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
The idea that the Huns were the same as the Hsiung-
nu 匈奴 (Xiongnu), long ago rejected by most historians
of Central Eurasia,4 has been revived in a recent article
by Étienne de la Vaissière. He argues that it is confirmed
inter alia by the Sogdian ‘ancient letters’, the second of
which refers specifically to the capture of Yeh and
Loyang in 307 and 311 respectively and identifies the
people responsible for the sacking as “Xwn”, that is,
“Hun(s)”5 whereas, according to de la Vaissière, the
Chinese sources identify them as Hsiung-nu. Although
1
de la Vaissière (2005a).
2
See also de la Vaissière (2005b: 43-45).
3
These include the Turkologists Annemarie von Gabain and Louis
Bazin, who conclude that the language is Turkic, and much more
recently the East Asianists E.G. Pulleyblank and Alexander Vovin, who
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
Chieh 羯 in the traditional Chinese reconstruction system, ✩kɨat (Pul.
154: ‘people subject to the Xiongnu’). However, the Chinese recon-
structions used by the latter are not accurate enough for them to have
drawn correct conclusions about the text or the name Chieh.
4
See for example the discussion by Sinor (1990: 177-178).
5
The relevant portion is translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams:
“And, sirs, the last emperor, so they say, fled from Luoyang because of
the famine, and fire was set to his palace and to the city, and the palace
was burnt and the city [destroyed]. Luoyang (is) no more, Ye (is) no
more! Moreover … as far as Ye, these (same) Huns [who] yesterday
were the emperor’s (subjects)! And, sirs, we do not know wh[ether] the
remaining Chinese were able to expel the Huns [from] Changan, from
China, or …” <http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html>
this has been taken by him as crucial evidence that the
Huns of the West are to be equated with the Hsiung-nu
of some centuries earlier in the East, Chinese historians’
records of the events tell us specifically that the foreign
people responsible for the deed were the Chieh 羯 or
*Kɨr, not the Hsiung-nu.6
According to the Chin!shu!晉書, the official dynastic
history of the period, a *Kɨr army led by Shih Hu, a
general and relative of Shih Le,7 captured Yeh in 307.
In 311, the *Kɨr and others, including Liu Yao 劉曜 (a
Hsiung-nu by ancestry) captured and sacked Loyang.
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!
shu fortuitously preserves an actual sentence in the *Kɨr
language, transcribed in Chinese characters and provided
with glosses and a translation. The historical context for
it is that Shih Le was unsure whether or not he would be
6
Although this ethnolinguistic group is said by the Chinese histo-
rians to be “a branch of the Hsiung-nu”, the same statement is made
in Chinese histories about more or less all northern peoples from late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; the Turks, for example, are also
said to be “a branch” or “descendants” of the Hsiung-nu. It has long
been accepted among Sinologists familiar with early Chinese sources
on early Central Eurasia that such claims cannot be taken at face value.
Besides, if the people really were Hsiung-nu, the Chinese would undoubt-
edly have called them Hsiung-nu, not *Kɨr. Note also T’an Ch’i-hsiang,
who argues that the Chieh were not ‘Hsiungnu’ (T’an 1987). For
more on the historical context and significance of the events, names,
and linguistic identifications mentioned here, see Beckwith (2011).
7
Shih Le 石勒 (274-333 A.D.) was the founding emperor of the
*Kɨr 羯 state known as the Later Chao 後趙 (319-351 A.D.).

Journal!Asiatique 303.1 (2015): 143-151

doi: 10.2143/JA.303.1.3085124
144 ANDREW SHIMUNEK, CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH, ET!AL.
able to capture his rival Liu Yao, who had attacked
Loyang. Shih therefore asked a Buddhist monk, Fo-t’u
Ch’eng (佛圖澄), for his advice. In his reply, the monk
produces two sentences in the Chieh language, which we
discuss in the following section.
I. THE CHIN! SHU PASSAGE
This passage has been studied or commented on by
many scholars, including Shiratori (1902: 6-7), Ramstedt
(1922: 30-32), Bazin (1948), Wright (1948: 322, n. 6),
von Gabain (1950), Benzing (1959: 686-687), Pulley-
blank (1962b: 264-265), Krueger (1962), Tekin (1993),
Vovin (2000), Dybo (2007: 76-82), and others.8 Due to
the numerous erroneous interpretations in these previous
studies – including fundamental problems with the inter-
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
relied on our own translation of this passage, and present
a new analysis of the Chieh sentence, based on an
updated reconstruction of the early northeastern Middle
Chinese dialect in which the sentence was transcribed.
The relevant passage of the Chin!shu!which contains
the *Kɨr sentences is presented below, with our English
translation:
及曜自攻洛陽, 勒將救之, 其群下鹹諫以為不可。勒以訪
澄, 澄曰:「相輪鈴音云: 秀支替戾岡, 僕谷劬禿當。」此
羯語也, 秀支, 軍也。替戾岡，出也。僕谷, 劉曜胡位
也。劬禿當, 捉也。此言軍出捉得曜也。9
When [Liu] Yao himself attacked Loyang, [Shih] Le was
going to save it (i.e. the city), [but] all of his retainers
remonstrated that this was impossible. [Shih] Le visited
[Fo-t’u] Ch’eng, and Ch’eng10 said: “The bells on the
high minister’s [chariot] rang,11 saying ‘*su! keter! erkan!
bokluggu!tuktaŋ.’” This is in the 羯 *Kɨr language; *suke
8 13
There is at least one additional work that discusses this text,
namely Шервашидзе, И. Н. (1986) Формы!глагола!в!языке!тюркских!
