Sims-Williams Nicholas. Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan: Volume 1. Legal and Economic Documents

Oxford University Press, 2000. — 256 p. — (Studies in the Khalili Collection 3). — ISBN 0-19-727502-8.Bactrian, the ancient language of Afghanistan, was virtually unknown before the recent discovery of more than a hundred leather documents written in Bactrian in a local variant of the Greek alphabet. As well as revealing an important new language of the Indo-European family, these documents
shed light on the history and culture of Afghanistan during the 4th to 8th centuries AD, a turbulent period during which power changed hands many times, ending with the Arab conquest and the introduction of Islam. The three volumes of this series provide a comprehensive edition of the texts, with translations, photographs, glossary, and indexes, making this rich material available to linguists and historians alike.