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37-608: Hormizd (sometimes spelled Hormuzd and Graecized Hormisdas or Ormisdas ) is an Iranian name derived from the name of the god Ahura Mazda . It may refer to: Any of the several kings and members of the Sasanian dynasty of Persia: Other people with the name Hormizd or Hormisdas: Other uses: Iranian languages The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly-attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from

74-555: A 'deliberate systematic survey of the languages of India.' The signatories included Karl Bühler , Max Müller , Monier Williams and Grierson. The recommendation was made to the British Government and in 1898 he was appointed Superintendent of the newly formed Linguistic Survey of India. For the survey a standard set of materials was sought. He had government officials collect material for every language, dialect, and subdialect, going from village to village and sampling across

111-603: A deep interest in languages, won prizes for studies in Sanskrit and Hindustani before leaving for the Bengal Presidency in 1873. First posted to Bankipore (Patna) in Bihar, he became Magistrate and Collector at Patna and still later in 1896, Opium Agent for Bihar . He married Lucy Elizabeth Jean, daughter of Maurice Henry Fitzgerald Collis, a Dublin surgeon, in 1880 but they had no children. Grierson attended

148-522: A derivative of Proto-Indo-European language *ar-yo- , meaning "one who assembles (skilfully)". In the Iranic languages spoken on the plateau, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier, included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of the Avesta , and remains also in other Iranian ethnic names Alan ( Ossetian : Ир Ir ) and Iron ( Ирон ). When used as a linguistic term Iranian

185-513: A third-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam , with the accompanying Parthian inscription using the term Aryān , in reference to the Iranian peoples . The Middle-Iranian ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns ēr- (Middle Persian) and ary- (Parthian), both deriving from Proto-Iranian language *arya- (meaning " Aryan ", i.e. "of the Iranians"), recognized as

222-443: Is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language . Some scholars such as John R. Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category, and Iranian for anything about the modern country of Iran . He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic . This use of

259-463: Is best attested in one of the three languages of the Behistun inscription, composed c.  520 BCE , and which is the last inscription (and only inscription of significant length) in which Old Persian is still grammatically correct. Later inscriptions are comparatively brief, and typically simply copies of words and phrases from earlier ones, often with grammatical errors, which suggests that by

296-408: Is indistinguishable from effects due to other causes). In addition to Old Persian and Avestan, which are the only directly attested Old Iranian languages, all Middle Iranian languages must have had a predecessor "Old Iranian" form of that language, and thus can all be said to have had an (at least hypothetical) "Old" form. Such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Old Parthian . Additionally,

333-451: Is not known where that dialect (or dialects) was spoken either. Certain is only that Avestan (all forms) and Old Persian are distinct, and since Old Persian is "western", and Avestan was not Old Persian, Avestan acquired a default assignment to "eastern". Further confusing the issue is the introduction of a western Iranian substrate in later Avestan compositions and redactions undertaken at the centers of imperial power in western Iran (either in

370-581: Is only "Eastern Iranian" in the sense that it is not Western. The Iranian languages all descend from a common ancestor: Proto-Iranian , which itself evolved from Proto-Indo-Iranian . This ancestor language is speculated to have origins in Central Asia , and the Andronovo culture of the Bronze Age is suggested as a candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture around 2000 BCE. The language

407-551: Is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit . On the other hand, Younger Avestan is at about the same linguistic stage as Old Persian, but by virtue of its use as a sacred language retained its "old" characteristics long after the Old Iranian languages had yielded to their Middle Iranian stage. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, Avestan has no clearly identifiable Middle Iranian stage (the effect of Middle Iranian

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444-1193: The Achaemenid Empire ) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta ). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire ), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire ), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite empires). As of 2000s , Ethnologue estimates that there are 86 languages in the group. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān , first attested in

481-643: The Bangiya Sahitya Parishat . He received several other honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Cambridge, Oxford, and Bihar. A literary award of India, the Dr. George Grierson Award , was named in his honour in 1989. Grierson was a prolific writer. On his 85th birthday, an article was contributed in his honour and published by the School of Oriental Studies which included a list of Grierson's publications occupying 22 pages. The following are

518-428: The 4th century BCE the transition from Old Persian to Middle Persian was already far advanced, but efforts were still being made to retain an "old" quality for official proclamations. The other directly attested Old Iranian dialects are the two forms of Avestan , which take their name from their use in the Avesta , the liturgical texts of indigenous Iranian religion that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism but in

555-464: The Avesta itself is simply known as vohu daena (later: behdin ). The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as "Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan", and "Younger Avestan". These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since 'Younger Avestan' is not only much younger than 'Old Avestan', but also from a different geographic region. The Old Avestan dialect

592-610: The Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group was an areal entity whose languages retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic -derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script , though Bactrian

629-728: The Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna and proposed the idea of a formal linguistic in India. Grierson was a delegate of the Royal Asiatic Society along with Dr Theodor Duka , Albert Terrien de Lacouperie , Cecil Bendall , and R. N. Cust . At the Congress it was noted that the number of Indian languages was unknown with estimates varying from 20 to 250. A resolution was passed urging the Government to undertake

666-446: The ancient speakers of Iranian languages. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of only two has survived. These are: Indirectly attested Old Iranian languages are discussed below . Old Persian was an Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in southwestern Iran (the modern-day province of Fars ) by the inhabitants of Parsa , Persia, or Persis who also gave their name to their region and language. Genuine Old Persian

703-437: The classes and sexes. He provided forms and instructional material to his correspondents. He sought a version of the parable of the prodigal son, oral narratives and a predefined list of 241 words and phrases (this list had been made by Sir George Campbell in 1866). The parable was chosen because 'it contains the three personal pronouns, most of the cases found in the declension of nouns, and the present, past, and future tenses of