рунических! надписей (Тбилиси: Мецниереба). Unfortunately, we
were unable to obtain a copy of this work.
9
Chin!Shu 95: 2485.
10
The character 澄 also has the reading teng; it is possible that his
name should be read Fo-t’u Teng instead of Ch’eng. The Chin!Shu!晉
書, chüan 95, states that Fo-t’u Ch’eng is a!T’ien-chu!person (T’ien-chu!
jen 天竺人). This T’ien-chu is a dialect word for ‘India’ or Indic peoples
in general. In the Old Chinese dialect in which the word was originally
transcribed, t’ien 天 (central Old Chinese *tʰin) must have been read
*hin so that *hin-du!or *hin-duk 天竺 renders the name Hinduk(a) (cf.
Pulleyblank 1962a: 108; Pelliot 1914: 412). See Wright (1948) for a
biography of Fo-t’u Ch’eng/Teng.
11
Vovin (2000: 93) translates 相輪鈴音云 as “It is said in Xian[g]
lun Lingyin…,” assuming 相輪鈴音 to be the name of a text. However,
the meaning is completely clear from the Chin!shu text. In addition, if
相輪鈴音 were known to be a book title the editors of the Chung-hua
shu-chü edition of the Chin!Shu would have marked it as such with a
wavy line.
means ‘army’, *tererkaŋ means ‘go out’, *boklug is Liu
Yao’s foreign title, and *gutuktaŋ means ‘capture’.12 This
means ‘army go out, capture [Liu] Yao.’13
As for the mention of ringing bells in this passage, the
Chin!shu states that Ch’eng had an unusual skill: “He was
able to tell fortunes by listening to bell chimes.” (能聽鈴
音以言吉凶).14 Additional confirmation of this is given on
the following page of the text, in an explicit example:
澄曰 :「昨日寺鈴鳴云，明旦食時當擒段末波 」。
“Ch’eng said, ‘Yesterday the temple bells rang, saying
“Tomorrow morning at breakfast-time you will catch
Tuan Mo-po”.15
Accordingly, Fo-t’u Ch’eng’s response to Shih Le’s
request is perfectly clear in the context of the text of the
Chin!shu.
II. THE MIDDLE CHINESE AND OLD CHINESE READINGS
OF THE CHARACTERS
Considering the dates of these events, this *Kɨr text
must have been transcribed in a variety of Early Middle
Chinese (EMC),16 i.e. Chinese as spoken during the period
of Northern and Southern division, roughly from the fourth
to sixth centuries AD. The strongest evidence for Early
Middle Chinese phonology is the corpus of Chinese tran-
scriptions of foreign languages dating roughly to the
period of Northern and Southern division.17 One must
also carefully consider the phonology of the following
period, Late Middle Chinese (Sui-T’ang Middle Chinese),
12
It is likely that Fo-t’u Ch’eng gave the oral Chinese translation
of the sentence as a whole, but it is highly unlikely that the monk
uttered this sentence and then gave a word-by-word gloss. The glossing
and segmentation of the individual wordforms is almost certainly a later
addition by someone else, presumably whoever recorded the *Kɨr sen-
tence in Chinese. The glossing and segmentation of individual *Kɨr
words in the Chin!shu must therefore be carefully reexamined.
This English sentence is a literal translation of the Early Middle
Chinese translation of the *Kɨr sentence.
14
Chin!Shu 95: 2485.
15
Chin!Shu 95: 2486. The Tuan 段 (*dɔr/*dʊr/*dɔn/*dʊn) were a
branch of the *Serbi (Hsien-pei), q.v. Shimunek (2013).
16
Note that “Early Middle Chinese” as used here is different from
Pulleyblank’s usage of the term “Early Middle Chinese” to denote “the
standard [dialect of Middle Chinese] underlying the [Ch’ieh!Yün]” of
601 AD (Pulleyblank 1991: 2). In our usage, Middle Chinese as spoken
during the Sui-T’ang period is termed “Late Middle Chinese” and the
preceding period is “Early Middle Chinese”, i.e. the language of the
period of Northern and Southern division, lasting from approximately
the 4th century AD through the 6th century. The tradition-based theo-
retical ‘Middle Chinese’ presented in Pulleyblank (1984, 1991, etc.)
corresponds roughly to attested Sui-T’ang Late Middle Chinese.
To avoid confusion with our Early Middle Chinese and Pulleyblank’s
own “Late Middle Chinese”, we call his “Early Middle Chinese” sim-
ply “Middle Chinese” or “MChi” herein.
17
For Northeastern Early Middle Chinese phonology see Beckwith
(2007) and Shimunek (2013).
