Ebook: Sogdian Tales

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 11,No. 3 (1945), pp. 465-487The present collection of Sogdian stories, taken (with the possible exception of text J) from Manichaean manuscripts, is meant to close this gap. These stories are also of some interest from the linguist's point of view. For while the Christian and Buddhist Sogdian texts are valuable merely as repositories of vocables, the Manichaean texts alone (apart from the few available Sogdian documents and letters) give us a clear idea of the true structure and syntax of the Sogdian language, and this quality is nowhere better apparent than in these stories, which are sometimes pleasingly vivid.