Indo-Iran J (2007) 50: 173182

DOI 10.1007/s10783-008-9053-6
BOOK REVIEW

Sims-Williams, Nicholas (Ed.): Indo-Iranian Languages

and Peoples
[Proceedings of the British Academy No. 116] Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002, viii + 296 pp., 8 plates, numerous figures.
ISBN 0-19-726285-6. 29.50

Almut Hintze

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

One of the greatest iranists of the twentieth century, Professor Sir Harold Walter Bai-
ley, who died on 19th January 1996, would have completed the centenary of his birth
on 16th December 1999. Nicholas Sims-Williams marked the date with a symposium
held in Cambridge, England, at the Ancient India and Iran Trust which Sir Harold
had established in 1979 jointly with two academic couples, and where he had lived
and worked during the last fifteen years of his life. Sims-Williams brought together
a group of leading linguists and archaeologists in the field of Sir Harolds academic
passion: Indo-Iranian languages and peoples. The thirteen articles collected in this
volume are based on presentations given at the symposium and not only cover a wide
range of Indo-Iranian topics but also pay tribute to Sir Harolds life and work. The
conference was sponsored by the British Academy, of which Bailey was a fellow for
over fifty years, and its proceedings appeared in 2002, the year of the Academys own
centenary.
On the day that would have been Sir Harolds one hundredth birthday, his dis-
tinguished pupil, the late Ronald E. Emmerick, delivered the first Sir Harold Bailey
Memorial Lecture, which Bailey himself had endowed at the Oriental Faculty in the
University of Cambridge. The lecture, entitled Hunting the hapax: Sir Harold W.
Bailey (18991996), was in memory of the great scholar and constitutes the first
contribution (pp.117) to this volume. Emmerick, who also published a detailed ac-
count of his teachers life (p.1), discusses some of Baileys findings that have re-
mained unchallenged. They include his connection of Khotanese ssandaa- with Av.
spn.ta- and of Khot. ssandramata- with Av. spn.ta- a rmaiti- (pp.69). He also con-
siders views held by Bailey that are unlikely to stand the test of time, in particular the

A. Hintze ()
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornaugh Street, Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG, UK
e-mail: ah69@soas.ac.uk
174 A. Hintze

equation of the Khotanese hapax legomena ttaira and harays with Av. taera- peak
and hara- brz- respectively (pp.1215). Emmerick emphasizes the enormous and
pioneering contribution to Iranian studies made by Baileys transcriptions and inter-
pretations of Khotanese texts and fragments.
In his article Archaeological models and Asian Indo-Europeans (pp.1942)
James P. Mallory distinguishes five different ways of accounting for prehistoric lin-
guistic dispersals: the continuity, discontinuity, geographical, cultural and contact
models (pp.1921). He points out that Indo-Iranian dispersals have to rely on se-
quencing a series of independent . . . cultures into a common linguistic trajectory
(p.21). On the basis of archaeological records he distinguishes four broad geograph-
ical zones of IIr. core areas and reviews the evidence for IIr. languages within them
(pp.2332). He proposes a unified model according to which the four zones consti-
tuted a geographical and chronological sequence of IIr. dispersals. Zone 1 is the area
of the IIr. proto-language, which during the 4th or 3rd millennium BCE transgressed
eastwards into the steppelands of zone 2, passed through the Bactria-Margiana Ar-
chaeological Complex (BMAC) of Central Asian oasis farmers in zone 3 and then
dispersed southward into zone 4 of Iran and India (p.32f.).
Mallory explains the movement of IIr. culture through the BMAC by means of
the Kulturkugel black-box model: When passing through that area, although the IIr.
steppe tribes adopted its material culture, they not only retained both their own (IIr.)
language and social organisation, but also effected a social and linguistic assimilation
of the oasis khanates (p.34). Mallory adduces the case of the Ugandan Acholi as a
parallel for ethnic and language maintenance. In the light of this Ugandan example, he
examines the four-tiered system of social organization which has been postulated for
both the Indo-Iranians and the BMAC, and suggests that the former adopted not only
a portion of their most significant religious vocabulary from the BMAC but also the
concept of their superordinate fourth social tier, the *dasyu-. The latter provided a
system of co-ordination between the *dasa-speaking BMAC oasis dwellers and the
Central Asian steppe nomads (p.38f.).
Asko Parpolas article entitled From the dialects of Old Indo-Aryan to Proto-
Indo-Aryan and Proto-Iranian (pp.43102) offers a useful survey of the complex
linguistic and archaeological data involved in the debate on Indo-Aryan and Iranian
origins and dispersals. In three main sections, he discusses Historical layers of early
Old Indo-Aryan (pp.4466), Aryan languages and archaeology (pp.6692) and
Non-Aryan linguistic substrata in Vedic (pp.9295).1
While some arguments for Mesopotamian influence on Achaemenid culture are
compelling (e.g. Parpola suggests that the Zoroastrian winged disc, first attested in
Achaemenid glyptics, is an adaptation of the Assyrian winged solar disc, which repre-
sented the national god Aur, p.88f.), it is difficult to accept his view that the worship
of abstract deities, such as Mitra and Varun.a, Aryaman, Bhaga, Am . sa and Daks.a,
was adopted into the Proto-Indo-Aryan pantheon of the BMAC from the Assyri-
ans (p.89f.). Since deities representing abstract social and ethical qualities are found
in both Indo-Aryan and Iranian, it is likely that they developed independently during

