A First Look at Pyu Grammar

Marc Miyake (The British Museum)

17 May 2018
SEALS 28, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Supported by
 Who were the Pyu?
• Pyu is the modern Burmese
exonym for a people who once
flourished in walled cities such
as Halin, Beikthano, and Śrī
Kṣetra in the first millennium CE;
their autonym is unknown
• The Pyu assimilated with
Burmese speakers who arrived
in the 9th century CE

CIA map of Burma

 What did the Pyu speak?
• A Trans-Himalayan (Sino-
Tibetan) language whose
position within the family is
unknown; may belong to an
extinct branch.
• No guarantee that Pyu
subgroups with any TH language
now spoken in Burma (cf. Illyrian
and modern Indo-European
languages in the Balkans)

CIA map of Burma’s languages

 What remains of the Pyu language?
• Pyu-language epigraphic texts in
an Indic script
• Tang dynasty Chinese
transcriptions of Pyu (驃 Piao in
Mandarin); extremely limited in
number and difficult to interpret
• Borrowings into Burmese: e.g.,
‘country’; more may await
identification

Photographs of PYU 27 by James Miles

A century of Pyu language studies
 Mostly just a struggle to transliterate what we see: e.g.,
yaṗ trom·ḹ tin·ṗ [ba/kha] dri ḙaḹ ti sat· pdraul·ḹ ta thraṛ ·ḹ din·ṙ ṗ
I feel as if I’m looking at early Albanian manuscripts – the script
is vaguely familiar, but the language is almost totally alien.

Public domain photograph of the Bellifortis MS (15th c.) from Wikipedia.

 After last year, I can sound out the Pyu text …
/jä t.rom̥ tïn [ba/kʰa] Ri ɓah ti sat p.Rol̥ ta t.r̥aŋ̊ ðïn/
 … but what does it all mean?
/jä t.rom̥ tïn [ba/kʰa] Ri ɓah ti sat p.Rol̥ ta t.r̥aŋ̊ ðïn/
To begin to answer that question, we need to go back
to where Pyu language studies started …

Photograph of PYU 7 by James MIles

The Kubyaukgyi (Myazedi) Inscription

Rubbings from Epigraphia Birmanica (1919)

The Pyu ‘Rosetta Stone’
 The four texts don’t quite line up
• Burmese: ‘1628 years of the Buddha’s religion
having elapsed’
• Pali: ‘When 1628 years had elapsed after the
Nirvāṇa of the Lord of the World [lokanātha]’
• Mon: ‘After the religion of the Lord Buddha had
gone on for 1628 years’
• Pyu: dathagaṃda ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 600 20 ? ? ?
????
Translations by Duroiselle and Blagden from Epigraphia Birmanica (1919)
 Finding matches: the date
• Burmese: ‘1628 years of the Buddha’s religion
having elapsed’
• Pali: ‘When 1628 years had elapsed after the
Nirvāṇa of the Lord of the World [lokanātha]’
• Mon: ‘After the religion of the Lord Buddha had
gone on for 1628 years’
• Pyu: dathagaṃda ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 600 20
hra[t]·ṁ = ‘eight’ ? ? ? ? ? ?
 Finding matches: Buddha
• Burmese: ‘1628 years of the Buddha’s religion
having elapsed’
• Pali: ‘When 1628 years had elapsed after the
Nirvāṇa of the Lord of the World [lokanātha]’
• Mon: ‘After the religion of the Lord Buddha had
gone on for 1628 years’
• Pyu: dathagaṃda /tatʰagata/= tathāgata ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? 1628 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
 It gets worse: no word spacing –
just ‘syl la bic u nits’ (cf. Vietnamese)

Photograph of PYU 8 by James MIles

But at least the Kubyaukgyi has punctuation
(too bad other texts don’t!)
 Finding matches: ends of sentences
• Old Burmese: verb + brī ‘finish’ + … ||
• Pyu: verb + /ta ðäŋ/ ‘finish’? ||

Pyu /ta/: cf. Burmese thāḥ- < *t- ‘to place’

