I

Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr Phoneme Chart

II

Concerning the Nature of Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr

The Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr language is one that shares many similarities with Indic and Iranian languages: most notably with that of Sanskrit and Avestan. When pronouncing any of the words in this language, it is good to keep in tongue an enunciation that reflects the latter mentioned ones. I have also used Sanskrit IPA and, where needed, Avestan IPA to denote most of these characters, because of similar sounding values in western languages being inadequate in determining the proper sound.

But there are indeed some differences between these languages, most notably concerning the ḥ character. Within the Indic languages it is often the case that a syllable constructed of a vowel succeeded by a ḥ character, placed at the end of a verse or sentence, will be pronounced as h + vowel. This is a particularly common occurrence in the recitation of hymns. An example would be the word namaḥ, such is the case in this verse of the Guru Stotram:

tatpadaṃ darśitaṃ yena tasmai śrīgurave namaḥ

In this verse, the final word would be pronounced na-ma-ha. It is important to note that the reflected vowel is still considered as part of the same syllable as the ḥ, which will come into later importance when discussing prosody. While such a thing does indeed happen within Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr, such as when this line in the Prayer for the Dead is sung:

Vimaho Santatehvārhaḥ

It is much rarer due to its own internal construction. As such, words or names that have haḥ or hiḥ either in the middle or the end, will almost invariably not have this vowel reflection. As for why I have used ḥ against this grammatical construction, there are two reasons. One: to denote the character given within the Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr script: [ : ]. And two: to indicate where an exhalation is to be performed. In most cases, if an individual had read ha instead of haḥ, this directed exhalation would have more than likely been lost on them.

III

Concerning the Theophoric Suffixes and Syllables

In similar likeness to Hebrew, names in Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr often contain theophoric suffixes and syllables such as: haḥ, haḥm, hō, ṃār, and hiḥ.

This list is not exhaustive, however, I have chosen to discuss these five, due to them being the most common in this language and as such, in my opinion, holding a greater degree of importance than any of the others. Each of these have their own ascribed meanings but nonetheless all have a theological basis referencing either the Gods or the singular divine personage that they refer to as Arhaḥṃār or That One and All.

haḥ is understood to directly reference Arhaḥṃār, and as such when individuals give meanings for names with this suffix they tend to end it in of That One (and All). An example would be Iḷēhaḥ’s name: Adoration of That One (and All). The All, however, is sometimes dropped and will be discussed later.

haḥm is very similar to haḥ with the exception that it has an added emphasis of the One in That One and All and directly creates an association between the person holding the name and the singular divine personage. A good example would be Nakthaḥm’s name: One who is of the Night.

hō in its most basic sense means to come, but when used in names or titles, its meaning becomes analogous to to come of the Divine where the Divine can refer to any divinity within their culture and/or religion. An example would be the celestials known as Daivhaḥhō, roughly translating as: Beings that arise of Those who come from That One, where Thosewould refer to the Dehaḥṃār.

ṃār out of all the others thus far mentioned, is quite interesting, due to it being a plural word and syllable. Often it is translated as They but in a theological sense it directly references the All portion of That One and All. As such when concerning the names of certain classes of beings like the Dehaḥṃār and Yavhaḥṃār, their names will usually invoke the All regarding themselves, seeing, as it were, some level of association with the All as expressed by the singular divine personage, and further reinforcing that association with That One as indicated by haḥ. So if we take the title Dehaḥṃār for example, in this particular context, it would roughly translate to: All beings that arise or come of That One. And conversely, Yavhaḥṃār would mean: All beings that go from or take leave of That One.

hiḥ is a theophoric suffix and syllable that is analogous to haḥ. One might wonder why there should be two theophoric suffixes referencing the same being, idea, and construct. Well, it would so happen that, unusually, hiḥ is a female based theophoric suffix, with haḥ being gender neutral. There is, as yet, no known analogous male theophoric suffix and syllable following in the same line. For now, it is assumed that at some earlier point one possibly deriving from haḥ did indeed exist, but as for why it would have been dropped in later stages of the language is not yet known.

Now, you might have noticed that in certain cases I use That One and in other cases That One and All, and similarly many of the characters in the epic do so as well. This is generally done for shortening a title down to the main sub-component. In most cases That One supersedes All, but it is not done to the effect of seeing one quality as higher than another. Rather it should be understood, in context, which sub-component of that title is being given the greater amount of importance. All is generally relegated to use within ṃār but interestingly, They is used instead of the former when used in personal names such as Tūmbṃār: They who shall Overcome. As for why this is done, some propose that it could be a sign of showing humility in reverence to being(s) greater than them. Nonetheless, the All holds its position, even if unreferenced, in personal names.

IV

Concerning the Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr Script

The Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr script is an abugida comprising both vowel and consonant characters with vowel diacritics and consonant conjunctions. The script is dextrosinistral (right to left), and while the exact reason for this writing direction remains unknown—as much as it does in our world—I would say it has to do in-part for the left-hand dominance within the world of Ārhmanhaḥ and was written in that direction for convenience. It would indeed make it less likely to smudge ink if one was writing in the opposite direction with a dominant hand. The same line of reasoning could be held for rock inscriptions which are written from left to right, which is assumed to be a more comfortable direction to chisel with the left hand.

