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Idiom of the Day
last chance (for/at/to do something)
The last or final opportunity to get, have, do, or achieve something. Watch the video
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s
5.1 Table of the ten ‘heavenly stems’ (Tian’gan 天干 ) and twelve ‘earthly branches’ (Dizhi 地支 )
5.2 The Chinese 60s cycle (Jiazi) formed from the combination of the 10 ‘heavenly stems’ (Tian’gan 天干 ) with the 12 ‘earthly branches’ (Dizhi 地支 )
5.3 List of selected special characters for the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
5.4 List of abbreviations for chapters I ‒ VI of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan (without book title and author name) 5.5 Bibliography of secondary literature in Western languages for the study of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan presented here
5.6 Bibliography of non-Western languages
6 The text of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan in the Chinese original
6.1 穆天子傳卷一 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter I
6.2 穆天子傳卷二 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter II
6.3 穆天子傳卷三 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter III
6.4 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter IV
6.5 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter V
6.6 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter VI
Brief biography of the author
Index of selected names, titles and terms (11 double-columned pages)
Miscellanea
The silk road is mentioned on pp. XII, 385, 408, 547, 673; 1208, most prominently in the introdcution where Frühauf describes his own travels in Xinjiang in 1976 and 1980, when he first heard about the MTZZ.
Frühauf mentions the Tocharians several times, e.g., when discussing theethnonyms Yuezhi 月氏，Yuezhi 禺知, and Daxia 大夏 (Greco-Bactria) and the proposed linguistic identifications for them.
The volume was published open access about a week ago. Here it is (pdf) for your reading pleasure, all 1,214 pages of it
There are over a thousand footnotes in the main part of the book, plus hundreds more for the separate sections at the back of the book.
Selected readings
* "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)
* "Rethinking the Yuezhi?" (8/5/24)
* "Kunlun: the origins and meanings of a mysterious place name" (2/24/21)
* "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)
* "Persian peaches of immortality" (1/22/21)
* Porter, Deborah Lynn. From Deluge to Discourse: Myth, History, and the Generation of Chinese Fiction. Albany: State University of New York, 1996.
* Knauer, Elfriede R. (2006). "The Queen Mother of the West: A Study of the Influence of Western Prototypes on the Iconography of the Taoist Deity". In Mair, Victor H. (ed.). Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. pp. 62–115.
[Thanks to Wolfgang Behr]
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research on such topics as the mythology and astronomy of that challenging text, for which see his chapter in the 65th birthday Festschrift for Heiner Roetz (Bochum Yearbook of East Asian Studies [BJOAF]) , 38 (2015), which is prefaced by the following English abstract: Mu tianzi zhuan is China’s oldest travelogue, purportedly dating back to the 10th century B. C. There has long been a debate over its authenticity and date of origin. Its literary character or type is also a point of contention: is it a travelogue moulded into a certain literary form (irrespective of whether the events reported in it are authentic or fictional)? Was it written by an ancient court historiographer who intended it to serve as a historical source document? In the present article three examples from the travelogue are presented to demonstrate that the ancient text contains a number of elements with astronomical implications, which suggest that yet another perspective should be taken into consideration, namely the astral-mythological approach of von Dechend & de Santillana, to achieve a new and deeper interpretation of the text.
I am particularly intrigued that a Sinologist working on a 1st millennium BC Chinese text would know about the esoteric research in Hamlet's Mill and use it productively to interpret the astronomical and mythological phenomena in it.
When all is said and done, how does Frühauf's MTZZ translation stack up against previous renditions in Western languages? In a word, it is a philological triumph. The last complete translation of MTZZ was that into French by Rémi Mathieu, published in 1978. I was already quite impressed by that version, but it is more literary and cultural, whereas Frühauf's is more technical and linguistic. Prior to Mathieu was Cheng Te-k'un's in JNCBRAS, 64-65 (1933-34), which I read years before Mathieu's version appeared. Cheng's rendition was so disappointing that I could barely force myself through a few pages. E. J. Eitel's translation of 1888 in China Review was issued before Sinology had become a science and was rather sketchy.
Mathieu's translation, like many others he did, is very good, informed by the major commentaries and obviously eloquent enough to convince major French publishing houses to publish them, but they do not dig as deeply into the philology of difficult passages as Frühauf does. He is familiar with a wider range of the secondary literature, including Japanese, and passionately interested in the philological "ancillary sciences" like astronomy, archaeology, historical geography, etc., which are eminently important to understand a fragmentary text like MTZZ with its complicated transmission history, hapax characters, etc. He is also more familiar with the Central Asian connections which are so important for an understanding of the text.
That brings me to my final series of points. Namely,
1. we may view MTZZ as a hoary forerunner of the famous vernacular novel, Journey to the West, written around two millennia later and featuring the fictionalized medieval Buddhist pilgrim, Xuanzang (Tripitaka), and his three inimitable companions — Pigsy, Sandy, and Monkey (who has many similarities to Hanuman in the Indian epic Ramayana) — plus a White Dragon Horse. Incidentally, a team of eight horses figure prominently in MTZZ.
2. the route described is like a precursor of the "Silk Road" before there was trade in silk, though there was plenty of jade (plus horses, furs, faience, glass, etc. coming in the opposite direction)
3. it was these aspects (1. and 2.) that drew Frühauf to Central Asia and attracted him to MTZZ
4. King Mu was traversing the same area as the Tocharians and the Yuezhi must have passed through around the same time (first millennium BC). If we read the narrative and descriptions of MTZZ attentively enough, we may gain valuable insights into who, after all, the Tocharians were, and who, after all, the Yuezhi were.
5. If we are truly open-minded and percipient enough, we may also obtain a better, cleare[...]
Language Log
Magisterial German translation of a neglected monument of ancient Chinese literature, Mu Tianzi Zhuan
First, a few words about the text, after which I will introduce the Sinologist who undertook this monumental philological task, Manfred W. Frühauf.
