1.
Menander I
–
Menander I Soter was an Indo-Greek King of the Indo-Greek Kingdom who established a large empire in Northwestern regions of South Asia and became a patron of Buddhism. Menander was initially a king of Bactria, large numbers of Menander’s coins have been unearthed, attesting to both the flourishing commerce and duration of his realm. Menander was also a patron of Buddhism, and his conversations with the Buddhist sage Nagasena are recorded in the important Buddhist work, after his death in 130 BC, he was succeeded by his wife Agathokleia who ruled as regent for his son Strato I. Menander was born to a Greek family in a village called Kalasi adjacent to Alexandria of the Caucasus and his territories covered the eastern dominions of the divided Greek empire of Bactria and extended to India. His capital is supposed to have been Sagala, a city in northern Punjab. He subsequently travelled across northern India and visited the Maurayan capital of Patna, any plans of conquering the capital were put aside as Eucratides I king of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom began warring with the Indo-Greeks in the north-western frontier. In short, Apollodorus says that Bactriana is the ornament of Ariana as a whole, and, more than that, they extended their empire even as far as the Seres, the thick mud-fortifications at Pataliputra being reached, all the provinces will be in disorder, without doubt. Ultimately, a battle will follow, with tree-like engines. The Milinda Panha gives some glimpses of his methods, His reign was long. Generous findings of coins testify to the prosperity and extension of his empire, the finds of his coins are the most numerous, precise dates of his reign, as well as his origin, remain elusive however. Menanders predecessor in Punjab seems to have been the king Apollodotus I, Menanders empire survived him in a fragmented manner until the last Greek king Strato II disappeared around 10 AD. Menander was the first Indo-Greek ruler to introduce the representation of Athena Alkidemos on his coins, probably in reference to a statue of Athena Alkidemos in Pella. This type was used by most of the later Indo-Greek kings. According to tradition, Menander embraced the Buddhist faith, as described in the Milinda Panha and he is described as constantly accompanied by a guard of 500 Greek soldiers, and two of his counsellors are named Demetrius and Antiochus. As a disputant he was hard to equal, harder still to overcome, and as in wisdom so in strength of body, swiftness, and valour there was found none equal to Milinda in all India. He was rich too, mighty in wealth and prosperity, there is however little besides this testament to indicate that Menander in fact abdicated his throne in favour of his son. Based on numismatic evidence, Sir William Tarn believes that he in fact died, leaving his wife Agathocleia to rule as a regent, until his son Strato could rule properly in his stead. Despite the success of his reign, it is clear that after his death, his loosely hung empire splintered into a variety of Indo-Greek successor kingdoms, of various size, in his right hand, he holds a branch of ivy, symbol of Dionysos
Menander I
–
Silver coin of Menander
Greek legend: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ (BASILEOS SOTEROS MENANDROU) lit. "Of Saviour King Menander".
British Museum.
Menander I
–
Indo-Greek Kingdoms in 100 BC.
Menander I
–
2. Silver
drachm of Menander I (155-130 BC). Obv:
Greek legend, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ (BASILEOS SOTEROS MENANDROU) lit. "Of Saviour King Menander". Rev:
Kharosthi legend: MAHARAJASA TRATARASA MENAMDRASA "Saviour King Menander".
Athena advancing right, with thunderbolt and shield.
Taxila mint mark.
Menander I
–
King Milinda asks questions.
2.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
Greek language
–
Idealized portrayal of
Homer
Greek language
–
regions where Greek is the official language
Greek language
–
Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
3.
Pali
–
Pali is a Prakrit language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of much of the earliest extant literature of Buddhism as collected in the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka and is the language of Theravāda Buddhism. The word Pali is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon, Childers translates the word as series and states that the language bears the epithet in consequence of the perfection of its grammatical structure. However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as a mix of several Prakrit languages from around the 3rd century BCE, combined together and partially Sanskritized. The closest artifacts to Pali that have found in India are Edicts of Ashoka found at Gujarat, in the west of India. There is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, Pali, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, is different from Sanskrit more with regard to its dialectal base than the time of its origin. A number of its morphological and lexical features show that it is not a continuation of Ṛgvedic Vedic Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, however, this view is not shared by all scholars. Some, like A. C. Woolner, believe that Pali is derived from Vedic Sanskrit, Paiśācī is a largely unattested literary language of classical India that is mentioned in Prakrit and Sanskrit grammars of antiquity. e. Evidence which lends support to this interpretation is that literature in Paiśācī is fragmentary and extremely rare, many Theravada sources refer to the Pali language as Magadhan or the language of Magadha. This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate more closely with the Maurya Empire. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it and it is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a high degree of mutual intelligibility. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali, Pali has some commonalities with both the western Ashokan Edicts at Girnar in Saurashtra, and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription. In Sri Lanka, Pali is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century, the work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. Another scholar states that at time it was a refined. Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue, after the death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language. According to K. R. Norman, it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, in the early period it is likely that no degree of translation was necessary in communicating this material to other areas. Around the time of Ashoka there had been more linguistic divergence, following this period, the language underwent a small degree of Sanskritisation
Pali
–
The upper half shows a text in
Sanskrit (praise of
Vishnu) written in
devanagari while the lower half shows a text in Pali from a Buddhist ceremonial scripture called "Kammuwa" from
Burma, probably in the
Mon script.
4.