 THE EARLIEST ATTESTED TURKIC LANGUAGE
and the preceding period, Late Old Chinese (Ch’in-Han
Old Chinese).18
The strongest reliable sources for the reconstruction
of Late Middle Chinese are transcriptions in Old Tibetan,
Khotanese Brahmi, and Old Uygur, which have been
studied in detail by Takata (1988, 1993), Csongor (1952,
1954, 1960, 1962), Coblin (1995), Takeuchi (2008), and
others. The dominant, unperiodized ‘Old Chinese’ recon-
structions include Schuessler (1987), Starostin (1989),
Baxter (1992), and Sagart (1999). Beckwith (2002, 2007,
etc.) has developed a scientific linguistic methodology
for the historical-comparative reconstruction of Old Chi-
nese and foreign languages transcribed in Chinese.
In reconstructing the EMC readings of the characters
transcribing the Chin!shu!*Kɨr data, we have placed the
greatest emphasis on the foreign segmental transcriptions
of LMC when they exist, although it has been necessary
to take the dominant unperiodized ‘Old Chinese’ (Bax.,
Sch., Sag., Sta.) and theoretical ‘Middle Chinese’ (Pul.)
reconstructions into consideration.
1. The first clause: [秀支替戾岡], glossed as ‘army go
out (軍出)’
The first character, 秀 (hsiu4), is read in Middle Chi-
nese as ✩suw3 (Pul. 347). No foreign segmental transcrip-
tions are known. Various proposals exist for unperio-
dized ‘Old Chinese’ readings of the word, including
*bs-hlu(ʔ)-s (Sag. 240), *sljus (Bax. 798), and *slhuʔh
(Sta. 555). We propose *suw/*su as the northern EMC
reading of this character.19
The second character, 支 (chih1), is read in theoretical
MChi as ✩tɕi1 (Pul. 404) and the attested LMC form is
transcribed in Old Tibetan as ཅི་ ci! [tśi] (Tak. 328-329).
‘Old Chinese’ readings include *kje (Bax. 809), and more
correctly, *ke (Sta. 567). It has been shown that this char-
acter was read *ke in northern varieties of EMC.20
18
See Beckwith (2002, 2007, etc.) for the periodization of Old
Chinese.
19
Vovin (2000: 96) criticizes Bazin (1948) for connecting 秀 with
Old Turkic sü ‘army, soldiers’ on the grounds that the vocalism of the
Old Chinese form does not permit it, and also argues, following Baxter
(1992), that the Old Chinese form had coda *-s. While this is possible
for Old Chinese, we are in fact not dealing with Old Chinese, but a
northern dialect of Early Middle Chinese (ca. 4th to 6th c.). It is clear
from evidence on other languages of this period that the phonology of
this variety of Middle Chinese differed greatly from the usual tradi-
tion-based reconstructions of ‘Old Chinese’ and Pulleyblank’s work on
Late Middle Chinese (‘Early Middle Chinese’ in his terminology).
While we have evidence of Early Middle Chinese *-s in numerous
transcriptions of foreign words and titles and even in Byzantine Greek
transcriptions of Türk names attesting a word-final sibilant (cf. Beck-
with 2009), it is highly likely that many of the *-s!codas proposed in
the literature in fact never existed.
20
Beckwith (2007), Beckwith (2009: 382).
145
The character 替 (t’i4) is reconstructed as ✩they3
(Pul. 305) for theoretical Middle Chinese. ‘Old Chinese’
readings include *thijlts (Bax.) and *thēh (Sta. 567).
We propose Northern EMC *tʰey.
The character 戾 (li4! ~! lei4) is reconstructed ✩ley3 ~
✩
let (Pul. 189, 194) for theoretical LMC. ‘Old Chinese’
readings include *C-rets (Bax. 773) and *r(h)īć (Sta.
572). Considering the fact that theoretical LMC coda ✩t
(including *t from OChi *ts) corresponds to r in attested
Late Middle Chinese in foreign segmental transcriptions,
we reconstruct Northern EMC *ler. Northern Wei tran-
scriptions of Taghbach provide further evidence of this
coda *r in Northern Early Middle Chinese.21
The last character of the first clause, 岡 (kang1), is
reconstructed as MChi ✩kaŋ1 (Pul. 103). Note also attested
LMC in Khotanese Brahmi transcription 剛 kām ~ kau
(Tak 386-387). ‘Old Chinese’ reconstructions for 岡
include *kaŋ (Bax. 758) and *kāŋ (Sta. 584). Note also
‘Old Chinese’ 鋼 *akaŋ (Sag. 236). The reconstruction of
Old Chinese non-labial nasals is still a matter of uncer-
tainty. In many instances it is not clear whether a given
word had alveolar *n, velar *ŋ, or something else. We
represent this ambiguity with a capital *N (distinguished
from small caps [ɴ], the standard IPA grapheme for
uvular nasals). The northern variety of EMC in which
the Chieh sentence is transcribed appears to have been
fairly conservative, and is likely to have retained the Old
Chinese neutralization of *n and *ŋ. Thus, we recon-
struct 岡 Northern EMC *kaN.
2. The second clause: [僕谷劬禿當], glossed as ‘cap-
ture Yao (捉得曜)’
The first character, 僕 (p’u2), is reconstructed for theo-
retical MChi as ✩bəwk/✩bawk (Pul. 243), and is attested in
Old Tibetan transcription as བོག་ bog![bʊk] (Tak. 418-419).
‘Old Chinese’ reconstructions include *bok (Bax. 781)
and *bōk (Sta. 560). We propose northern EMC *bok.
The second character, 谷 (lu4), has several readings.
