Tag: Philology

  • Deciphering the Illegible

    Deciphering the Illegible, a Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber, has now been published, celebrating his profound and life-long contributions to the study of Middle Persian documents. Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber (Iranica 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. On Monday, 21 October 2024, Maria and…

  • Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology

    Adam Benkato and I have finally launched our journal, Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology, where we intend to publish short and longer articles or research reports on the philology and epigraphy of the Middle Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Chorasmian, Khotanese). We start the Working Papers with issue 0, Towards a…

  • The birth of the abestāg

    My part in the WZO’s annual seminar this coming Sunday along with my @invisible_east colleagues, @ArezouAzad, Hugh Kennedy and Tommy Benfey: The birth of the abestāg from the spirit of philology سخنرانی من در سمینار سالانه «سازمان جهانی زرتشتیان» یکشنبه این هفته به همراه همکارانم در گروه پژوهشی «شرق مکنون».

  • History of Humanities

    Last week, I taught about Anquetil-Duperron, William Jones, the discovery of language similarity and the beginnings of IE Studies. Disciplines such as Iranian Studies or #Indology, as we know them today, would not have been possible without those efforts and contributions. I also made it a point to at least briefly discuss “genesis amnesia” and…

  • Panini, Sanskrit and software development

    BBC Radio 4 is currently exploring aspects of Indian history based on biographies of 50 important Indian historical figures: Incarnations: India in 50 Lives. Yesterday’s programme happened to be on the Indian grammarian Panini, whose grammar—according to this programme—played a pivotal role in making Sanskrit the lingua franca of South Asia for more than a…

  • Final -y

    Juan Jose, Ferrer-Losilla. 2014. Final -y in Non-Manichaean Parthian and the Proto-Parthian ‘rhytmic law’  (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 52). Peeters Publishers. This work traces the uses of the co-called “final -y” in Inscriptional Parthian, and provides the distributional rules that govern its presence or absence in certain words. Following the introduction, the bulk of this…

  • Iranische Personennamen

    Hutter, Manfred. 2015. Iranische Personennamen in der Hebräischen Bibel (Iranisches Personennamenbuch Bd. 7 / Faszikel 2, Iranische Onomastik 14, Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-historischen Klasse 860). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Der Band verbucht insgesamt 54 Namen der Hebräischen Bibel (einschließlich der Abschnitte in Aramäisch), für die eine iranische Deutung sicher oder plausibel ist; ferner werden…

  • Vers une édition de la liturgie longue zoroastrienne

    Cantera, Alberto. 2014. Vers une édition de la liturgie longue zoroastrienne: Pensées et travaux préliminaires (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 51). Peeters Publishers. The long liturgy is the most important ceremony in Zoroastrian priestly tradition. Most extant Avestan texts have been composed for their performance within this liturgy. It is highly likely that it acquired its…

  • A cultural history of Aramaic

    Gzella, Holger. 2015. A cultural history of Aramaic: From the beginnings to the advent of Islam. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Aramaic is a constant thread running through the various civilizations of the Near East, ancient and modern, from 1000 BCE to the present, and has been the language of small principalities, world empires, and a fair share…

  • Sogdian bibliography

    Benkato, Adam. 2015. Sogdian Bibliography. This provisional bibliography restricts itself to works focused mostly on the Sogdian language and its linguistic analysis or editions of texts. Comments, corrections, and further entries are most welcome.  

  • Comparative Oriental manuscript studies

    Bausi, Alessandro & Pier Giorgio Borbone, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, Paola Buzi, Jost Gippert, Caroline Macé, Marilena Maniaci, Zisis Melissakis, Laura Parodi, Witold Witakowski (eds.). 2015. Comparative Oriental manuscript studies: An introduction. COMSt. The present introductory handbook on comparative oriental manuscript studies is the main achievement of the Research Networking Programme ‘Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies’ (COMSt), funded…

  • Avestan research 1991–2014

    The first part of a survey by Almut Hintze on Avestan research from 1991 to 2014: Hintze, Almut. 2014. Avestan research 1991–2014. Part 1: Sources and phonology. Kratylos 59. 1–52. For more information and a PDF, see here.

  • Forgotten origins of modern humanities

    From the book’s webpage: ‘The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins—and what they still share—has never been more urgent’. Turner, James. 2014. Philology: The forgotten origins of the modern humanities. Princeton University Press. Many today do not recognize the word, but “philology” was for…