Concept

Middle Persian

Overview

Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīg or, in an earlier form, Pārsīk (Inscriptional Pahlavi script: 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪, Manichaean script: 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐‎, Avestan script: 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐), is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, the official language of Iran (also known as Persia), Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

For the first mentioned of these flows from the Armenians, and the latter from the Matienians. The fourth river is called the Gyndes, which Cyrus once distributed into three hundred and sixty channels. As you enter from Armenia into the country of Matiene, there are four stations; and from thence as you proceed to the Cissian territory there are eleven stations, and forty-two parasangs and a half, to the river…
Herodotus, The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus
States what Middle Persian is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Middle Persian is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
The histories of the _Persians_ now extant in the East, represent that the oldest Dynasties of the Kings of _Persia_, were those whom they call _Pischdadians_ and _Kaianides_, and that the Dynasty of the _Kaianides_ immediately succeeded that of the _Pischdadians_. They derive the name _Kaianides_ from the word _Kai_, which, they say, in the old _Persian_ language signified a Giant or great King; and they call the…
Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
Close in meaning to Middle Persian; the term itself is not named.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Middle Persian

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Asoristan

Place in the tradition

Part of Iranian philosophy.

Explore Middle Persian in the interactive graph →