Old Turkic script explained

Old Turkic
Also Known As:Orkhon script
Type:Alphabet
Languages:Old Turkic
Children:Old Hungarian
Time:8th to 10th centuries
Unicode:U+10C00 - U+10C4F
Iso15924:Orkh
Sample:Ongin inscription Bumin Qaghan.svg
Caption:A line dedicated to Bumin Qaghan in the Ongin inscription

The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.[1]

The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolai Yadrintsev.[2] These Orkhon inscriptions were published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893.[3]

This writing system was later used within the Uyghur Khaganate. Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Yenisei Kirghiz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and the Old Hungarian alphabet of the 10th century. Words were usually written from right to left.

Origins

Many scientists, starting with Vilhelm Thomsen (1893), suggested that Orkhon script is derived from descendants of the Aramaic alphabet in particular via the Pahlavi and Sogdian alphabets of Persia,[4] [5] [6] or possibly via Kharosthi used to write Sanskrit.[7] [8] [9] It has also been speculated that tamgas (livestock brands used by Eurasian nomads) were one of the sources of the Old Turkic script,[10] but despite similarities in shape and forms, this hypothesis has been widely rejected as unverifiable, largely because early tamgas are too poorly attested and understood to be subject to a thorough comparison.[11]

Contemporary Chinese sources conflict as to whether the Turks had a written language by the 6th century. The 7th centuryBook of Zhou mentions that the Turks had a written language similar to that of the Sogdians. Two other sources, the Book of Sui and the History of the Northern Dynasties, claim that the Turks did not have a written language.[12] According to István Vásáry, Old Turkic script was invented under the rule of the first khagans and was modelled after the Sogdian fashion.[13] Several variants of the script came into being as early as the first half of the 6th century.[14]

Corpus

The Old Turkic corpus consists of about two hundred[15] inscriptions, plus a number of manuscripts.[16] The inscriptions, dating from the 7th to 10th century, were discovered in present-day Mongolia (the area of the Second Turkic Khaganate and the Uyghur Khaganate that succeeded it), in the upper Yenisey basin of central-south Siberia, and in smaller numbers, in the Altay mountains and Xinjiang. The texts are mostly epitaphs (official or private), but there are also graffiti and a handful of short inscriptions found on archaeological artifacts, including a number of bronze mirrors.[15]

The website of the Language Committee of Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan lists 54 inscriptions from the Orkhon area, 106 from the Yenisei area, 15 from the Talas area, and 78 from the Altai area. The most famous of the inscriptions are the two monuments (obelisks) which were erected in the Orkhon Valley between 732 and 735 in honor of the Göktürk prince Kül Tigin and his brother the emperor Bilge Kağan. The Tonyukuk inscription, a monument situated somewhat farther east, is slightly earlier, dating to . These inscriptions relate in epic language the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese (Tang-Gokturk wars), and their liberation by Bilge.[17]

The Old Turkic manuscripts, of which there are none earlier than the 9th century, were found in present-day Xinjiang and represent Old Uyghur, a different Turkic dialect from the one represented in the Old Turkic inscriptions in the Orkhon valley and elsewhere. They include Irk Bitig, a 9th-century manuscript book on divination.[18]

Alphabet

Old Turkic being a synharmonic language, a number of consonant signs are divided into two "synharmonic sets", one for front vowels and the other for back vowels. Such vowels can be taken as intrinsic to the consonant sign, giving the Old Turkic alphabet an aspect of an abugida script. In these cases, it is customary to use superscript numerals ¹ and ² to mark consonant signs used with back and front vowels, respectively. This convention was introduced by Thomsen (1893), and followed by Gabain (1941), Malov (1951) and Tekin (1968).

Vowels, with Yenisian variants
Consonant sets, with Yenisian variants
scope=rowFrontvowels
scope=rowBackvowels
scope=row rowspan=2Others

A colon-like symbol is sometimes used as a word separator.[19] In some cases a ring is used instead.[19]

A reading example (right to left): transliterated t²ñr²i, this spells the name of the Turkic sky god, Täñri (pronounced as //tæŋri//).

Variants

Variants of the script were found from Mongolia and Xinjiang in the east to the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 8th and 10th centuries.

These alphabets are divided into four groups by Kyzlasov (1994)[20]

The Asiatic group is further divided into three related alphabets:

The Eurasiatic group is further divided into five related alphabets:

A number of alphabets are incompletely collected due to the limitations of the extant inscriptions. Evidence in the study of the Turkic scripts includes Turkic-Chinese bilingual inscriptions, contemporaneous Turkic inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, literal translations into Slavic languages, and paper fragments with Turkic cursive writing from religion, Manichaeism, Buddhist, and legal subjects of the 8th to 10th centuries found in Xinjiang.

