ܕܣܬܓܪܕ dstgrd place-name; a bishopric
Reborrowings: ܕܣܩܪܬܐ dsqrtʾ; ܕܣܬܩܪܬܐ dstqrtʾ
Inscr. MP dstkrt, dstklt dastgerd settlement, estate, possession; MP dastgerd [YDEkrt'] id. (Dādestān ī dēnīg 90 § 5); Inscr. Parth. dstkrty estate, landed or spiritual property (NPi 1, 64; KZ MP 21, Parth. 16: see Huyse 1999/2, 98 ff.; Humbach – Skjærvø 1978–1983, 3/1, 93); ManParth. dstygyrd /dastegird/ estate, mansion (Durkin-Meisterernst 2004, 142); Arm. dastakert, jeṙakert settlement, estate, possession (Hübschmann AG 135, no. 169; Schmitt 1983, 89); OP [dasta]kr̥ta- handiwork = Gr. χειροποίητον (DSe 42): in OP, however, the form is restored. — Talm. Aram. dsqrtʾ village, estate (Telegdi 1935, 239 f. and 216). Syr. dstgrd is a sheer transcription of the Iranian word, whereas Syr. dsqrtʾ and Talmudic Aramaic dsqrtʾ show the regular loss of the internal -t- in order to avoid the double closed syllable (see § 11.4); Telegdi also underlines that the Talmudic form is feminine: the Iranian final -t has been reanalysed as the Aramaic feminine morpheme. Both Syr. dsqrtʾ and dstqrtʾ seem to have been borrowed earlier than dstgrd, because the presence of q and t points to an older MP model, preceding the sonorization of the plosives /k/ and /t/ and realized as *dastkart.
Skalmowski's attempt to separate the etymon of MP dstklt from OIr. *dasta- is not convincing (cf. Skalmowski 1993; Huyse 1999/2, 99; Schmitt 1994, 291), as it seems also confirmed by the fact that Syr. ʿbd ʾydyʾ handiwork (corresponding to τὰ ἔργα χειρῶν in the Septuagint), an expression well known in Semitic (cf. Hebr. maʿæšē yādayim is well attested in the Old Testament, and the expression already occurs in Akkadian, in the form šipir idī (šipir qātē) "handiwork", see CAD š iii, 82), in the Pahlavi Psalter 134, 15 is translated with MP dstklty (see Gignoux 1969, 241 f. and n. 22); see also MP dastgerd [YDEkrt'], with the Aramaic heterogram YDE hand. Sims-Williams (2000, 201) holds that the abovementioned Ir. forms whose meaning is "estate possession", together with Bactr. λιστηγιρδο, λιστιγιρδο, trace back to OIr. *dastay(ā)-kr̥ta-, a so-called "syntactic compound" (namely, a fixed sequence of two inflected words), where the first element has the locative ending and whose etymological meaning is "(person or thing) put into (someone's) hands". From this etymological meaning would be better explainable both the meanings "estate" and "ward, adopted child" attested for Inscr. Parth. dstkrty, in addition to "estate". According to Sims-Williams, if some Ir. form actually means "handiwork" (OP [dasta]kr̥ta- is restored: see above), it represents a different OIr. compound, namely *dasta-kr̥ta-. However, the compound-vowel Bactr. -η-, Parth. -y- seems to me a too weak evidence to reconstruct a locative ending in the first member of the compound, and the two meanings "estate, possession" and "handiwork" are not so irrelated to imply the reconstruction of two different compounds: in fact, the translator of the Pahlavi Psalter easy translated Syr. ʿbd ʾydyʾ "handiwork" with MP dstklty ● dstgrd am 1, 199, 6pu; Hoffmann 1880, 212; dsqrtʾ Hoffmann 1880, 120; Syn 671; dstqrtʾ am 1, 134 ◆ PS 930; PS Suppl. 92
For the etymology and the semantic value of the Iranian term see also Huyse 1999/2, 98 ff.; Humbach – Skjærvø 1978–1983, 3/1, 93; Skjærvø 1999, 40; Eilers 1982, 26; Schmitt 1994, 291; Gignoux 1996a, 105 f.; for the meaning of the term in ābuhr's inscription KZ, see Rubin 2002, 285 f.