Prakrit
–
A Prakrit is any of several Middle Indo-Aryan languages. The Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, which was used extensively to write the scriptures of Jainism, is considered to be the definitive form of Prakrit. Prakrit grammarians would give the full grammar of Ardhamagadhi first, for this reason, courses teaching Prakrit are often regarded as teaching Ardhamagadhi. Other Prakrits are reported in old sources but are not attested. Alternatively, Prakrit can be taken to mean derived from an original, Prakrit is foremost a native term, designating vernaculars as opposed to Sanskrit. The Prakrits became literary languages, generally patronized by ancient Indian kings identified with the Kshatriya Varna of Hinduism, the earliest extant usage of Prakrit is the corpus of inscriptions of Emperor Aśoka. Besides this, Prakrit appears in literature in the form of Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhists, Prakrit canon of the Jains, Prakrit grammars and in lyrics, plays and epics of the times. The various Prakrit languages are associated with different patron dynasties, with different religions and different literary traditions, each Prakrit represents a distinct tradition of literature within the history of Pakistan, India and Nepal. In linguistic terms, this is used in contrast with saṃskṛta, Dramatic Prakrits were those that were devised specifically for use in dramas and other literature. Whenever dialogue was written in a Prakrit, the reader would also be provided with a Sanskrit translation, none of these Prakrits came into being as vernaculars, but some ended up being used as such when Sanskrit fell out of favor. The phrase Dramatic Prakrits often refers to three most prominent of them, Shauraseni, Magadhi Prakrit, and Maharashtri Prakrit, however, there were a slew of other less commonly used Prakrits that also fall into this category. These include Pracya, Bahliki, Daksinatya, Sakari, Candali, Sabari, Abhiri, Dramili, there was an astoundingly strict structure to the use of these different Prakrits in dramas. Maharashtri Prakrit, the ancestor of modern Marathi, is an interesting case. Maharashtri was often used for poetry and as such, diverged from proper Sanskrit grammar mainly to fit the language to the meter of different styles of poetry, the new grammar stuck, which led to the unique flexibility of vowels lengths – amongst other anomalies – in Marathi. Ardhamagadhi Dramili Elu Gandhari Magadhi Maharashtri Paisaci Shauraseni Jain Maharashtri Jain Shauraseni Apabransh National Institute of Prakrit Study, shravanabelagola, Karnataka, India Banerjee, Satya Ranjan. The Eastern School of Prakrit Grammarians, a linguistic study, deshpande, Madhav, Sanskrit & Prakrit, sociolinguistic issues. Pischel, R. Grammar of the Prakrit Languages
Prakrit
–
The Suryaprajnaptisutra, an astronomical work dating to the 3rd or 4th century BC, written in Jain Prakrit language (in
Devanagari book script), c. 1500 AD.
Prakrit
–
Pillar capital with addorsed lions and Prakrit inscriptions in the
Kharosthi script,
British Museum
5.
Sanskrit
–
Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
Sanskrit
–
Rigveda (
padapatha) manuscript in
Devanagari, early 19th century
Sanskrit
–
Devi Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript in an early
Bhujimol script,
Bihar or
Nepal, 11th century
Sanskrit
–
A poem by the ancient Indian poet Vallana (ca. 900 – 1100 CE) on the side wall of a building at the Haagweg 14 in Leiden, Netherlands
Sanskrit
–
Kashmir Shaiva manuscript in the
Śāradā script (c. 17th century)
6.
Ionians
–
The Ionians were one of the four major tribes that the Greeks considered themselves to be divided into during the ancient period, the other three being the Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans. The Ionian dialect was one of the three major divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and Aeolian dialects. When referring to populations, “Ionian” defines several groups in Classical Greece, in the narrowest sense it referred to the region of Ionia in Asia Minor. Finally, in the broadest sense it could be used to all those who spoke languages of the East Greek group. The foundation myth which was current in the Classical period suggested that the Ionians were named after Ion, son of Xuthus, when the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese they expelled the Achaeans from the Argolid and Lacedaemonia. The displaced Achaeans moved into Aegilaus, in expelling the Ionians from the Aegilaus. The Ionians moved to Attica and mingled with the population of Attica. Unlike the austere and militaristic Dorians, the Ionians are renowned for their love of philosophy, art, democracy, unlike Aeolians and Dorians, Ionians appears in the languages of different civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. They are not the earliest Greeks to appear in the records, that belongs to the Danaans. The trail of the Ionians begins in the Mycenaean Greek records of Crete, a fragmentary Linear B tablet from Knossos bears the name i-ja-wo-ne, interpreted by Ventris and Chadwick as possibly the dative or nominative plural case of *Iāwones, an ethnic name. The Knossos tablets are dated to 1400 or 1200 B. C. and thus pre-date the Dorian dominance in Crete and this name also appears in a fragment of the other early poet, Hesiod, in the singular Ἰάων, iāōn. In the Book of Genesis of the English Bible, Javan is a son of Japheth, Javan is believed nearly universally by Bible scholars to represent the Ionians, that is, Javan is Ion. The Hebrew is Yāwān, plural Yəwānīm, additionally, but less surely, Japheth may be related linguistically to the Greek mythological figure Iapetus. The locations of Biblical tribal countries have been the subjects of centuries of scholarship, the Book of Isaiah gives what may be a hint by listing the nations. That have not heard my fame including Javan and immediately after the isles afar off, are the isles in apposition to Javan or the last item in the series. If the former, the expression is used of the population of the islands in the Aegean Sea. The date of the Book of Isaiah cannot precede the date of the man Isaiah, the Assyrian word, which is preceded by the country determinative, has been reconstructed as *Iaunaia. More common is ia-a-ma-nu, ia-ma-nu and ia-am-na-a-a with the country determinative, sargon II related that he took the latter from the sea like fish and that they were from the sea of the setting sun. of Yadnana
Ionians
–
The location of ancient
Ionia on the coast of modern-day
Turkey.
7.
Ancient Greek
–
Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
Ancient Greek
–
Inscription about the construction of the statue of
Athena Parthenos in the
Parthenon, 440/439 BC
Ancient Greek
–
Ostracon bearing the name of
Cimon,
Stoa of Attalos
Ancient Greek
–
The words ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ as they are inscribed on the marble of the 1955
Leonidas Monument at
Thermopylae
8.
