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- Old Persian was the administrative language of the early Achaemenian dynasty, dating from the 6th century bce, and an eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialect was the language of the chancellery of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-3rd century bce.
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Old Indo-Aryan (c. 1500 –300 BCE) early Old Indo-Aryan: includes Vedic Sanskrit (c. 1500 to 500 BCE) late Old Indo-Aryan: Epic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit (c. 200 CE to 1300 CE) Mitanni Indo-Aryan (c. 1400 BCE) Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrits (c. 300 BCE to 1500 CE) early Buddhist texts (c. 6th or 5th century BCE)
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Indo-Iranian languages, group of languages constituting the easternmost major branch of the Indo-European family of languages; only the Tocharian languages are found farther east. Scholarly consensus holds that the Indo-Iranian languages include the Iranian and Indo-Aryan (Indic) language groups. Some scholars suggest that the Nūristānī and Bangani...
In the early 21st century, Indo-Iranian languages were spoken by nearly one billion individuals, most of whom resided in a broad region of southwestern and southern Asia. Speakers of modern Iranian languages number between 150 and 200 million; Persian, Pashto, and Kurdish are the most widely spoken of these languages. Speakers of modern Indo-Aryan languages number more than 800 million persons; Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Urdu are the most widely spoken of these languages. Among the Indo-European languages, only Greek and Hittite possess written records older than those of Indo-Iranian.
The Indo-Iranian languages have been used in both administrative and literary contexts. Old Persian was the administrative language of the early Achaemenian dynasty, dating from the 6th century bce, and an eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialect was the language of the chancellery of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-3rd century bce. The Indo-Iranian languages have also been used in the literature of some of the world’s great religions: Indo-Aryan for Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism and Iranian for Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. The oldest Zoroastrian texts are in dialects included under the name Avestan. Commerce, conquest, and religion spread the influence of these languages. Indo-Aryan languages, for example, penetrated deep into Southeast Asia; lexical borrowings in Indonesia, Thailand, and other areas and Sanskrit texts in Cambodia reflect this influence.
The original location of the Indo-Iranian group was probably to the north of modern Afghanistan, east of the Caspian Sea, in the area that is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, where Iranian languages are still spoken. From there, some Iranians migrated to the south and west, the Indo-Aryans to the south and east. From geographical references in the earliest Indo-Aryan literary document, the Ṛigveda (“The Veda Composed in Verses,” c. 1500 bce), it is clear that the earliest settlement of Indo-Aryans was in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Migration did not take place at once. It is now generally accepted that there were doubtless a series of migrations, although the now-discredited view that an Indo-Aryan invasion took place was once seriously entertained. The date of entry of the Indo-Aryans into the Indian subcontinent cannot be determined precisely, though the beginning of the 2nd millennium bce is plausible and generally accepted.
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There is controversy concerning the precise position of the language of the Indo-Iranian family first attested in Middle Eastern texts of about 1450–1350 bce. Some borrowed words and proper names appearing in these Hittite-Hurrian documents have been interpreted variously as belonging to Indo-Iranian, to an Indic subgroup of Indo-Iranian that had not yet fully split, or to Indo-Aryan proper. For example, the number word aika- ‘one’ has been considered to indicate that the language in question was Indo-Aryan, since the Iranian term is aiva- (Avestan aēuua-/aēuuā-) in contrast to Sanskrit eka-, although the Sanskrit particle eva ‘only, indeed,’ comparable to Avestan aēuua-/aēuuā- ‘indeed,’ can be considered to reflect the existence in earliest Indo-Aryan of both eka- and eva- for ‘one.’ Consensus has yet to be reached on this issue, although a majority of authorities hold that the language in question represents an early variety of Old Indo-Aryan, prior to changes such as the replacement of *źh by h (e.g., *źh > jh > h).
Also awaiting further research is the identification of the Harappan peoples of the Indus Valley and other sites in the subcontinent, whose writing has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered despite decades of effort. A definitive solution to this problem could possibly answer the question of whether Indo-Aryans encountered these people or whether Harappan civilization had passed by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived on the subcontinent, although scholars now generally agree that the Indus Valley civilization’s decline was not due to any Indo-Aryan invasion. Whatever may be the answers to the questions concerning the Middle Eastern texts and the Harappan peoples, the reasons for the split of the Indo-Aryans and Iranians are not known.
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- George Cardona
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian).
Of the modern Iranian languages, by far the most widely spoken is Persian, which, as already indicated, developed from Middle Persian and Parthian (with elements from other Iranian languages such as Sogdian) as early as the 9th century ce.
The name 'Iranian', which stems from the Old Persian *Aryānām, also continues to be used to refer to specific ethnolinguistic groups. Indo-Aryan refers to the populations speaking an Indo-Aryan language or identifying as Indo-Aryan; they form the predominant group in Northern Indian subcontinent.
The Old Indo-Aryan period is represented by Sanskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan ( c. 600 bce –1000 ce ) consists principally of the Prakrit dialects, including Pali. Modern Indo-Aryan speech is largely a single dialect continuum spread over an undivided geographical space, so demarcations between languages and dialects are somewhat artificial.
Ancient (Old) Iranian. Of the ancient Iranian languages, only two are known from texts or inscriptions, Avestan and Old Persian, the oldest parts of which date from the 6th century bce.