The reading lu4 is attested for northern frontier dialects;
note the Hsiung-nu title 谷蠡王 luli! king.22 Theoretical
MChi ✩ləwk (Pul. 201). ‘Old Chinese’ *Cə-lok (Sag. 236).
No foreign segmental transcriptions of this reading are
known. We reconstruct Northern EMC *luk.
The character 劬 (ch’ü2) is reconstructed for MChi as
✩
gu1 (Pul. 260). There are no known foreign segmental
transcriptions. The word is reconstructed as ‘Old Chinese’
*gju (Sch. 498), corrected to *gu. We propose Northern
EMC *gu.
21
Shimunek (2013) presents an analysis of the Northern Wei Chinese
transcriptions of T’o-pa (*Taghbach, Old Turkic tabγač), a Hsien-pei
(*Serbi) language.
22
Pulleyblank (1991: 201).
146 ANDREW SHIMUNEK, CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH, ET!AL.
The character 禿 (t’u1) is reconstructed for MChi as
✩ h
t əwk (Pul. 311). No known foreign segmental transcrip-
tions exist. The dominant reconstructions of unperiodized
‘Old Chinese’ (i.e. Bax., Sag., Sta., and Sch.) do not treat
this word. Northern EMC *thuk.
The last character of the clause, 當 (tang1), is recon-
structed for theoretical LMC as ✩taŋ (Pul. 72) and is
attested in Old Tibetan transcription as ཏང་ tang ~ དང་
dang ~ ཏོ་ to (Tak. 386-387). Unperiodized ‘Old Chinese’
readings include *tāŋ (Sta. 614) and *taŋh (Sch. 113).
Northern EMC *taN.
3. The Chieh ethnonym
The Chin! Shu passage uses several words to denote
the Turkic people in whose language the sentence was
uttered by Fo-t’u Ch’eng. First they are referred to as 匈
奴 “Hsiung-nu”, then 羯 Chieh, and they are also
referred to as 胡 “Hu”. There is clearly a mix-up of
terms. It is a well-known fact among Sinologists that
Chinese scholars were often of the habit of using old
words in their texts to add literary and historical weight
to their work. It is clear from the Chin!shu!text that the
actual ethnonym of this people was Chieh and that they
are explicitly distinguished from the Hsiung-nu. The
term “Hsiung-nu” appears in numerous texts as a generic
term denoting northern non-Sinitic peoples, and “Hu” is
used in reference to Indo-Europeans, Uyghurs, Mongols,
and many other non-Sinitic frontier peoples.23
The character transcribing the Chieh ethnonym, 羯
(chieh2), is reconstructed for theoretical MChi as ✩kɨat
(Pul. 154). For ‘Old Chinese’, we have the following
related reconstructions: chieh2!竭 is given as *gjat (Bax.
768) and chieh2 偈 is given as *khrjat (Bax. 768) and
*khrat (Sta. 576). As shown by Takata (1988, 1993) and
others, attested Late Middle Chinese has a coda [r] cor-
responding to ✩t in the traditional reconstruction. Thus,
we must reconstruct ✩kiar for the theoretical Middle Chi-
nese reading of the character 羯, which must have been
read similarly in Early Middle Chinese. This could have
transcribed foreign forms such as *kɨr or *ker, the former
being more likely for a Turkic language. Thus we recon-
struct *Kɨr as the Chieh endonym.
III. INTERPRETING THE TRANSCRIPTION
In his study of the Chieh transcriptions, Vovin claims
that “the possibility of incorrect segmentation is almost
non-existent” (2000: 96). However, we are dealing with
23
See Beckwith (2009: 393, n. 25) for more on the ethnonym
“Hu” and its wide scope of reference. See also note 6.
two very different languages. No two languages share the
same phonotactic constraints, and quite often, even closely
related languages differ greatly in their phonology. The
morphological and syllabic segmentation of the *Kɨr
wordforms do not correspond exactly to their Chinese
transcriptions. Bazin (1948) was basically right to sup-
pose there is not a direct, one-to-one correspondence
between the syllables of the Chinese transcription and the
Chieh forms they approximate, although the details of his
reconstruction and the Chinese reconstructions he was
using were flawed.
As early as Pelliot (1915), it was recognized that the
syllable boundaries of Chinese transcriptions of foreign
languages often do not match up with the syllable bound-
aries of the original language. In his study, he identifies
a number of Middle Chinese transcriptions of Old
Tibetan in which codas in the Middle Chinese transcrip-
tions can represent syllable onsets or the initial segments
of onsets in the Old Tibetan originals, e.g. the title of the
Tibetan emperor Khri Srong Lde Brtsan ཁྲྀ་སྲོང་ལྡེ་བརྩན་ is
transcribed in Chinese as [乞黎蘇籠獵贊] Ch’i-li Su-lung
Lieh-tsan (MChi ✩kʰɨy-lɛy-sʊ-ləwŋ-liap-ʦan).24
We should thus ignore the boundaries of Chinese
phonotactics and lay everything out in a string,25 taking
into account the fact that certain Chinese segments could
represent multiple foreign sounds, e.g. it has long been
recognized that Chinese l! can represent foreign lateral
or rhotic segments. Foreign -n and -ŋ were recorded as
what was pronounced in Middle Chinese -n or -ŋ, but not
necessarily in regular correspondence, perhaps due to
frontier dialect interference, where there was evidently
only *N, as in Old Chinese.