Kambojas
–
The Kambojas were a tribe of Iron Age India, frequently mentioned in Sanskrit and Pali literature. The ancient Kambojas were probably of Indo-Iranian origin and they are, however, sometimes described as Indo-Aryans and sometimes as having both Indian and Iranian affinities. The Kambojas are also described as a clan of the Sakas. The earliest reference to the Kambojas is in the works of Pāṇini, Some sections of the Kambojas crossed the Hindu Kush and planted Kamboja colonies in Paropamisadae and as far as Rajauri. The Mahabharata locates the Kambojas on the side of the Hindu Kush as neighbors to the Daradas. Others locate the Kambojas and the Parama-Kambojas in the areas spanning Balkh, Badakshan, the mountainous region between the Oxus and Jaxartes is also suggested as the location of the ancient Kambojas. The name Kamboja may derive from, referring to the people of a known as Kum or Kam. The mountainous highlands where the Jaxartes and its confluents arise are called the highlands of the Komedes by Ptolemy, ammianus Marcellinus also names these mountains as Komedas. The Kiu-mi-to in the writings of Xuanzang have also identified with the Komudha-dvipa of the Puranic literature. Scholars have identified both the Ptolemian Tambyzoi and Ambautai with Sanskrit Kamboja, Some scholars believe that the Trans-Caucasian hydronyms and toponyms viz. The capital of Kamboja was probably Rajapura, the Kamboja Mahajanapada of Buddhist traditions refers to this branch. Kautiliyas Arthashastra and Ashokas Edict No, XIII attest that the Kambojas followed a republican constitution. One king of Kamboja was King Srindra Varmana Kamboj, the Kambojas were famous in ancient times for their excellent breed of horses and as remarkable horsemen located in the Uttarapatha or north-west. They were constituted into military sanghas and corporations to manage their political, the Kamboja cavalry offered their military services to other nations as well. There are numerous references to Kamboja having been requisitioned as cavalry troopers in ancient wars by outside nations and it was on account of their supreme position in horse culture that the ancient Kambojas were also popularly known as Ashvakas, i. e. horsemen. Their clans in the Kunar and Swat valleys have been referred to as Assakenoi and Aspasioi in classical writings, the Kambojas were famous for their horses and as cavalry-men, Aśvakas, horsemen, was the term popularly applied to them. The Aśvakas inhabited Eastern Afghanistan, and were included within the general term Kambojas. The Kambojas entered into conflict with Alexander the Great as he invaded Central Asia, the Macedonian conqueror made short shrift of the arrangements of Darius and after over-running the Achaemenid Empire he dashed into Afghanistan
Kambojas
–
Vedic period India, with the Kamboja on the northwest border
9.
Antiochus II Theos
–
Antiochus II Theos was a Greek king of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire who reigned from 261 to 246 BC. He succeeded his father Antiochus I Soter in the winter of 262–61 BC and he was the younger son of Antiochus I and princess Stratonice, the daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes. Antiochus also made some attempt to get a footing in Thrace, during the war he was given the title Theos, being such to the Milesians in slaying the tyrant Timarchus. During the time Antiochus was occupied with the war against Egypt, Andragoras, his satrap in Parthia, then about 238 BC, Arsaces led a revolt of the Parthians against Andragoras, leading to the foundation of the Parthian Empire. These events would have cut off communications with India, phylarchus relays current scandals regarding his drunken banquets and liaisons with unsuitable young men. About this time, Antiochus made peace with Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Antiochus repudiated his wife Laodice I and exiled her to Ephesus. To seal the treaty, he married Ptolemys daughter Berenice and received an enormous dowry, during her stay in Ephesus, Laodice I continued numerous intrigues to become queen again. By 246 BC Antiochus had left Berenice and their infant son Antiochus, Laodice I took the occasion to poison Antiochus while her partisans at Antioch murdered Berenice and their infant son. Antiochus was buried in the Belevi Mausoleum, Laodice I then proclaimed Seleucus II as King. With his cousin-wife Laodice I, Antiochus had two sons, Seleucus II Callinicus, Antiochus Hierax and three daughters, Apama, Stratonice of Cappadocia and Laodice, wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them imported, along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals. Antiochus II entry in Seleucid Genealogy This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh
Antiochus II Theos
–
Coin of Antiochus II. The Greek inscription reads ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ (of king Antiochus).
10.
Edicts of Ashoka
–
These inscriptions were dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan and represent the first tangible evidence of Buddhism. The edicts describe in detail the Ashokas view about dhamma, an earnest attempt to solve some of problems that a complex society faced, according to the edicts, the extent of Buddhist proselytism during this period reached as far as the Mediterranean, and many Buddhist monuments were created. These inscriptions proclaim Ashokas adherence to the Buddhist philosophy which, as in Hinduism is called dharma, the inscriptions show his efforts to develop the Buddhist dharma throughout his kingdom. In these inscriptions, Ashoka refers to himself as Beloved servant of the Gods The identification of Devanampiyadasi with Ashoka was confirmed by an inscription discovered in 1915 by C, beadon, a British gold-mining engineer, at Maski, a village in Raichur district of Karnataka. Another minor rock edict is found at the village Gujarra in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh and this also shows the name Ashoka in addition to usual Devanampiyadasi. The inscriptions found in the part of India were written in Magadhi Prakrit using the Brahmi script. These edicts were deciphered by British archaeologist and historian James Prinsep. The edicts were based on Ashokas ideas on administration and behaviour of people towards one another, now it is conquest by Dhamma that Beloved-Servant-of-the-Gods considers to be the best conquest. Rock Edict Nb13 The distance of 600 yojanas corresponds to the distance between the center of India and Greece, roughly 4,000 miles. Amtiyoko refers to Antiochus II Theos of Syria, who controlled the Seleucid Empire from Syria to Bactria in the east from 305 to 250 BCE, and was therefore a direct neighbor of Ashoka. Turamaye refers to Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt, king of the dynasty founded by Ptolemy I, amtikini refers to Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedon. Maka refers to Magas of Cyrene, alikasudaro refers to Alexander II of Epirus. Some scholars, however, point to the presence of Buddhist communities in the Hellenistic world from that time, the pre-Christian monastic order of the Therapeutae may have drawn inspiration for its ascetic lifestyle from contact with Buddhist monasticism, although the foundation and Scriptures were Jewish. A possible Buddhist gravestone from the Ptolemaic period has been found by Flinders Petrie, decorated with a depiction of what may be Wheel of the Law and Trishula. Commenting on the presence of Buddhists in Alexandria, Robert Linssen pointed out that It was later in this place that one of the most active centres of Christianity was established. These communities therefore seem to have been significant during the reign of Ashoka. A notable mention references aspects of Greek society, there is no country, except among the Greeks, where these two groups, Brahmans and ascetics, are not found, and there is no country where people are not devoted to one or another religion. Rock Edict Nb13 Two edicts in Afghanistan have been found with Greek inscriptions, one of these being a bilingual edict in Greek language, and the king abstains from living beings, and other men and those who huntsmen and fishermen of the king have desisted from hunting. Kambojas are a people of Central Asian origin who had settled first in Arachosia and Drangiana, the Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Palidas are other people under Ashoka’s rule
Edicts of Ashoka
–
Distribution of the Edicts of Ashoka
Edicts of Ashoka
–
Edicts of Ashoka I-XI in
Shahbazgarhi,
Peshawar, along the
Karakoram Route, now the
Karakoram Highway
Edicts of Ashoka
–
Bilingual inscription (
Greek and
Aramaic) by king Ashoka, from
Kandahar.