English:
The Mu Tianzi Zhuan, or Records of [King] Mu, the Son of Heaven, is considered to be the earliest and longest extant travelogue in Chinese literature. It describes the journeys of King Mu (r. 976-922 BC or 956-918 BC) of the Zhou Dynasty (c.1046-256 BC) to the farthest corners of his realm and beyond in the 10th century BC. Harnessing his famous eight noble steeds he visits distant clans and nations such as the Quanrong, Chiwu, and Jusou, exchanging gifts with all of them; he scales the awe-inspiring Kunlun mountains and meets with legendary Xiwangmu ("Queen Mother of the West"); he watches exotic animals, and he orders his men to mine huge quantities of precious jade for transport back to his capital. The travelogue ends with a detailed account of the mourning ceremonies during the burial of a favorite lady of the king.
Irrespective of the question of its literary specifics and merits, the Mu Tianzi Zhuan (MTZZ) may be regarded as a treasure house of primary source information on Chinese Bronze Age diplomacy, describing contacts with various clans, ethnic groups, and foreign peoples such as the Ximo, Yilü-Shi, Zhanhan-Shi, Guzhan-Shi, Chongyong-Shi etc., from a Zhou dynasty perspective. Stored in a grave probably in the Warring States era (c.475-221 BC) , the Mu Tianzi Zhuan escaped the burning of books by Qin Shi Huang ("First Emperor of the Qin [Dynasty]" [and hence of China]) in the year 213 BC, as it came back to daylight only around 280 AD. This is one of the reasons why this find was considered a great discovery at the beginning of the Jìn dynasty (226-420). All claims to the authenticity of the travelogue are weakened by the obvious dearth of archeological finds corroborating the far-flung travelogue. Edward L. Shaughnessy speaks of a general retreat to the capital area in the aftermath of the catastrophic failure of King Zhao’s (1027-957 BC) expedition to the South, which makes large scale expeditions of his son, King Mu, into the far West — as seemingly described in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan — rather unlikely. On the other hand, Shaughnessy has also shown that the names of several persons mentioned in the travelogue can also be found on excavated Western Zhou bronzes dated to the era of King Mu, persons whose names are not attested elsewhere in orthodox classical Chinese literature.
German
Das Mu Tianzi Zhuan, übersetzbar als „Überlieferungen von [König] Mu, den Sohn des Himmels“, gilt als ältester erhaltener Reisebericht in der chinesischen Literaturgeschichte. Darin werden die Reisen beschrieben, die König Mu, fünfter Herrscher der dynastischen Zhou, im 10. Jahrhundert v. u. Z. zu den entferntesten Orten seines Reiches und darüber hinaus unternommen haben soll. Mit einem Gespann aus den berühmten acht edlen Pferden besucht er weit entfernte Familienclans und Völkerschaften wie z. B. die Quanrong, Chiwu oder Jusou und tauscht mit ihnen allen Geschenke aus. Er besteigt das Ehrfurcht gebietende Kunlun-Gebirge und trifft mit der legendären Xiwangmu zusammen. Er beobachtet exotische Tiere, und er befiehlt seinen Männern, große Mengen wertvoller Jade zu brechen und in seine Hauptstadt zu bringen. Fast sprichwörtlich geworden ist die Feststellung im antiken Zuozhuan, wonach „einst König Mu … eine Reise durch die ganze Welt (tianxia) unternehmen [wollte], auf daß sich überall seine Wagenspuren und die Hufabdrücke seiner Pferde fänden.“ Der Reisebericht endet mit einer detaillier[...]
Language Log
The wisdom of puns
Recent stock-market volatility reminds us of this KAL cartoon:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SellBuy.png
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
psycho
crazy, insane
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Idiom of the Day
in the last analysis
When everything has been considered; when all the facts are known or the truth has come to light. Watch the video
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Language Log
Skinning a bear with Rosanne Barr
…vs. having a video conversation with her…
Attachment ambiguity of the week: "RFK Jr. says he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it in bizarre video with Roseanne Barr", NY Post 8/4/2024.
The Berkeley Neural Parser thinks that he planned to skin the bear in a video with Rosanne Barr:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/BarrBear1.png
(Presumably with her as co-skinner with him, not co-skinnee with the bear…)
But of course the headline writer meant for the PP "with Rosanne Barr" to modify "a bizarre video", and for the resulting PP "in a bizarre video with Rosanne Barr" to modify "RFK Jr. says [he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it]".
SpaCy comes to the same conclusion.
[h/t J.W. Brewer]
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and cultural ideology. Wang seems conscious of this when responding to a question from the WSJ author about whether Beijing could use a reinterpretation of the Yuezhi to make territorial claims in the region. Wang replies, ‘Such a notion was absurd because the nomads are a historical people and no one serious would put forth that argument’.
Yet at the same time Wang seems to be promoting an implausible nationalistic claim of Uzbek responsibility for the establishment of the Kushan Empire. Wang notes that his results ‘match up with the needs of China and Uzbekistan’, and the article concludes with the following statement: ‘Being able to trace the origins of the Kushan Empire to local people rather than outsiders feeds a tale of national resurgence after a period of foreign dominance that lines up favorably with Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet efforts to write its own history’. Undoubtedly many thousands of local people – farmers, merchants and urban residents – were a significant element of the demographic makeup of the multicultural Kushan Empire, which stretched from Uzbekistan to the Ganges, and from the Iranian Plateau to Xinjiang. But to claim the founders of the empire were Uzbeks half a millennium before Turkic-speaking peoples even began to make their mark on the stage of Eurasian history does no service whatsoever to the credibility of the exciting and flourishing modern nation of Uzbekistan.
Craig Benjamin
benjamic@gvsu.edu
5 August 2024
Brief Bibliography
* Benjamin, C., The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria, Silk Roads Studies Series vol. XIV, Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
* Falk, H., ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on the History of the Kushans on the Basis of Literary Evidence, Seminaris Conference Center, Berlin, December 2013, Mainz: Mainz Academy of Literature and Culture, 2016.
* Hill, J., Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Roads 1st to 2nd Centuries CE, Vol. I, 2nd edition. An annotated translation from the Houhan Shu, John E. Hill, 2015.
* Hulsewe, A.F.P. and Loewe, M.A.N., China in Central Asia. The Early Stage: 125B.C. – A.D. 23. An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty, Leiden: Brill, 1979.
* Litvinsky, B.A. and Altman-Bromberg, C., ‘The Archaeology and Art of Central Asia: Studies from the Former Soviet Union’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 8 (1996).