When interpreting any segmental script or wholistic
writing system’s transcription of a foreign language, we
must always take into consideration the phonological and
morphological typology of the area and possible lan-
guages involved. Most non-Sinitic languages spoken
today in the region relevant to this study not only have
few, if any, diphthongs, they have vowel harmony, too.
This means that the diphthongs of the Chinese values of
the characters should be understood as Chinese attempts
to represent foreign single vowel segments. Consider the
analyses in Figures 1 and 2.
24
Pelliot (1915: 6). The MChi readings given by us here are taken
from Pulleyblank (1991), with slight revision (for his ✩ɔ we use ✩ʊ, as
the foreign segmental transcriptions of LMC suggest).
25
As another example of the syllable and morpheme boundaries of
Chinese-transcribed foreign utterances not matching up with those of
their Chinese transcriptions, note certain early 17th century Mandarin
transcriptions of Early Modern Mongolian in the text Pei!Lu!K’ao!北
虜考, e.g. *gər-in *ʊnĭ (yurt-GEN rafter) ‘rafters of a yurt’, transcribed
in Chinese as [圪利努你] (MSC kə-li-nu-ni) and glossed as ‘rafters
(椽子)’ (PLK 9968: 7a).
 THE EARLIEST ATTESTED TURKIC LANGUAGE 147

Sigla: *erkan: OTrk ärkän (or possibly erkän) ‘temporal clause

1 = Northern EMC values; marker’27.
2 = typologically likely foreign segments that could be tran- This *Kɨr word is significant in that it does not con-
scribed by this variety of Chinese; 3 = foreign segment form to the vowel harmony system posited for Old Turkic.
values intended by the Chinese transcription;
4 = reconstruction of the foreign form, with individual word- *boklug [僕谷] ‘Liu Yao’s Hsiung-nu title’28
forms identified;
*-(g)u [劬] (accusative): OTrk -(X)g29!~!-nI
5 = morphological segmentation of the foreign sentence.
N.B.: Asterisks have been removed here to improve readability.
If the word *boklug were attested in Old Turkic, the
accusative form would be either *boklugug or *boklugnu,
depending on the dialect. There is a certain amount of
秀 支 替 戾 岡
literature on the two forms of the accusative in Old Tur-
1 suw ke they leyr kaN kic.30 Given our reconstruction of the *Kɨr sentence,
2 s u k e t e l e r k a N however, it is possible that -(X)g and -nI are later forms
i r i l q of */-gI/ and */-(I)n-gI/, respectively. This hypothesis
3 s u k e t e r e r k a n requires the positing of a pre-Old Turkic suffix */-(I)n/.
4 su keter erkan This hypothetical suffix may be responsible for a number
of other alternations we see in Old Turkic, such as the
5 su ket-er er-kan
Figure 1. 27
Erdal notes the construction AORIST!+!ärkän!in Old Turkic: “The
-Ur!form is… governed by ärkli!(runiform inscriptions) or ärkän!(the
rest of Old Turkic) to form the kernel of temporal clauses. The follow-
僕 谷 劬 禿 當 ing sentence shows it in three different functions, governed by ärkän,
1 bok luk gu t ukh
taN qualifying a head referring to time, and governed by a postposition:
kaltï! män! öŋrä! uzun! asankïlïg! yolda! bodisatvlar! yorïkïnda! yorïyur
2 b o k l o k g o t u k t a N ärkän!burxan!kutïŋa!katïglanur!ugurda!kaltï!alp!är!čärigkä!tägir!täg!
u q r u q ʁ u o q isig!özümin!äsirkänčsizin!titip!ïdalap!bo!montag!sukančïg!nom!ärdinig!
g g Ø g bošgundum!tuttum!(Suv 395,4-10) ‘While I was!previously walking!on
ʁ ʁ ʁ the bodhisattvas’ path along the world-age-long road and at a time
when I was! striving! towards buddhahood I grudgelessly gave up my
3 b o k l u g g u t u k t a ŋ life as, for instance, a valiant man goes! to the army, and learned and
4 bokluggu tuktaŋ kept this treasure of a sutra!which is lovely to such an extent’” (285).
Note also “bo!nomka!kertgünmägüči!tïnlïg!yorïyu!turur ärkän!ök!ölüp!
5 boklug-gu tukta-ŋ bargaylar!‘Creatures who do not believe in this teaching will suddenly
die right [where they’re standing].’” (254).
Figure 2. 28
The word might be analyzable. The *bok! [boq]! element! could
be a borrowing from Chinese ‘slave’, i.e. early Middle Chinese 僕 bok.
