Pazand, A language or a writing system?

Document Type : .

Author

Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Pazand texts are a part of the intellectual heritage of Zoroastrianism, which, regardless of their often prayerful and ritualistic content, is a dilemma in the history of the Persian language. What we know as Pazand are some Middle Persian texts that were transcribed from the ambiguous Pahlavi script to the clear and vocalic Avesta script around the 12th century. The writing of Pazand continued until the 19th century in Iran and India, and a corpus has emerged which, according to some faile readings, has acquired the characteristic of the new period of the Persian language, but both Pazand writers and users of their works believed that they presented a text from the Middle Ages.
Always on the issue of whether the change of script led to the change of language or not? It has been discussed and reasons can be mentioned. In the following discussion, an attempt has been made to answer this question by examining eight text samples from different periods of Pazand corpus in Iran and India, that in the process of Pazand, the change of script has led to an independent language?

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