page_title: Pyu language (Burma)
section_title: Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Pyu language (Burma) / Classification
caption_attribution_description: English: Location of Pyu city-states shown in the present-day borders of Myanmar
context_page_description: The Pyu 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.
  The language is principally known from inscriptions on four stone urns found near the Payagyi pagoda and the multi-lingual Myazedi inscription.
  These were first deciphered by Charles Otto Blagden in the early 1910s.
  The Pyu script was a Brahmic script. The most recent scholarship suggests the Pyu script may have been the source of the Burmese script.
context_section_description: The Pyu language was a Sino-Tibetan language related to Old Burmese, although the degree of proximity is debated. The language is tentatively classified within the Lolo-Burmese languages by Matisoff and thought to most likely be Luish by Bradley. Van Driem feels it is best treated as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan pending further evidence.
caption: Pyu city-states circa 8th century; Pagan shown for comparison only, not contemporary to the Pyu cities
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