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When Did Sogdians Begin to Write Vertically?

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When Did Sogdians Begin to Write Vertically? Tokyo University Linguistic Papers (TULIP) 33 (2013) 375-394 When Did Sogdians Begin to Write Vertically? Yutaka Yoshida Keywords: Sogdian, Sogdian, Middle Iranian, Sogdian script, Aramaic script, Silk Road, Kidara Abstract The Sogdian script originates from the Aramaic script employed in Sogdiana during the Achaemenid dynasty (550-331 BCE). The Aramaic script comprised twenty-two letters and was written horizontally from right to left. Its Sogdian descendant inherited both number of letters and the writing direction. However, a Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who visited Sogdiana in 630 CE, reports the vertical writing of the script and his witness is borne out by inscriptions from the latter half of the 6th century onward. In this paper the author tries to find out when the Sogdian script began to be written vertically. For that purpose a group of short inscriptions discovered in the Upper Indus area are taken into consideration. Since both vertical and horizontal writings are found among them, the author assumes that the Sogdians began to write vertically when the inscriptions were executed. Consideration of the historical background of the route connecting Gandhara and Sogdiana leads the author to date the material to the latter half of the 5th century, hence the script changed its writing orientation during that period. 0. Introduction Both Professor H. Kumamoto and I have been studying Pre-Islamic Iranian philology in Japan for the last thirty years and naturally have had close contact with each other. I have learned and benefited much not only from his outstanding articles on the Khotanese texts and on the history of Khotan but also from his profound knowledge in Indian as well as Iranian studies unsparingly imparted to me in personal communications. Long ago, when we were colleagues at the Shitennoji International Buddhist University, we even collaborated in publishing two Middle Iranian inscriptions found on two pieces of sandalwood preserved for more or less 1,300 years in the Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan: one in Pahlavi was read by Kumamoto and the other, a brand in Sogdian script, by myself.' It is my greatest pleasure to dedicate this paper to the volume commemorating his retirement as a token of my profound gratitude for his long-standing help and friendship and I hope that he likes it, even though its subject is the writing direction of Sogdian script and is hardly linguistic. 1. Two Problems of the Sogdian script 1 See our contributions to Tono (1987) , — 375 — YOSHIDA, Yutaka There are several questions surrounding Sogdian script. One is concerning when and how the Uighur script developed from the Sogdian. N. Sims-Williams (1981) proved that the development was quite smooth, and that there was no deliberate effort to create the Uighur script distinct from the Sogdian. Recently, I have envisaged the possibility that it was the so-called "Turco-Sogdians", or bilinguals in Sogdian and Uighur, who first wrote the Uighur language in the script familiar to them, cf. Yoshida (forthcoming a). In other words, it was not the Uighurs who adopted the Sogdian script to their mother tongue, but the Turco-Sogdians who being fully accustomed to Sogdian script applied it to write the other of their two mother tongues.2 Even so one must still explain the sharp difference between the Sogdian and Uighur alphabets: the latter totally lacks four letters D (daleth), T (teth), ` (ain), and Q (koph) out of the total twenty-two letters of the Aramaic alphabet and adds the three extra letters S, M, and X at the end, cf. T. Moriyasu (1997). Although the first four letters were never used in writing Sogdian either, the Sogdian alphabets of the eighth century does comprise them and puts signs like letters in the places where they used to occupy. These signs have nothing to do with the original shape of each letter. For example, a sign for ` (ain) is that of a numeral "100", while the letter ` (ain) is known to have merged with R (resh) long before.3 Another vexing problem is when and why the Sogdian script began to be written vertically. It was W. B. Henning who first drew attention to the fact that the script was once written vertically. In his monumental article, he writes as follows: Auch die besonders aus dem Mongolischen und Mandschuiischen bekannte Anderung der ursprunglichen Schriftrichtung, von oben nach unten in nach rechts fortschreitenden Kolumnen, statt von rechts nach links in Zeilen, ist bereits dem Sogdischen zuzuschreiben; das wird nicht nur durch dis Stellung von Abbildungen und Beischriften in chinesischer oder indischer Schrift, sowie durch die Schriftrichtung in pothi- Buchern (z.B. in der Hs. des Vessantara Jktaka) bewiesen, sondern sogar fur das Heimatland durch das direkte Zeugnis Huan-tsangs; die Christen und Manichaer schlossen sich von dieser Neuerung aus, die iibrigens zur Zeit der `Alien Briefe' noch nicht eingefuhrt worden war .' In this paper I try to find out the time or period when the Sogdian script changed its writing orientation. One of the reasons why I have selected this subject is that even after Henning's clear statement many non-Sogdianists still assume the horizontal orientation of the Sogdian script and 2 One Turco-Sogdiantext , TextA of Sims-Williamsand Hamilton(1990), could reflect the situation.Obviously, one and the same personwrote the entiretext, becausein the text sentencesin Sogdianand Uighuralternate without any discerniblereason and withoutany observabledifference in handwriting. 