Nicholas Sims-Williams
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 697756 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Nicholas Sims-Williams |
| NOMBRES | Nicholas |
| APELLIDO | Sims-Williams |
| FIRMA | SIMS-WILLIAMS N |
| AFILIACIONES | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7444-2376 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 50 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 83 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 48 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1972 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Two unpublished Bactrian documents in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait
Bactrian, the principal written language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, was little known until the early 1990s, when more than 150 contracts, economic documents and letters, together with a few Buddhist texts, were acquired by collectors. Most of these were published by Nicholas Sims-Williams between 2001 and 2012 in three volumes entitled Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan . The present article presents two additional documents which have…
Further Old Khotanese Texts in ‘Metre B’
Old Khotanese poetry makes use of three metres, conventionally referred to as A, B and C. The metre of the longest surviving Old Khotanese poem, the Book of Zambasta (Z) was analysed in detail in Sims-Williams 2022, which was followed by a series of articles studying the use of metre C in other texts and fragments, in order to determine to what extent their treatment of this metre conforms to the practice of Z. The present article applies the sam…
Metre and Stress in Old Khotanese
In Sims-Williams 2022 I argued that the metre of the Old Khotanese Book of Zambasta combines quantitative and accentual principles. This conclusion has been disputed by Marco Fattori (2025), who claims that Old Khotanese metre is exclusively quantitative. In the present article I attempt to re-establish the role of stress, showing that Fattori’s analysis is unduly abstract and fails to account for significant features of the metrical system
A Handbook of Khotanese
Chapter 11.1.Khotanese is written in a variety of script of Indian origin known as Brhm.The variety of Brhm script in which Khotanese was written was peculiar to Central Asia.It was adapted by the Khotanese for writing an Iranian language that had a different phonemic system from those of Indian languages (see Figure 1 on p. 7). 1.2.The following consonant phonemes appear to have been similar in both Khotanese and Indian (Sanskrit): /p/ written p…
Hossein Sheikh. Studies of Bactrian Legal Documents
This is a revised and expanded version of the author’s Göttingen PhD dissertation. The Bactrian documents which have come to light since the early 1990s include at least 35 contracts and receipts dating from the 4th to the 8th century CE. Sheikh analyses both the external format (e.g. single and double documents, use of sealings) and the internal content and structure (e.g. dating, witness lists, warranty clause) of the Bactrian legal documents. …
Metrical passages in the Khotanese Saṃghāṭa-sūtra
The Buddhist Sanskrit Saṃghāṭa-sūtra includes several longer or shorter passages in verse, mostly śloka s. Many though not all of these verse passages also appear in metrical form in the Khotanese version, which makes use of all three of the metres known from the longest Old Khotanese poem, the Book of Zambasta . The aim of the present article is to analyse these metrical passages in order to determine to what extent the treatment of the metres c…
Plural and Collective in the Sogdian Ancient Letters
In most varieties of Sogdian, all regular plural forms of nouns and adjectives are formed with a suffix which derives from the Old Iranian collective suffix *‐ tā ‐. In the earliest substantial Sogdian documents, however, the so‐called ‘Ancient Letters’ of the early 4th century ce , it can be shown that forms with this suffix differ in their syntax as well as their morphology from the plural forms inherited from Old Iranian and thus form a gramma…
A Buddhist technical term in Christian Sogdian
This article surveys the Indian (Sanskrit and Prakrit) loanwords used in the Christian literature in Sogdian, including some which have not been noticed previously. In particular, it discusses a possible borrowing of the Buddhist Sanskrit technical term citta-saṃtāna-, used in a Christian Sogdian text in the sense train of thought
Another pre-Sasanian Middle Persian inscription
A pre-Sasanian Middle Persian inscription on a silver bowl is published here for the first time and compared with a similar inscription published by P. O. Skjærvø in 2000 and identified by him as naming members of the dynasty which ruled Persis (Fārs) in the 1st century bce . The commentary concentrates on the word šʾtḥw, apparently a name for this type of bowl, and on the importance of these inscriptions for the history of the Pahlavi script
Sogdian Documents from Khotan, II