Kabul Museum.
Edicts of Ashoka
–
Fragment of the 6th Pillar Edicts of Ashoka (238 BCE), in
Brahmi, sandstones.
British Museum.
11.
Antialcidas
–
Antialcidas Nikephoros was a Greek king of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, king of the Eucratid Dynasty, who reigned from his capital at Taxila. Bopearachchi has suggested that he ruled from ca.115 to 95 BCE in the parts of the Indo-Greek realms. Senior places him around 130 to 120 BCE and also in eastern Punjab, senior does however believe that he ruled in tandem with King Lysias. Antialcidas may have been a relative of the Bactrian king Heliocles I, several later kings may have been related to Antialcidas, Heliokles II, Amyntas, Diomedes and Hermaeus all struck coins with similar features. It states that he was a devotee of Vishnu, the Hindu god, a part of the inscriptions says, This Garuda-standard was made by order of the Bhagavata. Otherwise, Antialcidas is also known through his plentiful coins and he issued a number of bilingual Indian silver types, diademed, wearing a helmet with bulls horns or a flat kausia. He also appears throwing a spear, in that case the coin scene would represent a victory of Buddhism. According to other interpretations the elephant was the symbol of the city of Taxila, there is a bronze which features the obverse of Lysias and the reverse of Antialcidas. This was interpreted by Tarn and other scholars as though the two kings might have forged some kind of alliance, but later, a bronze with the opposite arrangement was found. The Indo-Greeks, A. K. Narain, B. R Publications The Decline of the Indo-Greeks, senior & D. MacDonald, the Hellenistic Numismatic Society Coins of Antialcidas More coins of Antialcidas Catalog of the coins of Antialcidas
Antialcidas
Antialcidas
–
Antialcidas sent an Embassy to
Vidisa in central India.
Antialcidas
–
Silver
drachm of King Antialcidas. Obv: Bust of Antialcidas wearing a helmet, with Greek legend BASILEOS NIKEPHOROU ANTIALKIDOU "Of Victorious King Antialcidas". Rev: Seated
Zeus holding sceptre, with
Nike on his extended arm, holding out a wreath to a baby elephant with bell.
Kharoshti legend: MAHARAJASA JAYADHARASA ANTIALIKITASA "Victorious King Antialcidas".
Antialcidas
–
Antialcidas wearing the
kausia.
Japan Currency Museum.
12.
Heliodorus pillar
–
Historically, it is the first known inscription related to the Bhagavata cult in India. The site is located 5 miles from the Buddhist stupa of Sanchi, the pillar was surmounted by a sculpture of Garuda and was apparently dedicated by Heliodorus to the god Vāsudeva in front of the temple of Vāsudeva. There are two inscriptions on the pillar, the first inscription describes in Brahmi script the situation of Heliodorus and his relationship to the Shunga Empire and the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Although not perfectly clear, the inscription seems to be referring to Heliodoros as a Bhagavata, One devoted to Bhagavan, three steps to immortality, when correctly followed, lead to heaven, control, generosity, and attention. The pillar was surmounted by a sculpture of the eagle Garuda and was dedicated by Heliodorus to Vāsudeva, called god of gods. He is the earliest recorded converts to the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism, an earlier Greco-Bactrian king Agathocles also minted coins with the image of Hindu gods circa 180 BCE. Coins minted during the period of Antialcidas depict Zeus with a lotus-tipped sceptre, in front of an elephant with a bell, surmouted by Nike holding a wreath. The coins carry the inscription BASILEOS NIKEPHOROU ANTIALKIDOU and these coins were also minted at the Pushkalavati mint and carry the same inscription in Kharoṣṭhī script. Zeus Eagle messenger and companion Aetos Dios, was considered as Zeus himself, when you were an eagle, when you picked up the boy on the slopes of Teukrian Ida with greedy gentle claw, and brought him to heaven. Based on this evidence it has suggested that Heliodorus is one of the earliest Westerner on record to convert to Vaishnavism whose evidence has survived. But some scholars, most notably A. L. Basham, certainly there were numerous others including the king who sent him as an ambassador. Bhagavata History of Hinduism Photo of the pillar with Brahmi inscription Text of the inscriptions on Heliodorus pillar Vedic archeology
Heliodorus pillar
–
The dedication of the Heliodorus pillar was made by Heliodorus, ambassador of the
Indo-Greek king
Antialcidas (here depicted on one of his coins).
Heliodorus pillar
–
The Heliodorus pillar in
Madhya Pradesh,
India
Heliodorus pillar
–
Inscription on the board by ASI on the base of the pillar
13.
