i. The Term
BAḴT (Middle and New Persian) “fate, lot,” often with the positive sense of “good luck”(ḵᵛošbaḵtī), though the related NPers. verb bāḵtan means “to lose” (as opposed to bordan “to win”) in a game or gamble. The Avestan passive past participle baxta, from Aryan bhag– “to allot” (Old Indian bhajati “divides,” bhakta “apportioned”) appears as a neuter noun meaning “allotted destiny” or “fate’s decree” (Vd. 5.8, 21.1), mainly with the negative sense of “misfortune, doom, perdition” (Yt. 8.23; AirWb., col. 923). The Iranian word accordingly fits the concept of fate as the pre-allotted share, held by all nations and expressed in words such as Greek hē aîsa and ho oîtos “destiny” corresponding to the Avestan masculine noun aēta “part” (Indo-Germanic ai-to-; see Pokorny, p. 10, and Güntert, Kalypso, p. 2482) as well as hē moîra “goddess of fate” and tò méros “part” (IE. smer-); Hittite henkan “fate, plague, death,” properly “apportionment” (henk “to apportion”); Russian dólya and dólyushka “share, lot, destiny,” nouns related to the verb delit’ “to divide.” From the Muslim Arabs has come the universally known “kismet” (Arabic qesma “fate” and qesm “part;” see Eilers, “Schöpfergott,” in Ex Orbe Religionum, Studia Geo Widengren Oblata, Leiden, 1972, II, p. 400). Syriac likewise has ḥelqā “fate” from ḥəlaq “to divide, to allot” (whence the Pahlavi ideogram HLKWN– for the semantically identical Mid Pers. baxtan/baxš).
Typical Persian idioms are baḵt-e bīdār “wide-awake luck,” baḵt-e javān or now “young” or “new luck,” baḵt-e sabz “green luck,” all meaning good fortune in contrast to baḵt-e ḵofta “sleeping luck,” baḵt-e bargašta “reversed” or “dwindling luck,” i.e., ill-fortune.
A compound which deserves note is Mid. Pers. baḡ(ō)baxt “God-given destiny” from Avestan baγōbaḵta “decided by God” (Y. 8.35; see AirWb., col. 922); it appears in the Bundahišn as an epithet of the Alborz range. In the modern language there are compounds meaning “fortunate” such as baḵtāvar and baḵtūr (from baxt-āβar), Baḵtīār (from baxta-dāra-), a man’s name, whence Baḵtīārī, the name of the tribe in western Iran, as well as ḵᵛošbaḵt, javānbaḵt, nowbaḵt; likewise baḵt-āzmāʾī (lit., “testing one’s luck”) “lottery.” There are also personal names such as Āzādbaḵt, Nēkbaḵt, Šādbaḵt (Justi, Namenbuch, pp. 487f.). The name of the Baḵtagān salt lake west of Neyrīz is probably a patronymic derived from a shortened form of such a man’s name.
More doubtful is the relationship of baḵt “fate” to baḵtak “nightmare” (Eilers, Die Al, ein persisches Kindbettgespenst, Munich, 1979, pp. 44.16, 45.18, 48.5) and to baḵtū “thunder” (fate’s utterance of threats?). Baḵtū is also a name of mountains (A. Gabriel, Durch Persiens Wüsten, Stuttgart, 1935, p. 203), but probably then refers to water partings; cf. Kūh-e Baḵt-āb (S. Hedin, Eine Routenaufnahme durch Ostpersien I, Stockholm, 1918, p. 57).
Formed from bhag– with a suffixed š is the Mid. Pers. and NPers. bakš “part.” The derived verb baḵšīdan “to divide” or “give” ought to be distinguished from the homophonous baḵšīdan “to forgive” (Man. Mid. Pers. aβa-xšāy-, Parth. aβa-xšāh-). Another form bāš is probably the source of the NPers. stem pāš (East Persian fāš from βāš) found in pāšīdan “to scatter, sprinkle,” ābpāš “watering can,” and the place names Ābpāšān and Bāšgāh given to water-distribution points (Eilers, Geographische Namengebung, Munich, 1982, p. 40).
Also related to bhag– “to divide, allot” are the Avestan neuter noun baxəδra “part,” Mid. Pers. and NPers. bahr “share,” and with metathesis NPers. barḵ “part” (AirWb., col. 923; Nyberg, Manual II, p. 43a).
Further derivatives of the same fruitful root are Mid. Pers. baḡ and NPers. foḡ (East Iranian, with labial vowel), from Old Persian baga “God” (as distributor, cf. Arabic al-Qāsem), or, in poetry, “idol;” Mid. Pers. and NPers. bāḡ “garden,” properly “piece of land;” NPers. bāj or bāž “tribute, toll,” from the Old Persian masculine noun bāji; and finally the place name Balḵ, derived through a form Bahl/Baxl from Old Persian Baxtriš, the name of the province, which must have been connected with water distribution (cf. bāš/pāš above; Eilers, Geographische Namengebung, pp. 23f., 40). For the Bactrian camel (the two-humped draft animal), the term is boḵtī with labial vowel.
Still to be mentioned are NPers. bāzi “game” and the numerous compounds of bāz such as asbbāz “jockey,” gūybāz “polo player,” ʿešqbāz “philanderer,” kabūtarbāz “pigeon fancier,” lajjbāz “nagger,” šamšīrbāz “fencer,” tanābbāz “tightrope walker,” waraqbāz “card player,” zanbāz “seducer,” etc.; also sarbāz “soldier,” literally one who gambles with his head, and jānbāz “life-risker,” e.g. dare-devil acrobat.
The question whether the Arabs borrowed their word waqt “time” from baḵt or an East Iranian form thereof remains uncertain. Waqt (pronounced vaḵt, voḵet, or the like) is not of Semitic origin, and the concepts of time and fate are not far apart (cf. Arabic dahr which means both).