740-638: The completion of the Linguistic Survey of India was celebrated at the Criterion Restaurant by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland with Lord Birkenhead proposing the toast. Grierson published scholarly works throughout his career: on the dialects and peasant life of Bihar, on Hindi literature, on bhakti , and on linguistics . His contemporaries noted both his lack of sympathy for Advaita Vedanta , which he regarded as "pandit religion," and his "warm appreciation of

777-409: The existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages. Such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has (what is called) a " Median " substrate in some of its vocabulary. Also, foreign references to languages can also provide a hint to the existence of otherwise unattested languages, for example through toponyms/ethnonyms or in

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814-698: The far northwest; and the hypothetical "Old Parthian" (the Old Iranian ancestor of Parthian) in the near northwest, where original *dw > *b (paralleling the development of *ćw). What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages are conventionally classified into two main groups, Western and Eastern . The Western family includes Parthian ( Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian , while Bactrian , Sogdian , Khwarezmian , Saka , and Old Ossetic ( Scytho - Sarmatian ) fall under

851-458: The following branches: According to modern scholarship, the Avestan languages are not considered to fall under these categories, and are instead sometimes classified as Central Iranian, since they diverged from Proto-Iranian before the east-west division rose to prominence. It has traditionally been viewed as Eastern Iranian; however, it lacks a large number of Eastern Iranian features and thus

888-547: The journals of learned societies and wrote several books during his administrative career but proposed a formal linguistic survey at the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna. The Congress recommended the idea to the British Government and he was appointed superintendent of the newly created Linguistic Survey of India in 1898. He continued the work until 1928, surveying people across the British Indian territory, documenting spoken languages, recording voices, written forms and

925-759: The linguistic botany of India". Grierson died in Camberley , Surrey, England at Rathfarnham, the house he built and named after his grandfather's castle in Dublin. Grierson was an honorary member of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha at Benares. He was an honorary fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal , the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, the Modern Language Association, Linguistic Society of India, and

962-412: The monotheistic devotion of the country folk". He also published on literary texts and writers, including a paper on Kalidasa in 1877. Most of Grierson's later work deals with linguistics. In a celebratory account of his life, F. W. Thomas and R. L. Turner refer to the extensive publications of the Linguistic Survey of India as "a great Imperial museum, representing and systematically classifying

999-581: The reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European. Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after the Proto-Indo-Iranian breakup, or the early-2nd millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe , the Iranian Plateau , and Central Asia. Proto-Iranian innovations compared to Proto-Indo-Iranian include:

1036-472: The recording of vocabulary, as Herodotus did for what he called " Scythian " and in one instance, Median ( σπάκα "dog"). Conventionally, Iranian languages are grouped into "western" and "eastern" branches. These terms have little meaning with respect to Old Avestan as that stage of the language may predate the settling of the Iranian peoples into western and eastern groups. The geographic terms also have little meaning when applied to Younger Avestan since it

1073-550: The south-west in Persia, or in the north-west in Nisa/Parthia and Ecbatana/Media). Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *ć and *dź: As a common intermediate stage, it is possible to reconstruct depalatalized affricates: *c, *dz. (This coincides with

1110-454: The state of affairs in the neighboring Nuristani languages .) A further complication however concerns the consonant clusters *ćw and *dźw: A division of Iranian languages in at least three groups during the Old Iranian period is thus implied: It is possible that other distinct dialect groups were already in existence during this period. Good candidates are the hypothetical ancestor languages of Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian subgroup of Scythian in

1147-456: The term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen . Robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan ( Iranian ) and Indo-Aryan ( Indic ). Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention. The Iranian languages are divided into

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1184-506: The turning of sibilant fricative *s into non-sibilant fricative glottal *h; the voiced aspirated plosives *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ yielding to the voiced unaspirated plosives *b, *d, *g resp.; the voiceless unaspirated stops *p, *t, *k before another consonant changing into fricatives *f, *θ, *x resp.; voiceless aspirated stops *pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ turning into fricatives *f, *θ, *x, resp. The multitude of Middle Iranian languages and peoples indicate that great linguistic diversity must have existed among

1221-609: The verb'. The survey classified the languages of 290,000,000 people. In 1900 he moved to England "for convenience of consulting European libraries and scholars". By 1903 most of the data had come in and he retired from the Indian Civil Service. He spent the following thirty years editing the enormous amount of material gathered and worked briefly in collaboration with the Norwegian linguist Sten Konow (who contributed to volume III on Tibetan languages). On 8 May 1928

1258-500: Was responsible in documenting information on 179 languages, defined by him through a test of mutual unintelligibility, and 544 dialects which he placed in five language families. He published the findings of the Linguistic Survey in a series that consisted of 19 volumes. Grierson was born in Glenageary , County Dublin . His father and grandfather ( George Grierson ) were well-known Dublin printers and publishers. His mother Isabella

1295-671: Was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia and Kazakhstan . It was thus in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family , such as Thracian , Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus ), according to

1332-524: Was the daughter of Henry Ruxton of Ardee. He was educated at St. Bees School , and from the age of 13 at Shrewsbury . He then went up to Trinity College, Dublin , where he was a student of mathematics. Grierson qualified for the Indian Civil Service in 1871 ranking twenty-eighth for the year. He continued studies at Trinity College for two probationary years where he was influenced by Robert Atkinson , professor of oriental languages. He took

1369-579: Was written using an adapted Greek script . George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE FBA (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India . He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languages and folklore of India during his postings in Bengal and Bihar. He published numerous studies in

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