In that case, the *Kɨr suffix *-lug!/!*-luk [谷] could be cognate to OTrk
IV. THE RECONSTRUCTED TEXT -lIG!‘having X’ or -lIK!‘having the quality of X’, i.e. ATrk *bok ‘slave
(?)’ ← ? MChi 僕 bok!‘slave’, with *boklug meaning approximately
either ‘one having slaves’ or a pejorative ‘slavish one’. However, the
The above analysis allows us to reconstruct the *Kɨr DTS!does not attest an Old Turkic word cognate to *bok or *boklug,
sentence as follows: and we have not been able to find reflexes in the modern Turkic lan-
guages. The Middle Chinese word, with morphological modification,
秀 支替戾岡, 僕谷 劬 禿當 can be found in Serbi-Mongolic languages. Note Late Kitan *bawl
*su-Ø! kete-r!erkan! boklug-gu! tukta-ŋ [暴里] ‘vile person (惡人)’ and Middle Mongol bo’ol!‘slave’, reflexes
army-NOM leave-AOR TEMP boklug-ACC capture-2PL.IMP of Proto-Serbi-Mongolic *bɔɣul! ‘slave’ (Shimunek 2013), which is
probably a reanalysis of MChi 僕 bog! ‘slave’ with a Serbi-Mongolic
‘When/as the army goes out, capture the Boklug!’
plural suffix *-Ul. This would seem to support the view (Zhengzhang
(1991: 161; cf. Beckwith 2008: 173-174) that OChi and EMC had
underlyingly voiced obstruent codas, although the voicing in Ser-
V. RECONSTRUCTED WORDFORMS AND COMPARATIVE bi-Mongolic could have resulted from its intervocalic position there.
TURKIC ANALYSIS The MChi word was also borrowed into Japanese, where it serves today
as the typical masculine first person singular pronoun, boku!僕 (ぼく).
Nevertheless, it is probable that the Chinese gloss is correct – i.e., that
*su [秀] ‘army (軍)’: OTrk sü!‘id.’ *boklug is Liu Yao’s Hsiung-nu title, in which case the word cannot
*ket- ‘go out (出)’: OTrk ket- ‘leave, depart’ presently be analyzed because the linguistic identity of Hsiung-nu has
not been established, despite many proposals.
*-er!(aorist): OTrk -Ar!~!-Ur!~!-Ir!~!-yUr!~!-r!(aorist)26 29
Erdal (2004: §2.24) uses /X/ to indicate a reduced vowel of
some sort that surfaces differently based on rules that are not yet well
understood.
26 30
Erdal (2004:131). See Erdal (2004: 170) for the distribution of the two forms.
148 ANDREW SHIMUNEK, CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH, ET!AL.

“pronominal /n/” found in the oblique stems of demon- the opposite, i.e. early Serbi-Mongolic loanwords into
strative pronouns in Old Turkic. Note Table 1, adapted Archaic Turkic, with the unstressed non-initial short vowels
from Erdal (2004: 199). in open syllables lost by the attested Old Turkic period.
Some verbs in Tatar (but not in closely related Bash-
‘this’ ‘these’ ‘that’ ‘those’ qort) take an unpredicted epenthetic low vowel in their
Nom. bo bolar ol olar aorist form (the normal is an epenthetic high vowel),
Gen. munuŋ!~!monuŋ bolarnɨŋ anɨŋ olarnɨŋ which may be a retention of pre-Old Turkic short low
vowels which otherwise underwent apocope. In the case
Dat. muŋar!~!muŋa bolarqa aŋar!~!aŋa olarqa
of the verb tut-, the Tatar verb stem tot- ‘hold, catch,
Acc. bunɨ!~!munɨ bolarnɨ anɨ olarnɨ seize’ has the aorist form tot-ar, not the otherwise pre-
Loc. bunta!~!munta bolarta anta olarta dicted, regular *tot-ɨr (attested in Bashqort, where all
Abl. muntɨn bolardɨn antɨn olardɨn verbs take /-Ir/). The same holds true in Turkish, where all
but 13 monosyllabic verb stems, including tut-, take /-Ar/
Instr. munun anɨn in the aorist, e.g. tut-ar. The rest take /-Ir/, as do polysyl-
Equ. bunča!~!munča anča!~!anɨča labic stems. This corroborates the hypothesis that there
Dir. (bärü) aŋaru olarʁaru was a final low vowel in pre-Old Turkic.32
There may also be indications of these reduced short
Simil. munɨlayu anɨlayu
vowels in Khotong, a highly moribund or possibly now
Table 1. dead Turkic language of northeastern Mongolia, once
spoken in Uws province and documented in the late 19th
*tukta- ‘capture (捉得)’: OTrk tut- ‘capture, grab, catch’ and early 20th centuries by Potanin and Vladimirtsov &
Aside from the *Kɨr sentence, there is good reason to Samoilovich (1916). Note the Khotong forms in Table 2:33
reconstruct *tukta- as the predecessor of Old Turkic tut- pre-Old Turkic
‘capture, grab, catch’.31 There are two elements which gloss Old Turkic Khotong
(Proto-Turkic?)
differ from the Old Turkic form, and we will treat each
‘one’ bir birĭ 34 *birĭ
of those independently:
‘three’ üč üčü̆ *üčü̆
• The final vowel /a/ is not attested in Old Turkic, but ‘five’ bes!~!bis!~!biš bešĭ *besĭ ~ *bisĭ
appears in the *Kɨr sentence. That there were pre- ‘mouth’ aʁɨz oːză (also ‘lips’) *aʁză
Old Turkic word-final short vowels that underwent
‘riding at *[hat ~ aht]36 ată *ahtă ~ *hată
apocope (i.e. deletion) has long been assumed by many horse’35
Turkologists (Róna-Tas 2006: 72-73). There are a signif-
‘eye’ köz gözä̆ *gözä̆ ~ *közä̆
icant number of Turko-Mongolic lexical correspondences
‘fire’ ot otă *otă
that appear to demonstrate a preservation of word-final
short vowels of these words in Mongolic. Note the fol- Table 2.
lowing exemplary etymologies:
(1) MMgl anda! ‘sworn brother’ < PMgl ↔ PTrk *andă 32
Johanson notes traces of short stem-final vowels in the aorist
> OTrk and!‘oath’. forms of “conservative languages such as Turkish”, and quotes the
(2) MMgl düri! ‘form, shape, complexion’ < PMgl ↔ forms sağar ‘milks’, atar ‘throws’, alır ‘takes’, sever ‘loves’, gelir
PTrk *ðüŕĭ > OTrk yüz!‘face’. ‘comes’, bilir ‘knows’, durur ‘stands’, verir ‘gives’, okur ‘reads’, and
güler ‘laughs’ (2006: 90, 116).
