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Two Iranian loanwords in Syriac*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Nicholas Sims-Williams
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Abstract

This article discusses two Syriac words which have been understood in many different ways by both ancient and modern scholars. The translations and etymologies previously proposed are evaluated and new explanations are offered, according to which both words, sāsgaunā “red” and syānqā “hemi-drachm”, are loanwords from Middle Persian, though unattested in that language.

Keywords

Syriac lexicographySyriac etymologyIranian loanwords in SyriacSyriac sāsgaunā “red”Syriac syānqā “hemi-drachm”

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Articles
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Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 485 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2017 

1. ssgwnʾ [sāsgaunā]

The two most recent Syriac–English dictionariesFootnote 1 agree in translating sāsgaunā as “purple”, although it should be noted that the Peshitta contrasts sāsgaunā with argāwānā, for which the meaning “purple” is well established. Other dictionaries translate sāsgaunā with a wide variety of colour terms including “vermilion, sky-blue or blue-black”Footnote 2 or “purple red, vermilion, scarlet”.Footnote 3 Many of these definitions go back to the Syriac–Arabic lexicon of Bar Bahlul.Footnote 4 As Claudia Ciancaglini says, it would seem that the only certainty is that the word refers to a colour, or more precisely a dye-stuff, and that it is a compound containing gwnʾ “colour” as its second element. Since Syriac gaunā “colour” is an Iranian loanword, it is possible though not inevitable that the word as a whole is Iranian. On the basis of yet another translation of the compound as “multicoloured, variegated”, which is the most commonly accepted interpretation of the identically spelt Hebrew and Aramaic word ssgwnʾ, several scholars have suggested that its first part is a Persian numeral, either šast “sixty”Footnote 5 or šaš “six”.Footnote 6 However, the correspondence of Syr. s- to Pers. š- would be quite exceptional. It is not impossible to imagine an assimilation of š…s to s…s, as Shaul Shaked seems to suggest, but he does not cite any close parallel.Footnote 7

In the Peshitta sāsgaunā is used in two contexts. In one group of passages it translates Hebrew taḥaš, mainly in the phrase ʿōr taḥaš “leather or skin of taḥaš” (Num. 4: 6, 8; plural in Ex. 25: 5, 26: 14, 35: 7, 23, 36: 19, 39: 34), a material used for the covering of the Tabernacle or placed over a table of offerings. It has recently been suggested that Hebrew taḥaš is a loanword from Akkadian duhšu, a technical term for faience and beadwork,Footnote 8 but its original meaning was forgotten at an early date. Old Testament versions and commentaries therefore interpreted taḥaš from context, as a term either for a particular animal or for a colour. The Septuagint, for example, has ὑακίνθινος, whence hyacinthinus in the Vulgate, while the second-century Jewish scholar Rabbi Meir maintained that taḥaš was “a creature which existed at the time of Moses and was afterwards hidden”.Footnote 9 The use of Syriac sāsgaunā to translate Hebrew taḥaš evidently depends on Jewish tradition, since its Aramaic equivalent ssgwnʾ is used for the same purpose in the Targum,Footnote 10 explained pseudo-etymologically in the Talmud as “joyful (śaś) with several colours (gōn)”.Footnote 11

A different usage is attested by the Peshitta's version of II Chron. 2: 7, 14 (= 2: 6, 13 in the Hebrew text). Here sāsgaunā translates Hebrew karmīl “red”, in both cases as part of a sequence including tǝḵēlet “blue” (Peshitta tklt ʾ) and argāmān or argǝwān “purple” (Peshitta ʾrgwnʾ). The last two are dyes produced from certain types of murex shell,Footnote 12 while karmīl is a red dye produced from the Armenian cochineal (Porphyrophora hamelii),Footnote 13 apparently the same colour which is referred to in earlier books of the Hebrew Bible as tōlaʿat šānī.

