THE EARLIEST ATTESTED TURKIC LANGUAGE THE CHIEH 羯 (*KƗR) LANGUAGE OF THE FOURTH CENTURY A.D. ANDREW SHIMUNEK – CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH – JONATHAN NORTH WASHINGTON – NICHOLAS KONTOVAS – KURBAN NIYAZ Abstract The recent revival by Étienne de la Vaissière1 of the idea that the Huns of European history are to be identified with the Hsiung-nu of Chinese history is based partly on Chinese and Sogdian accounts of the sacking of the cities Yeh and Loyang in the early fourth century AD.2 One of the key pieces of evidence not discussed by de la Vaissière is a prophecy recorded in Chinese transcription, which has been interpreted variously by previous scholars, who have proposed to identify the text linguistically with one or another language.3 Close reexamination based on a more accurate reconstruction of the Chinese and on careful attention to the Central Eurasian linguistic evidence allows the text to be accurately read and precisely identified as an archaic form of Turkic close to the earliest attested texts in Old Turkic. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND this has been taken by him as crucial evidence that the Huns of the West are to be equated with the Hsiung-nu The idea that the Huns were the same as the Hsiung- of some centuries earlier in the East, Chinese historians’ nu 匈奴 (Xiongnu), long ago rejected by most historians records of the events tell us specifically that the foreign of Central Eurasia,4 has been revived in a recent article people responsible for the deed were the Chieh 羯 or by Étienne de la Vaissière. He argues that it is confirmed *Kɨr, not the Hsiung-nu.6 inter alia by the Sogdian ‘ancient letters’, the second of According to the Chinshu晉書, the official dynastic which refers specifically to the capture of Yeh and history of the period, a *Kɨr army led by Shih Hu, a Loyang in 307 and 311 respectively and identifies the general and relative of Shih Le,7 captured Yeh in 307. people responsible for the sacking as “Xwn”, that is, In 311, the *Kɨr and others, including Liu Yao 劉曜 (a “Hun(s)” 5 whereas, according to de la Vaissière, the Hsiung-nu by ancestry) captured and sacked Loyang. Chinese sources identify them as Hsiung-nu. Although After many more adventures, captures, and sackings, in 328 Shih Le himself captured Liu Yao at Loyang and later executed him. In relating the events of 328, the Chin 1 de la Vaissière (2005a). shu fortuitously preserves an actual sentence in the *Kɨr 2 See also de la Vaissière (2005b: 43-45). language, transcribed in Chinese characters and provided 3 These include the Turkologists Annemarie von Gabain and Louis Bazin, who conclude that the language is Turkic, and much more with glosses and a translation. The historical context for recently the East Asianists E.G. Pulleyblank and Alexander Vovin, who it is that Shih Le was unsure whether or not he would be conclude that the language is Yeniseic. The latter two scholars’ judge- ment is apparently based above all on the putative similarity of the modern name Ket to the ‘Early Middle Chinese’ form of the name 6 Although this ethnolinguistic group is said by the Chinese histo- Chieh 羯 in the traditional Chinese reconstruction system, ✩kɨat (Pul. rians to be “a branch of the Hsiung-nu”, the same statement is made 154: ‘people subject to the Xiongnu’). However, the Chinese recon- in Chinese histories about more or less all northern peoples from late structions used by the latter are not accurate enough for them to have Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; the Turks, for example, are also drawn correct conclusions about the text or the name Chieh. said to be “a branch” or “descendants” of the Hsiung-nu. It has long 4 See for example the discussion by Sinor (1990: 177-178). been accepted among Sinologists familiar with early Chinese sources 5 The relevant portion is translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams: on early Central Eurasia that such claims cannot be taken at face value. “And, sirs, the last emperor, so they say, fled from Luoyang because of Besides, if the people really were Hsiung-nu, the Chinese would undoubt- the famine, and fire was set to his palace and to the city, and the palace edly have called them Hsiung-nu, not *Kɨr. Note also T’an Ch’i-hsiang, was burnt and the city [destroyed]. Luoyang (is) no more, Ye (is) no who argues that the Chieh were not ‘Hsiungnu’ (T’an 1987). For more! Moreover … as far as Ye, these (same) Huns [who] yesterday more on the historical context and significance of the events, names, were the emperor’s (subjects)! And, sirs, we do not know wh[ether] the and linguistic identifications mentioned here, see Beckwith (2011). remaining Chinese were able to expel the Huns [from] Changan, from 