(3) MMgl ikir! ‘twins’ < PMgl ↔ PTrk *ikeŕ ~ *ikiŕ 33
The Khotong forms presented here are our interpretations of the
(cf. Chuvash yĕkĕr and Hungarian iker!‘id.’) > OTrk Cyrillic phonetic transcriptions given by Vladimirtsov & Samoilovich
ikiz!‘twins’. (1916: 274-276): [бĭрi] ‘one (одинъ)’, [ÿчÿ̆ ] ‘three (три)’, [бешĭ] ‘five
(4) MMgl bora! ~! boro! ‘gray’ < PMgl ↔ PTrk *boŕă > (пять)’, [о̄зӑ] ‘lips, mouth (губы, ротъ)’, [атӑ] ‘horse (лошадь)’,
OTrk boz!‘gray’. [гöзä̆ ] ‘eye (глазъ)’, [отӑ] ‘fire (огонь)’. The pre-Old Turkic recon-
(5) MMgl ere!‘man, male’ < PMgl ↔ PTrk *ärä̆ > OTrk structions are our own.
34
är!‘man’. The form actually given by Vladimirtsov & Samoilovich is
“bĭri” (бĭрi) (1916: 274), but this is very likely an error for *[birĭ].
These are usually considered to be Old Turkic loan- 35
On the specific meaning of the Old Turkic word, Clauson states:
words into Mongolic, but given the phonology they may be “at ‘horse’; nearly always with the implication of ‘riding horse’”
(Clauson 1972: 33).
36
Old Tibetan and Late Middle Chinese transcriptions of Old Tur-
31
Tekin (1993: 52) comes to the same conclusion as we do in his kic clearly indicate that the spoken language had a laryngeal fricative
reconstruction of Chieh *tukta-. We learned of his paper only after we had */h/ which was not represented in Old Turkic runiform script or Old
arrived at that conclusion. The fact that we independently attained nearly Uygur script. This segment is transcribed in Old Tibetan script vari-
identical results further supports the validity of this particular reconstruction. ously as ཧ [h] or འ [ɦ].
 THE EARLIEST ATTESTED TURKIC LANGUAGE 149

• The /k/, as part of a /kt/ cluster before the final vowel
that was lost can also be reasonably reconstructed inde-
pendently of the *Kɨr sentence. There are Mongolic
cognates where we find a */kt/ cluster lost in Turkic. For
example, Middle Mongol aqta ‘gelding’37 corresponds
to, and appears to be the same word as, Old Turkic at
‘riding horse’.38 Furthermore, this word appears in a
number of Turkic daughter languages as /aht/ (e.g.
Tuvan, Tofa,39 and Yogur40) and in Khalaj as /hat/.41
We propose the following evolution of this cluster:
(6) MMgl aqta! /agtʰa/! ‘gelding’ < PMgl ← PTrk *akta
‘horse’ > pre-OTrk *ahtă (cf. Yogur aht, Tuvan aht) ~
*hată (cf. Khalaj hat, Khotong ata) > attested OTrk at!
‘riding horse’.42
Thus, Old Turkic tut-!has the following etymology:
(7) PTrk *tukta- ‘capture, catch’ > *tuhtă- (cf. Tuvan tuht-!
and its cognates in other varieties of Sayan Turkic) >
OTrk tut-!‘capture, grab, catch’.
The identification of this form not only helps shed
light on the *Kɨr sentence, but brings together known
37
The word is also found in Pashto and Hazaragi ‫[ اخته‬aχta] ‘cas-
trated’. The authors thank Rakhmon Inomkhojayev (Indiana Univer-
sity) for mentioning the Pashto form (p.c., 2011). The Hazaragi form
is from Malistani (1993). For more on the western Middle Mongol
elements in Hazaragi, see Shimunek (2010). The Middle Mongol word
was also borrowed into Tungusic, e.g. Jurchen and Manchu akta,
Ewenki akta- ‘to castrate a reindeer’, akta! ‘castrated reindeer’ and
aktakii! in some dialects (with the Ewenki zoonym suffix -kii), Solon
akta ‘castrated bull’, Ewen aat- ‘to castrate’, Negidal aktawcaa ‘cas-
trated reindeer’,!and the innovative forms Nanai xakta- ‘to castrate’ and
Uilta (“Orok”) xakta ‘castrated reindeer’ (Rozycki 1994b: 15; Tsint-
sius et al. 1975: 26; Vasilevich 1958: 21; Tsintsius 1982: 189; Onenko
1980: 446b). Rozycki considers this an Iranic element in Mongolic,
ultimately from Persian akhta!‘castrated, gelding’, from the verb akhtan!
