Pārsīg Database is a Middle Persian language database (Sasanian Pahlavi) and will include all Middle Persian texts. The texts and words of this database are tagged manually. These tags have the Pahlavi spelling of the word, transliteration, letter writing, Farsi meaning, sub-word, grammar tag (PoS Tagging), reference to the chapter and paragraph of the book, and reference to the critical edition. Dr. Farzaneh Goshtasb is a researcher of ancient languages and cultures and the database’s author, manager, and founder.
What you read above is part of an article entitled “Texts of the Sassanid Period in the Parsig Database,” published on the 1st of Amordad, 1402 (July 2023), on page 12 of Shargh newspaper. The author talks about how to get to know the Parsig and Middle Persian language databases and introduces this specialized internet database and its contributors.
Ali Asghar Seyedabadi: “Go towards goodness and strive for it”. In occasional trips to the cities and villages of Iran and internet searches in a specific field, sometimes I come across works that are surprising or important to me, especially since these works often proceed with personal or group funds, and do not wait for official institutions to do something.”
In whatever field you are working, you will come across people and groups who take up small or big projects, depending on their assets and ability, and carry it forward voluntarily. These works may arise from those people’s individual interests or from society’s need to recognize them. We are often familiar with large charitable institutions. With tremendous and famous works as well. Big institutions usually spend a budget on public relations and introduce their work, but there are small but vital projects that we need to know about.
Although these tasks may be small, they are essential; both in terms of society and their social impact in promoting voluntary work, and public access to knowledge or possibilities, or make access easier, and also in terms of the effect they have on a specific field.
Fortunately, the variety of voluntary work has increased and expanded in recent decades. My searches and excursions are not to find these works and get to know them, but over time has come to know a large number of these kinds of good deeds, especially in the field of culture, and sometimes I have benefited form of expressing my gratitude, but also being of help to others.
I was wondering, which one of them to start with, so I decided to start with the last work that I came across. Sometime back, I was looking for a subject in the texts of the Sassanid period to see what they thought about it. I decided to compile a list of works that may contain this topic, then find the texts – usually their translation – and search for the topic I want.
I was searching for it, when I came across the Parsig database, and it did the job, that would take me days, in minutes. I searched for this topic in this database and got my result.
I have not met any of these personalities who had a hand in doing this job, but I was pleased that this work was done inside Iran. 13, 14 people have played a role in setting up this database. Farzaneh Goshtasb is a researcher of ancient languages and cultures and a writer, manager, and founder of this database. Her other colleagues are Nadia Hajipour, Sirous Nasrollahzadeh, Sholeh Hesarpouladi, Hossein Mostafavi Kashani, Masoud Ghayoumi, and Anahita Partovi, who are primarily professors of linguistics and ancient languages and cultures or Ph.D. students in these fields, and another group has helped them in the technical work of the database. In the section about us, this database states:
Pārsīg Database is a Middle Persian language database (Sasanian Pahlavi) and will include all Middle Persian texts. The texts and words of this database are manually tagged. These tags have the Pahlavi spelling of the word, transliteration, letter writing, Farsi meaning, sub-word, grammar tag (PoS Tagging), reference to the chapter and paragraph of the book, and reference to the critical edition. Data preparation for this database started in Dey 1397 (December 2018) and was unveiled in the winter of 1399(2020) with about 40 thousand words. The data of this database is being completed and will continue until the entry of all the words of Middle Persian texts. The Pārsīg site is a non-profit project, and the costs of its design and implementation, as well as the provision of tagged language data to complete the database, are funded by the founder and free-of-charge, for all researchers and is free when mentioning the source. In this database, Zoroastrian texts and private inscriptions are listed, and you will be guided to the text by researching for the meaning or the text in mind. However, the entire text will probably not be available, in order to respect the author’s rights. However, when you search by text title, you will find its bibliography and a list of studies about it. To access this database, you can go to the following address:
https://www.parsigdatabase.com/