1 Only selected aspects of Parpolas long contribution are discussed here. For a more detailed survey of its
contents, see the review by P.O. Skjrv in Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 2006, p.195f.
Book review 175

the common Proto-Indo-Iranian period. Parpola, however, abandons any concept of

the latter. On the basis of Aryan loanwords in Uralic languages, he argues that the
dialectal split between the two main branches of Indo-Iranian goes back to the very
emergence of Proto-Aryan from Late Proto-Indo-European (p.43, 7983). Such a
view, though, is difficult to reconcile with the numerous linguistic and ideological
features shared by Indo-Aryan and Iranian. Such isoglosses rather suggest that they
developed during a common Proto-Indo-Iranian stage located after Indo-Iranian had
branched off from Proto-Indo-European but before it split into sub-dialects.
Almuth Degener surveys The Nuristani languages (pp.103117) with a view to
defining their exact relationship to Iranian and Indo-Aryan. She discusses three pos-
sible hypotheses: either the Nuristani languages belong to the Iranian family, but
separated at a very early stage from the main stream of Iranian languages; or they are
part of the Indo-Aryan family, but separated from Indo-Aryan in pre-Vedic times; or
they are neither Indian nor Iranian but represent a third branch of the Aryan family
(p.104). After establishing that each of the three possibilities would be plausible if the
only evidence considered was linguistic (pp.106112), Degener combines the latter
with archaeological and anthropological data in order to establish a coherent his-
torical picture (p.112). She suggests that Nuristani was originally part of the Indian
branch of Indo-Iranian and that the specifically Iranian elements developed during a
period of contact between Proto-Nuristanis and Proto-Iranians. She supports this pro-
posal by reference to present-day Nuristani culture and religion, which still resembles
the culture of ancient India even after a century of (forced) islamisation (p.113f.).
Based on the hypothesis that the BMAC culture of the early second millennium
BCE had a Proto-Indo-Aryan component, and the Yaz I culture, attested around
1500 BCE, an Iranian one, Degener proposes that the Proto-Nuristanis were a rem-
nant of those BMAC Proto-Indo-Aryans who had not moved southwards into India.
While staying put, they thus came into contact with the people of the succeeding
(Iranian) Yaz I culture (p.113). Iranian features in the Nuristani languages then de-
veloped during a period of intensive contact, and the Avestan term daeuuaiiasna-
could be directed against Proto-Nuristanis (p.114f.). Since the Nuristanis practised
burial, though no graves have been found in the Yaz I culture, Degener suggests that
the Proto-Iranians pushed the Proto-Nuristanis into inaccessible mountain areas be-
fore ca. 1500 BCE. (p.115). The latter proposal, however, seems to be a weak point
in Degeners hypothesis since it leaves little time or space for contact between Proto-
Iranians and Proto-Nuristanis, unless one assumes it continued even after the latter
had been pushed into the mountains.
Richard Salomon discusses Gandhar and the other Indo-Aryan languages in the
light of newly-discovered Kharos.t.h manuscripts (pp.119134). He points out that
in 1946 Harold W. Bailey coined the term Gandhar to replace the earlier name of
Northwestern Prakrit for the Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) dialect of north-west India.
Apart from coin legends, short and formulaic Buddhist inscriptions and administra-
tive documents on wood and leather, the only literary text available before the late
1980s was the birch-bark scroll of the Gandhar (or Khotan) Dharmapada. The sit-
uation changed dramatically in the 1990s with the discovery of a large number of
Buddhist manuscripts written in Gandhar. This new material, which dates from the
first to the third centuries CE and comes from different places, consists of two sets
176 A. Hintze