* Mallory, J.P. and Mair, V.H., The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
* Sima Qian, Shi Ji (trans. B. Watson), Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian – Han Dynasty II, New York: Columbia University Press, Revised edtn. 1993.
* Zadneprovsky, Y.A., ‘Migration Paths of the Yueh-chih based on Archaeological Evidence’, Circle of Inner Asian Art Newsletter No. 9 (April 1999) pp. 3 ff.
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Language Log
Rethinking the Yuezhi?
[This is a guest post by Craig Benjamin, the leading authority on Yuezhi history. It is a follow-up to "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)]
"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back: The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).
A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal concerning attempts by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists to unearth material evidence of the Yuezhi and early Kushans makes interesting reading. The author prefaces their account by placing the work of the archaeologists in the context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand the scope and influence of Chinese civilization, arguing that the efforts of Chinese researchers in various global locations ‘has the potential to change the field of archaeology itself, along with China’s place in the sweep of human history’. However, rather than promoting the influence of Chinese civilization in Central Asia, the archaeologists appear to be intent upon advancing nationalist claims in support of China’s Belt and Road partner Uzbekistan by arguing, on the basis of very slender evidence, that the Kushans ‘were descendants of the local population’.
The article focuses on the work of Wang Jianxin, a Chinese archaeologist based at Northwest University in Xi'an. Wang has apparently long been fascinated with the Silk Roads, and in particular with the impact of the migration of the Yuezhi from the borderlands of ancient northwestern China to Bactria, essentially southern Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan today. According to the article, Wang and his team have been digging for several years in Uzbekistan, most recently at a site known as Chinortepa, close to the so-called Iron Gates of ancient Sogdia. The article states that, based on the artifacts he has discovered and the location of these discoveries, Wang now believes that our understanding of the nature and role of the Yuezhi in the history of ancient Central Asia might be incorrect, and that the Yuezhi might not have been founders of the Kushan Empire after all.
Such a startling thesis, which is clearly at odds with the consensus view held by most Yuezhi specialists, needs to be evaluated in light of the evidence Wang has assembled. Wang’s assertion that the field of Silk Roads Studies is dominated by Western scholars, and that it was time to ‘add China’s voice to the field’ might hold some merit, but it is hardly the fault of Western (and also Russian and Japanese) scholars if Chinese interest in the field has been slow to develop. And of course it is ancient Han Chinese annals – the Shiji, Han Shu and Hou Han Shu – that are fundamental to the story of the Yuezhi and their role in founding the Kushan Empire. None the less, Western scholars should welcome greater Chinese engagement in the field.
According to the article, after Wang signed an agreement with the Uzbek Academy of Sciences in Samarkand, the joint Chinese-Uzbek team unearthed ‘dozens of hitherto unknown nomadic settlements in Uzbekistan, stunning other archaeologists in the field’. It would be helpful if reports of these stunning discoveries were more widely disseminated through appropriate academic journals because so far information on these excavations has been difficult to access. The article’s implication that these settlements can be attributed to the Yuezhi is apparently based on Wang’s skill in ‘using rock paintings to identify sites’, but to the best of this author’s knowledge rock paintings (petroglyphs?) are not something generally associated with Yuezhi mortuary sites. But Wang’s reported preference of searching for graves ‘in flat terrain, orchards or farmland’ rather than digging up the numerous tepe mounds that dot the landsc[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
flame
to attack someone by posting an abusive message in an online forum or message board
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Idiom of the Day
lap of the gods
A state beyond possible human control, intervention, or responsibility; a state or condition that is or will be decided by nature or fate. Usually used in the phrase "in the lap of the gods." Watch the video
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Language Log
What AI is (not) good for?
Deep Learning "AI" systems are doing ever more impressive things, although there continues to be plenty of skepticism Out There about the underlying technologies.
And now there's increasing skepticism about the economic impact. An 8/2/2024 Atlantic article has the title "The Generative-AI Revolution May Be a Bubble", and the subtitle "Tech firms have been spending historic amounts of money on AI—but will it pay off?" A recent Goldman-Sachs report had the title "GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND, TOO LITTLE BENEFIT?", featured in a 7/24 Washington Post article "Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble."
One idea about AI socio-economics has always been that wider and wider swaths of the world's population will want to pay for its participation in their daily lives, replicating the successes of social media and portable networked devices. But even if this is true, there are some hiccups along the way, such as Google's "Dear Sidney" Olympics ad:
There was a lot of negative reaction to that ad, for example Alexandra Petri, "I hate the Gemini ‘Dear Sydney’ ad more every passing moment", and Caroline Nimbs Nyce's "Google Wins the Gold Medal for Worst Olympic Ad" — so much that Google quickly pulled it. Here's the start of the WSJ's 8/2/2024 summary, "Google Pulls Olympic-Themed AI Ad After Failing to Stick the Landing":
Google pulled an Olympics-themed ad for its AI chatbot after it sparked backlash from viewers that the messaging was impersonal and dystopian, the latest misstep by Alphabet’s search giant in its rollout of the technology.
The advertisement, called “Dear Sydney” and created in partnership with Team USA, featured a father who uses Gemini, a chatbot based on Google’s most advanced technology, to help his daughter write a letter to Team USA track runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
Critics online said the ad was tone-deaf because it took an innocent childhood experience—writing a heartfelt letter of admiration to a role model—and turned the task over to an algorithm. Parents especially were quick to note that a letter written by generative artificial intelligence detracts from the sentimental value it has when personally written by a child.
That article ends with a reference to an earlier tone-deaf advertisement from another Tech giant:
Apple apologized in May for an ad that depicted an array of creative tools being crushed —including a piano and colorful paint brushes—saying it fell short of the company’s standards, after some critics said the ad highlighted their concerns that AI could replace human creativity.
(See "Tim Cook crushes it everything", 5/9/2024…)
Cory Doctorow has coined the metaphorical term "centaur" for the application of these ideas in the workplace ("The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us", 8/2/2024):
A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.
