merhdad malekzadeh
Abstract
Onomastics, a branch of historical linguistics, is of great significance for historical, historico-geographical, and anthropological studies. In the field of ancient Iranian studies, onomastics serves as a means to respond to a broad range of questions. For example, study of Median history and culture, ...
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Onomastics, a branch of historical linguistics, is of great significance for historical, historico-geographical, and anthropological studies. In the field of ancient Iranian studies, onomastics serves as a means to respond to a broad range of questions. For example, study of Median history and culture, suffering a lack of written evidence in Median language, has always been dependent on onomastic data recorded in non-Median sources. The present article focuses on the etymology of Ἁρμαμίθρης, an originally Median personal name attested in the list of Assyrian kings by Ctesias of Cnidus, and attempts at explaining the presence of a Median name in that context, that may lead to a better understanding of the narrative history of Assyria and Media in ancient time.
Mohammad Hasan Jalalian Chaleshtari
Abstract
Despite the few data about Mardâs in Shâhnâme, the very high attention of scholars to him and his name is indebted to the importance of his son, Zahhâk, in Iranian mythology. The lack of any information about this personality in Avesta, ambiguity of written forms of his name in ...
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Despite the few data about Mardâs in Shâhnâme, the very high attention of scholars to him and his name is indebted to the importance of his son, Zahhâk, in Iranian mythology. The lack of any information about this personality in Avesta, ambiguity of written forms of his name in Pahlavi script in middle Persian texts, multiplicity of the recorded forms in Islamic texts and also the similarity of the written and probably phonetic forms of this name in Shâhnâme and the Arabic personal name are the issues which make Mardâs and his name more and more ambiguous. In Vedic myths Zahhâkʼs equivalent is viśvarūpa. This latterʼs father, tvaṣṭṛ, is a deity. The vast mythology of this god can partly compensate our lack of information about Mardâs. In this article attempts has been made to provide a more precise view about Mardâs and his name by reviewing the data related to this person in Vedic texts on the one hand and surveying the recorded forms in middle Persian and Islamic texts and also by criticizing the previous views.