of birch-bark scroll fragments, one of them now housed in the British Library and
the other, the Senior scrolls, in a private collection in England. Furthermore, there
are two groups of palm-leaf manuscripts, the Schyen Kharos.t.h fragments in a pri-
vate collection in Norway and the Pelliot Kharos.t.h fragments in the Bibliothque
Nationale in Paris. These manuscripts have greatly enhanced our knowledge of the
language, to the extent that a comprehensive grammar and dictionary of Gandhar
has now become a possibility (p.122). They show that during the Kushan empire it
was transformed from a local vernacular into a language of Buddhist culture and ad-
ministration. Its predominance in Central Asia lasted until the third century, when the
Kushan empire came to an end, and its role as the vehicle of Indo-Buddhist culture
was taken over by Sanskrit (p.120f.).
Salomon argues that Gandhar developed into a literary language as a direct result
of the spread of Buddhism into north-west India. On the basis of the new documents,
he identifies four literary styles which he correlates with different stages in the his-
torical development of Gandhar as a Buddhist literary language (p.128). The earli-
est stratum, which Salomon calls Gandhar translationese (style no.1), is found in
some narrative texts of the British Library and Senior scrolls. It represents the initial
stage when Buddhist texts in some northern/midland early MIA dialect close to Pali
(p.124) were rendered into Gandhar by rudimentary and unstandardized translation
techniques (pp.123, 130). This resulted in a mixed dialect with great linguistic varia-
tion. For instance, in the British Library scrolls, the nom.sg. masc./ntr. ending varies
between -o, -e, -u and -a, while in the Schyen Kharos.t.h fragments, which belong
to a later stratum with a more standardized and regular grammar, it is consistently -o
(p.131).
In due course, Gandhar established an identity of its own as a canonical language
and was used in original compositions in the second, avadana style. The latter is
found in poetry and informal narratives of the British Library scrolls. This style is
characterized by a more natural, colloquial, unpolished language close to the actual
contemporary dialect spoken at the time. Salomon suggests that the British Library
fragments reflect a stage in the avadana tradition that could have underlain or at
least influenced the development of the more elaborate avadana literary style of later
Buddhist Sanskrit literature (pp.125, 130). The third variety, scholastic Gandhar, is
represented in British Library scrolls containing commentaries, abhidharma treatises
and other technical texts. It has a highly formalized and standardized syntax and style,
and its limited vocabulary consists largely of Buddhist technical terms. It is difficult
to decide whether such texts are original compositions in Gandhar employing some
pan-Buddhist scholastic jargon or whether they are translations from another MIA
dialect (pp.1257).
During the second to third centuries, literary Gandhar came under the influence
of the pan-Indian prestige language, Sanskrit, a trend (evidenced by, for example,
genitives in -sya) that is also observable in inscriptional Gandhar (p.128). This stage
is represented by the fourth style, sanskritized Gandhar. A rare, though not unprece-
dented, Sanskrit text in Kharos.t.h script among the Pelliot fragments suggests that
Gandhar gradually changed to the point that eventually it was no longer Gandhar
but Sanskrit. The resulting body of Buddhist literature consisted of Sanskrit texts
written in Kharos.t.h script. The sanskritized Gandhar of the Schyen and Pelliot
Book review 177

