Chinese Glosses in Uighur Texts Written in Brahmi [antikvár]

CHINESE GLOSSES IN UIGHUR TEXTS WRITTEN IN BRAHMIBYB. CSONGORThe items dealt with in this paper are all taken from the Tiirkische Turfantexte VIII (TTVIII) by A. v. Gabain (Berlin 1954). Although scanty in number, they still reveal something worth our attention.All of these words are already well-known from the Uighur texts written in Uighur script1 (cf. my Chinese Glosses in the Uighur Script . . . : Acta Orient. Hung. II, p. 73121 (ChGU)). As however the Brahmi alphabet embraces a much wider range of phonetic distinctions than the Uighur script, there is a possibility for discovering this time some phonetic features of the Chinese glosses that the Uighur script was unable to reveal. Brahmi has e.g. letters to denote both the aspirated and unaspirated character of both the voiced and voiceless plosives respectively while Uighur in the case of dentals and labials at least has no means to distinguish even between voiced and voiceless ones. Chinese Uancient Chinese (aCh.) d'iei tsi is to be met with in Uighur script as titsi. The same word is written in TTVIII either as thetse (lari) (A3), or tethtse (E5), . . . thse (lari) (E33), tethsela . . . (E35), tethsila . . . (E39), tethse (N3). It is obvious that the original form of the Brahmi gloss is identical with the first occurrence mentioned above (thetse) and the other cases are to be put down to metathesis, which, in turn, was due to the influence of the Uighur basis of articulation. Now it turns out that in this case 1. aCh. d' has changed into an aspirated voiceless initial, in accordance with the facts stated in my A contribution to the history of the ch'ing yin : Acta Orient. Hung. IX (1959), p. 79, i.e. the first syllable is stressed; 2. the vowel of the first syllable is an e and not an i ;2 3. the vowel of the second syllable has developed already into a mixed jf, which is confirmed by the velar vowel of the Turkish plural suffix -lar added to the word.3F 1 M$, V;1The gloss hoytsi (AH9) is precluded from further investigation as its equation with Chineseseems to be very poor in view of the fact, that in the original text it stands parallel to Sanskrit cumanda "Baumwolle (?)".2It is not impossible that also "Uighur titsi has to be read as tetsi, cf. ChGU, p. 80.3The same with the Uighur form in titsilar'iy.4 Acta Orientalia XV/13.