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21
John Tang
Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu — Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava
TOWARDS TWO KHITAN CHARACTERS RELATED TO IRON1
1. Introduction
The Khitan writing systems, either the logographic macroscript (dazi literally "Large Script") or the abjad microscript (xiaozi
literally "Small Script"), are still in the process of decipherment based mainly on the excavated epitaphs. Owing to semantic concordance to some excerpts of the Chinese inscriptions together with the Khitan epitaphs as well as some records of HKLD, there have been quite a few Khitan terms deciphered, including such Chinese loanwords or Khitan transliterations as personal names, administrative titles, reign mottos, posthumous titles, kinship words, etc., far from the precise reconstruction of any indigenous Khitan word. It seems indicative of the fact that the present methodology borrowed from the Chinese historians could be inappropriate to extend and deepen the decipherment of the Khitan words recorded in both Khitan writing systems.
Since the extinct Khitan language is unquestionably classified into the greater Mongolic family as belonging to the so-called Para-Mongolic branch [Janhunen 2003], the Altaic etymological work, currently in progress [Starostin et al. 2003], would offer another probable approach to the reconstruction of Khitan words in the macroscript and microscript. The following is one of our attempts to make the decipherment of Khitan writing more profound.
1 This paper is supported by the 2011' MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities, Center for the Study and Application of Chinese Characters in East China Normal University, entitled as "Zhonghua minzu zaoqi wenzi ziliaoku yu Zhonghua minzu zaoqi wenzi tongyi duizhao zidian" (Earlier greater Chinese writing corpus and Synonymic Paralleling Dictionary of Earlier Greater Chinese Writings, Project Number: 11JJD740015).
2. Etymological and Graphic Analyses
In the Berlin Turfan Collection there appears a fragment including two Khitan macroscript characters with nearly wholesome Uyghur notes in the second rightward column of the typical picture (Ch 3586), as illustrated below2.
Wang Ding [2004: 371] suggests that the Uyghur gloss qacu-(the alternative reading qaju- as c and j are not distinguished in Old Uyghur alphabet) may be a phonetic transcription of the Khitan word meaning 'iron', which is phonetically glossed as hezhu in HKLD3. In this paper, a new decipherment of these two Khitanograms is made mainly based on Wang's reading together with some other proofs, either etymological or graphological.
The Khitanogram A. *qcicu- could originate from a graphic subtraction of the rightward component in the cursive Chinese character >k for "iron' coined by Pei Xiu (791-864 AD) of Tang dynasty (618-907 AD). The contemporary simplified Siniform %% comes from an assimilation of the radical I into ^ of the vulgar form ^ appearing under Yuan Dynasty (1260-1368 AD), according to The Comprehensive List of Simplified Chinese Characters (Jianhua zi zongbiao ffitt^&S^)
2 There are two nearly same copies in this Collection [Wang Ding 2004: 371]; only the clearer one is shown here.
3 For a comprehensive study of this Sino-Khitan word see [Tang 2013].
published in 1964 [Zhang Shuyan et al. 1997: 80], and is not related to some similar Khitanograms.
In the same fragment, it is somewhat similar to ^^ (Ch 3586v); recently, West [2011] did such an identification of both characters and, accordingly, regarded the corresponding Uyghur letter -q as a fragmentary ending of the phonetic gloss. Thus, this Uyghur gloss could be fully restored as qaciiy, and the respective Khitanogram could be restored as used to translate Sanskrit ciyatana/visava 'sphere of perception or sense' (jue M / shi ff) in Buddhist terminology. This would make sense as the majority of Turfan and Dunhuang manuscripts are Buddhist in nature, and both the Khitans and the Uyghurs were mostly Buddhists, so there is a good chance that any Khitan-Uyghur manuscript would be a Buddhist text.
If such a similarity between the aforementioned characters is ignored, that is to say, the lowest fragment of the Uyghur gloss corresponding to this Khitanogram cannot determine its reading as a whole, the Uyghur gloss qacn- could be considered to be the Khitan term for 'iron" as represented by the Khitanogram [Wang Ding 2004: 373]. It can become a pathway to overcome the confusions of (un)voicedness and stop/fricative in the second syllable of the Chinese transliteration.
The other Khitanogram is glossed in Uyghur as ^»"CVt -urun [Ibid.: 372]. West [2011] restored the corresponding Uyghur gloss as oriin, just to consider the relevant Khitanogram to be A for 'place, seat, throne, territory, country'. Such a decipherment is worth considering; those two Khitan characters, however, were read individually and were unable to gain any support from the extant data.
