A Sino-Iranian tale of the donkey's Eurasian trail

May 10, 2024 @ 6:27 am · Filed by under Borrowing, Language and animals, Language and archeology, Language and culture

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By now, we have conclusively traced the path of the domesticated horse from the area around the southern Urals and Pontic Steppe through Central Asia to East Asia.  It's time to pay more attention to another equid, this one not so glamorous, but still redoubtable in its own formidable way:  Equus asinus asinus.

Samira Müller, Milad Abedi, Wolfgang Behr, and Patrick Wertmann, "Following the Donkey’s Trail (Part I): a Linguistic and Archaeological Study on the Introduction of Domestic Donkeys to China", International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics, 6 (2024), 104–144.

Abstract

How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys’ forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen’s (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell’s (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia.

Due to its length, the paper is published in two instalments: Part I covers archaeological, art historical and textual evidence for the earliest occurrence and popularization of donkeys in China. Part II (in the fall issue) contains three sections: Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively. In a final discussion, possible ways of transmission for the donkey from the Iranian plateau to the Chinese heartland are evaluated with regard to the cultural, linguistic, and topographic conditions reflected in the previous parts.

For the linguistic nitty-gritty, we will have to wait till later this year for Part II, which has long been submitted, to come out, although already in Part I, bits and pieces have appeared, such as documentation that favored donkeys evidently came from the west outside the East Asian Heartland and were referred to by transcriptional names (pp. 115-116), indicating the borrowing of a foreign word.  Moreover, a fondness for white specimens (including among humans) is clearly reflected in the data, and this is a preference that goes all the way back to the oracle bones, as has been shown by Wang Tao (2007a 2007b), n. 49.  This is a predilection shared with PIE, for which see Anders Kaliff & Terje Oestigaard, "The Great Indo-European Horse Sacrifice:  4000 Years of Cosmological Continuity from Sintashta and the Steppe to Scandinavian Skeid", Occasional Papers in Archaeology, 72 (2020), Uppsala Universitet. (pdf) Thus, even here in Part I, we can see the intimate intertwining of language and culture, the epistemological dyad that is a central preoccupation at Language Log.

 

Selected readings

May 10, 2024 @ 6:27 am · Filed by under Borrowing, Language and animals, Language and archeology, Language and culture


11 Comments

  1. Hippophlebotomist said,

    May 10, 2024 @ 10:56 am

    Rostislav Oreshko's "The Onager Kings of Anatolia: Hartapus, Gordis, Muška and the steppe strand in early Phrygian culture" (2020) in Kadmos is a another interesting recent look at underappreciated equids in Indo-European.

  2. Chris Button said,

    May 10, 2024 @ 6:45 pm

    I think the link might be wrong?

    However, this extract that i found online of a related talk sounds really interesting:

    In the Early Chinese textual record, the word *C-ra (> lǘ 閭), associated with an animal with a long face, a long forehead and rabbit-like ears, along with its more widespread orthography lǘ 驢 and the variant *rˁoj (> luó 驘/騾) suddenly appear around the end of the third century BCE. All these terms seem to reflect attempts to transcribe foreign words for the beast of burden, which were ultimately derived from dialect forms or reflexes of different diachronic borrowing stages of an etymon related to Middle Persian χar ‘donkey’ and congeners. However, the Middle Persian word χar itself is highly controversial in terms of its traditional etymology and may have originally been related to the broader semantic field of ‘dark, obscure, dumb’. A comparable metonymic shift of meaning seems to be reflected in earlier Chinese designations for dark horses.

    The idea that 驢 and 驘/騾 are related loanwords makes good sense. It will be nice to see how they present the linguistic evidence.

    And with that in mind, I'm looking forward to this:

    Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively.

  3. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    May 10, 2024 @ 7:06 pm

    "lǘ 驢 and the variant *rˁoj (> luó 驘/騾) suddenly appear around the end of the third century BCE."

    Same as Shamo-Psammo, if the word came during that period from Hellenic-ruled Bactria (Third Century BC) through the Tarim and Gansu, looking at όνος ('onos) would be a possibility.

  4. Chris Button said,

    May 10, 2024 @ 8:35 pm

    It will be interesting to see how the B&S Old Chinese form *rˁoj for 驘/騾 stacks up with the loanword evidence.

    I would have gone with a Pulleyblankian *rwa̯l (my inverted breve symbolizing a Type-A syllable where B&S have pharyngealized ˁ).

    Although how *rwa̯l actually surfaced at the time/location of the loan is another matter. Was OC -wa- surfacing closer to a rounded vowel? Had OC -l already become -j on its way to fully disappearing to leave Early Middle Chinese lwa ?

  5. Anthea Fleming said,

    May 11, 2024 @ 2:42 am

    The donkey as a wild animal was a North African animal,(now almost extinct in the wild) so the Egyptians and other North Africans were the first to domesticate it. Its spread to other countries was inevitable, given its usefulness. In Asia its wild equivalent is the Onager, which is seldom if ever domesticated, but hybrids between the domestic donkey are obtained by tethering female donkeys in onager country and hoping that mating will ensue. It is now believed that the chariot teams on the Standard of Ur are hybrids of this type. I am wondering if any Egyptian words for donkey have had any influence in other languages.

  6. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    May 11, 2024 @ 3:21 am

    if the word for donkey appeared as coming from the West during the 3rd century BC (Tarim, not the Northern steppes) in the Chinese language… then it should be included in a geopolitical trade context and not from Ur or Egypt for that period.

  7. David Marjanović said,

    May 12, 2024 @ 7:13 am

    However, the Middle Persian word χar itself is highly controversial in terms of its traditional etymology and may have originally been related to the broader semantic field of ‘dark, obscure, dumb’.

    Really? From what I've read, *kʰara- is a well-known loanword into Proto-Indo-Iranian (from an unknown source that was presumably spoken in the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex).

  8. Chris Button said,

    May 12, 2024 @ 7:48 am

    The link still looks to be to the Uppsala book rather than the "donkeys trail" article.

    Regarding horse sacrifices in China possibly being represented by 禡, the linguistics is interesting. Looking at the Early Middle Chinese forms, 貉 represents both ɣak and maɨkʲ, and the latter was loaned in earler times for what became 禡 maɨʰ. As for the Old Chinese forms, I think it goes back to Old Chinese ʁ- having an allophone ɢ-, which under certain conditions led to divergent Middle Chinese reflexes (mentioned elsewhere on LLog).

  9. Chris Button said,

    May 12, 2024 @ 8:33 am

    The association of Old Chinese ʁ- with m- is attested in various places across the lexicon. The association of 朝 with 廟 is a classic. In onset position, the evolution of Late Middle Chinese ʋ- to Fuzhou Min m- is instructive. In coda position, the standard evolution of ʁ- to β- (albeit ultimately merging with -w) is also instructive.

  10. Chris Button said,

    May 14, 2024 @ 8:30 am

    Here is the correct link to the open-access article:

    https://brill.com/view/journals/jeal/6/1/article-p104_5.xml

  11. David Marjanović said,

    May 14, 2024 @ 3:18 pm

    From there:

    By the end of the Hàn period, the inferiority of donkeys seems to be deeply manifested as their characteristics were used in similes to allude to stubborn people who burdened the government:

    In accordance with the intentions of Heaven, one might say the following: Now, that the state is in great disorder, worthy and stupid are reversed, all those who hold the power of government are like donkeys.

    天意若曰：國且大亂，賢愚倒植，凡執政者皆如驢也。
    Hòu Hànshū 103: 3272

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