The dates in the Pahlavīg and Pārsīg
inscriptions of Durā (Europos) Among the Perso-Aryan texts found in Dura –a city located on the west bank of the Upper Euphrates, re-founded by Macedonian invaders as a military settlement in about 303 B.C., and given the name Εύρωπός, flourished in the Parthian period since the end of the second century B.C., seized by the Romans about A.D. 165 who held it for some ninety years and made it a Roman garrison, and baptized it Colonia Europaeorum, and ultimately fallen into the hands of the Persian king Šābūr – eleven texts indicate dates: one, Parthian (pahlavīg), a graffito on the wall of the temple of Zeus Megistos; and ten, Persian (pārsīg) dipinti (painted texts) on the synagogue frescoes. A Gurānī poem in « Pahlavi » script
There exists a short Gurānī poem, in four couplets, each of ten syllables with a caesura between two rhyming hemistiches. We learn from a note of B. P. Nikitine (1932) that it was engraved on an amulet (according to the testimony of a Kurdish prince, Sureya Bedr Khan); however, according to the testimony of another Kurdish personality, Saʿīd Khan Kurdestāni, it was written in “Pahlavi” script on a piece of parchment, and was found in Suleymanieh. We are in ignorance about the author and also the date of the poem. For this reason, any speculation to classify it as a forged literary piece is absurd. Indeed, the text is a true Gurānī poem; and the content also reflects the spirit of a large part of the Perso-Aryans in the difficult period of defeat. |
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