A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine […]
There's certainly a lot of centauring Out There. But the main effect of several such out-sourced innovations in my own workplace has been to force many departments and centers to hire new human employees to deal with the bureaucratic "help" thus provided, which semi-automatically monitors lots of newly-tracked details through badly-designed interfaces to ill-fitting data models. Which is not a very good imitation of the 19th-century successes of industrial automation…
This seems to be a problem with the people designing, selling, and buying such systems, rather than with the underlying technologies. But as long as administrative productivity is defined by bureaucrats, I don't think it will be easy to fix the problems.
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ually referring to 1st millennium Bactria, as well as the Takhar province of Afghanistan. The Tókharoi are often identified by modern scholars with the Yuezhi of Chinese historical accounts, who founded the Kushan Empire.
Müller's identification became a minority position among scholars when it turned out that the people of Tokharistan (Bactria) spoke Bactrian, an Eastern Iranian language, which is quite distinct from the Tocharian languages. Nevertheless, "Tocharian" remained the standard term for the languages of the Tarim Basin manuscripts and for the people who produced them. A few scholars argue that the Yuezhi were originally speakers of Tocharian who later adopted the Bactrian language.
The name of Kucha in Tocharian B was Kuśi, with adjectival form kuśiññe. The word may be derived from Proto-Indo-European *keuk "shining, white". The Tocharian B word akeññe may have referred to people of Agni, with a derivation meaning "borderers, marchers". One of the Tocharian A texts have ārśi-käntwā as a name for their own language, so that ārśi may have meant "Agnean", though "monk" is also possible.
Tocharian kings apparently gave themselves the title Ñäktemts soy (in Tocharian B), an equivalent of the title Devaputra ("Son of God") of the Kushans.
And what languages did the Tocharians speak?
The Tocharian languages are known from around 7600 documents dating from about 400 to 1200 AD, found at 30 sites in the northeast Tarim area. The manuscripts are written in two distinct, but closely related, Indo-European languages, conventionally known as Tocharian A and Tocharian B. According to glotto-chronological data, Tocharian languages are closest to Western Indo-European languages such as proto-Germanic or proto-Italian, and being devoid of satemization predate the evolution of eastern Indo-European languages.
Tocharian A (Agnean or East Tocharian) was found in the northeastern oases known to the Tocharians as Ārśi, later Agni (i.e. Chinese Yanqi; modern Karasahr) and Turpan (including Khocho or Qočo; known in Chinese as Gaochang). Some 500 manuscripts have been studied in detail, mostly coming from Buddhist monasteries. Many authors take this to imply that Tocharian A had become a purely literary and liturgical language by the time of the manuscripts, but it may be that the surviving documents are unrepresentative.
Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian) was found at all the Tocharian A sites and also in several sites further west, including Kuchi (later Kucha). It appears to have still been in use in daily life at that time. Over 3200 manuscripts have been studied in detail.
The languages had significant differences in phonology, morphology and vocabulary, making them mutually unintelligible "at least as much as modern Germanic or Romance languages". Tocharian A shows innovations in the vowels and nominal inflection, whereas Tocharian B has changes in the consonants and verbal inflection. Many of the differences in vocabulary between the languages concern Buddhist concepts, which may suggest that they were associated with different Buddhist traditions.
The differences indicate that they diverged from a common ancestor between 500 and 1000 years before the earliest documents, that is, sometime in the 1st millennium BC. Common Indo-European vocabulary retained in Tocharian includes words for herding, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, horses, textiles, farming, wheat, gold, silver, and wheeled vehicles. Prakrit documents from 3rd century Krorän, Andir and Niya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain around 100 loanwords and 1000 proper names that cannot be traced to an Indic or Iranian source. Thomas Burrow suggested that they come from a variety of Tocharian, dubbed Tocharian C or Kroränian, which may have been spoken by at least some of the local populace. Burrow's theory is widely accepted, but the evidence is meagre and inconclusive, and some scholars favour alternative explanations.
(Wikipedi[...]
actria, the Kushanas (Chinese: 貴霜; pinyin: Guìshuāng), began to subsume the other tribes and neighbouring peoples. The subsequent Kushan Empire, at its peak in the 3rd century AD, stretched from Turfan in the Tarim Basin in the north to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain of India in the south. The Kushanas played an important role in the development of trade on the Silk Road and the introduction of Buddhism to China.
The Lesser Yuezhi migrated southward to the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Some are reported to have settled among the Qiang people in Qinghai, and to have been involved in the Liang Province Rebellion (184–221 AD) against the Eastern Han dynasty. Another group of Yuezhi is said to have founded the city state of Cumuḍa (now known as Kumul and Hami) in the eastern Tarim. A fourth group of Lesser Yuezhi may have become part of the Jie people of Shanxi, who established the Later Zhao state of the 4th century AD (although this remains controversial).
Many scholars believe that the Yuezhi were an Indo-European people. Although some scholars have associated them with artifacts of extinct cultures in the Tarim Basin, such as the Tarim mummies and texts recording the Tocharian languages, there is no evidence for any such link. [VHM: See this post and the many references herein.]
Three pre-Han texts mention peoples who appear to be the Yuezhi, albeit under slightly different names.
*
* The philosophical tract Guanzi (73, 78, 80 and 81) mentions nomadic pastoralists known as the Yúzhī 禺氏 (Old Chinese: *ŋʷjo-kje) or Niúzhī 牛氏 (OC: *ŋʷjə-kje), who supplied jade to the Chinese. (The Guanzi is now generally believed to have been compiled around 26 BC, based on older texts, including some from the Qi state era of the 11th to 3rd centuries BC. Most scholars no longer attribute its primary authorship to Guan Zhong, a Qi official in the 7th century BC.) The export of jade from the Tarim Basin, since at least the late 2nd millennium BC, is well-documented archaeologically. For example, hundreds of jade pieces found in the Tomb of Fu Hao (c. 1200 BC) originated from the Khotan area, on the southern rim of the Tarim Basin. According to the Guanzi, the Yúzhī/Niúzhī, unlike the neighbouring Xiongnu, did not engage in conflict with nearby Chinese states.
* The epic novel Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven (early 4th century BC) also mentions a plain of Yúzhī 禺知 (OC: *ŋʷjo-kje) to the northwest of the Zhou lands. [VHM: An important new publication on this early text will be announced in Language Log within a few days.]