A group of Sogdian documents from the area of Khotan was recently acquired by Renmin University of China, Beijing. Four economic documents were edited in JAOS 130/4 (2010); the present article, comprising the edition of one complete letter and several fragments of letters, completes the publication of this collection, which adds to a growing body of evidence for the presence of Sogdian-speakers on the trade routes to the south of the Taklamakan d…
Epitaph of a Buddhist Lady
The inscription edited in this paper is the third bilingual Chinese-Sogdian epitaph to be made known, following that of Wirkakk (Shijun) and Wiyusi and that of Nanai-vande and Kekan, published in 2005 and 2017 respectively. The new epitaph is that of a Sogdian lady who died in 736 CE. Apart from its linguistic interest, it is important as attesting the conversion of a Sogdian lady to the "heretical" Buddhist Sanjie or "Three levels" movement, whi…
The Sogdian epitaph of Shi Jun and his wife
Three bilingual Chinese and Sogdian epitaphs have been discovered and published in recent years. The first of these forms part of the tomb of Wirkakk, alias Shi Jun 史君 "Mr Shi", and his wife Wiyusi, who were buried in 580 ce in Chang'an, the capital of the Northern Zhou. This article provides some corrections to the previous editions of the Sogdian version and attempts to elucidate points which have so far appeared obscure
A Dictionary: Christian Sogdian, Syriac and English
The Bactrian Documents as a Historical Source
Les connaissances sans frontières, hier et aujourd’hui
Sims-Williams Nicholas. Les connaissances sans frontières, hier et aujourd’hui. In: Comptes-rendus des séances de l année - Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 163e année, N. 4, 2019. pp. 1375-1380
Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan
Two Iranian loanwords in Syriac
This article discusses two Syriac words which have been understood in many different ways by both ancient and modern scholars. The translations and etymologies previously proposed are evaluated and new explanations are offered, according to which both words,sāsgaunā"red" andsyānqā"hemi-drachm", are loanwords from Middle Persian, though unattested in that language
Another Sogdian-Chinese bilingual epitaph
Two stone tablets in the Wangye Museum, Shenzhen, contain a bilingual Sogdian and Chinese epitaph for a Sogdian merchant and his wife, who lived in the northern Chinese city of Ye 鄴 in the late sixth centuryce. The two texts are published here for the first time and accompanied by a detailed commentary on philological and historical points of interest
Die Entwicklung von Demonstrativpronomen zu Artikeln im Soghdischen, written by Antje Wendtland
A Dictionary
Many works of Syriac literature, including some now lost, were translated into Sogdian, a language of the Iranian family. This Dictionary makes the whole material accessible to both Iranists and Syriacists, giving a full semantic and morphological analysis of the attested Christian Sogdian vocabulary. The first part, arranged by Sogdian lemmata, also indicates the various Syriac words which each Sogdian form translates, while the second part, arr…
Bactrian documents from Northern Afghanistan
During the last twenty years, more than 150 documents in Bactrian, the language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, have come to light. These documents, which have been deciphered and published by Nicholas Sims-Williams, provide unique information on the history of Afghanistan and neighbouring lands in the 4th to 8th centuries C.E., as well as revealing a Middle Iranian language which was hardly known before. The purpose of the present volume is to illus…
Seals, Sealings, and Tokens from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th century CE)
Early New Persian in Syriac script
The German Turfan collection includes fragments of two Early New Persian manuscripts in Syriac script, a bilingual (Syriac and New Persian) Psalter and a pharmacological handbook containing prescriptions similar to those in the Syriac Book of Medicines published by E. A. W. Budge. Both texts make use of certain non-Syriac characters, some of which were also used for writing Sogdian while others may have been created especially for writing Persian…
Bactrian Personal Names
From the time of the Kushan Empire (1st to 3rd centuries C.E.) until the early Islamic period, Bactrian was the principal language of administration in what is now Afghanistan. The surviving Bactrian inscriptions and documents, coins and countermarks, seals and sealings attest a large number of personal names, whose various linguistic origins â Persian, Sogdian, Indian, Hunnic, Turkish, and of course native Bactrian â mirror the variety of people…
Les plus anciens monuments de la langue sogdienne
National audience
Seals, Sealings, and Tokens from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th century CE)
Bactrian Personal Names
From the time of the Kushan Empire (1st to 3rd centuries C.E.) until the early Islamic period, Bactrian was the principal language of administration in what is now Afghanistan. The surviving Bactrian inscriptions and documents, coins and countermarks, seals and sealings attest a large number of personal names, whose various linguistic origins â Persian, Sogdian, Indian, Hunnic, Turkish, and of course native Bactrian â mirror the variety of people…
Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan
The Sogdian fragments of the British library
Chotano-Sogdica
The appearance of Sir Harold Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka brings to completion a project conceived as long ago as 1934 and initiated in 1945 with the publication ofKhotanese texts, I. The next two decades saw the appearance of five further volumes of texts (Khotanese Buddhist texts, 1951, and Khotanese texts, II-v, 1954-63) as well as of a much-admired volume of lexical commentary, Khotanese texts, VI: Prolexis to the Book of Zambasta (1967…
A Hunnish Kushan-shah
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen I
The Nachlass of Olaf Hansen, which I was able to examine in Kiel in 1985 through the kindness of his son Lars Hansen, includes transcriptions of several Christian Sogdian texts of which neither the original manuscript nor even a photograph seems to be extant. In such cases Hansen's transcriptions attain the status of primary sources. Amongst them are four fragments belonging to two different manuscripts of the Life of Serapion, the Syriac text of…
Eine sanskrit-sogdische Bilingue in Brāhmī
Bei der Durchsicht der Brāhmī-Handschriften der " Mainzer Sammlung / [Mz]1 entdeckte einer der beiden Verfasser [Maue] mit Mz 639 ein Fragment, das neben Sanskrit eine Übersetzungssprache enthielt, die aufgrund einiger Indizien dem Iranischen, am ehesten dem Sogdischen, zuzuordnen war. Anhand einer ersten vorlä ufigen Umschrift konnte Professor R. E. Emmerick (Hamburg) das Sakische ausschlieβen. Der zweite Autor [Sims-Williams] erkannte darin zwe…
On the plural and dual in Sogdian
As a result of the gradual attrition of final syllables, which caused the Old Iranian nominal plural endings to become insufficiently distinct from those of the singular, the plural was extensively remodelled in almost all Middle and New Iranian languages. Such renovation could come about in two ways. Either the more distinctive pl. inflexions, such as the gen. *-ānām or the instr. and dat. forms containing *b, could be extended or adapted to sup…
A Pakthian sound-change
The existence of M Sogd.prqyš- 'to imprison', past stemprkšṯ-, and the meaning of the associated B Sogd. nounprk'š'imprisonment' were first established by Henning in 1936. Later he recognized also the equivalent Parth. verbprg'c- 'to incarcerate'. For the alternation betweenšandčhe compared NPāγōš: Parth. 'gwc('side') and MPāgustan<*ākuštan: Sogd.ākōč-/ākuγd- ('to suspend'), remarking that 'the discrepancy is found only in syllables that begin wi…
Metrical passages in the Khotanese Saṃghāṭa-sūtra
The Buddhist Sanskrit Saṃghāṭa-sūtra includes several longer or shorter passages in verse, mostly śloka s. Many though not all of these verse passages also appear in metrical form in the Khotanese version, which makes use of all three of the metres known from the longest Old Khotanese poem, the Book of Zambasta . The aim of the present article is to analyse these metrical passages in order to determine to what extent the treatment of the metres c…
A Buddhist technical term in Christian Sogdian
This article surveys the Indian (Sanskrit and Prakrit) loanwords used in the Christian literature in Sogdian, including some which have not been noticed previously. In particular, it discusses a possible borrowing of the Buddhist Sanskrit technical term citta-saṃtāna-, used in a Christian Sogdian text in the sense train of thought
New studies on the verbal system of Old and Middle Iranian
Despite the similar titles of the two books reviewed here, they are very different in aims and scope. While Samadi's book is primarily an etymological dictionary of verb forms, Kellens's is in effect the first volume of a comprehensive Avestan grammar, as a companion to which the author promises ' in the near future' (p. 435) a complete lexicon of the Avestan verb. What they do have in common, in addition to the relationship in subject-matter ind…
The final paragraph of the tomb-inscription of Darius I (DNb, 50-60)
The great inscription of Darius I at Bisitun has hitherto been the only Achaemenid inscription known to exist not only in the three versions carved on the rock-face-Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian-but also in an Aramaic translation on papyrus. The fragmentary scroll containing the Aramaic text was first published by Sachau in 1911. In general, the Aramaic version agrees closely with the Babylonian and is therefore comparatively easy to interp…
The Sogdian epitaph of Shi Jun and his wife
Three bilingual Chinese and Sogdian epitaphs have been discovered and published in recent years. The first of these forms part of the tomb of Wirkakk, alias Shi Jun 史君 "Mr Shi", and his wife Wiyusi, who were buried in 580 ce in Chang'an, the capital of the Northern Zhou. This article provides some corrections to the previous editions of the Sogdian version and attempts to elucidate points which have so far appeared obscure