Vidisha
–
Vidisha is a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, located near the state capital Bhopal. Vidishā is the headquarters of Bhelsa during the medieval period. Vidisha is located at 23. 53°N77. 82°E /23.53,77.82 and it has an average elevation of 424 metres. As of 2011 India census, Vidisha had a population of 155,959, males constitute 53. 21% of the population and females 46. 79%. Vidisha has an literacy rate of 86. 88%, higher than the national average of 74. 04%, male literacy is 92. 29%. In Vidisha, 15% of the population is under 6 years of age, near the eastern edge of the old town are the remains of a large temple of the late Paramara period known as the Bijamaṇḍal. The building was started in the second half of the 11th century. That it was never finished is shown by carved niches and unfinished architectural pieces found round the base of the temple plinth, on top of the plinth is a small mosque made using pillars, one of which has an inscription dating probably from the time of king Naravarman. It is a devotional inscription revering Carccikā, of whom he was a devotee, the miḥrāb suggests the mosque was constructed in the late 14th century. To one side of the Bijamaṇḍal is a house of the Archaeological Survey of India containing many sculptures collected in the neighbourhood. A step-well of the 7th century is in the campus and has, beside the entrance. These are the earliest Kṛṣṇa scenes in the art of central India, the town is situated east of the Betwa River, in the fork of the Betwa and Bes rivers,9 km from Sanchi. The Emperor Ashoka was the governor of Vidisha during his fathers lifetime and his Buddhist Empress Vidisha Devi who was also his first wife was brought up in Vidisha. It finds mention in Kalidasas Meghdoot, besnagar was abandoned in the 6th century. It came into prominence again as Bhelsa during the medieval period and it became famous for the temple of Sun god Bhillasvanin. It was ruled by the Later Gupta king Devagupta and Rashtrakuta king Krishna III, the name is first noted in an inscription of 878 AD by a merchant Hatiaka of Paravada community. The 12th century Tri-shashthi-shalaka-purusha-charitra mentions an image of Bhillasvamin at Vidisa, minhajuddins Tabaqat-i-Nusiri states that the temple was destroyed by Iltutmish in A D. 1233-34. In 1293, Allauddin Khilji of the Delhi Sultanate sacked the city as a general of Sultan Jalaluddin and it has been described as a very difficult loot which shows that Vidisha had an importance in the medieval era
Vidisha
–
Massive rock-cut sculpture depicting
Vishnu in his
Varaha incarnation at the
Udayagiri Caves, near Vidiśā, carved when the city was a provincial capital of the
Gupta Empire
Vidisha
–
View of
Heliodorus pillar
Vidisha
–
Pillar in the Bijamaṇḍal with an inscription of Naravarman
Vidisha
–
The Vidisha Railway Station area.
14.
Milinda Panha
–
The Milinda Panha is a Buddhist text which dates from approximately 100 BCE. It is included in the Burmese edition of the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism as a book of the Khuddaka Nikaya, however, a shorter version of it, however, is featured in Chinese Mahayana translations. It purports to record a dialogue in which the Indo-Greek king Menander I of Bactria, the earliest part of the text is believed to have been written between 100 BCE and 200 CE. The text may have initially been written in Sanskrit, however, apart from the Sri Lankan Pali edition and its derivatives and it is generally accepted by scholars that the work is composite, with additions made over some time. In support of this, it is noted that the Chinese versions of the work are substantially shorter, the oldest manuscript of the Pali text was copied in 1495 CE. Based on references within the text itself, significant sections of the text are lost, the book is included in the inscriptions of the Canon approved by the Burmese Fifth Council and the printed edition of the Sixth Council text. Rhys Davids says it is the greatest work of classical Indian prose, the work has been translated into English twice, once in 1890 by Thomas William Rhys Davids and once in 1969 by Isaline Blew Horner. Horner, 1963-4,2 volumes, Pali Text Society, Bristol Abridgements include, Pesala, Bhikkhu, The Debate of King Milinda, the Questions of King Milinda, An Abridgement of the Milindapanha. Kandy, Sri Lanka, Buddhist Publication Society,1993, paracanonical texts Ship of Theseus Hinüber, Oskar von. The Questions of King Milinda, translated by Thomas William Rhys Davids. at Sacred-texts. com, the Debate of King Milinda, Most Recent HTML and PDF Editions. The Debate of King Milinda, Abridged Edition, milindapañha - Selected passages in both Pali and English, translated by John Kelly Milinda Panha Sinhalese translation
Milinda Panha
–
King Milinda asks questions
Milinda Panha
–
Coin of Menander I
15.
Astrology
–
Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash
Astrology
Astrology
–
Marcantonio Raimondi engraving, 15th century
Astrology
–
'The Zodiac Man' a diagram of a human body and astrological symbols with instructions explaining the importance of astrology from a medical perspective. From a 15th century Welsh manuscript
Astrology
–
The Roman orator
Cicero objected to astrology.
16.
Yavanajataka
–
The Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja is an ancient text in Indian astrology. According to Pingree, it is a versification of an earlier translation into Sanskrit of a Greek text, thought to have been written around 120 BCE in Alexandria. Furthermore, traditionally Yavanesvara and Sphujidhvaja were understood as referring to the same person, the date of the Yavanajātaka according to Mak is now revised to between 4th and 6th century CE. Yavanajataka is one the earliest known Sanskrit works referencing western horoscopy and it was followed by other works of Western origin which greatly influenced Indian astrology, the Paulisa Siddhanta, and the Romaka Siddhanta. However, the earliest known Sanskrit work on horoscopy is Vedanga Jyotisha It was translated by David Pingree into English, there was a wise king named Sphujidhvaja who versified this entire, which was seen by him in the year 191, in 4,000 indravajra verses. The dates employed in the Yavanajataka are based on the Saka era, accordingly, the versification by Sphujidhvaja was made in 269 CE. The Yavanajataka contains instructions on calculating astrological charts from the time, astrology flourished in the Hellenistic world and the Yavanajataka reflects astrological techniques developed in the Greek-speaking world. Astronomical mathematical methods, such as the calculate of the horoskopos was used in the service of astrology, thirty-six are the thirds of the zodiacal signs which are called Drekanas by the Greeks. They have various clothes, forms, and colors, I will describe them all their qualities beginning with their characteristic signs. The wise say that the course of the planets is the supreme eye of the entire body of the rules of horoscopy. I shall explain it concisely according to the instruction of the Greeks, some who are students of the laws find that it is good to follow the opinion of the sage Vasistha, the best of the Greeks should consist of 165 years. 4, Otto Harrassowitz — Wiesbaden,1981 Bill M. Mak, “The ‘Oldest Indo-Greek Text in Sanskrit’ Revisited, Additional Readings from the Newly Discovered Manuscript of the Yavanajātaka”, Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 62, Mars 2014, no. 3, pp. 1101-1105 Bill M. Mak, the Last Chapter of Sphujidhvajas Yavanajātaka critically edited with notes
Yavanajataka
–
New millennium astrological chart
17.
