On the T'ien-ch'uan Tibetan Dialect of Hsi-K'ang in the Sixteenth Century : A study of the Chinese-Tibetan Vocabulary, Hsi-Fan-Kuan I-yu

• Nishida, Tatsuo

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• 十六世紀における西康省チベツト語天全方言について : 漢語・チベット語単語集いわゆる丙種本『西番館譯語』の研究

Abstract

I. Tibetan written and spoken language. II. Sifan A and Sifan B--the written Tibetan of Amdo in the fifteenth century and the T'ien-ch'üan dialect of Hsi-k'ang in the sixteenth century. III. Phonemic system of Sifan B. IV. Grammatic form of Sifan B. V. Text of the Chinese-Tibetan vocabulary. 1. The Tibetan written language has two types. One is the written language which developed along sanskrit lines after the Devanāgari script was introduced in the seventh century, and which was largely composed of a sanskritized translated vocabulary and style. In 826 this written language was reformed by King Khri-sde srong-btsan, and became what is known as Classical Tibetan, as found in the works of the Buddhist Tripitaka. The second type of the written language had no direct connection with sanskrit, and represented the spoken form of the Tibetan language as it existed in the ninth century. The present writer refers to this language, which has been established from Turfan, Turkestan, and Tun-huang manuscripts, as Ancient Tibetan. After the ninth century this Ancient Tibetan came under the influence of Classical Tibetan and a new written language evolved. I refer to the language as found in the non-canonical literature as Written Tibetan. While the written language was undergoing these changes, the spoken language was also following its own development. Source materials on the old forms of spoken Tibetan are extremely scarce, and it is possible that among the numerous Tibetan literary works surviving there is not a single source for the spoken form of Tibetan later than the tenth century. There is, however, one excellent source which records the Tibetan spoken language of one particular area. This is the Chinese Tibetan vocabulary known as Hsi-fan-kuan i-yü. Although this work does not use Tibetan characters and transcribes spoken Tibetan in Chinese characters, it serves as an excellent text for the spoken Tibetan of the sixteenth century, despite the limitations imposed by the structural differences in the Tibetan and Chinese phonemic systems. I conclude that here is represented the Tibetan language of the T'ien-ch'üan 天全 dialect of Hsi-k'ang 西康 province, for the reason that in its "Place Names Part" we find the name T'ien-ch'üan Liu-fan Chao tao ssŭ 天全六番招討司 listed directly after the names of Pei-ching 北京 and Nan-ching 南京. It is quite conceivable that the spoken Tibetan recorded here is still in use today. The object of the present study is an examination of this text, the Hsi-fan-kuan i-yü. 2. In Hsi-fan-kuan i-yü series, there are also several Tibetan-Chinese vocabularies. In a previous study I indicated (taking the texts in the Paris Asia Association and the Toyo bunko as representative) that the written Tibetan of the Amdo area was recorded there. Provisionally this has been referred to as Sifan language A and the above-mentioned dialect of the T'ien-ch'üan area as Sifan language B. Sifan language A is recorded in a vocabulary used as reference in translating letters sent from Tibet by a member of the Ssŭ-i-kuan 四夷館. The work which records Sifan language B is a pocket Tibetan glossay used for reference by an employee of the Hui-T'ung kuan 會同館, acting as interpreter for a Tibetan envoy. Thus the latter is an excellent source for information on the spoken form of the Tibetan of the time. For example, while "sea" is transcribed 児甲木錯 rgya-mtsho in Sifan A, in Sifan B it is written as ȡen-tsho ; while "border" is 薩木塔 sa-mtha in Sifan A, in Sifan B it is 三塔 santha. In the former, the writer is aware that "sea" is formed by a combination of rgya and mtsho and "border" by a combination of sa and mtha. The latter work, however, differs in that represents a record of the language as actually heard by the interpreter. Not a few examples similar to the above can be detected. 