The Semitic verbs in Peblevi. 
13 
Persian verbs, such as frorn the Arabic verbal noun 
or Hindi tahsllnä, ,to collect', from the Arabic noun 
(Beames. Comp. Gr. I, p. 40. Temple. Gloss. p. 213) 
are formed in exactly the same manner. 1 
While strongly asserting the pbonetic value of the Pehlevi 
letters, when tliey represent Semitic words, I readily grant 
that tliese words could be and were really very often, especially 
in modern times and by tlie illiterate, replaced by their Iranian 
equivalents. This is also the opinion of the best Pehlevi scholar, 
West, whose words are: ,The Semitic portion of the Pehlevi 
writing -— seeins to have formed no part of the spoken lan- 
guage, at all events in later times.' ,We have no reason to 
suppose that the spoken language of the great mass of the 
Persian people ever contained the Semitic words'. ,— as the 
actual sounds of these Semitic words were rarely pronounced.' 
,The Compilers of the glossary 2 had in some instances lost the 
correct pronunciation of these old Semitic words.' ,There 
is every reason to suppose that the Semitic portion of the 
Pehlevi was never pronounced by the Persians as it was 
written, unless, indeed, in the earliest times'. (S. B. E. t. V, 
pp. XIV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, t. XVIII, p. XXI). Quite recently 
the same view has been expressed by Iduart (Rev. crit. 1902, 
t. I, p. 382). 
This method of translating a foreign or obsolete word by 
a native one could very appropriately styled ,spelling', and 
that, mothinks, is the meaning of the term ,Xuzvares', which 
may be derived from xuzvan ,tongue', 3 hy the side of which 
we can suppose *xuzvar, cf. skr. pivan, n'unv, pivarl, n[eiga 
and ahan, aliar. It is true that n and r are also written by 
the same sign, so that supposing xuzvan to be the primitive 
form, xuzvar could arise by a misunderstanding of the final 
letter, but, on the one hand, I am not aware of other examples 
1 In Germany one may hear er hat geschöt ,he played 1 , from the French 
jeu, and in Vienna er verneglischiert sich ,he neglects himself 1 , from 
the French ncgliijer. 
1 The Pehlevi-Pazend glossary published by Hang. 
3 On different opinions regarding the etymology of this Word see Jamasp 
Asana’s Pahlavi-English dictionary, t,. I, pp. XLIV sqq.