Sample text

Transcription of part of Bilge Kağan's inscription (lines 36-38).

{{Script|Orkh|----: : : : : {{br

Unicode

See main article: Old Turkic (Unicode block).

The Unicode block for Old Turkic is U+10C00 - U+10C4F. It was added to the Unicode standard in October 2009, with the release of version 5.2. It includes separate "Orkhon" and "Yenisei" variants of individual characters.

Since Windows 8 Unicode Old Turkic writing support was added in the Segoe font.

See also

References

Sources

External links

Notes and References

  1. Scharlipp, Wolfgang (2000). An Introduction to the Old Turkish Runic Inscriptions. Verlag auf dem Ruffel, Engelschoff. .
  2. Encyclopedia: Sinor. Denis. Old Turkic. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. 4. 331–333. UNESCO. Paris. 2002.
  3. Vilhelm Thomsen, [Turkic] Orkhon Inscriptions Deciphered (Helsinki : Society of Finnish Literature Press, 1893). Translated in French and later English (Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms Intl., 1971). OCLC 7413840
  4. Book: Brill . E. J. . E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913-1936. Morocco - Ruzzīk . 1993 . Brill . Volume 6 . 978-90-04-09792-6 . 911 . 7 August 2024 . en.
  5. Book: Campbell. George. George L. Campbell. Moseley. Christopher. Christopher Moseley. The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets. 2013. Routledge. 978-1-135-22296-3. 40.
  6. Róna-Tas . András . On the Development and Origin of the East Turkic "Runic" Script . 1987 . Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae . 41 . 1 . 7–14 . 23657716 . 0001-6446.
  7. Book: Cooper, J.S.. The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. 2004. Houston. Stephen. 58–59. Babylonian beginnings: The origin of the cuneiform writing system in comparative perspective.
  8. Book: Mabry, Tristan James. Nationalism, Language, and Muslim Exceptionalism. 2015. University of Pennsylvania Press. 978-0-8122-4691-9. 109.
  9. Book: Kara, György. The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. 1996. 978-0-19-507993-7. Daniels. Peter. New York. Aramaic scripts for Altaic languages. Bright. William. registration.
  10. Aristov, N. (1896) Notes on Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes and People and Population Record. ZhS 3-4, 277-456
  11. Book: Tekin . Talat . A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic - ProQuest . 1965 . UNiversity of California, Los Angeles . 7 August 2024 . en.
  12. Book: Lung 龍, Rachel 惠珠. Interpreters in Early Imperial China. 2011. John Benjamins Publishing. 978-90-272-2444-6. 54–55.
  13. Mouton . 2002 . Archivum Ottomanicum . 49 . Tryjarski . Edward . Runes and runelike scripts of Eurasian area. Part 1 . 20.
  14. Sigfried J. de Laet, Joachim Herrmann, (1996), History of Humanity: From the seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D., p. 478
  15. Erdal, Marcel. 2004. A grammar of Old Turkic. Leiden, Brill. p. 7
  16. Book: Vasilʹiev, D.D. . Графический фонд памятников тюркской рунической письменности азиатского ареала (опыт систематизации). . 1983 . Leningrad: USSR Academy of Science . 37, 45 . ru . Graphical corpus of Turkic Runic writing monuments in the Asian area. . Руника Восточного Туркестана представлена двояко: в виде рукописных текстов и как граффити на фресках и на штукатурке пещерных храмов в Турфанском оазисе. Образцы тюркского рунического письма на бумаге имеют особое значение, так как только к этой группе могут быть применены традиционные приемы и методы палеографического исследования. Эти памятники относятся к периоду расцвета древнеуйгурских городов и торговли, к периоду зарождения тюркской письменной литературы и науки. Функциональное изменение характера памятников может быть признано свидетельством возникшей потребности в более широком и утилитарном использовании рунической грамоты..
  17. Web site: TURK BITIG. bitig.org. 2019-06-27. https://web.archive.org/web/20180624010508/http://bitig.org/?lang=e&mod=1&tid=1&oid=15&m=1. 24 June 2018. dead.
  18. Book: Tekin, Talât. Irk bitig = The Book of omens. 1993. Harrassowitz Verlag. 3-447-03426-2. Wiesbaden. 32352166.
  19. Web site: The Unicode Standard, Chapter 14.8: Old Turkic. Unicode Consortium. March 2020.
  20. Kyzlasov I. L.; "Writings of Eurasian Steppes", Eastern Literature, Moscow, 1994, 327 pp. 321–323
  21. Kyzlasov I. L.; "Writings of Eurasian Steppes", Eastern Literature, Moscow, 1994, pp. 98–100

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