It is strange that those who have tried to explain the meaning and etymology of Syriac and Aramaic sāsgaunā have generally focused on its use as a translation of the obscure Hebrew taḥaš rather than its use as a translation of Hebrew karmīl, a word whose meaning was surely known to the translator of II Chronicles – note that in the very next chapter, II Chron. 3: 14, karmīl is translated as zḥwrytʾ “scarlet”. As has long been recognized, karmīl, which is not attested in any other book of the Hebrew bible, is ultimately an Iranian loanword derived from a cognate of Persian kirm “worm”, just as the earlier Hebrew term tōlaʿat šānī, also translated in the Peshitta as zḥwrytʾ (Ex. 39: 1 etc.), derives from the word tōlēʿā, tōlāʿ “worm, maggot”. Consequently, if sāsgaunā is an accurate translation of karmīl, it seems evident that its first element should be cognate with Syriac and Aramaic sās, sāsā “moth, grub, worm”.

An apparent difficulty with this hypothesis is of course the fact that sās-gaunā “worm-colour” would represent a type of compound which is well-attested in Iranian (and in Indo-European languages in general) but quite foreign to Semitic. The obvious solution is that the compound was not formed in Syriac or Aramaic but in an Iranian language. It is a pleasure to find that this was recognized as long ago as 1794 by Georg Wilhelm Lorsbach,Footnote 14 who defined the meaning of Syriac sāsgaunā as “Wurmfarbe” and “wurmfärbig”, i.e. “scharlachroth”, and derived it from a Persian compound *sūsgūn. In view of the discrepancy in the vocalism of the first syllable, this explanation is not wholly acceptable as formulated by Lorsbach; moreover, Persian sūs “moth, grub, etc.” is almost certainly a borrowing from Arabic.Footnote 15 However, the problem disappears if we replace Lorsbach's Persian *sūsgūn with a Middle Persian *sāsgōn, assuming an earlier borrowing direct from Aramaic sās, or even from Akkadian sāsu. In fact, sās is attested both in New Persian, where its modern meaning is “bed-bug”,Footnote 16 and in Middle Persian, where sās is mentioned beside kayk “flea” as a noxious insect.Footnote 17

Although Lorsbach was hardly correct in postulating a Persian *sūsgūn as the source of Syriac sāsgaunā, it is probable that such a form did eventually come into existence as a modification of the older *sāsgōn. Thus, the Syriac–Arabic lexicon of Jirjis al-Karmsaddānī (George Karmsedinoyo), composed in 1619,Footnote 18 gives the spelling swsgwnʾ, vocalized sūsgaunā, beside sāsgaunā and săsgaunā, together with a variety of definitions which largely derive from Bar Bahlul. In this connection it is also worth noting the Arabic interpretation of sāsgaunā in II Chronicles 2 as swsnjrd “needle-work”,Footnote 19 which may be a corruption of *swsjwn = Persian *sūsgūn.

2. synqʾ [syānqā]

This word seems to be attested in a single passage from the Acts of the Persian martyrs under Shapur II, where the king tries to bribe Barbaʿshmin, the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, with a golden cup containing “a thousand syānqe of gold”.Footnote 20 It so happens that this passage is also attested in a Sogdian version, which has “a thousand kēsarakān”, i.e. “(coins) of Caesar”,Footnote 21 using a term which elsewhere translates dinārā “denarius”.Footnote 22

The meaning most commonly given for syānqā in Syriac dictionaries, both ancient and modern, is “hemi-drachm”. This interpretation goes back to Elias of Nisibis, who gives the Arabic translation niṣf dirham “half of a dirham”,Footnote 23 while Bar Bahlul has both niṣf dirham and dānaq,Footnote 24 the latter being the Persian term for “one sixth of a drachm”, i.e. “obol”. The various manuscripts of Bar Ali's dictionary give even more alternatives, ranging from “half of a dirham” via “quarter of a dirham (rubʿ dirham)” to “one sixth of a dirham (suds dirham), dānaq”.Footnote 25

