Structure and Content
The glossary encompasses approximately five hundred (not counting variations) Semitic language ideograms (huzvarishn, "probably mean 'obsoleteness, antiquity, or archaism'"), "in the form used by Zoroastrians in writing Middle Persian (Book Pahlavi), each explained by a "phonetic" writing of the corresponding Persian word." Besides ideograms of Aramaic origin, the Frahang also has a handful of pseudo-ideograms from "Arabic words coined by later scribes" and "scattered examples of historical spellings of Iranian words, no longer recognized as such." Altogether about 1300 words (including word forms) are represented, "but its original extent appears to have been only 1000 words, excluding the appendices." Several ideograms are not attested in any other text.
While the one-page Turpan fragment lists various forms for verbs followed by one Middle Persian translation (in the infinitive), other manuscripts list at most three verb forms, but then provide Middle Persian equivalents of each. The primary elements (ideogram(s) and translation) "are then transcribed interlinearly, and more or less corruptly, into Avestan letters, i.e., into Pāzand, whereby the ideograms appear in their traditional mnemonic pronunciation. Because of the ambiguity of the Pahlavi script this is often far removed from the original Aramaic spellings." In the manuscript examined by Asa and Haug, the huzvarishn and translations are in black, and the Pazend transliterations are in red (the first chapter is an exception, and is entirely in black).
Substituting Latin characters (and written left-to-right) for Pahlavi and Pazend ones (which are written right-to-left), Frahang glosses look like this:
| huzvarishn ideogram (Aramaic alphabet, RtL) |
MP translation (Latin transliteration) |
Aramaic word behind the ideogram (in the Frahang rendered in Pazend) |
English meaning |
| := KLB | sāg | kalba | "dog" |
| := MLK | shāh | malka | "king" |
| := LḤM | nān | laḥma | "bread" |
Thus, "king" would be written but understood in Iran to be the sign for 'shāh'.
In the Asa and Haug manuscript, the Frahang is organized thematically, divided into (approximately) thirty chapters. Eighteen of these chapters have titles (listed below in italics), the others do not. West ends his description at chapter 23 as "no further chapters are indicated." The last section/chapter is a collection of older Iranian language words (and variant spellings), with more modern words explaining the older terms.
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