunciation of the
Parthian language, . . . masked in the original script by ideograms.
Although the Parthian language was written down for ocial purposes, its
national literature, like that of Middle Persian, was never committed to writing.
Apart from Western sources, the rst literary works to treat of Parthian history are
the writings of the Arabs and the Persians themselves after the coming of Islam. It
is clear that from a rich oral tradition lasting many centuries much has been lost
and distorted. Mary Boyce (1983, pp. 1151 65) has assembled evidence for Parthian
oral literature. The picture that emerges from this is of an epic tradition of the
Homeric type. Had the Parthians, like the Greeks, employed widespread use of
writing and become a literate nation, the contribution of this epic tradition to world
history and literature would have been incalculable. Firdousis poetical Book of
Kings embodies much myth and legend and the genuine history underlying it is not
always easy to assess; he uses the term Pahlavan (i.e. Parthian) for all the heroes
of Iranian folk lore.
To complete this picture of Parthian, mention should be made of two other sources
for our knowledge of the language. The rst is the so-called Book Parthian, a term
connoting Parthian words found in two Pahlavi works with Parthian background.
These are Ay adg ar Zar er an (The Memorial of Zarer) and Draxt As urg (The
Babylonian Tree), the former a poem deriving from a lost Parthian version of what may
have been an earlier, possibly Avestan, work dealing with the Kayanian dynasty, the
latter a solitary survival of poetical wisdom-literature (Boyce, 1983, pp. 1157 58,
1160). The second source is the abundance of Parthian loan-words in other languages,
most notably Armenian, but also Aramaic, Syriac, Middle Persian and Sogdian (see
Schmitt, 2000, pp. 445 59; Bailey, 2000, pp. 459 65).
In concluding this discussion of the language, I shall risk making a confusing matter
of terminology even more confusing by pointing out that the name Pahlavi is simply
the word Parthian in another (dialectal) form, yet it has come to describe the
language of the Sassanian Persians. We must therefore be clear about the following
related facts:
(a) in Manichaean writings forms of the word Pahlavi are used to denote Parthian;
(b) the related southwest dialect of Manichaean texts is a colloquial form of the ocial
Sassanian language known to us as Pahlavi through contemporary inscriptions and
the later writings of the Parsees; and
(c) the Pahlavi of the later Zoroastrian books continues the southwest dialect.
10
Proof that Pahlavi is a later form of the word Parthian was given rst by Justus
Olshausen in 1877. Olshausen was well aware of the diculty of making useful
10 In Pahlavi no text seems to reect a single period except the late theological (Zoroastrian ed.) works,
which can be dated closely (Brunner, 1977, p. xiv). The Middle Persian (Pahlavi ed.) of the
Zoroastrian books is a literary koine, merging into Persian, with many northern forms mingling with
those of the South (Boyce, 1968, p. 66).
14 John Sheldon
observations about the Parthian language at a time when almost no original source
material had been found. He was dependent on Latin and Greek glosses and supposed
loan-words in neighbouring languages, especially Armenian (Olshausen, 1877,
pp. 727 77). Earlier attempts were made to derive the Old Persian name Parsa
Persian from an original Parthava which would give Persian, Parthian and Pahlavi
a common origin. These have not received any widespread support (see Bartholomae,
1906, p. 190).
Summary and Conclusions
In what precedes I have attempted to explain the identication of one of the Middle
Iranian languages found in the Central Asian texts as Parthian, that is, the Iranian
dialect spoken in the province of Parthawa and disseminated throughout the empire
especially in Arsacid times. The main proofs are in the concinnity of Parthian
inscriptional evidence with the language of the Manichaean texts; this comprises a
series of dialectal phenomena which were rst noted by Tedesco and conrmed by
the work of later scholars. I have also attempted to show two things about the
Parthians in Classical times from the same evidence. The rst, to some extent,
corrects an impression one receives in writings on the Parthians that they were a
people sprung from steppe nomads and whose level of literacy was well below that
of the dwellers in southwest Iran. I hope to have shown that the Parthian language,
so closely related to the Persian of the southwest, attained a status little dierent
from the idiom of the Sassanian court and was elevated to a sacred tongue in the
books of the Manichees and hence indicates a higher cultural level than is often
assumed.
11
The second point I have tried to emphasise here is the Iranian ethnicity