What is evidently the same coin is also referred to in Talmudic Aramaic as syynqʾ, pl. syʾnqy, zyʾnqy,Footnote 26 and in Mandaic as sianqa, pl. sianqia.Footnote 27 In Mandaic sianqa contrasts with danqa “obol”, which would seem to rule out the interpretation of Syriac syānqā as being identical with the dānaq. Of the various translations suggested by the dictionaries, there remain the quarter and half drachm, the latter explanation being the one preferred by most authorities, no doubt rightly so, since the Sasanians never minted a quarter drachm.

Though it does not seem to be attested in any Persian text, the fact that syānqā is a Persian word is likely from the context in which it appears and has in fact never been doubted. Two different Persian etymologies have been proposed. The first goes back once again to G.W. Lorsbach,Footnote 28 who suggested a Persian sih yakkah “one third”, with replacement of [kk] by [nk]. In order to explain the discrepancy between this meaning and the “hemi-drachm” indicated by the dictionaries he ingeniously, but anachronistically, proposed that half of a drachm was equivalent to one third of the Arabic miṯqāl and was named accordingly. Lorsbach's etymology held sway throughout the nineteenth century, being accepted (with some modifications and with various degrees of hesitation) by a number of scholars including Spiegel, de Lagarde and Hübschmann.Footnote 29 A new etymology from Persian sih (better: Middle Persian s ē̆) “three” plus the distributive suffix -ānak was proposed by Brockelmann in 1928 and adopted by Ciancaglini in 2008.Footnote 30 While this is in some ways an improvement on Lorsbach's explanation, the expected meaning of such a formation would be “three by three” rather than “a third part” as assumed by Brockelmann; moreover, the problem remains that our sources suggest that the syānqā is a half, or possibly a quarter, not a third of the drachm. It seems therefore that Telegdi and Geiger were fully justified in regarding all attempts so far at a Persian etymology of syānqā as unsatisfactory.Footnote 31

As mentioned above, the drachm, the main unit of currency in Sasanian Iran, was equivalent to six smaller units known in Greek as obolos but in Persian as dānak, later dāng. If syānqā is a hemi-drachm it should be equivalent to three obols. In my opinion that is exactly what its name indicates: *siyānak from Old Iranian *θri-dānaka-, Old Persian *çi-dānaka- “three dānaks”.

Phonologically this derivation presents no problems, as an intervocalic *d regularly gives y in Middle Persian. Two historical problems need to be addressed, however. In the first place, the hemi-drachm, which had been minted under the earliest Sasanians, had already fallen out of use by the time of Shapur II,Footnote 32 the king who is supposed to have offered “a thousand syānqe of gold” to Barbaʿshmin. Secondly, both the drachm and the hemi-drachm were coins of silver, not gold.

These two problems may have a common solution. We may start from the assumption that *siyānak was originally a hemi-drachm as its name implies. Once the silver hemi-drachm was no longer minted, the name would lose its specific application and could simply function as a “half” of any unit. Similarly, the Persian term šaš dāng, originally “six dānaks”, i.e. “a whole drachm”, came to be used for “six sixths whether of a dirham or a dīnār-miθqāl”Footnote 33 and later still of anything complete or perfect, e.g. šaš dāng-e jahān “the whole world”, cf. also Sogdian xwšdʾnc mrγʾrt “a perfect pearl”.Footnote 34 Mandaic has š̤ar danqa < Persian čahār dāng, which looks as if it should mean “four sixths”, i.e. “two thirds”.Footnote 35 The fact remains that the standard Sasanian gold coin (in so far as such a thing existed, since gold was generally used only for special “festive” issues) was the dinar, and that neither Shapur II nor any other Sasanian king minted a half dinar. The reference in the martyrdom of Barbaʿshmin to “syānqe of gold” cannot therefore be regarded as historically accurate.