* Chapter 59 of the Yi Zhou Shu (probably dating from the 4th to 1st century BC) refers to a Yúzhī 禺氏 (OC: *ŋʷjo-kje) people living to the northwest of the Zhou domain and offering horses as tribute. A late supplement contains the name Yuèdī 月氐 (OC: *ŋʷjat-tij), which may be a misspelling of the name Yuèzhī 月氏 (OC: *ŋʷjat-kje) found in later texts.
In the 1st century BC, Sima Qian – widely regarded as the founder of Chinese historiography – describes how the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) bought jade and highly valued military horses from a people that Sima Qian called the Wūzhī 烏氏 (OC: *ʔa-kje), led by a man named Luo. The Wūzhī traded these goods for Chinese silk, which they then sold on to other neighbours. This is probably the first reference to the Yuezhi as a lynchpin in trade on the Silk Road, which in the 3rd century BC began to link Chinese states to Central Asia and, eventually, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe.
(Wikipedia)
VHM: For a book-length scholarly history of the Yuezhi, see the recent work by Craig Benjamin listed in the "Selected Readings" below. Asii
The Asii, Osii, Ossii, Asoi, Asioi, Asini or Aseni were an ancient Indo-European people of Central Asia, during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Known only from Classical Greek and Roman sources, they were one of t[...]
Word of the Day
avaricious
Definition: (adjective) Immoderately desirous of wealth or gain.
Synonyms: covetous, grabby, grasping, greedy, prehensile.
Usage: The avaricious man prayed to have a room full of gold.
Discuss
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r understanding of how IE words entered Sinitic already by the 1st millennium or even earlier, not that these words just somehow magically showed up of their own volition, but that they came through some sort of agency, undoubtedly human. What could be more human than language?
6. I applaud Frühauf for his awareness of these vital issues and, being the responsible scholar that he is, treating them seriously.
A few closing words
Manfred Frühauf's extraordinary German annotated translation of MTZZ is manifestly important for its linguistic virtuosity and philological precision, but is also significant for what it tells us about early travel to and trade with Central and Inner Asia (presumably all the way to the Pamir Mountains), the movement and migration of cultures and peoples, archeology before it arose as a modern discipline, the development of Chinese fiction (a historical romance; an epic manqué), and so many other fascinating subjects, including a unique brand of mythology that is quite different from that of the Shānhǎi jīng 山海經 (Classic of Mountains and Seas), a sort of mythic geography and bestiary, which also dealt with the same regions and dates to around the same time (see Nienhauser's perceptive remarks about the distinctions between the two works in item 1. of the bibliography below).
Brief bibliography
For those who wish to know more about the contents and composition of as well as the commentaries on MTZZ, together with its textual history, the following succinct treatments are available:
1. William H. Nienhauser, Jr., in WHN, et al., ed., The Indiana Companion to Tradtiional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 632b-633b.
2. Rémi Mathieu, in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993), pp. 342-346. In it, Mathieu akes this astute observation:
Thanks to its theme of a journey to the west, the book reflects a Chinese attempt to take possession of the whole earth, and raises the question of the control that a sovereign and his court may exercise over all people under the skies.
1. Ulrich Theobald, online in ChinaKnowledge.de — An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art here (except for its mention of 1. and 2. above, based entirely on premodern and modern Chinese sources).
Table of contents (abbreviated, to give an idea of the riches available in the volume)
Foreword
Characters, transcription, orthography
1 Introduction to Mu Tianzi Zhuan
2 Mu Tianzi Zhuan 穆天子傳 ‒ Translation and commentary in six hefty chapters taking up more than half the book.
3 Individual observations
3.1 The Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ discovery and editing
3.2 Gaps in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ text fragments
3.3 On the biography of King Mu in the Western Zhou period
3.4 The book Liezi 列子 and Zhou King Mu
3.5 Liezi 列子 ‒ translation from Chapter III: Zhou Mu Wang pian 周穆王篇
3.6 Information in the Bamboo Annals 竹書紀年 Zhushu Jinian on the biography of the Zhou King Mu
3.7 Guo Pu 郭璞 (276‒324 AD) ‒ On his biography and his commentary
3.8 On the place names in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
3.9 List of geographical names in the six chapters of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
3.10 List of names of people, family associations and ethnic groups in the six chapters of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
3.11 The name Ditai 帝臺、帝台
3.12 The Zhou kings Zhao and Mu ‒ on the 昭穆 Zhaomu question
3.13 The accusation of incest and other questions of legitimacy and morality
3.14 Calendar and event overview for the chapters I ‒ VI of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
3.15 Observations from the translation work on the Mu Tianzi Zhuan as well as some remarks on the commentary literature
3.16 Some additional questions for the commentators as well as possible topics for further studies
3.17 Possibilities and limitations of a translation ‒ my translation of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan
4 Concluding remarks
5 Appendice[...]
ten Beschreibung der Trauerfeierlichkeiten während der Bestattung einer Favoritin des Königs.
Unabhängig von der Frage nach seiner Genrezugehörigkeit und seinen literarischen Qualitäten kann man das Mu Tianzi Zhuan als Schatzkammer voller Primärinformationen über diplomatische Aktivitäten in der chinesischen Bronzezeit ansehen, denn es berichtet ‒ aus der Perspektive des Zhou-Königshauses ‒ über Kontakte mit verschiedenen Familienverbänden, ethnischen Gruppen und fremden Völkern wie z. B. den Ximo, Yilü-Shi, Zhanhan-Shi, Guzhan-Shi, Chongyong-Shi u. a. Da das Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ vermutlich in der Ära der Kämpfenden Reiche (Zhanguo) ‒ in ein Grab eingelagert wurde, entging es der Bücherverbrennung 213 v. u. Z. durch Qin Shi Huang, denn der Text kam erst etwa um das Jahr 280 u. Z. wieder ans Tageslicht. Dies ist einer der Gründe, warum der Fund zu Beginn der Jìn-Dynastie große Aufmerksamkeit auf sich zog.