Another Sogdian-Chinese bilingual epitaph
Two stone tablets in the Wangye Museum, Shenzhen, contain a bilingual Sogdian and Chinese epitaph for a Sogdian merchant and his wife, who lived in the northern Chinese city of Ye 鄴 in the late sixth centuryce. The two texts are published here for the first time and accompanied by a detailed commentary on philological and historical points of interest
Early New Persian in Syriac script
The German Turfan collection includes fragments of two Early New Persian manuscripts in Syriac script, a bilingual (Syriac and New Persian) Psalter and a pharmacological handbook containing prescriptions similar to those in the Syriac Book of Medicines published by E. A. W. Budge. Both texts make use of certain non-Syriac characters, some of which were also used for writing Sogdian while others may have been created especially for writing Persian…
A bactrian god
The Kushan god μοζδοοανο is attested on a group of rare coins of Kanishka I, where he is depicted as a bearded male bearing a trident in his right hand and riding a two-headed horse. It has been universally assumed that the name μοζδοοανο is connected in some way with that of Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity of the Zoroastrian religion, the second element of the Bactrian form being generally interpreted as an epithet meaning 'victorious
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen II
The purpose of the present article, as of its predecessor, is to make known a group of fragments surviving only in the form of transcriptions in the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen. Neither the original manuscript nor photographs seem to be extant. Olaf Hansen's handwritten transcripts, which I had the opportunity to study in Kiel in 1985, are published here by kind permission of his son Lars Hansen
The Sogdian fragments of Leningrad
The Leningrad branch of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. possesses a collection of nearly 150 Sogdian fragments recovered from various sites in Central Asia between 1893 and 1915. During the first three decades of this century a few texts were published by F. Rosenberg and C. Salemann. Thereafter the collection was for a long time ignored, while Russian Sogdianists turned their attention to the important archive o…
A Sogdian Ideogramthe
The preposition rm 'with' is common in Buddhist Sogdian texts, but has not been found in texts in Manichaean or Christian writing; nor is such a preposition known in any other Iranian language. Its peculiar distribution was noticed by Benveniste, who also remarked: 'rm...se confond dans l'usage avcc δ'wn, δnn, et entraîne le cas oblique.... Il admet, comme δnn, la postposition pr'yw'. These facts in themselves strongly suggest that rm is not mere…
Notes on Sogdian Palaeography
It has long been recognized that the letters n and z , whose initial and medial forms had already fallen together by the date of the ‘Ancient letters’, remained distinct in final position, -n being provided with a long horizontal or vertical tail. At a slightly later period in the history of the Sogdian script two more pairs of letters—still distinguished in all positions in the ‘Ancient letters’— fell together: ‘ ain with r, 1 and x (ḥīth ) with…
The Sogdian fragments of the British library
On the plural and dual in Sogdian
As a result of the gradual attrition of final syllables, which caused the Old Iranian nominal plural endings to become insufficiently distinct from those of the singular, the plural was extensively remodelled in almost all Middle and New Iranian languages. Such renovation could come about in two ways. Either the more distinctive pl. inflexions, such as the gen. *-ānām or the instr. and dat. forms containing *b, could be extended or adapted to sup…
A Pakthian sound-change
The existence of M Sogd.prqyš- 'to imprison', past stemprkšṯ-, and the meaning of the associated B Sogd. nounprk'š'imprisonment' were first established by Henning in 1936. Later he recognized also the equivalent Parth. verbprg'c- 'to incarcerate'. For the alternation betweenšandčhe compared NPāγōš: Parth. 'gwc('side') and MPāgustan<*ākuštan: Sogd.ākōč-/ākuγd- ('to suspend'), remarking that 'the discrepancy is found only in syllables that begin wi…
The Sogdian fragments of Leningrad
The Leningrad branch of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. possesses a collection of nearly 150 Sogdian fragments recovered from various sites in Central Asia between 1893 and 1915. During the first three decades of this century a few texts were published by F. Rosenberg and C. Salemann. Thereafter the collection was for a long time ignored, while Russian Sogdianists turned their attention to the important archive o…
The final paragraph of the tomb-inscription of Darius I (DNb, 50-60)
The great inscription of Darius I at Bisitun has hitherto been the only Achaemenid inscription known to exist not only in the three versions carved on the rock-face-Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian-but also in an Aramaic translation on papyrus. The fragmentary scroll containing the Aramaic text was first published by Sachau in 1911. In general, the Aramaic version agrees closely with the Babylonian and is therefore comparatively easy to interp…