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Agnes Korn, who kindly allowed me to read her article “Arménien karmir, sogdien krmʾyr et hébreu karmīl «rouge»”, BSOAS 79/1, 2016, 1–22, in advance of publication and thus provided the impetus for the first of these notes, and who also provided valuable comments on its first draft. See also Agnes Korn and Georg Warning, “Armenian karmir, Sogdian karmīr ‘red’, Hebrew karmīl and the Armenian scale insect dye in antiquity”, in Marie Louise Nosch, Cécile Michel et al. (eds), Textile Terminologies – from the Orient to the Mediterranean 1000 BC–AD 1000 (forthcoming).

References

1 Sokoloff, Michael, A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum (Winona Lake and Piscataway, 2009)Google Scholar; Brock, Sebastian P. and Kiraz, George A., Gorgias Concise Syriac–English, English–Syriac Dictionary (Piscataway, 2015)Google Scholar.

2 Smith, J. Payne, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903)Google Scholar.

3 Ciancaglini, Claudia A., Iranian Loanwords in Syriac (Wiesbaden, 2008), 224Google Scholar.

4 Duval, Rubens, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule, II (Paris, 1901), col. 1365–6Google Scholar.

5 Shaked, Shaul, “Iranian loanwords in Middle Aramaic”, in Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.), Encyclopædia Iranica, II/3 (London, 1986), 259–61Google Scholar (where the Aramaic form is misprinted šsgwnʾ with initial š-, p. 261a); “Items of dress and other objects in common use: Iranian loanwords in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic”, in Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer (eds), Irano-Judaica, III, Jerusalem, 1994, 106–17, esp. 112–4.

6 Thus Philippe Gignoux apud Ciancaglini, Iranian Loanwords, 224.

7 Shaked, “Items of dress”, 114, refers rather vaguely to the “assimilation and dissimilation of consonants involving sibilants” but it is hard to see the relevance of the words he cites in this connection: Aramaic ṭas “plate”, Arabic ṭass “cup” < Middle Persian tašt (or perhaps rather from its expected by-form *tast); Middle Persian tis “someone” beside Parthian čiš, both ultimately from Old Iranian *čisčit. Sogdian has several examples of s assimilating to š ( Gershevitch, Ilya, A Grammar of Manichean Sogdian (Oxford, 1954), §450Google Scholar), but not of the reverse.

8 Dalley, Stephanie, “Hebrew taḥaš, Akkadian duhšu, faience and beadwork”, Journal of Semitic Studies 45, 2000, 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Feliks, Jehuda, “Taḥash”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills and Detroit, 2007), XIX, 435Google Scholar. See also Dalley, “Hebrew taḥaš”, 2.

10 Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine period, 2nd ed. (Ramat-Gan and Baltimore, 2002), 384Google Scholar.

11 Shaked, “Items of dress”, 112 n. 57.

12 On the former see Jehuda Feliks, “Tekhelet”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., XIX, 586–7, and in particular I.I. Ziderman, “First identification of authentic Tĕkēlet”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 265, 1987, 25–33, though it should be noted that Ziderman's claims gave rise to considerable debate: see McGovern, P.E. et al. , “Has authentic Tĕkēlet been identified?”, BASOR, 269, 1988, 81–90 Google Scholar.

13 See Korn, “Arménien karmir”.

14 Lorsbach, Georg Wilhelm, Archiv für die Biblische und Morgenländische Literatur, II (Marburg, 1794), 304–6Google Scholar, which is cited by Smith, R. Payne, Thesaurus Syriacus (Oxford, 1879–1901)Google Scholar, col. 2682, with an incorrect page reference.

15 It is perhaps an open question what connections there may be between such superficially similar terms for “worm, grub, moth” as Akkadian sāsu, Aramaic sās, Arabic sūs, Greek σής, Armenian c̣ec̣, Basque sats, sits.