Kharos.t.h fragments seems to be closely analogous to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit,

and Salomon proposes to term it Gandhar Hybrid Sanskrit (p.129).
The literary evolution of Gandhar followed a similar course to that of the other
midland and northern Middle Indo-Aryan vernaculars which underlay Buddhist Hy-
brid Sanskrit. However, an important difference is that while no specimens of the
underlying Buddhist Middle Indic survive, the new material provides abundant ex-
amples of literary Gandhar. Salomon concludes that its potential value for the recon-
struction of the linguistic and literary history of north Indian Buddhism is consider-
able (p.131). The new material confirms what Bailey had surmised on the basis of
the Khotan Dharmapada: that during the Kushan period Gandhar constituted a major
language of Buddhist literary activity.
In his contribution on Pali and the languages of early Buddhism (pp.135150),
K.R. Norman addresses the ancient question of what language the Buddha spoke. He
suggests that it was the Magadhan dialect of the time, Old Magadh (p.137) and
discusses its relationship to Pali, the language of the Theravadin canon (p.140). Nor-
man defines Pali as a western dialect with some eastern, or anomalous, features, and
analyses thirteen phonological and two morphological such features. On the phono-
logical level, they include the development of -ks.- to -kkh- (e.g. in bhikkhu) instead
of the expected -cch- and, on the morphological level, the ending -e instead of -o in
the nom. sg. of short a-stem nouns (p.141). The reasons adduced by Norman for the
retention of such anomalies in Pali include the suggestion that some words were
technical terms (e.g. bhikkhu) while others, such as kad.d.hati, a vudha, were morpho-
logically obscure to the translators (pp.146148).
Norman notes that many of these anomalous features occur not only in Pali but
also in eastern versions of the Asokan inscriptions, and suggests that in all cases they
could belong to a Magadh dialect, which was the language of both Asoka and early
Buddhism (p.145f.). Thus the anomalous traits can be shown, or can be surmised,
to have been current in the East at the time of Asoka, and probably earlier (p.148).
With Sylvain Lvi Norman interprets such features in Pali as indicators of an earlier,
pre-canonical form of the Buddhas teachings, rather than with Lders as evidence of
an original canon (Urkanon, pp.140, 148f.).
Oskar von Hinbers article on The vocabulary of Buddhist Sanskrit: Problems
and perspectives (pp.151164) addresses the problem of disentangling the history
of Buddhist Sanskrit vocabulary. The extremely rich vocabulary of Buddhist texts, on
the one hand, and its very poor documentation, on the other, make it difficult to trace
the history of Buddhist Sanskrit words. There is a severe lack of information on the
dates and provenance of both mss. and text editions (pp.153, 155). Such deficiencies,
however, are offset by the quite special approach of the Buddhists to the linguis-
tic form of their canonical texts. Von Hinber points out that it is because of their
Middle Indic connections and the lack of grammatical standardization that their vo-
cabulary offers such a broad and fruitful basis for a study of linguistic history (p.156).
For in contrast to the Buddhist sa stras, whose language is very close to classical or
Pan.inean Sanskrit, the canonical texts are based on Middle Indic originals that were
gradually assimilated to, or recast in Sanskrit, rather than translated into it (p.155).
Freedom from the rules of Pan.inean grammar gave Buddhists the opportunity both
to form new words and to mould texts linguistically in a creative manner (p.156).
178 A. Hintze

