PAIILAV or Pahlava is a term supposed by Olshausen to have arisen out of the name of the Parthava or Parthians. They were not the 1'cl-sinus, who are called Parasika, but the A rsacidan Parthians. The term Pahlav, as applied to a people, early fell into disuse in Persia, and came into use in India in the second to the fourth centuries A.D.
Pahlavi is a later Iranian dialect which followed on 'Land and the Old Persian of the inscriptions, and led to Parsi or Pazand and the Persian of Firdusi. The origin of the word has also been said to be Balkavi or pertaining to Balkh, and softened into Pahlavi. The term Pahlavi, however, now applied to the official language of the Sasaanian dynasty, Dr. Haug traces to Pahlav-Partbia, and holds that from the memory of Parthian rule in Persia, everything connected with antiquity was called Pahlavi, i.e. ancient. The term Huzvaresh, as applied to Pahlavi, he explains as a mode of writing and pronouncing a foreign word, generally Semitic being written, and its Persian equivalent pro nounced in its stead. Dr. Haug deciphered the Hajjabad, Naksh-i-Rajab, and other Pahlavi in scriptions, and showed that, in the Pahlavi languages, the Semitic clement far outweighs the Iranian. The Iranian verbal terminations, found in the Pahlavi MSS., are entirely wanting in the earlier Hajjabad inscription. The Pahlavi of the MSS. is, as written, a Semitic language with an admixture of Iranian words and a prevailing Iranian construction, and is, as read, a purely Iranian tongue. From using the Huzvaresh mode,
the Persians came by degrees to write their words as they pronounced them, and thus the Semitic words of the Pahlavi had disappeared from modern Persia as early as the time of Firdusi. In discuss ing the origin and age of Pahlavi, it cannot be supposed that the Sassanian kings, very zealous promoters of Persian ascendency and restorers of the Zoroastrian religion, would adopt for their official language a Semitic dialect not then exist ing in Persia. Dr. Haug therefore looks to an earlier period of Persian history, and shows reason for concluding that Pahlavi is identical with that form of the Assyrian language which was. spoken at Nineveh, whence it spread, with the Assyrian rule, over all the subject provinces, and among others over Iran. An old Pahlavi-Pazcnd glossary was edited by Dastnr Hoshengji Jamaspji Asa, revised and enlarged, with an introductory essay on Pahlavi, by Dr. Martin Haug, Ph.D. It com prises the text of the Sassanian Farhang, and a Pahlavi-English glossary arranged as an alpha betical index according to the Roman character, and an important essay on the. Pahlavi language by Dr. Hang. The essay comprises a history of the researches made in Europe into the Pahlavi language and literature. Mr. Growse describes it as a dialect of Assyria, and the language of the Persian court—Tirnes of India ; Crowe; 'Veber, p. 188.