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{{short description|Extinct Eastern Iranian language of Central Asia}}

factoids

,{{script>SogosogSogdsogSogdsogManisog|swγδyʾw}}|state=Sogdia|region=Central Asia, China|era=1st millennium BCE – 1000 CE|ref=linglistYaghnobi language>Yaghnobi|familycolor=Indo-EuropeanIndo-Iranian languages>Indo-IranianIranian languages>IranianEastern Iranian languages>Eastern?JACQUES GERNET>TITLE=A HISTORY OF CHINESE CIVILIZATIONURL-ACCESS=REGISTRATIONPUBLISHER=CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSPAGES=282–, |fam5=Northern

• Sogdian alphabet
• Syriac alphabetBOOK, Sigfried J. de Laet, Joachim Herrmann, History of Humanity: From the seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D.,books.google.com/books?id=WGUz01yBumEC&q=afshin+sogdian&pg=PA467, 1 January 1996, UNESCO, 978-92-3-102812-0, 467–,
• Manichaean alphabet}}|iso2=sog|iso3=sog|glotto=sogd1245|glottorefname=Sogdian

}}{{Contains special characters|Sogdian}}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, KazakhstanWEB,sogdians.si.edu/sidebars/sogdian-language/, Sogdian Language and Its Scripts {{!, The Sogdians}} and Kyrgyzstan;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 Sogdia 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.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.

History

File:British Museum stamp-seal (Registration number 1870,1210.3).jpg|Seal with two facing busts and Sogdian inscription “Indamic, Queen of Zacanta”, Kushano-Sasanian period, 300-350 CE. British Museum 119999.WEB, Stamp-seal; bezel British Museum,www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1870-1210-3, The British Museum, en, File:Sogdian text Manichaean letter.jpg|Sogdian text from a Manichaean creditor letter from around 9th to 13th centuryFile:Manicheans.jpg|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,BOOK, Rachel Lung, Interpreters in Early Imperial China,books.google.com/books?id=Wa5xAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA151, 7 September 2011, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 978-90-272-8418-1, 151–, Weinberger, E., “China’s Golden Age”, The New York Review of Books, 55:17. Retrieved on 2008-10-19. along which it amassed a rich vocabulary of loanwords such as tym (“hotel“) from the Middle Chinese /tem/ ({{zh|(wikt:店|店)}}).BOOK, The Silk Road: A New History, Valerie, Hanson, Oxford University Press, 2012, 136, 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.Richard Foltz, A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East, London: Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 4-5. 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.BOOK, Paul Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic,books.google.com/books?id=3coojMwTKU8C&pg=PA6, 15 June 2007, I.B.Tauris, 978-1-84511-283-7, 6–, It is spoken by the Yaghnobi people.

Discovery of Sogdian texts

File:Sogdian Christian Text Written in Estrangelo.jpg|thumb|Sogdian Christian text written in Estrangelo, discovered at TurpanTurpanAurel 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.ENCYCLOPEDIA, ANCIENT LETTERS, Encyclopædia Iranica, December 15, 1985, Sims-Williams, N., Encyclopædia Iranica, 7–9, II,www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ancient-letters, WEB,kimon.hosting.nyu.edu/sogdians/items/show/851, SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER II, Keramidas, Kimon, NYU, Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/Sackler Digital Exhibition Project, WEB,depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html, The Sogdian Ancient Letters 1, 2, 3, and 5, translated by Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams, Silk Road Seattle - University of Washington, WEB,www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=5032, Aurel Stein Discovers the Sogdian “Ancient Letters” 313 CE to 314 CE, Norman, Jeremy, History of Information, Sogdian Ancient Letter No. 3. Reproduced from Susan Whitfield (ed.), The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (2004) p. 248.WEB,sogdians.si.edu/ancient-letters/, Ancient Letters, THE SOGDIANS Influencers on the Silk Roads, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution., WEB,kimon.hosting.nyu.edu/sogdians/items/show/869, SOGDIAN ANCIENT LETTER III: LETTER TO NANAIDHAT, Keramidas, Kimon, NYU, Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/Sackler Digital Exhibition Project, WEB,ringmar.net/irhistorynew/index.php/welcome/introduction-4/from-temujin-to-genghis-khan/5-2-a-nomadic-state/5-3-how-to-conquer-the-world/5-4-dividing-it-all-up/sogdian-letters/, Sogdian letters, ringmar.net, 5 March 2021, History of International Relations, BOOK, Vaissière, Étienne de la, 2005, Sogdian Traders: A History,brill.com/downloadpdf/book/9789047406990/BP000005.xml, Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 8 Uralic & Central Asian Studies, 10, Brill, CHAPTER TWO ABOUT THE ANCIENT LETTERS, 43–70, 978-90-47-40699-0, 10.1163/9789047406990_005, BOOK,brill.com/display/book/9789047406990/BP000005.xml, 10.1163/9789047406990_005, About the Ancient Letters, Sogdian Traders, 2005, 43–70, Brill, 9789047406990, BOOK, LivÅ¡ic, Vladimir A., Orlov, Andrei, Lourie, Basil, 2009, Symbola Caelestis: Le symbolisme liturgique et paraliturgique dans le monde chrétien,brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/scri/5/1/article-p344_21.xml, Piscataway, Gorgias Press, SOGDIAN “ANCIENT LETTERS” (II, IV, V), 344-352, 9781463222543, 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.Utz, David. (1978). Survey of Buddhist Sogdian studies. Tokyo: The Reiyukai Library.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. 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.“Iranian Languages”(2009). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved on 2009-04-09Dunhuang 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.