Allen Behauptungen über die Authentizität des Mu Tianzi Zhuan steht der offenkundige Mangel an archäologischen Funden entgegen, die diesen weit gesponnenen Reisebericht unterstützen würden. Tatsächlich spricht E. L. Shaughnessy vielmehr von einem generellen Rückzug in die Region der Hauptstadt in der Folge des in einer Katastrophe endenden Feldzugs König Zhao’s in den Süden, was ambitionierte Expeditionen in den fernen Westen ‒ wie anscheinend im Mu Tianzi Zhuan beschrieben ‒ unter seinem Sohn, König Mu, wenig wahrscheinlich macht. Andererseits konnte Shaughnessy nachweisen, daß die Namen einiger Personen, die in dem Reisebericht auftreten, auch auf ausgegrabenen Bronzegefäßen aus der Westlichen Zhou-Zeit ‒ datiert auf die Ära König Mu’s ‒ belegt sind, obwohl sie in der orthodoxen klassischen chinesischen Literatur fehlen.
This German translation is the first new rendering of MTZZ into a Western language after more than forty years, complemented by copious annotations discussing linguistic, paleographic, historical, social, technical and other questions. It was published open access about a week ago by de Gruyter (2024) and appears under the title of Überlieferungen von Mu, dem Sohn des Himmels: Eine philologisch-historische Studie zum MU TIANZI ZHUAN 穆天子傳 as vol. 38 in the "Worlds of East Asia" series from the Swiss Asia Society.
The translator, annotator, and explicator of MTZZ into German is Manfred W. Frühauf, who was a brilliant teacher of Classical and Modern Chinese at the University of Frankfurt during the years 1983-5, when he worked on his outstanding dissertation on early forms of Chinese autobiography.
Before that, i.e., in the 70s and 80s, he spent a number of years in Taiwan and Japan, first as a student, then also as a language teacher, it seems. He also learned Turkish and, I believe, some other Central Asian Turkic languages along the way. With his near-native command of modern Mandarin, he moved on to become the director of the China Section at the Landesspracheninstitut (LSI) Nordhrein-Westfalen at Bochum around 1984/5, Germany's most important training center for Russian and Asian languages, which offers intensive courses for diplomats, business and media people, and so forth.
Accordingly, most of Frühauf's professional life after the Ph.D. was focused on TCFL. He thus has some related publications in German, e.g., on proverbs, and a very useful dictionary of measure word collocations. Later, the LSI became a self-governed entity within the University of Bochum, after which Frühauf published a book on Guo Moruo 郭沫若 and is currently investigating the early work by Hu Shih 胡適 from the period 1917‒1919. He retired from the LIS a decade or so ago, which gave him more time to work on his pre-modern projects again, hence, MTZZ. He has also found time to do interesting work on the "Gǔshī shíjiǔ shǒu 古詩十九首" ("Nineteen Old Poems"). And, during the course of preparation for his remarkable annotated and explicated translation of MTZZ, he carried out specialized[...]
Language Log
This is just to say
A poem by Dan Perkins:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PerkinsBearPoem.png
You'll need to be signed into a bluesky account to follow the link, which is why I presented it as a .png.
And you'll need to know the the background story about RFK Jr. and the bear cub — see e.g. "RFK Jr admits dumping bear carcass in New York's Central Park", BBC 8/5/2024, or his own video posted on X:
Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker… pic.twitter.com/G13taEGzba
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 4, 2024
And finally, you need to recall the William Carlos Williams poem "This Is Just To Say":
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: incinerate
This word has appeared in five articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
finish up
to be in a certain place or situation after a long series of events or a long time
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Word of the Day
stalwart
Definition: (adjective) Having or marked by imposing physical strength.
Synonyms: hardy, sturdy, stout.
Usage: Athos sprang into the boat, which was immediately pushed off and which soon sped seawards under the efforts of four stalwart rowers.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Watermarking AI output, again
Deepa Seetharaman & Matt Barnum, "There’s a Tool to Catch Students Cheating With ChatGPT. OpenAI Hasn’t Released It.", WSJ 8/4/2024:
OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper. The company hasn’t released it despite widespread concerns about students using artificial intelligence to cheat.
The project has been mired in internal debate at OpenAI for roughly two years and has been ready to be released for about a year, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a matter of pressing a button,” one of the people said.
What OpenAI wrote on 5/7/2024 — "Understanding the source of what we see and hear online" ("Update on August 4, 2024") — suggests that the method is relatively easy to circumvent:
* Our teams have developed a text watermarking method that we continue to consider as we research alternatives.
* While it has been highly accurate and even effective against localized tampering, such as paraphrasing, it is less robust against globalized tampering; like using translation systems, rewording with another generative model, or asking the model to insert a special character in between every word and then deleting that character – making it trivial to circumvention by bad actors.
* Another important risk we are weighing is that our research suggests the text watermarking method has the potential to disproportionately impact some groups. For example, it could stigmatize use of AI as a useful writing tool for non-native English speakers.
See also Umar Shakir, "Google’s invisible AI watermark will help identify generative text and video", The Verge 5/14/2024:
Google’s DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis, took the stage for the first time at the Google I/O developer conference on Tuesday to talk not only about the team’s new AI tools, like the Veo video generator, but also about the new upgraded SynthID watermark imprinting system. It can now mark video that was digitally generated as well as AI-generated text.
Some details are available on Google Deep Mind's SynthID page:
Finding a robust solution to watermarking AI-generated text that doesn’t compromise the quality, accuracy and creative output has been a great challenge for AI researchers. To solve this problem, our team developed a technique that embeds a watermark directly into the process that a large language model (LLM) uses for generating text.
An LLM generates text one token at a time. These tokens can represent a single character, word or part of a phrase. To create a sequence of coherent text, the model predicts the next most likely token to generate. These predictions are based on the preceding words and the probability scores assigned to each potential token. […]
This process is repeated throughout the generated text, so a single sentence might contain ten or more adjusted probability scores, and a page could contain hundreds. The final pattern of scores for both the model’s word choices combined with the adjusted probability scores are considered the watermark. This technique can be used for as few as three sentences. And as the text increases in length, SynthID’s robustness and accuracy increases.
Obviously this method depends on knowing what release of what generative model was used. And even then, the same "globalized tampering" interventions will presumably work here as well — though if and when these methods are generally accessible and used, naive cheaters will be caught.
Another approach — alas even easier for "bad actors" to circumvent — is the Content Authenticity Initiative and the C2PA protocol. This protocol is analogous to (various countries') food labeling requirements.
