Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Smail Matloobcari ¹
• Nayereh Dalir ²

¹ Phd َand researcher of history, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran

² Associated professor of History,Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The present article aims to study the words that can be applied to the socio-political concept of "people" in the Old Persian version of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions and according to the evidence equivalent to all or part of this concept. The present study with the approach of conceptual history based on linguistic analysis of Old Persian inscriptions has tried to examine these words and their relation to the concept of "people", as socio-political activists, from the perspective of social and political functions and meanings. Hence, it seeks an answer to the question of what is the equivalent or conveying words of the concept of people in the Old Persian version of these inscriptions and how can their function and social meaning be explained in the political context? In response, it is assumed that each of the stems martiya-, zana-, bandaka- and kāra- reflect a part of the socio-political concept of "people" in Old Persian inscriptions. The findings of the study examined the function and meaning of each of the four stems mentioned as "man", "soldier", "subjects and followers of the government", "inhabitants of the land", and "people/army" in Old Persian inscriptions.

Keywords

• people
• bandaka-
• kāra-
• martiya-
• zana-

Extended Abstract

A Study of the Function and Meaning of the Four Words Transmitter the Socio-Political Concept of "People" in Old Persian Inscriptions

Old Persian was the language of the ancient Persian people and one of the three all-encompassing languages ​​that are included in Achaemenid Royal inscriptions. This article aims to study words from this language that refer to the socio-political concept of "people" in Achaemenid inscriptions and are equivalent to all or part of this concept. The study of these inscriptions opens the way to the question of what is the equivalent or conveying words of the concept of people in the Old Persian version of these inscriptions and how can their function and social meaning be explained? It seems that martiya-, zana-, bandaka- and kāra- are stems that reflect part of the socio-political concept of "people" in old Persian.

Despite the few surviving words from Old Persian, understanding the concept and distinction of these words plays an important role in understanding historical concepts. For this reason, in this article, by adopting an approach based on conceptual history, linguistic analysis of several words from Achaemenid inscriptions has been used to understand the concept of "people". Since "people" is the main subject and the most central concept in social history, understanding the linguistic origins of the concept of "people" and its relationship with social and political relations is one of the most essential components of understanding this fundamental concept. It should be noted that in this study, the people are inhabitants of a land or territory consisting of several lands that are united under one government and have social and political action.

The socio-political concept of bandaka- has been studied in the Old and Middle Persian periods by Pierre Briant (Briant, 1996: 336-7) and Maria Macuch (Macuch, 1988: 764). Both researchers have concluded that this word and its middle Persian equivalent, bandag, can be studied in the sense of subject and subordinate. Rüdiger Schmitt (Schmitt, 2014: 201) also points to the possibility of kāra- similarities with Männerbund. Thus, he drew the attention of scholars to the non-Iranian and pre-Achaemenid backgrounds studied by Wikander (1938) and Widengren (Widengren, 1969: 9-44), which was followed by Daryaee until the Islamic period (Daryaee, 2018). Schmitt (Schmitt, 2014: 294) and Kent (Kent, 1953: 196, 208, 211) have also studied the linguistic presence of zana- in Old Persian compositions. Parsa Daneshmand (Daneshmand, 2015: 330) and Matthew Stolper (Stolper, 1984: 299, 303) have also paid attention to the use and borrowing of the Old Persian form of this word in the Persepolis fortification tablets were written the Elamite, and Akkadian, languages.

In Persian, the word mardōm, which in Middle and New Persian means "man or human", is used to express the meaning of people. Today, mardōm has the same meaning as demos or populus, but from a socio-political point of view, mardōm has a different meaning from these words. The etymology of mardōm, from the root  meaning to die, indicates that this word, unlike the Greek and Latin equivalents which have a worldly and socio-political meaning, has essentially a moral-religious connotation. the ancient form of this word is not mentioned In Achaemenid inscriptions, but equivalent words have been used to describe the socio-political features related to the concept of people.

The findings of this study indicate that martiya-, zana-, bandaka- and kāra- reflect part of the socio-political concept of "people" in the Old Persian and correspond to different functions and meanings such as "man", "soldier", "subject, and followers of the government", "inhabitants of the land", and "people/army".