3. In order to infer exactly what sort of phonetic form the Chinese characters which transcribed Sifan B were intended to represent, I have found that it is essential to refer to the languages which are most closely related to Sifan B, such as Written Tibetan and forms of modern Tibetan dialects. "Rabbit", for example, is transcribed as "里公", and judging from the Chinese phonetic form, would be inferred to be li-kung. In actuality, however, the form ri-gong can be inferred because of the presence of ri-gong in Written Tibetan, of ri-kong in the Lhasa dialect, of ɻə3-goŋ3 in Chamdo, and of ri-γoŋ in Amdo. In each instance, both in Written Tibetan and in modern dialects, the initial is r- and not 1- ; the vowel is -oŋ and not -uŋ. In the Chinese of the such a distinction could not be made. Thus the word form meaning "torrent" in Sifan B and the word meaning "ditch", also in Sifan B, are both transcribed in Chinese by "瀧" luŋ In actuality, the former may be presumed to have had the form roŋ and the latter the form luŋ. I have transliterated the Chinese phonetic form used here on the basis of the system devised by Hsü Hsiao 除孝 of the Ming dynasty in his Ssŭ-ma Wên-kung Têng yün t'u ching 司馬温公等韻図経. But where it was impossible to make distinctions on the basis of the Chinese system of the time, for example the existence of an initial velar nasal, the distinction between rand 1-, and the opposition of initial voiced unaspirated stops, I have had recourse to a different basis. An attention has been paid to such cases as the following. Since "jade", which corresponds to shel in Written Tibetan, is written 舎 in Sifan B, the form ｢ʂe｣ can be postulated. However, 博世 ｢po ʂi｣ in Sifan B corresponds to the written form spos shel, "amber". This is an example in which in the spoken language the same morpheme, in a different environment, takes a different phonemic form. ｢ʂe｣ and ｢ʂi｣ could be distinguished in contemporary Chinese, so we are led to infer that, when ｢ʂe｣ is the second member of a compound, it takes the form ｢ʂi｣ Thus ｢ʂe｣ and ｢ʂi｣ are allomorphs. 4. By an all-embracing comparison of the words collected in the text, one series of morphemes can be analyzed. Thus, "tree" 盛 can be distinguished in "pine" 湯盛, "a kind of locust" 看包盛, and "mulberry" 打児盛. Although a direct investigation of Sifan B is not possible, the following observations can be made by using the results obtained by Chinese people who had contact with the language: words in Sifan B were composed of 1) one morpheme and 2) a sequence of two or three morphemes, and we may conclude that one morpheme was, in principle, of the CVC2 syllabic type, and posssessed one tone. In Chapter III, 1) initials, 2) sequences of vowels and finals, and 3) tonemes are discussed in that order. In 1) initials (C) the single consonants k-, kh-, g-, t-, th-, d-, p-, ph-, b-, etc. (see Japanese text, p. 123) and the consonant clusters sk-, rk-, etc. are inferred. In 2) sequences of vowels and finals (VC2), -a#, -i#, -aŋ, -iŋ, etc. (see Japanese text, p. 138) are inferred. Although tonemes are not generally transcribed according to set principles, we can recognize toneme I (=high tone) and toneme II (=low tone), because of their partial differentiation by yin-p'ing shêng and chü shêng and by the contrast of shang sheng and chü shêng. In order to determine roughly what correspondence each unit of Sifan B has to modern Tibetan dialects, various examples have been given. The dialects which were used for comparison were, in addition to Written Tibetan, Lhasa, Balti, Chamdo, and Amdo. Using Sifan B as a standard, some eighty principles of correspondence have been found. 5. Chapter IV consists of a brief description of the grammar. The items given in the text under discussion are limited to one word or a combination of two words, with no longer sequences. For all these limitations, however, an outline of the grammatical form of Sifan B is discernible. 6. The semantic field covered by this text is divided into eighteen parts, containing a total of 749 items. The Sifan B word form has been reconstructed for each item, and an English translation has been provided for each Chinese word. In addition, in the right-hand column, the Tibetan written form corresponding to Sifan B has been appended.

Journal

• Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University

  Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 7 84-174, 1963-03-30

  京都大學文學部

Details

• CRID: 1050282810558842496
• NII Article ID: 110000056895
• NII Book ID: AN00061079
• ISSN: 04529774
• HANDLE: 2433/72922
• Text Lang: ja
• Article Type: departmental bulletin paper
• Data Source:
  • IRDB
  • CiNii Articles