Last year's LLOG AI Watermarking posts:
“Watermarking text”, 7/25/2023
“ROT-LLM?”, 7/28/2023
➖ @EngSkills ➖
ape of Uzbekistan does indeed have the potential to enhance our understanding of the lifeways of both nomads and sedentary communities in the region, so should be welcomed.
However, Wang’s arguments for seriously reevaluating the role of the Yuezhi in founding the Kushan Empire are less helpful. It is impossible to definitively attribute graves discovered in the region to the Yuezhi, although Wang seems confident in doing so. Even the so-called podboi tombs discovered by Russian and Chinese archaeologists at various locations corresponding with the itinerary of Yuezhi migration as outlined in the Han sources cannot be definitively attributed to the Yuezhi, although the description in the article of the tombs discovered by Wang around Chinortepa (‘where corpses were buried in underground pits with little chambers to their side’) does sound remarkably like podboi tombs. Podbois have also been excavated in Gansu in Western China and in Bactria by archaeologists over the past several decades. Those found in Bactria can be tentatively dated to the period of probable Yuezhi occupation of the region, and they have yielded a range of artifacts associated with militarized nomads, including swords and daggers, mirrors, jewelry and belt-buckles. But the artifacts apparently discovered by Wang at Chinortepa and used to illustrate the article – a ceramic vase, an unidentified bronze coin, and a ‘Kushan eggshell kept in a cigarette packet’ (?) – are hardly conclusive in providing any sort of attribution to the tombs.
Wang then contrasts these podboi tombs with other types of tombs his team has discovered near Kushan fortresses (which ones are not identified in the article) that apparently show evidence of Zoroastrian funerary practices. This leads Wang to the conclusion that ‘the Yuezhi and the founders of the Kushan empire weren’t the same people’. Wang believes that the Chinor graves were those of either local farmers who had been influenced by the Yuezhi, or Yuezhi who had integrated into farm life. He concludes that the Yuezhi weren’t bloodthirsty colonizers but ‘rather coexisted peacefully with the local population’. This latter conclusion is undoubtedly correct, and in no way at odds with our understanding of Yuezhi occupation of the region. I reached a similar conclusion in my 2007 monograph on the Yuezhi:
After the disruption and uncertainty of continuous migration, the (Yuezhi) had arrived in a fertile region ideally suited to irrigation agriculture and animal husbandry, and here they intended to stay. These were not transitory, destructive, migratory invaders, but a large confederation of semi-sedentised pastoralists and agriculturists intent upon occupying, controlling and facilitating the continuing prosperity of the Surkhan Darya region. Hence they were careful of the crop lands, established themselves near to the strategic river crossings, and occupied at least one (and probably several) of the pre-existing fortified settlements as a base from which to complete their subjugation both of the northern Bactrian region, and de facto of the former Greco-Bactrian realm south of the Amu Darya. … The ruling Yuezhi dynasty itself would have seen another advantage in leaving pre-existing crop lands unmolested – they knew how to exploit them by taking modest tributes so as not to undermine the wealth of rural populations. (C. Benjamin, 2007, p. 204)
Scholars of ancient Central Asia, particularly of Yuezhi and Kushan studies, should welcome the work of joint Chinese-Uzbek archaeological teams in the region. Important archaeological discoveries have been made in the region in the past but these have been piecemeal lately and we should all hope that this Chinese interest in the region yields new discoveries that help further flesh out the compelling tale unfolded by the authors of the Han Dynasty chronicles, supported by the work of so many archaeologists, numismatists and language specialists. But such discoveries must not be interpreted according to nationalist political [...]
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: labyrinthine
This word has appeared in 61 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
march on
to walk in a group towards a place in order to protest against something or to demand something
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Word of the Day
gabby
Definition: (adjective) Tending to talk excessively.
Synonyms: chatty, garrulous, loquacious, talkative, talky.
Usage: Mary's gabby friends kept her apprised of all the neighborhood gossip.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
a)
For fuller treatment, see Proto-Tocharian language and Tocharian languages
Many scholars identify the Yuezhi with the Tocharians. Based on the historical and linguistic evidence cited above, the likelihood of that being so looms rather large. The Chinese were borrowing IE lexical items already in the first millennium BC from a people (Tocharians) who in historical times (1st millennium AD) lived in Eastern Central Asia [ECA]) and whose language bore phonological and morphological resemblances to northwestern European peoples and whose culture (e.g., diagonal twill woolen plaids) bore resemblance to the same peoples at around the same time (roughly 1000 BC).
Those diagnostic linguistic and cultural traits did not reach the Tarim Basin by flying through the air or rising up out of the ground. Somebody brought them to the Tarim Basin, which was one of the last places on earth to be inhabited by humans who came from somewhere, and the Sinitic speakers further east borrowed elements of their language and culture. Selected readings
* "Tocharian Bilingualism and Language Death in the Old Turkic Context" (12/21/23) — with a lengthy bibliography divided into three sections: origins and affinities; the language, the people, and their history; archeology and language
* Craig G. R. Benjamin, The Yuezhi: Origins, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria (Louvain: Brepols, 2006).
* "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
* "The Wool Road of Northern Eurasia" (4/12/21) — with lengthy bibliography on archeology, linguistics, the horse, etc.
* "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
* Victor H. Mair, ed., The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 2 vols. (Washington D.C. and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998).
* J. P. Mallory and Victor H.Mair,The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000).
[h.t. Adrienne Mayor and John Tkacik; thanks to E. Btuce Brooks, Julie Wei, Nick Tursi, and Zihan Guo]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
he peoples held to be responsible for the downfall of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. In Greek Mythology they were the children of Iapetus and Asia.
Modern scholars have attempted to identify the Asii with other peoples known from European and Chinese sources including the: Yuezhi, Tocharians, Issedones/Wusun and/or Alans.
(source)
So, who were the Tocharians after all?
The Tocharians or Tokharians (US: /toʊˈkɛəriənˌ –ˈkɑːr-/ toh-KAIR-ee-ən, -KAR-; UK: /tɒˈkɑːriən/ to-KAR-ee-ən) were speakers of the Tocharian languages, Indo-European languages known from around 7,600 documents from around AD 400 to 1200, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern-day Xinjiang, China). The name "Tocharian" was given to these languages in the early 20th century by scholars who identified their speakers with a people known in ancient Greek sources as the Tókharoi (Latin: Tochari), who inhabited Bactria from the 2nd century BC. This identification is now generally considered erroneous, but the name "Tocharian" remains the most common term for the languages and their speakers. Their actual ethnic name is unknown, although they may have referred to themselves as the Agni, Kuči, and Krorän or as the Agniya and Kuchiya known from Sanskrit texts.