If the upmost fragment of the Uyghur gloss cannot likewise determine the whole reading, this Uyghur form can be immediately related to the Sino-Jurchen forms wolun ^^ / elun ^^ for 'cast iron' in HJJD [Tang 2013: 154]. It should be connected with the following Altaic etymology [Starostin et al. 2003: 1049]:
Proto-Altaic *oli (~ -e) 'to die; to be hungry, exhausted' — Proto-Turkic *ol- 'to die, (*ol-tur-) to kill' — cf. Old Turkic ol- 'to die' (Yenisei Old Uyghur), olur- 'to kill' (Orkhon-Yenisei Old Uyghur); Turkish ol- 'to die', oldur- 'to kill', etc.;
Proto-Mongolic *ol- 'to be hungry, hungry' — cf. Written Mongolian oluq 'hungry'; Khalkha olon 'hungry'; Buryat ulen 'hungry', etc.;
Proto-Manchu-Tungusic *(x)olbu- 'soul of the dead; shadow' — cf. Evenki elbu, olbu-n (attested only in Evenki, with probable parallels in Turkic and Mongolian).
Based on the above references and analyses, it could be challenged that Rybatzki [1999: 65] thought the Turkish-Gagauz designation olu demir, literally 'dead iron', for 'cast iron' as a loan translation from German or English. That is to say, such a Turkish-Gagauz isogloss seems rather cognate to the Sino-Jurchen form and further to the Proto-Altaic root despite of a slight semantic deviation.
Simultaneously, it can be noticed that, in the Uyghur gloss the extant upmost part resembles rather -l- than -r-. Consequently, it is justified etymologically that the Sino-Jurchen term wolun ^^ / elun ^^ for 'cast iron', reconstructed as *olon4, could be borrowed directly from some unattested Turco-Mongolic form, with the literal meaning 'exhausted (iron)'. And furthermore, in the fragment concerned, the two Khitan characters together with their Uyghur glosses should be reconstructed as olon 'cast (iron)" and qacu 'iron" respectively, and the whole compound should be interpreted as 'cast iron', which conforms to the general structure of Altaic compound nouns as "specific metalluigic term + generic metallurgic term". This becomes more reasonable as concerns the two Khitan terms related to iron from among the extant Khitanograms. On the other hand, Sun Bojun [2004: 266] reconstructed the first element of the compound as *olun based on the Manchu word olon for 'wave of water, girth of a horse', which is admissible despite of the erroneousness of the very parallel word given by her.
It is well known that the Khitan macroscript became the main pattern for the Jurchen writing system. In the extant Jurchen graphic set, there is no such character in our present reading of this lexical item. But beyond our expectations, an illegible Jurchenogram A as a part of the toponym ¿AI *xm-[?] mirjan 'Hu[...] Meng'an (M\ lUi'x) under the Hebei West Circuit (M^ffl^)', which occurs in the monument recording the names of successful candidates for the imperial degree of jinshi jJt± in 1224 (JPGII) [JinOjcong 1984: 35; West 2013], is extremely similar to the Khitanogram J&» by its graphic
4 Tang [2013: 154] reconstructed it as *oron, which deviates from our present reconstruction due to another reading of the Old Uyghur gloss w, as [w]-r-w-n.
form. As with the other two similar Jurchenograms — *ddn also for 'wind"5, — *xalu also for 'hot"6, both appearing in the Jurchen toponymy [West 2013], it seems possible for us to speculate on that the Jurchen character ft might well be reconstructed as *iilim so as to be combined with the preceding character *xu to form the above undeciphered Jurchen toponym developed from the Khitan character *olon. Thus, the Uyghur gloss *olon corresponding to the latter can be interpreted satisfactorily. Furthermore, it might well be that ft *ulun was erroneously regarded as an allograph of the Jurchen character & *fs [Jin Qicong 1984: 28, 29].
3. Conclusions
As mentioned above, the etymological and graphic approaches to some Jurchenograms, as well as phonetic connections with some Sino-Jurchen glosses recorded in Chinese historiography (HJJD^ could support the conclusion that the Khitan macroscirpt characters /fc» *olon and A *qcicu might well indicate 'cast (iron)" and 'iron" respectively, and the whole compound should be interpreted as the Khitan metallurgic term meaning 'cast iron', which seems more meaningful than ever. Of course, this needs further investigation to be proved ultimately in the context of some Khitan macroscript characters to be deciphered.
This paper offers certain attempts to decipher some Khitan macroscript characters based on the Altaic etymology and the graphic similarity to the neighboring writing systems (vulgar Chinese and Jurchen). The present methodology is sharply different from what Professor Liu Fengzhu and the other pioneers of Khitan studies (Goro Toyoda, Chinggeltei, etc.) made good use of. And furthermore, all these methods need to be synthesized to amply contribute to the decipherment of the Khitan writing systems.
Abbreviations
HJJD — Hisotry of the Jurchen-Jin Dynasty (Jin shi HKLD —
History of the Khitan-Liao Dynasty (Liao shi S^); JPGII — Jurchen Palace
5 This is the earlier form of the stem; its later full form is *3du-un 'wind' [JinQicong: 1984: 294].
6 The full stem is ^ *xalu-ijim 'hot' [Jin Qicong 1984: 187], but the reconstruction *xalu-un proposed by Jin Qicong is questionable.
Graduates' Inventory Inscription (Nüzhen jinshi timing bei ^Ä^i®-^^ /
Yantai Nüzhen guoshu bei SÄ^ÄH*"^).
Bibliography
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