Iranian Languages as Gardens

The main West Iranian languages, i.e. Old Persian, Parthian, Middle Persian, New Persian and – in some respects – Avestan, may be studied in a uniquely continuous development stretching over close to 3 000 years. These languages are not only the result of their genetic inter-relations but also of their cultural, religious and political history. They may be labelled ‘high languages’ (‘Hochsprachen’), in the sense that they are cultured and standardized and used for a great number of purposes by people of various linguistic backgrounds. This article presents an over-view of their development seen from a specific perspective. The traditional Iranian walled-in garden, the pairi-daēza-of the Avesta, is used as a metaphor for a high language in contrast to the free vegetation of spontaneous human speech in social interaction. The latter is here called ‘dialect’, a concept that includes both ‘geolect ’ and ‘sociolect’. These high language ‘gardens ’ are thus viewed as a kind of cultural artefacts. Among other things, this has implications for views on the dichotomy literacy/orality, showing that writing is not language and that ‘orality ’ belongs both to ‘high language ’ and ‘dialect’. It is furthermore argued that literacy and orality were present in complementary distribution throughout the whole known history of the Iranian cultural sphere