Dr. Milad Abedi

How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys’ forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen’s (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell’s (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia. Due to its length, the paper is published in two instalments: Part I covers archaeological, art historical and textual evidence for the earliest occurrence and popularization of donkeys in China. Part II contains three sections: Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively. In a final discussion, possible ways of transmission for the donkey from the Iranian plateau to the Chinese heartland are evaluated with regard to the cultural, linguistic, and topographic conditions reflected in the previous parts.

Superstratum languages often become substratum languages after military defeats. This was the case with Middle Persian in the Islamic Empire. There were different phases of interference between Middle Persian and Arabic. For example, Middle Persian terms, especially in administration and technology, were borrowed into Arabic. Later, in the first decades of Abbasid rule, a new scientific terminology was developed in Arabic based on translations of Sanskrit and Middle Persian texts in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Besides that, some scientific concepts of Chinese origin were received too. Most of these early Arabic scientific texts are lost, having been replaced later in the 3rd/9th century by translations of Greek scientific works. However, many fragments of them are preserved in secondary tradition, and such materials have been only partially studied. This paper will discuss cases of Arabic borrowings, including calques and loanwords from Sanskrit and Middle Persian.

How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys’ forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen’s (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell’s (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia. Due to its length, the paper is published in two instalments: Part I covers archaeological, art historical and textual evidence for the earliest occurrence and popularization of donkeys in China. Part II (in the fall issue) contains three sections: Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively. In a final discussion, possible ways of transmission for the donkey from the Iranian plateau to the Chinese heartland are evaluated with regard to the cultural, linguistic, and topographic conditions reflected in the previous parts.

Elamites and Persians were approximately in contact since 9 or 8 century BCE. Their broad connection contained diverse cultural, economic, social and linguistic interactions. Like all the contacts, the lexical borrowing was one of the initial consequences of Elamo-Persian contact; therefore, both languages have borrowed lexica form one another. In the pre-Achaemenid era, Old Persian language had a lower position in comparison with Elamite language which was the upper language, however, after a few centuries, in the Achaemenid age, this hierarchy has collapsed, and Old Persian became the upper language and used as the language of royal Achaemenid inscriptions as well as the language of the ruling class. At any positions, lexical borrowing was not one-sided, and both languages received lexica from each other. Apart from loanwords, there are some metonymies and forms of expression in Elamite language, which their origins are not apparent, yet they are comparable with some metonymic phrases in Classical and Middle Persian. This paper focuses on two Achaemenid Elamite metonymic expressions which are identical with metonymic terms in Persian and also tries to provide some instances for elucidating the possible origins of some metonymic Persian phrases and furthering this aspect of language contact between Elamites and Persians.

It is generally believed that Persian tribes migrated to the Iranian plateau in the late second millennium BCE, at a time when the region had long been under the sway of an Elamite population. Because of the location ofPersian settlements in the Iranian plateau, contact between Iranians and thelocal Elamite people was inevitable. Persian and Elamite populations were incontact for up to 500 years before the emergence of the Achaemenid PersianEmpire in the former eastern Elamite territories. The Elamite language wasadopted and strongly reshaped by speakers of Old Iranian, who probablyacquired Elamite as a second language for the purpose of writing and perhapsfor communication with native Elamites. The latest documented phase of theElamite language is known as (royal) Achaemenid Elamite. The nature of theimpact of Old Iranian on it goes beyond the adoption of loanwords, and includesmorphological restructuring. The main body of evidence for this evolution comesfrom a considerable collection of clay tablets written in Elamite that constitutesthe Persepolis Fortification Archive dated the reign of Darius I. Based on theseconsiderations, the present paper will discuss examples of language contact between Persians and Elamites. This paper analyzes the Old Persian andElamite versions of multilingual royal inscriptions in the Achaemenid royalnecropolis, Naqsh-e Rostam in order to further elucidate the nature of languagecontact between Old Iranian and Elamite