The Double System of Nominal Inflexion in Sogdian
Chotano-Sogdica
The appearance of Sir Harold Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka brings to completion a project conceived as long ago as 1934 and initiated in 1945 with the publication ofKhotanese texts, I. The next two decades saw the appearance of five further volumes of texts (Khotanese Buddhist texts, 1951, and Khotanese texts, II-v, 1954-63) as well as of a much-admired volume of lexical commentary, Khotanese texts, VI: Prolexis to the Book of Zambasta (1967…
Report of the Secretary
A note on Bactrian phonology
A central Problem of Bactrian Phonology, to which Georg Morgenstierne devoted the greater part of one of his last articles, is the origin of Postvocalic t , which is found in a small number of words of disputed etymology. Since OIr. postvocalic t generally gives Bactrian d , as in G[raeeo-Bactrian] οδο , M[anichean Bactrian] ' wd , ' wṭ [ ud ] ‘and’ uta or G κiρδo , M qyrd ‘made’ kṛta -,it seems that some oter orgin must be sought for Bactrian t …
New studies on the verbal system of Old and Middle Iranian
Despite the similar titles of the two books reviewed here, they are very different in aims and scope. While Samadi's book is primarily an etymological dictionary of verb forms, Kellens's is in effect the first volume of a comprehensive Avestan grammar, as a companion to which the author promises ' in the near future' (p. 435) a complete lexicon of the Avestan verb. What they do have in common, in addition to the relationship in subject-matter ind…
Persian Bahmān “so-and-so”
In this short article marking Sir Harold Bailey's 90th birthday on 16 December 1989 it seems appropriate to take up and develop one amongst the many fruitful insights with which he has enriched our understanding of the languages of India, Iran, and Central Asia
The Christian-Sogdian Manuscrip
Eine sanskrit-sogdische Bilingue in Brāhmī
Bei der Durchsicht der Brāhmī-Handschriften der " Mainzer Sammlung / [Mz]1 entdeckte einer der beiden Verfasser [Maue] mit Mz 639 ein Fragment, das neben Sanskrit eine Übersetzungssprache enthielt, die aufgrund einiger Indizien dem Iranischen, am ehesten dem Sogdischen, zuzuordnen war. Anhand einer ersten vorlä ufigen Umschrift konnte Professor R. E. Emmerick (Hamburg) das Sakische ausschlieβen. Der zweite Autor [Sims-Williams] erkannte darin zwe…
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen II
The purpose of the present article, as of its predecessor, is to make known a group of fragments surviving only in the form of transcriptions in the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen. Neither the original manuscript nor photographs seem to be extant. Olaf Hansen's handwritten transcripts, which I had the opportunity to study in Kiel in 1985, are published here by kind permission of his son Lars Hansen
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen I
The Nachlass of Olaf Hansen, which I was able to examine in Kiel in 1985 through the kindness of his son Lars Hansen, includes transcriptions of several Christian Sogdian texts of which neither the original manuscript nor even a photograph seems to be extant. In such cases Hansen's transcriptions attain the status of primary sources. Amongst them are four fragments belonging to two different manuscripts of the Life of Serapion, the Syriac text of…
Nouveaux documents sur l'histoire et la langue de la Bactriane
Sims-Williams Nicholas. Nouveaux documents sur l'histoire et la langue de la Bactriane. In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 140e année, N. 2, 1996. pp. 633-654
Sir Harold Bailey 1899-1996
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A bactrian god
The Kushan god μοζδοοανο is attested on a group of rare coins of Kanishka I, where he is depicted as a bearded male bearing a trident in his right hand and riding a two-headed horse. It has been universally assumed that the name μοζδοοανο is connected in some way with that of Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity of the Zoroastrian religion, the second element of the Bactrian form being generally interpreted as an epithet meaning 'victorious
Some Reflections on Zoroastrianism in Sogdiana and Bactria
The Inscriptions on the Miho bowl and some comparable objects
Publication d'une inscription d'Artaxerxes en vieux-perse et en babylonien sur une phiale en argent, conservee au Miho Museum (Japon). A la suite de Schaeder, l'auteur demontre que l'inscription A 1 I en vieux-perse sur quatre phiales similaires, qui avait ete publiee par Herzfeld, est une falsification moderne
Indo-Iranian languages and peoples
Nouveaux document bactriens du Guzgan (note d'information)
Sims-Williams Nicholas. Nouveaux document bactriens du Guzgan (note d'information). In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 146e année, N. 3, 2002. pp. 1047-1058
A Hunnish Kushan-shah
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