‘draw out, unsheathe, castrate, geld’ (1994a: 74). The directionality of
the loan is probably Iranic → Turkic → Mongolic → Tungusic, i.e.
Persian akhta!‘gelding’ → PTrk *akta → PMgl > MMgl aqta!‘gelding’
→ Tungusic ‘castrate’ ~ ‘castrated reindeer’.
38
Tekin (1977) proposes this correspondence. The fact that we
independently proposed the same correspondence before learning of
Tekin’s article illustrates the validity of this analysis.
39
Rassadin (1971: 157).
40
Yogur [aht ~ hat] ‘horse (馬)’ (Ch’en 2004: 29).
41
Khalaj [haˑt ~ hat] (Doerfer & Tezcan 1980: 127).
42
Another possible Turkic-Mongolic loan correspondence
(although semantically problematic) has been proposed by Tekin
(1977: 36-37; 1993: 52-53), which we revise as: Unattested MMgl
*baqta- or */bagtʰa-/ in our phonemic transcription (cf. attested WMgl
baγta-)!‘fit in, have enough room for, be included’ < PMgl ← ? PTrk
*bakta- > pre-OTrk *bahtă- > OTrk bat-! ‘go down, set (of the sun),
etc.’ Phonologically conservative reflexes of pre-Old Turkic *bahtă-
include Yogur [baht ~ pat] ‘lose sth (丟失)’ (Ch’en 2004: 29) and Tofa
[baht-] (in Rassadin’s transcription system, b̭aъt=), glossed as ‘to go
down, descend (спускаться); to set, of luminaries (сесть, о светилах);
to descend from a mountain (спускаться, с горы); and to dive, sink,
plunge, submerge (погружаться)’ (Rassadin 1971: 160). Note also
Kyrgyz бат- /bat-/ ‘to fit (somewhere)’ (Yudakhin 1985: 116).
facts and problems both internal to Turkic and involving
Mongolic cognates into a coherent theory about the pre-
history of Turkic phonology.
*-(V)ŋ (2p. imperative): OTrk -(V)ŋ43
Kɨr *tukta-ŋ is cognate morpheme by morpheme to
OTrk tut-uŋ.
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Chieh 羯 *Kɨr language is an archaic form of
Turkic spoken in North China at least two and a half
centuries before the foundation of the Türk Empire, and
four centuries before the appearance of the first Old
Turkic texts – the Orkhon inscriptions – and the T’ang
Chinese transcriptions of Old Kirghiz.44 It is, nevertheless,
very close to Old Turkic.
Furthermore, historical considerations suggest that *Kɨr
was a dialect of the Hun language, or at least a language
of the Hun confederation, speakers of which apparently
arrived in north China as part of the great migrations better
known from European history, where the historically well-
known Huns included some who evidently spoke a Turkic
dialect or language, as attested in part by the Turkic names
of Attila’s sons.45 Neither group of Huns can be connected
with the centuries-earlier Hsiung-nu historically or linguis-
tically. The Chin!shu text clarifies that the xwn “Huns”
mentioned by the Sogdians were not Hsiung-nu but Huns
who spoke an archaic Turkic language.
Abbreviations and symbols
2.PL second-person plural
ACC accusative case
AOR aorist
ATrk Archaic Turkic
Bax. Baxter 1992
DTS Древнетюрский!словарь
EMC Early Middle Chinese (ca. 4th to 6th c.)
GEN genitive case
IMP imperative
LMC Late Middle Chinese (i.e. Sui-T’ang Chinese, ca. 7th to
9th c.)
MChi Middle Chinese
MMgl Middle Mongol
MSC Modern Standard Chinese
43
“In some texts, -(X)ŋ!is exclusively used for polite address to the
singular… in others, -(X)ŋ! is also used for addressing more than one
person. The Orkhon inscriptions… use -(X)ŋ… for the plural as well”
(Erdal 2004:237).
44
See Laufer (1917: 369), Wittfogel and Fêng (1946: 150, n. 12),
and Boodberg (1936: 171) for some of the known Chinese transcriptions
of Old Kirghiz.
45
Beckwith (2011).
46
Following Beckwith (2007, 2009, etc.)
150 ANDREW SHIMUNEK, CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH, ET!AL.

NOM nominative case BOODBERG, Peter A. 1936. The language of the T’o-pa Wei.
OChi Old Chinese Harvard!Journal!of!Asiatic!Studies!1(2): 167-185.
OTrk Old Turkic CH’EN TSUNG-CHEN 陳宗振 2004. Hsi-pu!Yü-ku-yü!yen-chiu 西
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Pul. Pulleyblank 1991 術出版社.
Sag. Sagart 1999 COBLIN, W. South 1995. Two notes on the London Long Scroll.
Sch. Schuessler 1987 Bulletin! of! the! School! of! Oriental! and! African! Studies,!
Sta. Starostin 1989 University!of!London 58(1): 104-108.
Tak. Takata 1988 CSONGOR, B. 1952. Chinese in the Uighur script of the T’ang
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WMgl Written Mongol —, 1954. Some more Chinese glosses in Uighur script. AOH
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other foreign scripts —, 1960. Some Chinese texts in Tibetan script from Tun-huang.
// phonemic transcription AOH 10: 97-140.
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✩
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