of the Parthians. By this I mean that they should not be connected with ethnically
distinct Scyths or other steppe peoples. The names of the Arsacid kings are just as
Persian as those of the Achaemenids or the Sassanians. Furthermore the Arsacids
claimed a place in rightful succession to the founding kings, revered the Medes and
established the old Median capital of Ecbatana as their own. I suspect that the
sources on which we rely for the earliest history for the Arsacids mistake their
origins, or at any rate overemphasise their signicance, by describing them as
Scythian and generally present them as less civilised than they in fact were.
12
After
all, we rely for this information on second- or third-hand accounts in Greek and
Roman writers. There exists no historical account from a primary Iranian source
and this important fact must be remembered when assessing the evidence for the
history of a people who for a time ruled a world-empire second only to that of
Rome.
11 Using dierent arguments K. Shippman (2000, p. 531) reached the same conclusion. The Parthians have
every right to be considered on a par with the Seleucid and Sassanian dynasties not only politically but
also culturally. Shippman also cites recent archaeological evidence to suggest the existence of sizeable
political entities and a developed feudal state in Parthia and Margiane from as early as the rst
millennium BCE. This points to a prevailing condition of developed civilisation when the Parni arrived.
12 Typical of this earlier approach are the otherwise excellent entries on the history of Persia and Parthia
by Professor Eduard Meyer of Berlin in Encyclopaedia Britannica XI ed (1911). Meyer denies that the
Parthians ever possessed a world-empire, but remained warlords rather than rulers of a loose and
disjointed conguration of states. He saw their culture as an amalgam of Scythian, Parthian and Greek
elements.
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 15
References
Andreas, F.C. (1903) Die Entstehung des Awesta-Alphabetes und sein urspru nglicher Lautwert, Verhandlun-
gen des XII Internationalen Orientalisten Kongresses in Hamburg 1902, pp. 93 106 (Leiden: no publisher
given).
Andreas, F.C. and Henning, W.B. (1933) Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch Turkestan II (Berlin:
Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften).
Andreas, F.C. and Henning, W.B. (1934) Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch Turkestan III (Berlin:
Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften).
Arrian (1976) Anabasis of Alexander III, 8,4,11,420 422 (London and New York: Loeb Classical Library
Heinemann and Putnam).
Bailey, H.W. (1943 [1971]) Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books: Ratanbai Katrak Lectures
(Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Bailey, H.W. (1958) Languages of the Saka. In B. Spuler (Ed.) Handbuch der Orientalistik Iranistik
Linguistik, pp. 131 154 (Leiden: Brill).
Bailey, H.W. (1959 [1960]) Iranian arya- and daha- Transactions of the Philological Society, pp. 71 115
(Oxford: Basil Blackwood).
Bailey, H.W. (2000) Armenia and Iran. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Encyclopdia Iranica Vol. II, pp. 459 465
(New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press).
Bartholomae, C. (1904) Altiranisches Worterbuch (Strassburg: Walter de Gruyter).
Bartholomae, C. (1906) Zum Altiranischen Worterbuch Nacharbeiten und Vorarbeiten (Strassburg: Walter de
Gruyter).
Bivar, A.D.H. (1983) The political history of Iran under the Arsacids. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Cambridge
History of Iran Volume 3, Part 1, pp. 21 99 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Bolognesi, G. (1951) Sul vocalismo degli imprestiti iranici, Armeno Ricerche Linguistiche, 2, pp. 141 162.
Boyce, Mary (1968) Middle Persian literature. In I. Gershevitch (Ed.) Handbuch der Orientalistik. Iranistik
Literatur, pp. 31 66 (Leiden: Brill).
Boyce, Mary (1975) A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian: Acta Iranica 9 (Leiden: Brill).
Boyce, Mary (1983) Parthian writing and literature. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Cambridge History of Iran
Volume 3, Part 2, pp. 1151 1165 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Brunner, C.J. (1977) A Syntax of West Middle Iranian (New York: Caravan Books).
Gershevitch, Ilya (1979) Alloglottography of Old Persian, Transactions of the Philological Society, 77,
pp. 114 190 (Oxford: Basil Blackwood).
Ghilain, A. (1939) Essai sur la Langue Partheson syste`me verbal dapre`s les textes Manicheens du Turkestan
Oriental (Louvain: Publications Universitaires).
Ghirshman, R. (1961). Iran from the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books).
Henning, W.B. (1939) The Great Inscription of S