Alexandria on the Caucasus
–
Alexandria in the Caucasus was a colony of Alexander the Great. He founded the colony at an important junction of communications in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains. Note, In Classical times, the Hindu Kush were also designated as the Caucasus in parallel to their Western equivalent, the Caucasus Mountains between Europe and Asia. He had also built forts in what is nowadays Bagram in Afghanistan, at the foot of the Hindu Kush, the divinity of the city seems to have been Zeus, as suggested by coins of the Greco-Bactrian king Eucratides. Alexandria of the Caucasus was one of the capitals of the Indo-Greek kings, during the reign of Menander I the city was recorded as having a thriving Buddhist community, headed by Greek monks. Some archaeological evidence concerning Alexandria of the Caucasus was gathered by Charles Masson and his findings include coins, rings, seals and other small objects. In the 1930s Roman Ghirshman, while conducting excavations near Bagram, found Egyptian and Syrian glassware, bronze statuettes, bowls and this is an indication that Alexanders conquests have opened India to imports from the west. Today the cities remains feature a rectangular tell 500 by 200 metres in area and a nearby circular citadel about 3km northeast of Bagram Airforce base
Alexandria on the Caucasus
–
Alexandria in the Caucasus is located to the south of
Bactria, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.
Alexandria on the Caucasus
–
Ancient cities founded by Alexander the Great in Central and South Asia
Alexandria on the Caucasus
–
Menander coin
Alexandria on the Caucasus
–
Begram Guimet
18.
Mediterranean
–
The sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, although it is usually identified as a separate body of water. The name Mediterranean is derived from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning inland or in the middle of land and it covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, but its connection to the Atlantic is only 14 km wide. The Strait of Gibraltar is a strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Gibraltar. In oceanography, it is called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere. The Mediterranean Sea has a depth of 1,500 m. The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia and it is located between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west-east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Iskenderun, the seas average north-south length, from Croatia’s southern shore to Libya, is approximately 800 km. The Mediterranean Sea, including the Sea of Marmara, has an area of approximately 2,510,000 square km. The sea was an important route for merchants and travelers of ancient times that allowed for trade, the history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. In addition, the Gaza Strip and the British Overseas Territories of Gibraltar and Akrotiri, the term Mediterranean derives from the Latin word mediterraneus, meaning amid the earth or between land, as it is between the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe. The Ancient Greek name Mesogeios, is similarly from μέσο, between + γη, land, earth) and it can be compared with the Ancient Greek name Mesopotamia, meaning between rivers. The Mediterranean Sea has historically had several names, for example, the Carthaginians called it the Syrian Sea and latter Romans commonly called it Mare Nostrum, and occasionally Mare Internum. Another name was the Sea of the Philistines, from the people inhabiting a large portion of its shores near the Israelites, the sea is also called the Great Sea in the General Prologue by Geoffrey Chaucer. In Ottoman Turkish, it has also been called Bahr-i Sefid, in Modern Hebrew, it has been called HaYam HaTikhon, the Middle Sea, reflecting the Seas name in ancient Greek, Latin, and modern languages in both Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, in Modern Arabic, it is known as al-Baḥr al-Mutawassiṭ, in Turkish, it is known as Akdeniz, the White Sea since among Turks the white colour represents the west. Several ancient civilisations were located around the Mediterranean shores, and were influenced by their proximity to the sea. It provided routes for trade, colonisation, and war, as well as food for numerous communities throughout the ages, due to the shared climate, geology, and access to the sea, cultures centered on the Mediterranean tended to have some extent of intertwined culture and history. Two of the most notable Mediterranean civilisations in classical antiquity were the Greek city states, later, when Augustus founded the Roman Empire, the Romans referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum
Mediterranean
–
Circa the 6th century BCE: In ancient times the Mediterranean provided sources of food and local commerce and direct routes for trade and communications, colonisation, and war. Numerous cities and colonies were situated at its shores or within the basin: Greek (red) and Phoenician (yellow)
colonies in antiquity; and other cities (grey), including the provincial
"Rom".
Mediterranean
–
Map of the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean
–
With its highly indented coastline and large number of islands, Greece has the longest Mediterranean coastline.
Mediterranean
–
The
Battle of Lepanto, 1571, ended in victory for the European
Holy League against the Ottoman Turks.
19.
Sindh
–
Sindh /sɪnd/ is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, in the southeast of the country. Historically home to the Sindhi people, it is locally known as the Mehran. It was formerly known as Sind until 1956, Sindh is the third largest province of Pakistan by area, and second largest province by population after Punjab. Sindh is bordered by Balochistan province to the west, and Punjab province to the north, Sindh also borders the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan to the east, and Arabian Sea to the south. Sindhs climate is noted for hot summers and mild winters, the provincial capital of Sindh is Pakistans largest city and financial hub, Karachi. Sindh has Pakistans second largest economy with Karachi being its capital hosts the headquarters of several multinational banks. Sindh is home to a portion of Pakistans industrial sector. The remainder of Sindh has an agriculture based economy, and produces fruit, food consumer items, Sindh is also the centre of Pakistans pharmaceutical industry. Sindh is known for its culture which is strongly influenced by Sufism. Several important Sufi shrines are located throughout the province which attract millions of annual devotees, Sindh also has Pakistans highest percentage of Hindu residents. Karachi and other centres of Sindh have seen ethnic tensions between the native Sindhis and the Muhajirs boil over into violence on several occasions. Sindh is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites - the Historical Monuments at Makli, and the Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro, the word Sindh is derived from the Sanskrit language and is adapted from the Sanskrit term Sindhu which literally means river hence a reference to Indus River. Spelling of its name as Sind was discontinued in 1988 by an amendment passed in Sindh Assembly. The Greeks who conquered Sindh in 325 BC under the command of Alexander the Great rendered it as Indós, the ancient Iranians referred to everything east of the river Indus as hind from the word Sindh. When the British arrived in the 17th century in India, then ruled by the Maratha Empire, they applied the Greek version of the name Sindh to all of South Asia, calling it India. The name of Pakistan is actually an acronym in which the letter s is derived from the first letter in Sindh, Sindhs first known village settlements date as far back as 7000 BCE. Permanent settlements at Mehrgarh, currently in Balochistan, to the west expanded into Sindh and this culture blossomed over several millennia and gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE. The primitive village communities in Balochistan were still struggling against a difficult highland environment and this was one of the most developed urban civilizations of the ancient world
Sindh
–
The Priest King from
Mohenjo-daro, more than 4000 years old, in the
National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi
Sindh
–
Excavated ruins of
Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan.