The script has undergone many changes from logographic to alphabetic, and later, with the addition of diacritics and consonant conjuncts. Unfortunately many of the logographs have been lost and what remains are sparse and damaged such that we cannot at all reconstruct its original form. By the time of the epic, the script had already entered its more final form, yet elements of the former variations still exist. I have listed below each of these variations for a verse in Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr:

V

Concerning the Prekrds

Lastly, there is the nature of the various Prekrds as they are termed in Ārhmanhaḥ. They are both a collection of regional dialects of Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr and languages deriving from it. They are all classified as being natural languages whereas Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr, while not so much considered as artificial, is said to be refined and pure due to its association with the Gods. The various Prekrds within a single continent are generally understandable to the average person, regardless of how different it might seem to their mother-tongue. But they would usually have to learn the rules governing the grammar and phonemes of other Prekrds if it is specific to a different continent. There is said to be a central Prekrd for each one, from where many dialects and other languages descend. If a person learns each of these central tongues, then learning the rest becomes trivial.

All languages within the world of Ārhmanhaḥ are said to have derived from Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr no matter how far apart they could be in terms of grammar, phonology, vocabulary, etc. Both the priestly order and scholars agree on this. Indeed, the first line of reasoning any serious scholar must position themselves with, is that all the languages of Ārhmanhaḥ are interrelated and have, as one could say, a divine source from which they emanate from. And so it is rare, if ever, for a scholar to consider a language to be outside of this assertion, but that does not mean that a language could not have developed on its own, as is the case with Ameg̃išár, which is, of course, the language of the Demons. But evidence has yet to be found to suspect otherwise for any language in Ārhmanhaḥ.

VI

Concerning Prosody for Hymns

There are three main meters used for most of the hymns: The first comprises three verses with eight syllables each, known as the Havāzhtre; the second comprises four verses with eight syllables each, known as the Prestovṛt; and the last comprises four lines with eleven syllables each, known as the Trezhstovṛt. All hymns in Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr are measured by verse. Unlike other meters, there is no consistent marking of accented, long or short, and high or low syllables. There is also no formal grammar used in the composition of any verse, and so its meaning must be discerned through careful analysis of each of the words.

As was mentioned before, the vowel reflection for ḥ will still be counted as part of the proceeding syllable. This is because of strict requirements of recitation, where even a single change in a syllable could alter the entire meaning of the verse. And so, various schools had developed precise methods of recitation, with varying forms of weight, stress, intonation, and guidelines for proper enunciation.

To recite any of the hymns in the aforementioned meters, it would aid the individual to look at Sanskrit hymns for reference respectively in each of the following meters, for they are analogous in basic form with those found in Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr: Gāyatrī to Havāzhtre, Anuṣṭubh to Prestovṛt, and Triṣṭubh to Trezhstovṛt.

Examples for each of these meters are given below:

Gāyatrī

Aghnimīḷe purohitaṃYajñasya devaṃ ṛtvījamhotāraṃ ratnadhātamam

Havāzhtre

Vimadhahṃ Ishvhahṃ Ishvārhaḥṃ!
Svarh’diyathvahm prakṣhauriti
Dukhram vrahbt’ñyka vradzhayahm!

Anuṣṭubh

Sarva-dharmān parityajyaMām ekaṃ śaraṇaṃ vrajaAhaṃ tvāṃ sarva-pāpebhyoMokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ

Prestovṛt

Dehya yukmam āyirāshphaḥnPrementavahm baksher vrazhāḥṃThvel nivashphaḥ rar HṃetravāḥṃYavhaḥniv tūrprshasht telāḥ

Triṣṭubh

Tvameva mātā ca pitā tvamevaTvameva bandhuśca sakhā tvamevaTvameva vidyā draviṇaṃ tvamevaTvameva sarvaṃ mama devadeva

Trezhstovṛt

Yatram hvarathe haomkan aivibanamSamiztra Svyaṃ hvarenakt syarvedatVaritñyānush’ve dhı̄nava hvathemānHvathem kudah dvı̄tamānam zūryave

VII

Ameg̃išár Phoneme Chart

VIII

Concerning the Nature of Ameg̃išár

It is unfortunate to say that the Ameg̃išár language is incomplete at best. Much of our knowledge concerning this only comes from the epics, and that too in very minute amounts. We cannot even be sure if the transliteration given in Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr and the various Prekrds is reliable. It does, however, within the Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr transliteration, bear a resemblance to that of Sumerian, and for that reason I have listed some of the approximate consonant sounds using its IPA. As for vowels, I have defaulted to using the Sanskrit IPA, due in part to keeping the Ahasṭṛṭhaḥr transliteration partially intact. With no discernible script to be had, nor speakers, nor any Demons to converse with, I am afraid to say that for now this is the best that can be made of this language.