Writing system

Like 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). To distinguish long vowels from short ones, an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel.Clauson, Gerard. 2002. Studies in Turkic and Mongolic linguistics. P.103-104.The Sogdian language also used the Manichaean alphabet, which consisted of 29 letters.Gershevitch, Ilya. (1954). A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian. p.1. Oxford: Blackwell.In transcribing Sogdian script into Roman letters, Aramaic ideograms are often noted by means of capitals.

Morphology

Nouns

Light stems

{|class=“wikitable“! Case || masc. a-stems || neut. a-stems || fem. ā-stems || masc. u-stems || fem. Å«-stems || masc. ya-stems || fem. yā-stems || plural| -ta, -Ä«Å¡t, -(y)a| -te, -Ä«Å¡t(e), -(y)a| -tya, -Ä«Å¡tÄ«, -ān(u)| -tya, -Ä«Å¡tÄ«, -ān(u)| -tya, -Ä«Å¡tÄ«, -ān(u)| -tya, -Ä«Å¡tÄ«, -ān(u)

Heavy stems

{|class=“wikitable“! Case || masc. || fem. || plural| -t| -te| -tÄ«, -ān| -tÄ«, -ān| -tÄ«, -ān| -tÄ«, -ān

Contracted stems

{|class=“wikitable“! Case || masc. aka-stems || neut. aka-stems || fem. ākā-stems || pl. masc. || pl. fem.| -Ä“t, -āt| -Ä“te, -āte| -Ä“tÄ«, -ātÄ«| -Ä“tÄ«, -ātÄ«| -Ä“tÄ«, -ātÄ«| -Ä“tÄ«, -ātÄ«

Verbs

Present indicative{|class“wikitable”

! Person || Light stems || Heavy stems| -am| -∅, -ē| -t| -ēm(an)| -θ(a), -t(a)| -and

Imperfect indicative{|class“wikitable”

! Person || Light stems || Heavy stems| -∅, -u| -∅, -i| -∅| -ēm(u), -ēm(an)| -θ(a), -t(a)| -and

References

{{Reflist}}

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

{{commons category}}{{Spoken Pseudopedia|Sogdian_language.ogg|date=2006-01-02}}

• www.iranologie.com/history/ilf.html" title="web.archive.org/web/20041009124244www.iranologie.com/history/ilf.html">Iranian Language Family
• fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/index.html" title="web.archive.org/web/20170812032357fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/index.html">Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian by P. Oktor Skjærvø
• www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/s01_introduction.pdf" title="web.archive.org/web/20160304090931www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/s01_introduction.pdf">Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian (Introduction only)
• sites.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/sogdiancomplete.pdf" title="web.archive.org/web/20211111065740sites.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/sogdiancomplete.pdf">Introduction to Manichaean Sogdian (full text)
• www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/lil/sd-search.html" title="web.archive.org/web/20040905091926www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/lil/sd-search.html">Sogdian Dictionary

{{Iranian languages}}{{Authority control}}