Saeed Jafari
Language is central to the survival of Iran’s astronomical heritage, yet scholarship often treats celestial names, literary imagery, calendrical terms, and ritual symbols as separate evidence. This review examines how Iranian engagements with the sky were preserved and transmitted through language and symbol. It brings together scholarship on Avestan, Middle Persian, New Persian, selected Iranian languages, Persian literature, calendrical traditions, festivals, and astronomical knowledge. The discussion compares established studies from two perspectives, linguistic evidence and culturally situated signification. A diachronic linguistic-semiotic approach traces lexical retention and semantic reanalysis, metaphorical conceptualisation, and calendrical-symbolic representation. Terms including Tiˇstrya, Haft¯orang, Parv¯ın, Bahr¯am, and N¯ah¯ıd illustrate the interaction of celestial reference with ritual authority and moral association. Solar and lunar imagery extends those associations into descriptions of beauty, sovereignty, fortune, and character. Month names and festivals place meanings within recurrent social time, although direct equations between ancient observances and modern equinoxes or solstices require historical caution. Iranian astronomical heritage emerges as a changing archive whose continuity depends on reinterpretation, translation, and use across periods