Авестийское письмо: История и особенности

Alphabet used mainly to write Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian scripture Avesta

The Avestan alphabet (Middle Persian: transliteration: dyn' dpywryh, transcription: dēn dēbīrē, دین دبیره) is a writing system developed during Iran's Sasanian era (226–651 CE) to render the Avestan language. As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta. In the texts of Zoroastrian tradition, the alphabet is referred to as "the religion's script" (dēn dibīrih in Middle Persian and din dabireh in New Persian).

Digits and numbers can be seen on the Faulmann chart above.

Words and the end of the first part of a compound are separated by a dot (in a variety of vertical positions). Beyond that, punctuation is weak or non existent in the manuscripts, and in the 1880s Karl Friedrich Geldner had to devise one for standardized transcription. In his system, which he developed based on what he could find, a triangle of three dots serves as a colon, a semicolon, an end of sentence or end of section; which is determined by the size of the dots and whether there is one dot above and two below, or two above and one below. Two above and one below signify — in ascending order of "dot" size — colon, semicolon, end of sentence or end of section. +Avestan punctuation Mark Function Unicode ⸱ word separator U+2E31: WORD SEPARATOR MIDDLE DOT · U+00B7: MIDDLE DOT U+002E: FULL STOP abbreviation or repetition U+10B39: AVESTAN ABBREVIATION MARK colon U+10B3A: TINY TWO DOTS OVER ONE DOT PUNCTUATION semicolon U+10B3B: SMALL TWO DOTS OVER ONE DOT PUNCTUATION end of sentence U+10B3C: LARGE TWO DOTS OVER ONE DOT PUNCTUATION alternative mark for end of sentence(found in Avestan texts but not used by Geldner) U+10B3D: LARGE ONE DOT OVER TWO DOTS PUNCTUATION end of section(may be doubled for extra finality) U+10B3E: LARGE TWO RINGS OVER ONE RING PUNCTUATION alternative mark for end of section(found in Avestan texts but not used by Geldner) U+10B3F: LARGE ONE RING OVER TWO RINGS PUNCTUATION

The Avestan alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The characters are encoded at U+10B00—10B35 for letters (ii and uu are not represented as single characters, but as sequences of characters) and U+10B38—10B3F for punctuation.