Puhrepuhr (Grandchild) in the Shahpur’s Inscription at Haji-Abad by Comparison with Mesopotamian Texts

Document Type : Research

Authors

1 Assistant professor of Ancient Iran History Department, Faculty Member of Azad Islamic University. Esfehan. Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Language and Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Iran

3 teacher

4 MA in History, Faculty of Humanities, Azad Islamic University, Ghazvin Branch, Iran

Abstract

Linguistic, historical, and geographical conditions suggest that homogeneous communities settled in Eurasian and spoke Proto-Indo-European languages that began to expand around 4000 BCE. Mallory and some scholars believe that the Indo-European’s homeland was in the arid steppe of the Pont-Caspian region. Having migrated the Indo-Iranian groups, they probably occupied somewhere in central Asia (a geographical parallel to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) from where some Iranians migrated to the Iran’s plateau, while the Indo-Aryans migrated to the subcontinent (Mallory 1989:262).
Grandson is one of the most controversial words in the Indo-European languages. This word is attested in most of Indo-European languages such as Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek, and Indo-Iranian. In the Proto-Indo-European languages *h2nep-ōt is used for ‘male descendant’ and h2nep-t-ih1/2 for ‘female descendant’. Buck believes that PIE *nepot probably consists of a compound of negative ‘ne’, and a form of stem, which is seen in Sanskrit pati-, Latin potis ‘able’, etc., and literally means ‘powerless’(Buck.1944: 644). Paul Horn quotes from Leumann about PIE nēpōt which means ‘orphan’ (Horn.1883: 234), and Nourai regards nebh= ‘damp, humidity’ as a root (Nourai.2012: 322), but Helmut Rix does not think of nebh as the root of ‘nava’(Rix.2001: 448) .
In the Old Indian, nápāt means ‘grandson, son, descendant’, which changes into nápāt-am in the accusative case and nápāt-ah in the plural subjective case. In the Old Indian, apám nápāt compares with apąm napå in Avesta, which denotes ‘son of waters’. náptr̥ is the strong (vrdhi) stem of nápāt in the Old Indian, which originates from the rainy cloud. Napāt in the Old Avesta, and naptar, nafǝδar, in the Young Avesta means ‘grandson and sisters’ son’. This word seems to be used with the apąm to mean “grandson of waters” and originates from mountain and naptya denotes ‘descendant’. Darius the Great applied napāt to describe his pedigree in Bihstun Inscription. Horn regards nápāt as Old Iranian word for nava in the New Persian, which has evolved into nevi in Kurdish, and nwasia in Baluchi of the Iranian’s dialects. The ‘nava’ or grandson is transcribed ‘nab’ into the Middle Persian, which originates in *napak of the Pahlavi Language (Horn.1883: 234).
The noun structure in the Sumerian language, however, is based on nominal chains which include primary nouns such as dumu, ‘son’, ‘child’, and a number of verbal roots employing as a noun like ti ‘lie’, buru ‘hole’. The use of primary nouns was relatively limited, and the Sumerian language, instead, applied a large number of nominal compounds. In the Sumerian language, ‘dumu’ stands for “son”, and ‘dumu-ka’ for “grandson”, which Sumerian kings referred to in their communications. A Sumerian king, Gudae C. 2141- 2122 B.C, ruled over Lagash city and was a patron of the arts and the builder of a new temple at Girsu. Sumerian texts in Gudae era indicate “grandson or dumu-ka”.
Furthermore, nouns in the Akkadian language are declined in the three cases of singular: nominative (stem-um), genitive (stem-im), accusative (stem-am), (dual: nom-?n, gen,acc -in; and plural: nom-?, gen, acc, -?) or the three statuses of rectus status, constructus status, and absolutus rectus. In the Old Akkadian languages, the words of dumu-ka, DUMU DUMU, TUR TUR, ablu abli, bin bini, and liblibi use for ‘grandson’ and we describe them in the Akkadian lingual branches which all except for dumu-ka take the reduplicated forms. There are some reduplicated words in the Old and Middle Akkadian language, and some words and prefixes are used for the family members in the Kassite period such as mār= son; marat= daughter; TUR or Mar=son; TUR-SAL or Marat=daughter; TUR-TUR=grandson; KAL =adult; KAL-TUR-TUR=adult grandson.
Moreover, among the survived texts of the Assyrian language, nouns have the three numbers of singular, dual and plural , as well as the three declinable case of the nominative, ending in –u; the genitive, ending in –i; and the accusative, ending in –a. We have a few words which applied for ‘grandson’, such as DUMU DUMU, TUR TUR, ablu abli, bin bini, liblibi. Just like the noun structure in the Assyrian language, nouns are declined in the three number of singular, plural and dual; and three cases of nominative, accusative and genitive, and compounds along with reduplicated words coincide with those of the Assyrian language. In the Young Babylonian period, we see the same of structure and reduplicated stem with genitive case such as ban bani ‘grandson’, lib-lib-bi, mār māri and other reduplicated words.
However, nouns in the Aramaic language may be divided into two groups: 1-nouns with the Aramaic origin and loanwords adapted to Aramaic morphology 2- loanwords which have not been adapted to Aramaic morphology. The former groups with original Aramaic stock end for the most part in either (–a) or (–ta). The latter groups of loanwords are adapted to Aramaic morphology. They adopted this nominal inflection through the suffixing of the ending (–a) or, in a few cases, (-ta). In the Aramaic language and its sub-branches bar applies for "son, grandson", and bar bar in the same meaning. In addition, ben bane means a "son" which in the widest sense includes "grandson".

Keywords

References

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ZABANPAZHUHI (Journal of Language Research)
Volume 12, Issue 37
February 2021
Pages 369-387

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