Pyu language (Sino-Tibetan)

Pyu
Tircul
Pyu alphabet
Region	Pyu city-states, Pagan Kingdom
Extinct	13th century
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Pyu
Writing system	Pyu script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	pyx
Linguist List	pyx
Glottolog	burm1262

The Pyu language (Pyu: ; Burmese: ပျူ ဘာသာ, IPA: [pjù bàðà]; also Tircul language) is an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was mainly spoken in what is now Myanmar in the first millennium CE. It was the vernacular of the Pyu city-states, which thrived between the second century BCE and the ninth century CE. Its usage declined starting in the late ninth century when the Bamar people of Nanzhao began to overtake the Pyu city-states. The language was still in use, at least in royal inscriptions of the Pagan Kingdom if not in popular vernacular, until the late twelfth century. It became extinct in the thirteenth century, completing the rise of the Burmese language, the language of the Pagan Kingdom, in Upper Burma, the former Pyu realm.^[1]

The language is principally known from inscriptions on four stone urns (7th and 8th centuries) found near the Payagyi pagoda (in the modern Bago Township) and the multi-lingual Myazedi inscription (early 12th century).^[2][3] These were first deciphered by Charles Otto Blagden in the early 1910s.^[3]

The Pyu script was a Brahmic script. Recent scholarship suggests the Pyu script may have been the source of the Burmese script.^[4]