the script and orthography system which are used for the zoroastrian middle persian (= pahlavi) texts because of their many shortcomings and difficulties have always caused many misunderstandings and misinterpretations by the ancient users and modern researchers. this indeterminacy of the script and the lack of a complete and accurate understanding of the contents of the texts have caused the p...

sassanian pahlavi and manichaean middle persian pre/postpositions cover a relatively vast spectrum of meanings. by reference to the different components of the sentence, they act as determining factors for their grammatical roles. despite the fact that some pre/postpositions partly overlap others' in meanings, they mostly maintain the subtleties of their own specific significations. this a...

After the Arab-Muslim conquest (c. 650 CE), what we know of Middle Persian literacy in territory known as Ērānsahr is still little documented. Precisely, there evidence about linguistic developments during first two centuries but for an extract allegedly written by ibn al-Muqaffa. Most scholars’ debate on this passage based studied – mainly, inscriptions found south western part Sasanian empire...

The Middle Persian word sahrestān had often been translated as ‘provincial capital’. Cereti examines an impressive corpus of texts belonging to the Zoroastrian tradition, such Sahrenstānīhā-ī-Ērānshar, Bundahisn, Dēnkard, Kārnāmag ī Ardaxsīr Pābagān, Gujastag Abālis, Sāyast nē-Sāyast, Yoist Friyān, Pahlavi commentary Widēwdād, inscriptions Sāpūr I and Kerdīr at Ka’aba-e Zartost Narseh’s one Pai...

This paper will discuss several computational tools for creating a stemma of Avestan manuscripts, such as: a letter similarity matrix, a morphological expander, and co-occurrence networks. After a short introduction to Avestan and Avestan manuscripts and a representation of Avestan peculiarities concerning the creation of stemmata, the operatability of the above-mentioned tools for this text co...

This paper will discuss several computational tools for creating a stemma of Avestan manuscripts, such as: a letter similarity matrix, a morphological expander, and co-occurrence networks. After a short introduction to Avestan and Avestan manuscripts and a representation of Avestan peculiarities concerning the creation of stemmata, the operatability of the above-mentioned tools for this text co...

The late medieval Voynich Manuscript (VM) has resisted decryption and was considered a meaningless hoax or an unsolvable cipher. Here, we provide evidence that the VM is written in natural language by establishing a relation of the Voynich alphabet and the Iranian Pahlavi script. Many of the Voynich characters are upside-down versions of their Pahlavi counterparts, which may be an effect of dif...