Language Log

« previous post | next post »

Two of the best known displays of Chinese culture worldwide are the Lion Dance and Dragon Boat Races.  The former, including the Chinese word for "lion", is actually an import from the Western Regions (Central Asia, or East Central Asia more specifically).

Compare Old Persian * (*šagra-) (sgl /sagr, sēr/) (> Persian سیر‎ (sīr)). The Middle Persian word is cognate with Parthian ‎ (šarg, “Leo; Lion”), Khotanese [script (šarau, “Leo; Lion”), Khwarezmian شرغ‎ (šrγ /šarγ/, “Leo; Lion”) and Sogdian ‎ (šrwγ /šruγ/) , ܫܪܘܮ‎ (šrwγ /šruγ/, “Leo; Lion”)

Middle Persian:

Manichaean: ‎ (šgr)

• Classical Persian: شیر‎ (šir)
  • → Hindi: शेर (śer)
  • → Ottoman Turkish: شیر‎ (şîr)
    • Turkish: şir
  • → Urdu: شیر‎ (śer)
• → Mandarin: 獅 / 狮 (shī)

Source

Kipling-Disney:  Shere Khan (" Tiger Lion" — from Persian and Mongolian)

The latter cultural display, Dragon Boat Races / Festival, is also called Duānwǔjié 端午節 or Double Fifth Festival because it occurs on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, commemorating the suicide-death of the renowned poet, Qu Yuan (ca. 340 BC-278 BC), China's first poet known by name.  The composition of the celebrated Chǔ cí 楚辭 (Elegies of Chu) anthology, often referred to as Songs of the South in English, is ascribed to him.  The Chu ci (Elegies of Chu) are considered to be quintessentially representative of Chu culture, one of the most important regional cultures of what later became the Chinese empire, but always with a distinctive southern stamp.

Among the verse in the Chu ci (Elegies of Chu) are the "Nine Songs" (Jiǔ gē 九歌).  In these songs, a ritual plant named shūmá 疏麻 is referred to.  Chinese commentators have been bedeviled by this term, which has the semblance of a partially transcribed and partially translated foreign word.  In her paper titled "Is Shuma the Chinese Analog of Soma/Haoma? A Study of Early Contacts between Indo-Iranians and Chinese", Sino-Platonic Papers, 216 (October, 2011), 1-36, ZHANG He makes a persuasive case that shuma is indeed the same plant as that used in the preparation of the ritual drink, soma / haoma, beloved of the Vedic-Avestan Indo-Iranians.

(Baxter–Sagart): /*sra/

(Zhengzhang): /*sŋra/

(Baxter–Sagart): /*C.mˤraj/

(Zhengzhang): /*mraːl/

Diana S. Zhang cautions us against ignoring the regional aspects of Old Sinitic, and surely southern Chu ci language of the 4th c. BC would be significantly different from that of the northern Shī jīng 詩經 (Poetry Classic) of the 6th c. BC.  She tentatively reconstructs 疏麻 as *sm(r)a for the Chu ci, taking into account (and documenting) the Chu penchant for dividing up a disyllabic, partially transcribed and partially translated (as I described it above) word, e.g., the spirit of the wind, 飛pə廉rəm spells 風 (prəm).  It's noteworthy that Diana's "*sm(r)a" is remarkably close to "soma", yet she arrived at it independently without my telling her that Zhang He and I suspected that shūmá 疏麻 may be a transcription-translation (*s- + -m[r]a ["hemp"]), thus a "hemp[-like]" plant whose name resembles *s- + -m(r)a.

Zhang He also calls our attention (p. 25) to the conspicuous occurrence of the spiritually powerful wū 巫, which she connects with "the proto–Indo-Iranian, or Indo-Iranian, or Scythian-Saka [VHM:  N.B.] peoples from the west and northwest, i.e., Central Asia and Iran" in Chu ci.  Like most scholars, she loosely translates wū 巫 with the Tungusic (the etymology is contested) word "shaman", but I have assembled abundant archeological, epigraphical, phonological, textual, religious, and other types of evidence to link the wū 巫 with Iranian magi.  See Victor H. Mair, “Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Maguš, and English Magician,” Early China, 15 (1990), 27–47.  Notice that the earliest Sinograph for 巫, viz. ☩ (U+2629), is identical with the Cross Potent or Cross of Jerusalem, which has been the symbol of magicians for millennia.

Aside from the "Nine Songs" (Jiǔ gē 九歌), another peculiar, lengthy poem in the Chu ci (Elegies of Chu) is "Heavenly Questions" (Tiān wèn 天問), which has perplexed scholars for more than two thousand years.  It consists almost entirely of mystifying questions — without answers.  I translated the entire text with massive footnoting at the beginning to show that "Heavenly Questions" is essentially an Indo-European riddle text sharing close parallels, and even virtually identical lines, with similar texts in the Indic Vedas, the Iranian Avesta, and Old Norse Eddas.  See:

Victor H. Mair, “Heavenly Questions”, The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York:  Columbia University Press), pp. 371-386, also in The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York:  Columbia University Press), pp. 192–208.

Moreover, the bulk of "Heavenly Questions", with its baffling allusions to ancient myth and lore, draws on traditions that are also present in the most recondite of ancient Chinese texts, the Yi jing / I ching 易經 (Book of Changes; Classic of Changes), which is permeated with Indo-European themes.

Wolfgang Behr recently informed me that Nicholas Morrow Williams, author of "Mastering Caution amidst Hermeneutic Acrobatics" (11/1/19) is engaged in an intensive study of "Heavenly Questions".  Since Nick is also learning Sanskrit, I expect that he will fill in many gaps in our understanding of the details of the text that escape those who only pay attention to Chinese sources and commentaries.  We need to do that, of course, but we also have to be willing to follow leads that take us beyond the Sinosphere.