Individual schools formed their own vocabulary, so that their monks were identified
not only by their characteristically shaped staffs and distinctive way of wearing their
robes and carrying their alms bowls, but also by specific words, formulae and literary
styles of composition (p.156f.).
Von Hinber discusses a number of examples to give an idea of the various kinds
of evidence which would be required for a truly comprehensive study of a Buddhist
word, in an ideal philological environment (p.163). The ones dealt with illustrate
the possibilities offered by the study of single words for a better understanding of
both their meaning and their history, as well as demonstrating the deficiencies inher-
ent in the material available to us (p.163). In contrast to classical Sanskrit, where
forms that were corrupted in the ms. tradition can be corrected on the basis of a stan-
dardized norm, in Buddhist Sanskrit a form corrupted by transmission could acquire
the status of a new word and thus linguistic acceptability (p.164).
In his article on The Avestan language and its problems (pp.165187), Jost Gip-
pert identifies three major obstacles to solving philological difficulties in that lan-
guage. The first is the small size of its entire text corpus, which is less than that of
the Rgveda Sam . hita alone (p.165f.). The second obstacle is that Avestan has no di-
rectMiddle or New Iranian descendant that could provide evidence for Old Iranian,
and the third the circumstances of the transmission of its texts. After discussing some
instances of dialectal influence in the oral tradition on the language of the Avesta
(pp.166172), Gippert demonstrates the extent to which Y 11.9 is made up of OAv.
forms that either contain or resemble the numerals one to ten. The passage belongs
to the conclusion of the Hom Yat proper, which extends from Y 9.1 to 11.8. Gippert
suggests that Y 11.9 has a liturgical function and may belong to any other stratum of
Young Avestan which one may care to postulate (p.172f.). It may be added here that
in the priestly tradition the verse was also understood as containing the numerals one
to ten, for Kotwal & Boyd comment that when Y 11.9 is reached in the Yasna ritual,
the chief priest drinks the parahom while his assistant recites Y 11.9, expressing the
hope that the parahom may bring ten-fold blessings to the chief priest.2
Gippert draws attention to variations in the text of the Yasna when it forms part
of the Vispered, Vdevdad or Vitasp liturgies, pointing out that such divergences
are recorded only in H. Brockhaus edition of the Vendidad Sada (pp.173177). For
instance, in the text of Yasna 59 and 653 of the extended liturgies, the priestly title
zaota in a common liturgical formula is replaced by other priestly titles, in particular
sraoauuarz- and frabrtar-, neither of which is noted in either Geldners edition
of the Avesta or Bartholomaes Altiranisches Wrterbuch 985 and 1636.
Gippert briefly presents his project AUREA, part of which has entailed the pro-
duction of a digitized version of all available Avestan texts and their manuscript vari-
ants (pp.177ff.). This database may be used as the foundation for future editions of
Avestan texts. Gippert also focuses on the liturgy of the Maya Yat, which so far
has escaped the attention of scholars (p.181 with fn.31), and, by discussing the form

2 F.M. Kotwal and J.W. Boyd, A Persian Offering. The Yasna: A Zoroastrian Liturgy. Paris: Association
pour lavancement des tudes iraniennes, 1991 (Studia Iranica, cahier 8), p.22.
3 On p.175, Gippert quotes the two passages as Y 59.33 and 65.17, though Brockhaus subdivides the
individual haiti differently from Geldner.
Book review 179

varc a.hca in Y 34.12, highlights the importance of Vedic for the elucidation of
Avestan. On the basis of Vedic correspondences, he suggests that varc a is the acc.
pl. of varcah- splendour and is governed by the verb ni...dadat. The latter is charac-

