- Pahlavi Psalter
The Pahlavi Psalter is the name given to a 12-page non-contiguous section of a
Middle Persian translation of a Syriac book of psalms.The Pahlavi Psalter was discovered in 1905 by the second German
Turfan expedition underAlbert von Le Coq . Together with a mass of other fragmentary Christian manuscripts discovered in the ruins of the library of Shui-pang atBulayiq (near Turfan, in what is today the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region ofChina ), the documents were sent toBerlin for analysis, where the fragments remain today.The Pahlavi Psalter is the oldest surviving example of
Pahlavi literature , that is, literature composed using the Pahlavi writing system. The surviving fragments probably date to the 6th or 7th century CE. The translation itself dates to not before the mid-6th century since it reflects liturgical additions to the Syriac original by Mar Aba I, who was Patriarch of Babylon "c." 540 - 552.The script of the psalter, like that of all other examples of Pahlavi literature, is also an Aramaic-derived script (see
Pahlavi for details). However, unlike "Book Pahlavi" script, which is a later but more common form of the consonantary and has 12 or 13grapheme s, the script of the psalms has 5 symbols more. The variant of the script used for the psalter was for almost a century the only evidence of that specific variant, which consequently came to be referred to as "Psalter Pahlavi" script. More recently however, another sample of the writing was discovered in the inscriptions on a bronze processional cross found atHerat (in present-dayAfghanistan ). Due to the dearth of comparable material, some words and phrases in both sources remain undeciphered.References
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