بازنگري كتيبه پهلوي بر صليبهاي سنگي

The Pahlavi Inscription on Stone Crosses Revisited

From among the extant Pahlavi inscriptions, the inscription carved around six stone crosses is of great importance. The script used in this inscription shows the transition from inscriptional Pahlavi to book Pahlavi. All these six stone crosses have been discovered in southern India and probably belong to the 7th century AD. These crosses were made by the Syrian Christians who had migrated to India. So far many attempts have been made by scholars to read and translate this Pahlavi inscription, but none of them seems to be satisfactory. In this paper, the author proposes a new reading and translation of this inscription on the basis of linguistic evidence and shows that the language of the inscription is Dari Persian, not Middle Persian.