terized by the instr. sg. hca of the root noun hic- pouring. Accordingly the passage
n kauuaiiasct xratu n dadat varca hca means: even the kavis (continue to) lay
down (on him) power[s] and splendour[s],
 by daily pouring(?) (p.187).
Alexander Lubotsky discusses Scythian elements in Old Iranian (pp.189202).
The group of Iranian tribes who were called Sakas by the Persians and Scythians by
the Greek, inhabited the Central Asian steppes during the first millennium BCE. Since
the Scythians played an essential role in the rise and organisation of the Achaemenid
Empire (p.189), Lubotsky considers it likely that many Iranian words that do not
conform to Old Persian sound laws could be of Scythian, rather than Median (as usu-
ally assumed), origin provided such laws were shown to be characteristic of Scythian.
The difficulty, however, is that we know next to nothing about the Scythian of the
Old and Middle Iranian stages, both of which are documented in only a few per-
sonal names. Firm ground is not reached until Ossetic, a Scythian dialect of the New
Iranian period. Methodologically, therefore, Lubotsky starts from Ossetic sound laws
and then moves backwards by looking for parallel sound changes involving names
in Sarmatian and Alanic, the two Middle Iranian Scythian dialects, and then hypoth-
esizes that such changes had already taken place in Scythian during the Old Iranian
period (p.190). Thus, an Old Iranian word that agrees with Scythian sound laws but
not with Old Persian or Avestan ones could well be a Scythian loanword.
Lubotsky discusses two instances of Old Persian words which could exhibit the
sound changes that distinguish Scythian from all other Iranian dialects: *p > Oss.
f and assibilation *ti > Oss. c. Both sound changes are attested not only in Ossetic
but also in the Middle Iranian Scythian of Sarmatian. Lubotskys first example of a
possible Scythian loanword in Old Iranian is the much-debated Av.  arnah-, which
he renders as prosperity (p.191). While initial  - is found only in Avestan and its
loanwords, all other Iranian dialects have f-, e.g. OP farnah-, Man. MP and Parthian
prh, frh /farrah/, Oss. farn/farn, etc. Lubotsky considers the form with initial f- to
be original, derives OIr. *farnah- from PrIr. *parnah- and equates the latter directly
with Rigvedic prn.as- fullness, abundance, prosperity, a derivative in *-nas- from
the IE root *pelh1 to fill. According to him the form farnah- instead of the expected
*parnah- is of Scythian origin. Its earliest attestation is in Median onomastics and
dates from 714 BCE, a time when Media was invaded by Scythian tribes (p.194).
Lubotsky explains Avestan initial  - by substitution of  a- for fa-.
While the phraseological parallels of Vedic prn.as- and Avestan  arnah-, such
as Ved. raya prn.asa and Av. raiia  arna
haca with (your) wealth and abun-
dance (p.193), are striking indeed, Lubotskys explanation requires two major hy-
potheses. The first is that the word *parHnas-, which is inherited from IIr., only
survives in its Scythian sound shape in the Old, Middle and New Iranian languages;
in other words all Iranian dialects have substituted their own inherited form *parnah-
with Scythian *farnah-. The factors that would have motivated such substitution re-
main unclear. Lubotsky argues that Ossetic farn/ farn covers a wider semantic range
than *farnah- in the other Iranian languages, where it is a technical term (p.195).
However, if it was a Scythian loan in the latter, one would expect the Ossetic word
180 A. Hintze

also to be a technical term, rather than to have such wide and untechnical meaning.
The second hypothesis is the assumption of a substitution of  a- for fa- in Aves-
tan. According to Lubotsky, such a replacement is frequently attested in loanwords
(p.192), but the parallels he adduces remain unconvincing because they are from
modern Russian dialects, Middle Welsh and Finnish, rather than from Iranian.
Lubotskys second instance of Scythian loanwords in Old Iranian is the group of
three Old Persian words duvari- portico, colonnade, skaui-/kaui- weak, poor
and *igra(ka)- garlic from which the month name aigraci- is probably derived.
He argues that they contain the sequence i where on etymological grounds we
would expect ti (p.195). Assuming that -i- stands for Scythian -ts i-, he derives
duvari- from *duvar-ti- and skaui-/kaui- from *skau-ti-, a derivative from the
root *sku- to tear with the suffix -ti- (p.196f.). The most convincing of Lubotskys
examples of Scythian loanwords is the month name aigraci-, which he analyses with
Wackernagel & Debrunner, Altindische Grammatik II 2, 303 as a vrddhi-formation
from *igraka- or *igraci-. Assuming that OP i- represents Scythian  ts i-, he con-
nects *igra- with Iranian *tigra- sharp and *tigri- arrow, the Benennungsmo-
tiv for garlic being the arrow-like shape of its shafts. Since OP *igra- denotes a
plant that is native to Central Asia (p.199), his assumption of a Scythian loan here
is convincing. Furthermore, Lubotsky derives the name of the Ossetic spring festival
cyrisn/ciresn from *tigra-ayasana- and suggests that the latter is a remodelling
of Iranian tigra-cit- collecting garlic, with the Ossetic isyn/esun replacing the verb
*ci- to gather (p.200).
Frantz Grenet discusses Regional interaction in Central Asia and Northwest In-
dia in the Kidarite and Hephthalite periods (pp.203224). While most scholars have
treated these centuries, which extend from ca. 400 to 560 CE, as Dark Ages in
Central Asian history, Grenet argues, on the basis of textual, numismatic and archae-
ological evidence, that the Kidarite and Hephthalite states opened up Sogdiana and
facilitated the spread of other cultures into Central Asian areas that previously had
not been reached even in Kushan times. Thus, during the Kidarite dominion there was
a Bactrianisation of the hitherto very provincial Sogdian culture. This emerges,
for instance from a late 5th century Panjikent painting of the goddess Anahita mod-
elled on a Bactrian cult statue (p.208). Grenet discusses two silver bowls which bear
witness to the coexistence of the last Kidarites and the first Hephthalites in North-
west India (p.211f.). During the sixth century, Sogdian religious iconography was
reworked according to Hindu models. For instance, the cult image of Anahita at Pan-
jikent was replaced by one with Indian iconographic details (p.213). After discussing
the period of the Late Hephthalites (560748 CE) (pp.214218), Grenet examines
iconographic evidence suggesting that Rustam was a Hephthalite hero (pp.218220)
and concludes with a table outlining a tentative chronology of Kidarite and Heph-
thalite political history (p.220f.).
Nicholas Sims-Williams article on Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: Lin-
guistic evidence from the Bactrian documents and inscriptions (pp.225242) starts
with a succinct survey of the new Bactrian material that has become available since
the 1990s. It dates from year 110 to 549 of an unspecified era, whose beginning
Franois de Blois has recently established as coinciding with that of the Sasanian
Book review 181