See "Thai 'khwan' ('soul') and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/28/19) for a post that discusses a correspondence between the "Summons of the Soul", another poem in Chu ci, and a similar phenomenon and term in Thai.

On September 20-21, 2019, a US-China Chu Culture Symposium, co-organized by the National East Asian Languages Resource Center of The Ohio State University (OSU) and Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei Province, China, was held at OSU.  Among the featured events at the symposium (including a full orchestral concert played on replicas of ancient instruments — bronze bells, stone chimes, ocarinas, wind instruments including pan flutes, various string instruments, drums, etc. — recovered from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng 曾侯乙墓, which dates to around 433 BC), the most spellbinding for me was a paper delivered by Professor Xu Wenwu 徐文武 of Yangtze University.  In his paper, Professor Xu analyzed the relationship between the extensive description of chariots in Chu ci (Elegies of Chu) and archeological materials from the excavations undertaken around Jingzhou.

As I heard Professor Xu speak, I was dumbfounded by the thought of such intimate knowledge of horses and chariots as that presented in this southern literary work, Chu ci, since these are cultural manifestations of the northern steppes.  Even more astonishing was the good professor's account of the two thousand tumuli in the Jingzhou area, many with horse burials in them, including one with the remains of upwards of six hundred horses.  Such a lavish expenditure of horses, which must have been extremely costly and rare in that hot, humid environment, simply boggles the mind.

I know of a similar excessive burial sacrifice of horses hundreds of miles to the northeast in Shandong, at the tomb of Duke Jing of Qi (r. 547-490 BC; d. 490 BC) in the village of Yatou 崖头 in Linzi District of Zibo, where the procurement of such large numbers of horses would be somewhat less unlikely than in Jingzhou, southern Hubei, but still hundreds of miles south of their natural steppe habitat.  From such extravagant funeral outlays, the power and prestige of the horse and its equipage — even in regions that are distant from their native terrain — can readily be imagined.

Chu culture was situated in south central China, far removed from the steppes whence came the nomadic peoples who left their artistic and literary impress upon southern realms (like the wide-ranging Vikings in Anatolia, Ukraine, etc.).  The evidence for the presence of steppe nomads in the central and southern parts of what is now China is overwhelming.  One of the most conspicuous aspects of this are the scenes of animal combat on gold plaques that are prevalent in the Chu culture sphere.  Another are the composite tomb guardian figures (zhènmù shòu 鎮墓獸) incorporating elements of steppic animals.

For recent doctoral dissertations on these topics and on the horse in early China, see:

Andreeva, Petya. "Fantastic Beasts of the Eurasian Steppes:  Toward a Revisionist Approach to Animal-Style Art."  Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2018.

Chaffin, Cortney E.  "Strange Creatures of Chu:  Antlered Tomb Sculptures of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods."  Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2007.

Wan, Xiang.  "The horse in pre-imperial China."  Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2013.

Who were the carriers of these cultural attributes from western Eurasia to Central Asia, thence to the northern part of East Asia, and then, as we have seen, to the south central part of East Asia, and as we will momentarily discover, to the southern part of East Asia?  The main vector was the highly mobile group of Iranian nomads known as the Saka:

The Saka, Śaka, Shaka or Sacae (Old Persian: Sakā; Brahmi: Śaka, Sanskrit: शक, Śaka; Ancient Greek: Σάκαι, Sákai; Latin: Sacae; Chinese: 塞, old *Sək, mod. Sāi, Egyptian: /sꜣgskš) were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples who historically inhabited the northern and eastern Eurasian Steppe and the Tarim Basin.

Though closely related, the Sakas are to be distinguished from the Scythians of the Pontic Steppe and the Massagetae of the Aral Sea region, although they form part of the wider Scythian cultures. Like the Scythians, the Sakas were ultimately derived from the earlier Andronovo culture. Their language formed part of the Scythian languages. Prominent archaeological remains of the Sakas include Arzhan, the Pazyryk burials, the Issyk kurgan, Saka Kurgan tombs, the Barrows of Tasmola and possibly Tillya Tepe.

In the 2nd century BC, many Sakas were driven by the Yuezhi from the steppe into Sogdia and Bactria and then to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, where they were known as the Indo-Scythians. Other Sakas invaded the Parthian Empire, eventually settling in Sistan, while others may have migrated to the Dian Kingdom in Yunnan, China. In the Tarim Basin and Taklamakan Desert region of Northwest China, they settled in Khotan, Yarkand, Kashgar and other places, which were at various times vassals to greater powers, such as Han China and Tang China.

Source

The Saka did not stop in south central China, but went on farther south all the way to what is now Yunnan, where they had a conspicuous influence upon the Dian kingdom (279-109 BCE; the culture extended for several centuries before and after that period), famous for its bronze drums and cowry containers.  Many of these impressive artifacts are decorated with depictions of warriors having Caucasoid features wearing Central Asian, Iranian style clothing (tunics and jackets with belts and trousers [the better for riding horses]) and carrying typical Saka / Iranian weaponry (long swords and akinakes, sagaris, spears, and probably also their characteristic compound bows, though I personally do not recall having seen them represented in Dian artifacts).  Even here in the far south, still warmer than and as humid as south central Chu, the horse is prominent among the elite, as are massive oxen with spreading horns.

Since the Sakas (and other nomadic peoples, not all speaking Iranian languages) and their horses were traversing Eurasia from one end to the other, carrying with them their art, clothing styles, weapons, and other cultural attributes, naturally they would also have taken along that aspect of their cultures that was most intimate to them as human beings — their languages.

November 11, 2019 @ 7:02 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Language and archeology, Language and culture, Language and literature

Permalink