3 On the Sogdianalphabets see V. A. Livshitz(1970), idem (2008:298-305) and Y. Yoshida(1995: 75-79). For the mergerof letters ` (ain)and R (resh)see Henning(1958: 34) and Sims-Williams(1972). A letterD (daleth)was also no longer distinguishedfrom R (resh) already in the AncientLetters of the early fourth century,on which see Sims-Williams(1975: 134-139).What we find in the correspondingplace of the Sogdianalphabets is a sign for the numeral20. 4 Cf. Henning(1958: 56). Henning'smention of the pothi-bookof the SogdianVessantara Jataka seems to imply that the verticalorientation can be provedonly for short-linedpothis, and thathe tries to avoidhis judgmentabout the writingdirection in the long-linedpothi-books. Quite recently,Ch. Reck was able to ascertainthe verticalorientation also for long-linedpothis, cf. Reck (2009).For the two typesof pot/it-bookformat see Yoshida(2008: 461-462, nn. 5, 7). Curiously,Henning does not state anythingabout Uighurscript. However, it is now widelyaccepted that it was also writtenvertically, cf. Kara (1996:539). - 376 - When Did Sogdians Begin to Write Vertically? repeat the mistaken view in their books for the general readership.5 Apparently, this is partly due to the still common habit of Sogdianists to reproduce manuscripts and inscriptions in the way they are accustomed to read them, and partly because Iranianists do not pay much attention to the writing direction in their descriptions of scripts.' 2. Horizontal and Vertical Orientations of Sogdian script The Sogdian script goes back to the Aramaic script employed in Sogdiana during the Achaemenid Dynasty. During the Achaemenid period, Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic served as its administrative language and was employed all over its territory from Gandhara in the east to Egypt in the west. After the corruption of the empire, Imperial Aramaic ceased to be written and the local Iranian scribes began to write their own languages with the same Aramaic script. When and how this "Iranianization" of the administrative languages began and proceeded is hard to realize . However, consensus has been achieved about the Parthian affiliation of a number of the ostraca from the first century BC discovered from the ruined city of Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthian Empire. Obviously, from the Parthian period (ca. 210 BC - 224 CE) onward Iranian dialects or languages were represented by the Aramaic script.' It is to be noted in passing that the things developed differently in Gandhara, where the Aramaic script was totally remodeled to write the local Middle Indian dialect or Gandhari. The Gandharan script, now called Kharosthi, is much superior to the Iranian counterparts originating from the Aramaic script in that the former can represent every vowel of Gandhari, while the latter are simple consonantal scripts lacking vowel signs. Nevertheless, the both share the horizontal writing direction from right to left. Let us first see Xuanzang's (602 - 664 CE) report mentioned by Henning; he travelled through Sogdiana in the summer 630 CE8: 牢源簡略本 二十鹸言.韓 而相 牛 … 粗 有書記 堅藷其文. The primary characters are few; in the beginning they were twenty or so in number: the words are composed by the combination of these; ... They have some literature and read the sentences vertically.9 It is clear that Xuanzang's report accords very well with what we now know about the Sogdian alphabet and is likely to have been based on his own observation. Therefore, he must also have witnessed the local people writing and reading the script vertically. In fact his second observation 5 The latest example known to me is a book by M. Hamada, Chuoajia no isuramu, Tokyo 2008, p. 49. 6 For example, P. 0 SkjwrvO does not refer to the problem in his otherwise very useful essay entitled "Aramaic scripts for Iranian languages" published in 1996. Differently, Yoshida (2009: 279), where I wrote: "By the end of the sixth century, this Sogdian script came to be written vertically rather than horizontally from right to left." 7 Mention should be made of the Aramaeo-Iranian inscriptions of Asoka dating back to the third century BC. Their language is generally assumed to be a local East Iranian language, cf. H. Humbach (1979). Differently, Skjxrvo (1996: 516). 8 Recently, de la Vaissiere (2010) showed convincingly that Xuanzang left China not in 627 but in 629; he stayed two months in Kucha before crossing the Tianshan Mountains, obviously waiting for the spring to come.
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