Āsmān

Āsmān

This is a shared and living word of the modern Iranian languages; it remains current in both literary and spoken usage. The word āsmān carries religious associations in theology as the place and station of God; mythologically, it evokes legends, power, ability, and extraordinary beings; and artistically, it possesses a powerful character and symbolises beauty, brightness, and forbearance.

The word derives from the Indo-European root akman and the Indo-Iranian root asman. It appears in Avestan as āsmān, asan, asma; Old Indic asman; Median asman; Achaemenid asman, asan; Parthian āsmān; Pahlavi āsmān; Uzbek osman; Urdu āsmān; Pazend āsmā; Arabic asmā; Syriac šmyn; and Greek ākmōn. Among modern Iranian languages it occurs in Pashto āsmān, Dari āsmān, Mazandarani āsmān, Balochi āžmān, Bakhtiari āsmān, Luri āsamō, Gilaki āsmōn, Talysh āsmūn, Kurdish āsmān, azmān, āsmān, āsīmān, āsmīn, āzmīn, and Persian āsēmān, āsēmūn. It is found in Behdini Avestan as āsbān and in Avestan as āsmān. Within Kurdish it also remains āsmān, as in Sanglachi, Munjani, Sanglechi, and Shughni. Sanskrit has āšman, āsman, and New Indo-Iranian has Haćman, with the meaning “sky-stone” or “stone of the sky.” The word derives from the Indo-European and Proto-Iranian roots ās and āK, denoting roundness, circularity, or a ring-like form. In Avestan āsān and Sanskrit āsān, the term may come from the root ās, referring to the circular ring of a mill or hand-mill. The earth, after all, is suspended among galaxies, innumerable stars, and clusters of stars. The phytomorphological, physical, and pragmatic perception of ancient human language led speakers, semantically and pragmatically, to choose this name for the sky. The derived word combines ās with the suffix -mān, meaning resemblance or similarity; it may refer to a circular, ring-shaped form resembling a mill or hand-mill. It may also be related to the Indo-European root star in the word for “star,” where ās corresponds to shining and radiance.

In the Mukriyan and Balakayati areas of Kurdish, the phones /ئـە/ and /ئا/ commonly sometimes assimilate to the letters /ع/ and /ح/, and conversely, producing a sequence such as ئاسمان → ئەسمان → عاسمان → حاسمان.

Source: Versin Dictionary.

Sabir Zhakaw