The Old Turkic origins of the Tang Dynasty

August 31, 2024 @ 5:21 pm · Filed by under Language and history, Language and kinship, Language and politics, Manuscripts, Philology

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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-sixth issue:  “The Tang as a Tuoba Dynasty” (pdf) by Sanping Chen.

ABSTRACT

By examining the record of a local anti-Tibetan rebellion in document scroll S.1438 from the Dunhuang “library cave,” this discussion demonstrates that the nomadic Tuoba origin of the Tang royal house was known not only to the ancient Turkic people, as shown by their name for the Tang, Tabγač, but also to the Tang subjects themselves. In addition to substantiating Paul Pelliot’s old assertion that the Old Turkic name Tabγač came from the name Tuoba, this work argues that the Tang dynasty was in many aspects indeed the continuation of its Tuoba predecessors.

All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.

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 This paper is heavily focused on language, philology, and manuscript studies.

Key words

Paul Demiéville; Paul Pelliot; Friedrich Hirth; Rong Xinjiang; Gerard Clauson; Xiongnu; Tibet; India; Tuoba; Tabγač; Dunhuang manuscripts; An-Shi Rebellion 安史之亂 (755–763); Silk Road; literary genres; political and economic history; Tangut; Qiang; Tuyuhan; Uyghurs; Sogdian; Iranian; Buddhism; Orkhon inscriptions; Maḥmūd al-Kāšγarī’s Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Dīwān lugāt at-Turk); metathesis; fanqie; the “literati prism” of written sources; “Iranization of Chinese nomenclature”; civil service examination system; birthday celebration

 

Selected readings

August 31, 2024 @ 5:21 pm · Filed by under Language and history, Language and kinship, Language and politics, Manuscripts, Philology


4 Comments

  1. Rodger C said,

    September 1, 2024 @ 9:54 am

    the Old Turkic name Tabγač came from the name Tuoba

    Shouldn't that be the other way around?

  2. Peter B. Golden said,

    September 1, 2024 @ 3:44 pm

    An interesting paper that would have benefited from several studies apparently unknown to the author:

    Christopher Beckwith, “On the Chinese Names for Tibet, Tabghatch, and the Turks” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 2005, 14: 5-20, who notes:
    pp.9-12 thakbat = takbat = *takbar (?? Only in MC) probably via Rouran or Tabġač *taġbač (Türk. Tabġač) “ruler of the earth”
    Accordingly, 拓跋 Tuoba “should be similarly understood as having meant “The Tâɣ King(s) or ‘The Royal Tâɣ.’” The Mongolic Tâɣ (or “more accurately *tâʁ clearly meant ‘earth’ in their language (as well as in Old Chinese) – but Beckwith further notes that Tâɣ~ Tâʁ “is clearly a proper name…and as such may well not have an identifiable etymology. In any case, it now seems most probable that the word did not originally have the meaning ‘earth’ in the proper name known to us as T’o-pa (Toba) or Tabghach. It was simply the proper name of the people in question. What their name, *Tâɣ~ *Tâʁ really meant, as usual in the case of ethnonyms, must in all likelihood remain obscure.”

    Andrew Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China. A Historical-Comparative Study of the Serbi or Xianbei Branch of the Serbi-Mongolic Language Family, with an Analysis of Northeastern Frontier Chinese and Old Tibetan Phonology. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2017). Shimunek, pp. 121-168 gives an analysis of the Tabġač words in Chinese transcription. Tabġač is a Middle Serbi-Mongolic, not a Turkic language.

    Other studies on the Tabğač language include Hakan Aydemir, “Altaic Etymologies: tōz, toprak, toɣosun” Turkic Languages 7/1 (2003): 104-143. A. Vovin, “Once Again on the Tabgač Language” Mongolian Studies XXIX (2007): 191-206 (Tabġač is a Para-Mongolic language, p. 193).

    There are two recent studies of the Tabghach in Turkish, both of which make extensive use of Chinese sources: Pulat Otkan, Tabgaçlar. Toplum ve Ekonomi (Istanbul, Ötuken Neşriyatı, 2020, posthumously published, edited by Gürhan Kırilen) and Tuğba Gökçe Balcı. Tabgaçlar Bozkırdan Çin Tahtına (Istanbul: Kronik 2021)

  3. Vampyricon said,

    September 3, 2024 @ 2:01 pm

    Fascinating stuff! I recently learned about this on the r/AskHistorians subreddit, and I'm glad that this came out so I can look into it.

  4. Huiping Wang said,

    September 4, 2024 @ 8:14 am

    Very good stuff

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