Sindh
–
A manuscript written during the Abbasid Era.
Sindh
–
The Samma period is known for pioneering of Sindhi folklore and literature.
20.
Ancient Egypt
–
Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
Ancient Egypt
–
The
Great Sphinx and the
pyramids of Giza are among the most recognizable symbols of the civilization of ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egypt
–
A typical Naqada II jar decorated with gazelles. (Predynastic Period)
Ancient Egypt
–
The
Narmer Palette depicts the unification of the Two Lands.
21.
Assyria
–
Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. Centered on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia, the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Assyria is named after its capital, the ancient city of Aššur. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders, Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were centered. The indigenous modern Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, southeast Turkey, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria were the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, during the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a sprachbund and it is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name. The city of Aššur, together with a number of other Assyrian cities, however it is likely that they were initially Sumerian-dominated administrative centres. In the late 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash, then the dominant Sumerian ruler in Mesopotamia, similarly, in c. the early 25th century BC, Lugal-Anne-Mundu the king of the Sumerian state of Adab lists Subartu as paying tribute to him. Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is known, in the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. According to Georges Roux he would have lived in the mid 25th century BC, Tudiya was succeeded on the list by Adamu, the first known reference to the Semitic name Adam and then a further thirteen rulers. The earliest kings, such as Tudiya, who are recorded as kings who lived in tents, were independent semi-nomadic pastoralist rulers and these kings at some point became fully urbanised and founded the city state of Ashur in the mid 21st century BC. During the Akkadian Empire, the Assyrians, like all the Mesopotamian Semites, became subject to the dynasty of the city state of Akkad, the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great claimed to encompass the surrounding four quarters. Assyrian rulers were subject to Sargon and his successors, and the city of Ashur became an administrative center of the Empire. On those tablets, Assyrian traders in Burushanda implored the help of their ruler, Sargon the Great, the name Hatti itself even appears in later accounts of his grandson, Naram-Sin, campaigning in Anatolia. Assyrian and Akkadian traders spread the use of writing in the form of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to Asia Minor, the Akkadian Empire was destroyed by economic decline and internal civil war, followed by attacks from barbarian Gutian people in 2154 BC. The rulers of Assyria during the period between c.2154 BC and 2112 BC once again fully independent, as the Gutians are only known to have administered southern Mesopotamia
Assyria
–
Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of
Lagash (maybe
Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 BC, found in
Girsu.
Assyria
–
Overview map of the Ancient Near East in the 15th century BC (Middle Assyrian period), showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities
Assur and
Nineveh wedged between
Babylonia downstream (to the south-east) and the states of
Mitanni and
Hatti upstream (to the north-west).
Assyria
–
Assyrian attack on a town with archers and a wheeled battering ram, 865–860 BC
Assyria
–
Jehu, king of
Israel, bows before Shalmaneser III of Assyria, 825 BC
22.
Persian people
–
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
Persian people
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Costumes of an ancient Persian noblemen and soldiers.
Persian people
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Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages: Modern Persian (green) and other related Persian (some descendant of Middle Persian like Luri in Red) also shown in the map
Persian people
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Greek
hoplite and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient
kylix, 5th century BC
Persian people
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Tajiks in
Samarkand,
Uzbekistan
23.
Babylon
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Babylon was a major city of ancient Mesopotamia in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates and divided in parts along its left and right banks. Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c.2300 BC, the town attained independence as part of a small city-state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia, the empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabis death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rule of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid empires. It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c.1770 to 1670 BC and it was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings, the English Babylon comes from Greek Babylṓn, a transliteration of the Akkadian Babili. The Babylonian name in the early 2nd millennium BC had been Babilli or Babilla, by the 1st millennium BC, it had changed to Babili under the influence of the folk etymology which traced it to bāb-ili. The Gate of God or Gate of El being from the Aramaic Hebrew Bab for Gate and El for God and this being similar to the Hebrew word for confusion Balal. In the Bible, the name appears as Babel, interpreted in the Hebrew Scriptures Book of Genesis to mean confusion, the modern English verb, to babble, or to speak meaningless words, is popularly thought to derive from this name, but there is no direct connection. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. The site at Babylon consists of a number of mounds covering an area of about 2 by 1 kilometer, oriented north to south, along the Euphrates to the west. Originally, the river roughly bisected the city, but the course of the river has since shifted so that most of the remains of the western part of the city are now inundated. Some portions of the city wall to the west of the river also remain, remains of the city include, Kasr—also called Palace or Castle, it is the location of the Neo-Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki and lies in the center of the site. Amran Ibn Ali—the highest of the mounds at 25 meters, to the south and it is the site of Esagila, a temple of Marduk which also contained shrines to Ea and Nabu. Homera—a reddish colored mound on the west side, most of the Hellenistic remains are here
Babylon
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A partial view of the ruins of Babylon from
Saddam Hussein 's Summer Palace
Babylon
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Plan of Ruins of Babylon, 1905
Babylon
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Babylon in 1932
Babylon
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The
Queen of the Night relief. The figure could be an aspect of the goddess
Ishtar, Babylonian goddess of sex and love.