7 Shih Le 石勒 (274-333 A.D.) was the founding emperor of the China, or …” <http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html> *Kɨr 羯 state known as the Later Chao 後趙 (319-351 A.D.). JournalAsiatique 303.1 (2015): 143-151 doi: 10.2143/JA.303.1.3085124 998065.indb8065.indb 114343 55/08/15/08/15 113:403:40 144 ANDREW SHIMUNEK, CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH, ETAL. able to capture his rival Liu Yao, who had attacked means ‘army’, *tererkaŋ means ‘go out’, *boklug is Liu Loyang. Shih therefore asked a Buddhist monk, Fo-t’u Yao’s foreign title, and *gutuktaŋ means ‘capture’.12 This 13 Ch’eng (佛圖澄), for his advice. In his reply, the monk means ‘army go out, capture [Liu] Yao.’ produces two sentences in the Chieh language, which we As for the mention of ringing bells in this passage, the discuss in the following section. Chinshu states that Ch’eng had an unusual skill: “He was able to tell fortunes by listening to bell chimes.” (能聽鈴 14 I. THE CHIN SHU PASSAGE 音以言吉凶). Additional confirmation of this is given on the following page of the text, in an explicit example: This passage has been studied or commented on by 澄曰 :「昨日寺鈴鳴云，明旦食時當擒段末波 」。 many scholars, including Shiratori (1902: 6-7), Ramstedt (1922: 30-32), Bazin (1948), Wright (1948: 322, n. 6), “Ch’eng said, ‘Yesterday the temple bells rang, saying von Gabain (1950), Benzing (1959: 686-687), Pulley- “Tomorrow morning at breakfast-time you will catch Tuan Mo-po”.15 blank (1962b: 264-265), Krueger (1962), Tekin (1993), Vovin (2000), Dybo (2007: 76-82), and others.8 Due to Accordingly, Fo-t’u Ch’eng’s response to Shih Le’s the numerous erroneous interpretations in these previous request is perfectly clear in the context of the text of the studies – including fundamental problems with the inter- Chinshu. pretation of the Chinese text (in the majority of these studies), not to mention the interpretation of the Chieh sentence transcribed in Chinese characters – we have II. THE MIDDLE CHINESE AND OLD CHINESE READINGS relied on our own translation of this passage, and present OF THE CHARACTERS a new analysis of the Chieh sentence, based on an Considering the dates of these events, this *Kɨr text updated reconstruction of the early northeastern Middle must have been transcribed in a variety of Early Middle Chinese dialect in which the sentence was transcribed. Chinese (EMC),16 i.e. Chinese as spoken during the period The relevant passage of the Chinshuwhich contains of Northern and Southern division, roughly from the fourth the *Kɨr sentences is presented below, with our English to sixth centuries AD. The strongest evidence for Early translation: Middle Chinese phonology is the corpus of Chinese tran- 及曜自攻洛陽, 勒將救之, 其群下鹹諫以為不可。勒以訪 scriptions of foreign languages dating roughly to the 澄, 澄曰:「相輪鈴音云: 秀支替戾岡, 僕谷劬禿當。」此 period of Northern and Southern division.17 One must 羯語也, 秀支, 軍也。替戾岡，出也。僕谷, 劉曜胡位 also carefully consider the phonology of the following 9 也。劬禿當, 捉也。此言軍出捉得曜也。 period, Late Middle Chinese (Sui-T’ang Middle Chinese), When [Liu] Yao himself attacked Loyang, [Shih] Le was going to save it (i.e. the city), [but] all of his retainers 12 It is likely that Fo-t’u Ch’eng gave the oral Chinese translation remonstrated that this was impossible. [Shih] Le visited of the sentence as a whole, but it is highly unlikely that the monk [Fo-t’u] Ch’eng, and Ch’eng10 said: “The bells on the uttered this sentence and then gave a word-by-word gloss. The glossing high minister’s [chariot] rang,11 saying ‘*suketererkan and segmentation of the individual wordforms is almost certainly a later addition by someone else, presumably whoever recorded the *Kɨr sen- .’” This is in the *Kɨr language; bokluggutuktaŋ 羯 *suke tence in Chinese. The glossing and segmentation of individual *Kɨr words in the Chinshu must therefore be carefully reexamined. 8 There is at least one additional work that discusses this text, 13 This English sentence is a literal translation of the Early Middle namely Шервашидзе, И. Н. (1986) Формы глагола в языке тюркских Chinese translation of the *Kɨr sentence. рунических надписей (Тбилиси: Мецниереба). Unfortunately, we 14 ChinShu 95: 2485. were unable to obtain a copy of this work. 15 ChinShu 95: 2486. The Tuan 段 (*dɔr/*dʊr/*dɔn/*dʊn) were a 9 ChinShu 95: 2485. branch of the *Serbi (Hsien-pei), q.v. Shimunek (2013). 10 The character 澄 also has the reading teng; it is possible that his 16 Note that “Early Middle Chinese” as used here is different from name should be read Fo-t’u Teng instead of Ch’eng. The ChinShu晉 Pulleyblank’s usage of the term “Early Middle Chinese” to denote “the 書, chüan 95, states that Fo-t’u Ch’eng is aT’ien-chuperson (T’ien-chu standard [dialect of Middle Chinese] underlying the [Ch’iehYün]” of jen 天竺人).