16 Haïm, S., The One-Volume Persian–English Dictionary (Tehran, 1961)Google Scholar, 431.

17 MacKenzie, D.N., A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary (London, 1971), 74Google Scholar; Williams, A.V., The Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg (Copenhagen, 1990)Google Scholar, I, 114–5, 333; II, 46 (where sʾs, 21a17, is an emendation for sʾš).

18 Cited in R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, col. 2682.

19 This form is cited by Gesenius, Guilielmus (Wilhelm), De Bar Alio et Bar Bahlulo, lexicographis syro-arabicis ineditis commentatio, II (Leipzig, 1839), 23Google Scholar, but with an erroneous explanation (“lily-coloured”, from Persian sūsan “lily” and -čarda “coloured”). On Arabic sūsanjird for Persian sōzankard “needle-work”, Niya Kharoṣṭhī su ȷ́ inakirta, see Lüders, Heinrich, Textilien im alten Turkistan (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1936, Nr. 3), 31–2Google Scholar.

20 Bedjan, Paulus, Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, II (Paris, 1891)Google Scholar, 299, line 20.

21 E27 (formerly C2), f. 69v, line 14, ed. Sims-Williams, Nicholas, The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C 2 (Berliner Turfantexte, XII, Berlin, 1985), 146Google Scholar.

22 Luke 10.35, ed. Müller, F.W.K., Soghdische Texte I (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1912, Nr. 2), 36Google Scholar.

23 de Lagarde, P., Praetermissorum Libri Duo (Göttingen, 1879), 58Google Scholar.

24 Duval, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule, II, col. 1344.

25 Gottheil, R.J.H., The Syriac–Arabic Glosses of Īshōʿ Bar ʿAlī, Part II (Rome, 1908), 163Google Scholar.

26 Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic periods (Ramat-Gan and Baltimore, 2002), 802Google Scholar.

27 Drower, E.S. and Macuch, R., A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford, 1963), 324Google Scholar.

28 In Arnoldi, Albrecht Jacob et al. , Museum für biblische und orientalische Litteratur, I/1 (Marburg, 1807), 26–7Google Scholar.

29 Spiegel, Fr., Grammatik der Huzvâresch-Sprache (Vienna, 1856), 77–8Google Scholar; de Lagarde, Paul, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Leipzig, 1866), 71Google Scholar; Hübschmann, Heinrich, Armenische Grammatik, I (Leipzig, 1897), 237Google Scholar.

30 Brockelmann, Carl, Lexicon Syriacum, 2nd ed. (Halle, 1928), 472Google Scholar; Ciancaglini, Iranian Loanwords, 221–2.

31 Telegdi, S., “Essai sur la phonétique des emprunts iraniens en araméen talmudique”, Journal Asiatique, 226, 1935, 177–256 Google Scholar, esp. p. 197; Bernhard Geiger in Krauss, Samuel et al. , Additamenta ad librum Aruch Completum (Vienna, 1937), 171Google Scholar [non vidi].

32 Göbl, Robert, Sasanian Numismatics (Braunschweig, 1971), 27Google Scholar; Schindel, Nikolaus, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Paris – Berlin – Wien, III/1 (Vienna, 2004), 103Google Scholar. Göbl's statement (op. cit., 29) that “the name of the half-drachm piece was … unknown” can now be revised.

33 Hinz, Walther, Islamische Masse und Gewichte (Handbuch der Orientalistik, Ergänzungsband 1, Heft 1, Leiden, 1955), 11Google Scholar.

34 See Yoshida, Yutaka, “Sogdian miscellany”, Studia Iranica, 13, 1984, 145–9Google Scholar, esp. 146 n. 2; Sims-Williams, Nicholas, Biblical and other Christian Sogdian Texts from the Turfan Collection (Berliner Turfantexte, XXXII, Turnhout, 2014), 103Google Scholar.

35 Rather than “double” with Drower and Macuch, Mandaic Dictionary, 100.