24.
Biblical Hebrew
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The term Hebrew was not used for the language in the Bible, which was referred to as Canaanite or Judahite, but the name was used in Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, Biblical Hebrew eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until the second century CE. There is also evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah. Biblical Hebrew has been written with a number of different writing systems, the Hebrews adopted the Phoenician alphabet around the 12th century BCE, which developed into the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. This was retained by the Samaritans, who use the descendent Samaritan alphabet to this day, however, the Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the Jews, and it became the source for the modern Hebrew alphabet. All of these scripts were lacking letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, though these sounds are reflected in Greek and these scripts originally only indicated consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis, became increasingly used to mark vowels. In the Middle Ages, various systems of diacritics were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts, of these, Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation is disputed, likely ejective or pharyngealized. Earlier Biblical Hebrew possessed three consonants which did not have their own letters in the system, but over time they merged with other consonants. The stop consonants developed fricative allophones under the influence of Aramaic, the pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected in the modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. Biblical Hebrew had a typical Semitic morphology with nonconcatenative morphology, arranging Semitic roots into patterns to form words, Biblical Hebrew distinguished two genders, three numbers. Verbs were marked for voice and mood, and had two conjugations which may have indicated aspect and/or tense, the tense or aspect of verbs was also influenced by the conjugation ו, in the so-called waw-consecutive construction. Default word order was verb–subject–object, and verbs inflected for the number, gender, pronominal suffixes could be appended to verbs or nouns, and nouns had special construct states for use in possessive constructions. The earliest written sources refer to Biblical Hebrew by the name of the land in which it was spoken, the Hebrew Bible also shows that the language was called יהודית Judaean, Judahite. In the Hellenistic period Greek writings use the names Hebraios, Hebraïsti, Jews also began referring to Hebrew as לשון הקדש the Holy Tongue in Mishnaic Hebrew. The term Classical Hebrew may include all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, the term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects. The archeological record for the prehistory of Biblical Hebrew is far more complete than the record of Biblical Hebrew itself, Early Northwest Semitic materials are attested from 2350 BCE to 1200 BCE, the end of the Bronze Age. Hebrew developed during the half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, an area known as Canaan. The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE
Biblical Hebrew
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Siloam Inscription at Istanbul Archaeological Museum
Biblical Hebrew
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Coin issued during the
Bar-Kokhba revolt.
Paleo-Hebrew text reads שמעון ('
Simeon ') on front and לחרות ירושלם ('for the freedom of Jerusalem') on back.
25.
Javan
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Javan was the fourth son of Noahs son Japheth according to the Table of Nations in the Hebrew Bible. Flavius Josephus states the belief that this individual was the ancestor of the Greek people. Also serving as the Hebrew name for Greece or Greeks in general, יָוָן Yavan or Yāwān has long been considered cognate with the name of the eastern Greeks, the Greek race has been known by cognate names throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, Near East and beyond—even in Sanskrit. In Greek mythology, the forefather of the Ionians is similarly called Ion. Javan is also found in literature in the Book of Daniel,8, 21-22 and 11,2
Javan
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The world as known to the Hebrews
26.
Modern Hebrew
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Modern Hebrew or Israeli Hebrew, generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew, is the standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It was revived as a language in the 19th and 20th centuries and is one of the two official languages of Israel, along with Modern Standard Arabic. Modern Hebrew is spoken by about nine people, counting native, fluent. The organization that directs the development of the Modern Hebrew language. The most common term for the language is Modern Hebrew. Most people refer to it simply as Hebrew, the term Modern Hebrew has been described as somewhat problematic as it implies unambiguous periodization from Biblical Hebrew. Rosén supported the now widely used term Israeli Hebrew on the basis that it represented the nature of Hebrew. In 2006, Israeli linguist Ghilad Zuckermann proposed the term Israeli to represent the origins of the language. Jewish contemporary sources describe Hebrew flourishing as a language in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew remained a spoken vernacular following the Babylonian captivity, Hebrew died out as a vernacular language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, which devastated the population of Judea. After the exile Hebrew became restricted to liturgical use, the revival of the Hebrew language was led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Modern Hebrew used Biblical Hebrew morphemes, Mishnaic spelling, and Sephardic pronunciation, idioms and calques were made from Yiddish. Ben-Yehuda used a stock of 8,000 words from the Bible and 20,000 words from rabbinical commentaries and codified and planned the new language, some words he invented, such as ḥatzilīm for eggplants and ḥashmal for electricity. Sometimes, old Hebrew words took on different meanings altogether, for example, the Hebrew word kǝvīš, which now denotes a street or a road, is actually an Aramaic adjective meaning trodden down, blazoned, rather than a common noun. It was originally used to describe a blazoned trail, for a simple comparison between the Sephardic version of Mishnaic Hebrew and the Yemenite version of the same, see Yemenite Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is classified as an Afroasiatic language of the Semitic family, although it has been influenced by non-Semitic languages, Modern Hebrew retains its Semitic character in its morphology and in much of its syntax. A minority of scholars argue that the language had been so influenced by various substrate languages that it is genealogically a hybrid with Indo-European. These theories have not been met with acceptance, and Modern Hebrew continues to be considered a Semitic language by most experts
Modern Hebrew
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The word shalom as rendered in Modern Hebrew, including
vowel points
27.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
Turkish language
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Old Turkic inscription with the
Orkhon script (c. 8th century).
Kyzyl, Russia
Turkish language
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Countries where Turkish is an official language
Turkish language
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Road signs in
Prizren,
Republic of Kosovo. Official languages are:
Albanian (top),
Serbian (middle) and Turkish (bottom).
Turkish language
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Map of the main subgroups of
Turkish dialects.
28.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
Persian language
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Old Persian
Persian language
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Ferdowsi 's
Shahnameh
Persian language
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Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature.
29.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
Arabic
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The Galland Manuscript of
One Thousand and One Nights, 14th century
Arabic
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Arabic is the sole official language
Arabic
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Bilingual traffic sign in
Qatar.
Arabic
–
Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.