ap ur I Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, 9, pp. 823

849.
Henning, W.B. (1942) The disintegration of the Avestic studies, Transactions of the Philological Society, 42,
pp. 40 65.
Henning, W.B. (1953) A new Parthian inscription, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 132 136.
Henning, W.B. (1958) Mitteliranisch. In: B. Spuler (Ed.) Handbuch der Orientalistik IranistikLinguistik,
pp. 20 130 (Leiden: Brill).
Herodotus (1921 1925) III 93 and 117; VII 64 and 66 (London and New York: Loeb Classical Library
Heinemann and Putnam).
Heuser, M. and Klimkeit, H.-J. (1998) Studies in Manichaean Literature and Art (Leiden: Brill).
Homann, K. and Narten, J. (1989) Das Sasanidische Archetypus (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert
Verlag).
Huyse, P. (1999) Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum Part III Pahlavi Documents Vol. 1 Royal Inscriptions
(London: School of Oriental and African Studies).
Justin (1886) Epitomy of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, XI 515, XLI 3 (London: George Bell and
Sons).
Koenen, L. and C. Ro mer, C. (1988) Der Kolner Mani-Kodex (Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfa lischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Pap. Col. XIV: Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag).
Lecoq, P. (2000) Aparna. In: E. Yarshater (Ed.) Encyclopdia Iranica Vol. II, p. 151. (New York: Bibliotheca
Persica Press).
Lieu, S.N.C. (1998) Manichaean art and texts from the Silk Road. In: S.N.C. Lieu (Ed.) Manichaeism in
Central Asia and China, pp. 1 58 (Leiden: Brill).
16 John Sheldon
MacKenzie, D.N. (1979) Manis S

abuhragan I, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 42,

pp. 500 534.
MacKenzie, D.N. (1980) Manis S

abuhragan II, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 43,
pp. 288 310.
Meyer, Eduard (1911) Parthia. In: Encyclopdia Britannica XI ed. Vol. 20, pp. 870 871 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press); Persia: History: A.ancient, to the fall of the Sassanid Dynasty. In:
Encyclopaedia Britannica XI ed. Vol. 21, pp. 202 224.
Morgenstierne, G. (1942) Orthography and sound-system of the Avesta, Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap,
12, pp. 30 82.
Nyberg, H.S. (1923) The Pahlavi documents from Avroman, Le Monde Oriental, 17, pp. 182 230.
Olshausen, Justus (1877) Parthava und Pahlav, M ada und M ah (Berlin: Academy [Monatsberichten]).
Schmitt, R. (Ed.) (1989) Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag).
Schmitt, R. (2000) Armenia and Iran. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Encyclopdia Iranica Vol. II, pp. 445 459
(New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press).
Shahbazi, A.Sh. (2000) Arsacids. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Encyclopdia Iranica Vol. II, p. 525 (New York:
Bibliotheca Persica Press).
Shippman, K. (2000) Arsacids. In E. Yarshater (Ed.) Encyclopdia Iranica Vol. II, p. 531 (New York:
Bibliotheca Persica Press).
Skjaervo, P.O. (1983) The Sassanian Inscription of Paikuli Pt. 3.1 (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag).
Strabo (1929) Geography of Greece (London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann and
Putnam) XI. 515.
Sundermann, W. (1973) Mitteliranische und Parthische Kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichaer
(Berlin: Berliner Turfantexte).
Sundermann, W. (1979) Namen von Go ttern, Da monen und Menschen in iranischen Versionen des
manicha ischen Mythos, Altorientalische Forschungen, 6, pp. 95 133.
Sundermann, W. (1981) Mitteliranische Manichaische Texte Kirchengeschichtlichen Inhalts (Berlin: Berliner
Turfantexte).
Sundermann, W. (1982) Die Bedeutung des Parthischen fu r die Verbreitung buddhistischer Wo rter indischer
Herkunft, Altorientalische Forschungen, 9, pp. 99 113.
Sundermann, W. (1986a) Studien zur kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur der iranischen Manicha er I,
Altorientalische Forschungen, 13, pp. 40 92.
Sundermann, W. (1986b) Studien zur kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur der iranischen Manicha er II,
Altorientalische Forschungen, 13, pp. 239 317.
Sundermann, W. (1987) Studien zur kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur der iranischen Manicha er III,
Altorientalische Forschungen, 14, pp. 41 107.
Sundermann, W. (2004) On the identity and the unity of the Parthian language, and on its unknown words. In
C.G. Cereti and M. Maggi (Eds), Middle Iranian Lexicography, pp. 85 100 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per
lAfrica e lOriente).
Tarn, W.W. (1932 [1951]) Parthia. In S.A. Cook, F.E. Adcock and M.P. Charlesworth (Eds) Cambridge
Ancient History, Vol. IX, pp. 574 613 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Tarn, W.W. (1938 [1951]) The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Tedesco, P. (1921) Dialectologie der westiranischen Turfantexte, Le Monde Oriental, 15, pp. 184 258.
Wolski, J. (1945) Leondrement des Seleucides de la domination des Seleucides en Iran au IIIe sie` cle avant
Je sus-Christ, Bulletin International de lAcademie Polonaise des Sciences et Belles Lettres, Supplement 5,
pp. 13 55.
Wolski, J. (1956 1958) The decay of the Iranian Empire of the Seleucids and the chronology of the Parthian
beginnings, Berytus, 12, pp. 35 58.
The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Parthians 17