Indo-Iranian languages

      group of languages constituting the easternmost major branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages (Indo-Aryan languages) are spoken by some 800 million persons in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and other areas of the Himalayan region. In addition, languages of the Indo-Aryan group are spoken by about 5,000,000 people in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania: the Gypsy, or Romany, dialects that are distributed about parts of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America are of Indo-Aryan origin. Speakers of Iranian languages number in the tens of millions and live in areas extending from Pakistan to Iran, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia. Among the Indo-European languages, only Linear A and Linear B and Hittite possess records that go back farther in time than those of Indo-Iranian.

      The Indo-Iranian tongues have been used as both administrative and literary languages. Old Persian was the administrative language of the early Achaemenian dynasty dating from the 6th century BC; and an eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialect was the language of the chancellery of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in India in the mid-3rd century BC. As literary languages, the Indo-Iranian languages were used in the texts of some of the world's great religions: Indo-Aryan for Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, and Iranian for Zoroastrian and Manichaean texts. The oldest Zoroastrian texts are in dialects included under the name Avestan. Commerce, conquest, and religion spread the influence of these languages. Indo-Aryan languages, for example, penetrated deep into Southeast Asia; names in Indonesia and other areas and Sanskrit texts in Cambodia reflect this influence.

      The close relation between the Iranian and Indo-Aryan groups has never been doubted. They share characteristic features that set them apart as a subgroup of Indo-European. The long and short varieties of the Indo-European vowels e, o, and a, for example, appear as long and short a: Sanskrit (Sanskrit language) manas- “mind, spirit,” Avestan (Avestan language) manah-, but Greek ménos “ardour, force.” (In the following examples, a macron (¯) indicates a long vowel; a breve (˘) indicates a short vowel. The spellings used in this article for Indo-Aryan and Iranian forms are traditional transliterations for the most part. In some cases, more accurate phonetic symbols are used. These can be found in the International Phonetic Alphabet.) In instances in which some Indo-European languages have an a sound, Indo-Iranian has i as a reflex of Indo-European sounds called laryngeals—e.g., Greek patēr “father,” Sanskrit pitṛ-, Avestan and Old Persian (Persian language) pitar-. After stems ending in long or short a, i, or u, an n occurs sometimes before the genitive (possessive) plural ending ām (Avestan -ąm)—e.g., Sanskrit martyānām “of mortals, men” (from martya-); Avestan mašyānąm (from mašya-); Old Persian martiyānām.

      In addition to several other similarities in their grammatical systems, Indo-Aryan and Iranian have vocabulary items in common—e.g., such religious terms as Sanskrit yajña-, Avestan yasna- “sacrifice”; and Sanskrit hotṛ-, Avestan zaotar- “a certain priest”; as well as names of divinities and mythological persons, such as Sanskrit mitra-, Avestan miθra- “Mithra.” Indeed, speakers of both language subgroups used the same word to refer to themselves as a people: Sanskrit ārya-, Avestan airya-, Old Persian ariya- “Aryan.”

      The Indo-Aryan and Iranian language subgroups also differ from each other in a number of linguistic features, among them that Indo-Aryan has an i sound representing an Indo-European laryngeal sound not only in initial syllables but generally also in interior syllables; e.g., Sanskrit duhitṛ- “daughter” (cf. Greek thugátēr). In Iranian, however, the sound is lost in this position; e.g., Avestan dugədar-, duɣdar-. Similarly, the word for “deep” is Sanskrit gabhīra- (with ī for i), but Avestan ǰafra-. Iranian also lost the accompanying aspiration (a puff of breath, written as h) that is retained in certain Indo-Aryan consonants; e.g., Sanskrit dhā “set, make,” bhṛ, “bear,” gharma- “warm,” but Avestan and Old Persian dā, bar, and Avestan garəma-. Further, Iranian changed stops such as p before consonants and r and v to spirants such as f: Sanskrit pra “forth,” Avestan frā; Old Persian fra; Sanskrit putra- “son,” Avestan puθra-, Old Persian pua- ( represents a sound that is also transliterated as ç). In addition, h replaced s in Iranian except before non-nasal stops (produced by releasing the breath through the mouth) and after i, u, r, k; e.g., Avestan hapta- “seven,” Sanskrit sapta-; Avestan haurva- “every, all, whole,” Sanskrit sarva-. Iranian also has both xš and š sounds, resulting from different Indo-European k sounds followed by s-like sounds, but Indo-Aryan has only kṣ; e.g., Avestan xšayeiti “has power, is capable,” šaēiti “dwells,” but Sanskrit kṣayati, kṣeti. Iranian was also relatively conservative in retaining diphthongs that were changed to simple vowels in Indo-Aryan.

      Iranian differs from Indo-Aryan in grammatical features as well. The dative singular of -a-stems ends in -āi in Iranian; e.g., Avestan mašyāi, Old Persian cartanaiy “to do” (an original dative singular form functioning as infinitive of the verb). In Sanskrit the ending is extended with a—martyāy-a. Avestan also retains the archaic pronoun forms yūš, yūžəm “you” (nominative plural); in Indo-Aryan the -s- was replaced by y (yūyam) on the model of the 1st person plural—vayam “we” (Avestan vaēm, Old Persian vayam). Finally, Iranian has a 3rd person pronoun di (accusative dim) that has no counterpart in Indo-Aryan but has one in Baltic.

      The original location of the Indo-Iranian group was probably to the north of modern Afghanistan, in the present-day states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, where Iranian languages are still spoken. From there, some Iranians migrated to the south and west, the Indo-Aryans to the south and east. From geographical references in the earliest Indo-Aryan literary document, the Rigveda, it is clear that the earliest settlement of Indo-Aryans was in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Migration did not take place at once; there was doubtless a series of migrations. The date of entry of the Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent cannot be precisely determined, though the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC is plausible and generally accepted.

      There is heated controversy concerning the precise linguistic position of the language of the Indo-Iranian family first attested in Middle Eastern cuneiform texts of c. 1450–1350 BC. Some borrowed words and proper names appearing in these Hittite-Hurrian documents have been interpreted as belonging either to Indo-Iranian, to an Indic subgroup of Indo-Iranian that had not yet fully split, or to Indo-Aryan proper. Complete scholarly agreement on this issue has not been reached.

      The identification of the Harappān peoples of the Indus Valley, whose writing has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered, also awaits further research; with it may come a possible answer as to whether Indo-Aryans encountered these people or whether their civilization had passed by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived on the subcontinent. Whatever the answers to these problems may be, the reasons for the split of the Indo-Aryans and Iranians are not known.

George Cardona

 

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