How Did Sogdiana Became with Seven Nests? (A Linguistic-Orthographic Survey of the Name of Sogdiana in Pahlavi Texts)

The script and orthography system which are used for the zoroastrian middle Persian (= Pahlavi) texts because of their many shortcomings and difficulties have always caused many misunderstandings and misinterpretations by the ancient users and modern researchers. This indeterminacy of the script and the lack of a complete and accurate understanding of the contents of the texts have caused the past writers and scribes of these texts and modern researchers make unfounded legends in order to legitimize their readings. In this article after surveying the different written forms of the name of Sogdiana in Pahlavi texts and offering a transcription for one of them, the hapax epithet of this land, haft-āšyan “with seven nests” is studied. This epithet is recorded in a Pahlavi text, šahestānīhā ī ērānšahr, and a persian history work, Gardizi’s Zain al-Axbār. At the end “haft-āšyān” is considerd as a distorted rendering of the Avestan form suγδō.šayana-. The Avestan form is reached to Middle Persian as suwdōšayan, but this middle Persian form is finally abandoned in pahlavi manuscripts and Islamic texts due to the unawareness of the scribes and also its similarity to haftāšyān.