Zooming out: the realis*? marker
/ɓïn̥/ + verb + /ta ðäŋ/
/ɓïn̥ t.väŋ̊ ta ðäŋ/
‘elapsed’
*suggested by Julian K. Wheatley
The realis marker /ɓïn̥/ as a landmark
kṭlot· rom· tṅok· sdak·ṃ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ tgav·ḥ
tak· °o kul· vuḥ tlaḥ kdaṅ· mūṅ·ḥ kjik·ṁ tin·ṁ
ṅam· °o pguṃ kdrap·ṁ pil·ṁḥ tdav·ṃḥ kdaṅ·
priṅ·ḥ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ tmu nim·ḥ diṃ yaṁ trom·ḥ
tin·ṁ [ba/kha] dri ḅaḥ ti sat· pdraul·ḥ ta
thraṅ·ḥ din·ṃṁ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ krol·ḥ gim·ṁ ti
saṁḥ tar· dav·ṃḥ [d]aṅ·ṁ kni din·ṃṁ tar·
ḅin·ṁḥ hmuy·ḥ … (PYU 27, line 3)
 The realis marker /ɓïn̥/
as a clue to (first syllables of) verbs
kṭlot· rom· tṅok· sdak·ṃ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ tgav·ḥ
tak· °o kul· vuḥ tlaḥ kdaṅ· mūṅ·ḥ kjik·ṁ tin·ṁ
ṅam· °o pguṃ kdrap·ṁ pil·ṁḥ tdav·ṃḥ kdaṅ·
priṅ·ḥ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ tmu nim·ḥ diṃ yaṁ trom·ḥ
tin·ṁ [ba/kha] dri ḅaḥ ti sat· pdraul·ḥ ta
thraṅ·ḥ din·ṃṁ tar· ḅin·ṁḥ krol·ḥ gim·ṁ ti
saṁḥ tar· dav·ṃḥ [d]aṅ·ṁ kni din·ṃṁ tar·
ḅin·ṁḥ hmuy·ḥ … (PYU 27, line 3)
Zooming out further: basic word order
agent + patient + verb
/raɉakumar ... t.ðu ɓïn̥ cʰaj ta ðäŋ/
Rajakumāra … water R L S pour finish
‘Rajakumāra poured water.’
(PYU 7.22)
 The mystery of medial verbs
agent + verb + patient
/raɉakumar ... ɓïn̥ s.tabana ɓuda tʰar/
Rajakumāra … R L S enshrine Buddha golden
‘Rajakumāra enshrined the golden Buddha.’
(PYU 7.19 – the same text!)
Zooming out: The Kubyaukgyi is a Late Pyu text from
c. 1112 CE – c. 600 years after the oldest? text.
One of the oldest texts (c. 6th century CE) may be in
a special register of Pyu that I call Gloss Pyu.
Gloss Pyu follows each Sanskrit word on the base of
the Kan Wet Khaung mound Buddha statue.

Photographs of PYU 16 by James MIles

Gloss Pyu follows each Sanskrit word on the base of
the Kan Wet Khaung mound Buddha statue.
 Unique Sanskrit-like features of Gloss Pyu:
More number and case marking than regular Pyu
Sanskrit: Gloss Pyu:
-ātma-jaiḥ /sah p.li vaŋ ðaŋ/
self-born.INS.PL child grandchild PL INS
‘with descendants’ ‘with children and
grandchildren’
 Unique Sanskrit-like features of Gloss Pyu:
Even a verb is marked for number
Sanskrit: Gloss Pyu:
virotsyanti /lam l̥ïh s.käŋ m.ra vaŋ/
contend.F U T .PL road ? obstruct F U T PL
‘they will contend’ ‘they will obstruct …
road’
 Unique Sanskrit-like features of Gloss Pyu:
Relative pronouns
Sanskrit: Gloss Pyu:
yaiḥ /p.ðik vaŋ/
REL.M .IN S .P L REL.PL
‘by whom’ ‘whom’
(no instrumental case
marker /ðaŋ/!)
Other Pyu: neither Gloss Pyu nor Late Pyu
 Late Pyu vs. Other Pyu
• Punctuation • No punctuation
• Spacing in one text (39) • Phrase/section spacing
• Mix of verb-final, medial orders • Verb-medial order not yet found
• Ubiquitous realis marker /ɓïn/ • /ɓïn/ less common
• Ubiquitous /ta ðäŋ/ ‘finish’ • /ta ðäŋ/ ‘finish’ only once
• Copula /si/ • Copula /jä/ < ‘this’?
• Preposed honorific /ɓäj̊/ • Postposed honorific /ɓäj̊/
Geographic diversity: Pyu inscription
findspots: 400 km north to south!
 Dialectal diversity?
• The corpus has a homogeneous phonology
with the exception of Late Pyu texts and a
single text (PYU 37) with transitional
(Middle Pyu?) features.
• Whether this homogeneity also extends to
morphology and syntax is an open question.
 No universal key
• Even if the Kubyaukgyi Late Pyu and the Gloss Pyu
texts were fully understood, they would still not be
the key to Other Pyu. They are both chronological
outliers, and the Gloss Pyu text is also a stylistic
outlier. They are not representative of Pyu in general.
• ‘Other Pyu’ is a cover term for the language of texts
across a wide range of space and time. The mining of
this diversity has barely begun.