Iranic Languages

Iranic Languages form one of the main -divisions of the Aryan linguistic family [Aryan Languages], somewhat intermediate between the Indie and Hellenic, but considerably more akin to the former than to the latter branch. There are three distinct groups, the first comprising the Old Baktrian, commonly called Zend, in which are composed the Avesta and Little Avesta (Vendidad, Vispered, and Yasna), that is, the sacred writing of the Zoroastrian religion, and which is now best represented by the Pushtu (Pukhtu) of Afghanistan, and the Galoha tongues of the Iagnob valley and Kafiristan; the second comprising the Old Persian of the trilingual cuneiform inscriptions (1st column), whieh later degenerated into the mixed Irano-Semitic Pehlvi (Huzvaresh), and ultimately died out after the overthrow of the Sassanid dynasty by "the Moslem Arabs in the 7th century, it is now best represented by the modern Persian literary language, which took its rise in Fars (Persia proper) about the year 1000 A.D., and to which the vernaculars of Kurdistan, Baluchistan, and Luristan (Bakhtiari Highlands) are cognate. The third group comprises the Medio, that is, the language of the middle column, which was probably the ancestor of the Old and later Armenian, and of the Ossetian, still current in the Darel district, Central Caucasus. Armenian preserves many of the old Aryan grammatical forms, which have mostly disappeared both in the modern Persian and Afghan, both now highly analytical and also mixed with numerous Arabic terms and expressions. (Burnout, Lassen, Rawlinson, Joseph Muller, Spiegel, Mohl.)