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DHALLA, DASTUR MANECKJI NUSSERWANJI (b. 22 September 1875, Surat; d. 25 May 1956, Karachi), Parsi priest and scholar (FIGURE 1). In 1878 Dhalla came to Karachi with his father, married at the age of nine, and was ordained a priest (navar) in 1890. For a while he abandoned his studies…

DHĀRAṆĪ, magic spells in the Buddhist Mahāyānist and Tantric (esoteric) traditions. i. In Khotanese. ii. In Sogdian.   i. IN KHOTANESE Introduction. Dhāraṇīs are, explained traditionally as “(capacity) to hold (Skt. dhṛ-) in memory”; shorter spells are called mantras. In the Buddhist Sanskrit texts dhāraṇīs can be recognized readily because…

DHARMAŚARĪRA-SŪTRA, a short Buddhist text belonging to the Mahāyānist tradition. Two different versions of the Sanskrit text, a fragment of the Khotanese version, and a Chinese translation have been published so far. One folio belonging to the German Turfan collection with the complete Sanskrit text in North Turkestan Brāhmī (formerly…

DHĀRVĀL or DHĀR, QĀŻĪ KHAN BADR MOḤAMMAD (or Ḥosayn) DEHLAVĪ, 15th-century Persian lexicographer in India, so named because he settled in Dhār (hence his nesba Dhārvāl), capital of the Ghurid principality of Malwa. A native of Delhi, he studied there with two leading philologists of the time, Qāżī Borhān-al-Dīn of…

DHŪTA-SŪTRA, name of a Buddhist Sogdian text discovered at Tun-huang (B. M. Or. 8212 [160]; facs. ed. in MacKenzie, pls. 37-66). The name of the sutra goes back to Hans Reichelt, who first studied it; the word δʾw-tʾ (< Skt. dhūta-) recurs several times in the text. Reichelt’s edition was...

DHYĀNA TEXT, designation of a Buddhist Sogdian text of 405 lines discovered at Tun-huang (B.M. Or. 8212 [85]; facs. ed. in MacKenzie, pls. 67-108; Taishō Tripiṭaka XV, no. 643, pp. 690c6-692c27). The name applied by Hans Reichelt, who first studied the text, is still in common use among Sogdianists, though…

DĪA (pl. dīāt), the prescribed blood money or wergild paid in compensation for a wrongful death or certain other physical injuries. The system of dīa is similar to other forms of compensation prevalent in Roman, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and other ancient legal systems (A. Diamond, pp. 144-58). Its inception, however, is…

DIAKONOFF (D’yakonov), Igor’ Mikhaĭlovich (b. Petrograd, 30 December 1914 [Old style]/12 January 1915; d. St. Petersburg, 2 May 1999), Russian orientalist of international standing, one of the greatest scholars in the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies (FIGURE 1). He was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary…

DIALECTOLOGY. Introduction. The terms dialect and language overlap. In general, language refers to the more or less unified system of the phonology, grammar, and lexicon that is shared by the speakers of a country, or geographic region, or a socially defined group, whereas dialect (Pers. lahja, gūyeš) focuses on varieties…

DIASPORA, Iranian. See also DEPORTATIONS. i. In Pre-Islamic times. ii. Persians in India. iii. Persians in Southeast Asia. iv. Persians in Ottoman Turkey. v. Persians in the Caucasus and Central Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century. vi. Persians in Iraq. vii. Persians in southern ports of the…