period.4 The new documents cover four centuries during which the foreign Kushan,
Kidarite, Hephthalite and Turkish invaders succeeded one another as rulers of Bac-
tria. Sims-Williams examines the vocabulary of these documents for names and ti-
tles, loanwords and calques in order to identify traces of the languages of the many
peoples who held sway in Bactria (p.226f.).
He identifies an Achaemenian heritage which includes words of Near Eastern
origin that probably entered the Bactrian language via Old Persian (p.227f.) and a
Greek heritage, which manifests itself not only in the adoption of that language and
script but also in Greek, Latin and Egyptian loanwords of which the latter two entered
Bactrian via Greek (p.228f.). In the 2nd cent. BCE the Kushan invaders adopted the
Bactrian language and established a kingdom that extended far beyond Bactria into
Central Asia and much of northern India. Kushan rule there was roughly contempo-
rary with Parthian rule in Iran. As to Kushan heritage in the Bactrian language, Sims-
Williams identifies as genuine Yuezhi words the tribe name Kushan, the surnames
of the earliest Kushan kings, Kadphises and Taktu, and the name of the country
Tukharistan (p.229f.). Indian vocabulary, including Buddhist terms, is present in
Bactrian from Kushan times onwards and remains in use throughout the Hephthalite
and Turkish periods (p.230f.). When Bactria became part of the Sasanian empire,
Middle Persian names and words, such as kanarang margrave, entered the Bactrian
language (p.231f.).
Nothing is known of the language or ethnic make-up of the Chionites (or Huns),
who put an end to the rule of the Sasanian Kushanshahs in Bactria in the late fourth
century CE, the Hunnish tribe of the Kidarites or of the Hephthalites, apart from
the names of several kings of the latter, such as Khingila, Toraman.a and Mihirakula
(p.233). Hephthalite supremacy in Bactria was terminated by an alliance between the
Sasanians and Western Turks in the mid-sixth century CE. Turkish words occur in
Bactrian documents from the 7th century onwards. Sims-Williams focuses attention
both on the tribal name Khalach (people), which constitutes one of their
earliest mentions, and clearly identifies them as Turks, and on the noun 
[hilitber], from which the Arabic title rutbl originates, and proves that *zunbil, an
emendation of the latter, previously proposed by scholars, is erroneous (p.234f.). He
also lists a number of Chinese loanwords in the Bactrian documents (p.233), as well
as Arabic and New Persian terms, such as poll-tax (p.236).
Finally, Sims-Williams addresses the question of the Kushan language. He notes
that the names of the first three Kushan rulers, Kujula Kadphises, Vima I Taktu and
Vima II Kadphises all display two characteristics, namely the consonant clusters df
and kt and a two-word make-up, which distinguish them from native Bactrian words
and names. He hypothesizes that the three names may retain features of the tongue
spoken by the Kushans before they invaded Bactria and adopted the local vernacular
and that the Kushan language may have been Iranian or at least contained an Iranian
component (p.236). Sims-Williams then discusses the origin of the suffix -()
found in the names Kanishka, Huvishka, Vasishka and Kuzgashk. Comparing Bac-
trian -() with the Tocharian B hypocoristic suffix -ske, f. -ska, he argues that

