Old Persian, or their languages had very close kinship with each other.

Old Persian, or their languages had very close kinship with each other. We find no traces of the Median language in the Achaemenian inscriptions. Apparently, if the Medes had spoken a different language, the Achaemenian emperors who had employed the Syriac, Ealmite, and Nabataean languages in their inscriptions would certainly not have ignored Median.

Moreover, a couple of words of this language and the names of the Median chiefs that have come down to us suffice to establish the close affinity of Median with Old Persian. From 330 B.C. when the Macedonians conquered Iran, Greek became the official language of the country and continued to enjoy the status for a long time. Right down to the Christian era Greek is the only language to be seen in the Seleucid and Parthian writings.

Needless to say that during this span of three and a half centuries the Iranian languages continued to flourish. Old Persian, however, is an exception, which gradually went out of use. We can witness definite marks of decay in the Old Persian writings of the later Achaemenian period in contrast with those of the earlier one. At the dawn of the Christian era we find two languages in the Iranian plateau running parallel to each other. One of these grew and developed in the eastern regions.

This has always been called “Dari” by the Iranians. The other which flourished in the western parts of the country was known as “Pahlawi.” These two languages have come down to our own times. Many dialects of “Dari” still continue to exist in the eastern regions of the Iranian plateau as far as the Chinese frontiers: the most important of these are spoken in the Pamir region.

The Pahlawi language has lived in the form of verse known as “Fahlaviyyat,” in the books written in Persian on the art of poetry and in dialects spoken in the north, south, and west of the country. The above-mentioned two languages have very intimate relationship and these have apparently stemmed from the same origin. A number of Aramaic words, however, entered Pahlawi and these have been known as “Huzvaresh” or “Zuwarishn.” These words found their way also into books of lexicography.

In the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent these have been erroneously given the name of the “Zend and Pazard” language. “Dari” was too far away to receive the impact of the Aramaic language. On the contrary, it accepted the influence of the eastern languages such as Tukhari, Sughdian, and Khwarizmi.