Afghanistan: An example of Bactrian cursive script on a sealed vellum document from Guzgan, Maimana, north Afghanistan, c. 450-500 CE

The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the Northeastern Iranian branch.

Because Bactrian was written predominantly with the Greek alphabet, Bactrian is sometimes referred to as 'Greco-Bactrian', 'Kushan' or 'Kushano-Bactrian'.

More than a hundred Bactrian documents, written in cursive script on leather, cloth or wood were discovered in the last decade of the 20th c. Before that the corpus of Bactrian was effectively limited to a single inscription from Surkh Kotal and the short legends on coins and seals. Almost all other texts were either illegible, incomprehensible, or both.

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

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Pictures From History

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SCRIPTS AND WRITING