Agricultural communities first appeared in the oases of the northern Tarim circa 2000 BC. Some scholars have linked these communities to the Afanasievo culture found earlier (c. 3500–2500 BC) in Siberia, north of the Tarim or Central Asian BMAC culture. The earliest Tarim mummies date from c. 1800 BC, but it is unclear whether they are connected to the Tocharians of two millennia later.
By the 2nd century BC, these settlements had developed into city-states, overshadowed by nomadic peoples to the north and Chinese empires to the east. These cities, the largest of which was Kucha, also served as way stations on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert.
For several centuries, the Tarim basin was ruled by the Xiongnu, the Han dynasty, the Tibetan Empire, and the Tang dynasty. From the 8th century AD, the Uyghurs – speakers of a Turkic language – settled in the region and founded the Kingdom of Qocho that ruled the Tarim Basin. The peoples of the Tarim city-states intermixed with the Uyghurs, whose Old Uyghur language spread through the region. The Tocharian languages are believed to have become extinct during the 9th century.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists recovered a number of manuscripts from oases in the Tarim Basin written in two closely related but previously unknown Indo-European languages, which were easy to read because they used a close variation of the already deciphered Indian Middle-Brahmi script. These languages were designated in similar fashion by their geographical neighbours:
*
* A Buddhist work in Old Turkic (Uighur), included a colophon stating that the text had been translated from Sanskrit via toxrï tyly (Tωγry tyly, "The language of the Togari").
* Manichean texts in several languages of neighbouring regions used the expression "the land of the Four Toghar" (Toγar~Toχar, written Twγr) to designate the area "from Kucha and Karashar to Qocho and Beshbalik." Friedrich W. K. Müller was the first to propose a characterization for the newly discovered languages. Müller called the languages "Tocharian" (German Tocharisch), linking this toxrï (Tωγry, "Togari") with the ethnonym Tókharoi (Ancient Greek: Τόχαροι) applied by Strabo to one of the "Scythian" tribes "from the country on the other side of the Iaxartes" that overran the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (present day Afghanistan) in the second half of the 2nd century BC. This term also appears in Indo-Iranian languages (Sanskrit Tushara/Tukhāra, Old Persian tuxāri-, Khotanese ttahvāra), and became the source of the term "Tokharistan" us[...]
where -k is an old derivative suffix)
TchA turs-ko (ko = ‘cow’) = Chinese zhōu ‘carriage-pole’ (AC *tru)
TchB kuke/TchA kuk* ‘heel, nave’ = gū ‘nave’
interesting Tch metaphor to see the nave of a wheel as its heel.
The “horse terminology” is taken more or less straightaway from Blažek and Schwarz’ Early Indo-Europeans in Central Asia and China. Innsbruck, 2017. (Baxter and Sagart is by far the most extensive investigation of loanwords in the ancient languages of Inner Asia and China that I know of. It should have made a bigger splash than it has.) This group of words is important (and to a certain extent mutually self-confirming) because it encompasses a particular semantic field.
There are other words, e.g., wang ‘king,’ which are admittedly more speculative. [VHM: Adams will soon be publishing an article about this in Sino-Platonic Papers.]
And, of course, the big difficulty, as always, is the necessity of a word borrowed into Chinese having to undergo “monosyllabification.” The second big difficulty is the wild range of Ancient Chinese pronunciations reconstructed. (The ones given above are a bit eclectically drawn from those wide-ranging possibilities.). Baxter and Sagart give lots more Chinese words that they would see as borrowings from Tocharian. I think they are probably right in many cases, but it’s just so difficult to tell.
As Douglas Adams aptly says, the word for "honey" is the gold standard for Tocharian borrowing into Sinitic:
Possibly from Proto-Tocharian *ḿətə, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰu (“mead”). Cognate with Tocharian B mit (“honey”), English mead, German Met (“mead”), Swedish mjöd (“mead”), Sanskrit मधु (madhu, “honey”), Ancient Greek μέθυ (méthu, “wine”), Polish miód (“honey”), Russian мёд (mjod, “honey”), Old Church Slavonic медъ (medŭ, “honey”).
(Wiktionary)
The Sinitic word for "honey" (mì 蜜) occurs already in the celebrated anthology of southern poetry known as the Chu ci 楚辭 (Elegies of Chu; Songs of the South), attributed to the first Chinese poet known by name, Qu Yuan 屈原 (c. 340 BC–278 BC). It is also in the works of the thinker Xunzi 荀子 (c. 310–c. after 238 BC).
Since Tocharian "honey" is in Sinitic by the first millennium BC, this shows how plugged into Transeurasian IE language dynamics East Asia was at such an early time. As for material culture, to give just one example, glass and faience beads have been found widely distributed across East Asia already by around 800 BC.
So, who were the Yuezhi after all?
The Yuezhi (Chinese: 月氏; pinyin: Yuèzhī, Ròuzhī or Rùzhī; Wade–Giles: Yüeh4-chih1, Jou4-chih1 or Ju4-chih1;) were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu in 176 BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups migrating in different directions: the Greater Yuezhi (Dà Yuèzhī 大月氏) and Lesser Yuezhi (Xiǎo Yuèzhī 小月氏). This started a complex domino effect that radiated in all directions and, in the process, set the course of history for much of Asia for centuries to come.
The Greater Yuezhi initially migrated northwest into the Ili Valley (on the modern borders of China and Kazakhstan), where they reportedly displaced elements of the Sakas. They were driven from the Ili Valley by the Wusun and migrated southward to Sogdia and later settled in Bactria. The Greater Yuezhi have consequently often been identified with peoples mentioned in classical European sources as having overrun the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, like the Tókharoi (Greek Τοχάροι; Sanskrit Tukhāra) and Asii (or Asioi). [VHM: see below on the Asii] During the 1st century BC, one of the five major Greater Yuezhi tribes in B[...]
