Bactrian language

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The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria, also called Tocharistan, in northern Afghanistan. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the Northeastern Iranian branch. It was written using the Greek alphabet with the additional letter ϸ.

Bactrian was probably spoken by the local populations of Bactria when Alexander the Great invaded the area around 323 BCE, inaugurating a two-century period of Hellenistic rule by the Seleucid Empire and the then the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.

Greek rule ended around 123 BCE with the invasions of the Yuezhi from the North, who adopted the Greek alphabet to write the local Bactrian language, a case which is unique among Iranian languages. Before that time, Bactrian was written in the Aramaic alphabet.

The Kushan writing system used the Greek alphabet, with the addition of the letter Sho (here in majuscule and minuscule), used to represent the Kushan sound "Sh".

Bactrian seems to have been, together with Greek, the official language of the Kushans, descendant of the Yuezhi, and was used in their coins and inscriptions. In 1993, the Bactrian Rabatak inscription was discovered, recording that under the Kushan king Kanishka (c. 120 CE), use of the Greek language was officially discontinued. The territorial expansion of the Kushans helped propagate Bactrian to Northern India and parts of Central Asia, as far as Turfan where Buddhist and Manichean inscriptions in Bactrian can be found.

Remains of the language are found as late as the 9th century CE.

[edit] See also

• Tocharian languages

[edit] External links

• A Bactrian text from the Hephthalite period
• Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams: "Bactrian Documents from Ancient Afghanistan"
• "Bactrian Language" in Encyclopedia Iranica by N. Sims-Williams