4 F. de Blois, Du nouveau sur la chronologie bactrienne post-hellnistique: lre de 223224 ap. J.-C. In:
Comptes rendus de lAcadmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, juin 2006 (in press).
182 A. Hintze

both are cognate with Parth. -icak and Sogd. -ckk, etc., and that they have their
origin in an Iranian language in which *ck, i.e. [tk], was simplified to *k (p.238).
While ruling out Khotanese as a potential source, he suggests that the suffix -()
represents a Saka (Scythian) element in the Bactrian language.
Georges-Jean Pinault in Tocharian and Indo-Iranian: relations between two lin-
guistic areas (pp.243284) surveys particular lexical problems in Tocharian which
need to be approached from the perspective of language contact (p.244). He points
out that the new Bactrian documents that have appeared since the 1990s cover very
much the same geographical and chronological space as the Tocharian manuscripts,
the greater part of which date from the 6th to the 8th centuries. While in earlier
studies the source of Iranian loanwords in Tocharian had been attributed to Sogdian
and Khotanese, it has now been established that many of them come directly from
Bactrian (p.243).
Pinault describes a scenario according to which Tocharian belongs to the North-
western group of IE languages. After the formation of Proto-Tocharian as a distinct
dialectal branch of IE, the Tocharians came into contact with speakers of Indo-Aryan
and Iranian languages. The intensity of such contacts varied at different times, but as
a result they borrowed many IIr. words. Pinault distinguishes three stages of Iranian
loans into Tocharian: (1) Old Iranian, (2) Bactrian and (3) Sogdian and Khotanese
(p.245). He discusses extensively the Tocharian terms for right and left with a
view to defining them precisely on the basis of textual evidence (pp.248261) and
then explores Tocharian-Bactrian contacts in the light of the new Bactrian documents
(pp.261271). Pinault deals in more detail with Toch. A kakmrtik, B kamart(t)ike
master, chief, the source of which is Bactr. *, now attested in 
chief (god) (pp.262264, 265271) and Toch. AB prmank hope from Bactr.
 hope (< OIr. *fra-manyu-ka-, p.264f.).
In addition to the presence of direct loans from Middle Iranian, Pinault suggests
that some Iranian words were incorporated into Tocharian via Sanskrit by means
of an interpretatio indica. He illustrates this with Toch. AB kritam . and its deriva-
tives (pp.271279). After establishing its meaning as gratitude, acknowledgement
. as a loanword from Bactr. , the meaning of which
(p.273), he explains kritam
Sims-Williams hypothetically posits as service. Bactr.  would have been
represented as *krtan in Common Tocharian but reshaped as *krtan under the influ-
ence of the Sanskrit verbal adj. krta-, pronounced /krita-/ at that time (p.278f.). In an
appendix, Pinault lists works bySir Harold W. Bailey relevant to Tocharian (p.279).
The last contribution to this volume by Ilya Gershevitch, Professor Sir Harold
Bailey: An appreciation (pp.285296) is the original English text which the author
wrote on the occasion of Baileys ninetieth birthday on 16 December 1989 and first
published in a Russian translation. In this personal memoir, Gershevitch provides in-
sights into the growth and composition of Baileys library now housed at the Ancient
India and Iran Trust in Cambridge (pp.286289), recounts the iranists life story and
shares his own personal memories of him (pp.290296).
The vast scope of this volume and the erudition of the individual chapters give
some idea of Sir Harolds own breadth and depth of learning. Having taken a vivid
interest in each of the topics addressed, to many of which he made important contri-
butions during his lifetime, he would no doubt have delighted in reading every article
within this excellent collection.