Tangut

Fieldwork from the past decade has yielded new data from a cluster of languages in Western Sichuan (China), resulting in new observations relevant for the understanding of Tangut grammar. In this paper, I intend to present morphosyntactic evidence pointing to the Tangut language’s membership within the Horpa taxon, located within the larger Gyalrongic group of the Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan. Tangut exclusively shares with Horpa languages cognates that are far too peculiar to be the result of mere chance. By successively considering the verbal, nominal, and postpositional domains, the present paper highlights evidence that links Tangut to Horpa, while proposing new paths to the understanding of grammatical categories of Tangut proper, such as orientational/aspectual preverbs.

Bu çalışma 11-14. Yüzyıllar arasında Orta Asya, Tibet, Çin ve İç Asya bozkırı arasında önemli bir geçiş bölgesi ve aynı zamanda merkez olan Tangut Devletinde Tiansheng Yasaları adı ile basılan yasaların Çince nüshası incelenerek hayvancılık üzerine yasalarını ele almaktadır. Tangut devletinde hayvan öldürme, kullanma, hayvan ve hayvancılık ürünleri satma üzerine devletin tekel kurma ve üretim, tüketim ve ticareti kendi kontrolüne alma girişimi devleti kuran Li Yuanhao tarafından ilan edilen bu yasalar üzerinden incelenerek bu dönemdeki Tangut hayvancılık politikasının ana esaslarının yanı sıra bunun çevredeki boylara etkileri de incelenmektedir. Aslen Tibetli göçebe bir kavim olmakla birlikte geride çok sayıda yazılı eser bırakan ve göçebelere ait Cengiz yasasından daha öncesine ait yazılı kanunlar bırakan Tangutlar, yaşadıkları Ordos bölgesi haricinde Gansu Uygurları, Moğol Bozkırı, Tibet Platosunun kuzey bölgeleri ve hatta Karahanlılar üzerinde de etkili olmuşlardır. Bu bağlamda bu yasaların incelenmesi hayvancılık alanında diğer göçebe devletlerin yaklaşımına da ışık tutacaktır.

This study examines the laws on husbandry and livestockof the Tangut State  which  was  not  only  a  passing  point  but  also  an  important center between Central Asia, China, Tibetan Plateau and Inner Asia during the 11th-14thcenturies,  by  observing  the  laws  printed  in  Chinese  under  the title of Tianshenglaws. By observing these laws issued by Li Yuanhao who established the Tangut State, the government’s endeavor to control the  killing and production of livestock and to monopolize  the  livestock production, consumption, and trade through these laws, the main Tangut state policies on husbandry and livestock and the effects of these policies on the  tribes residing at  the  peripheries of the  empire  will be  analyzed. Originally a Tibetan tribe, the Tanguts left behind many written records of laws long before the Jasakof JinghisKhan and other nomadic states and were influential on the Gansu Uighurs, Mongolian Steppe, northern regions of the Tibetan Plateau and even the QaraKhanids. In this respect, study  of  these  laws  will  also  shed  light  on  the  policies  of  the  other nomadic states

The Collection of the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia) includes a large number of Tangut items. Originally, an Imperial Russian expedition commanded by Colonel Kozlov discovered the items in the ruins of Khara-Khoto (Inner Mongolia, China), one of the fortified towns of Xixia. Most of the items are fine art objects and some of them contain texts written in Tangut. These items include the so-called "Illustration of the Ten Dharmadhātu of Mind Contemplation" (観心十法界図), in which four holy states (Buddha, Bodhisattva, Pratyekabuddha, Śrāvaka) and six types of entity (deva, human, asura, animal, hungry ghost, Hell) are illustrated and described in detail in Tangut. The illustration is quite valuable for comparative studies between Tangut and Uighur Buddhism. It provides a comprehensive explanation of the world and an explanation of its ten realms. In this study, we examine this part of the Tangut texts. In Section 1, previous studies (the caption by Samosyuk and the study by Kii) are introduced, and some new remarks are added by authors. In Section 2, the entire texts are deciphered; it is more than 90 lines long. The Tangut scripts, reconstructed forms of the syllables, glosses, and a translation into Japanese are presented line by line. In Sections 3 and 4, we compare the studies with the Chinese text (Yuandun guanxin shifajie tu [円頓観心十法界図]) by Zunshi (遵式) and linguistic remarks on the Tangut sentences in the texts. The texts contain not only Buddhist but also Confucian views at several points. We conclude that the Tangut version was translated from one of the Chinese versions, which is unidentified at this stage. On the matter of Tangut linguistics, we observed unique samples, in particular the use of negative prefixes and the co-occurrence of contain prefixes and verbs.

The Yuanduan Guanxin Shifajietu (Illustration of the Ten Realms of Mind Comnemplation in the Perfect and Immediate Teaching), drawn by the Northern Song Tendai priest Ciyun Zunshi 慈雲遵式 was the source for the Kumano Kanjin Jikkai Mandara 熊野観心十界曼荼羅 handed in Japan. This diagram is a schematic of the ten realms, with the heart character 心 in the center, and ranging from the Buddha realm to the realm of hell. This mandala was to be used to reflect on one's own heart.
In this article, we first examine and compare the iconography and text of Zunshi's Yuanduan Guanxin Shifajietu and Khara-khoto work, then we compare the Khara-khoto work and the mural painting from Bezeklik cave, Turfan.

The earliest edition of the Chinese military work Jiangyuan (General's Garden), posthumously attributed to Zhuge Liang, has survived not in Chinese but in its Tangut translation. This manuscript dates to the late 12th century and offers an intriguing perspective on the history of this work.

Николай Невский: жизнь и наследие: сборник статей / сост. и отв. ред. Е. С. Бакшеев и В. В. Щепкин; Ин-т восточных рукописей РАН, Российский ин-т культурологии. — СПб. : Филологический факультет СПбГУ, 2013. — 292 с., ил.
ISBN 978-5-8465-1255-9
В сборник вошли статьи отечественных и зарубежных ученых, основанные на докладах, представленных в рамках «Невских чтений» — международного симпозиума в честь 120-летия со дня рождения выдающегося российского востоковеда Николая Александровича Невского (1892–1937). Проблематика статей определена разносторонним характером исследований, которым посвятил себя ученый: мифология, синто, айноведение, язык и культура Рюкю, тангутоведение и др.

Tibetan Buddhism has played an important role in Asian politics from the 8th century to the present day. It has provided an ideological underpinning and power status to a variety of Central Asian and Chinese empires, including the Mongol empires of Genghis Khan’s heirs and the Manchu rulers of China’s Qing dynasty. While the geopolitical influence of Tibetan Buddhism during this time has waxed and waned over the centuries, it never disappeared. The locus for this influence is in Eastern Central Asia, the crossroads of cultures situated on the overland trading routes known as the Silk Road.

（See abstract in English at the end of the file）：This study investigates the blossoming of woodblock print illustration in late Tang, Song, Liao, and Xi Xia regimes during the late ninth to twelfth centuries. To date, studies of early Buddhist prints have primarily focused on the relationship between text and image, and less on how the images themselves were derived and transported across vast regions to be adapted and transformed by other artisans. This study explores the way in which multiple sources contributed to the stock of imagery used by print artisans, how they standardized visual motifs into modules, and how this distilled imagery was transferred geographically. The prints studied were produced in a number of important centers including Beijing, Dunhuang, Hangzhou, Kaifeng, and Yinchuan. Compared to wall paintings in caves, temples, and tombs, printed images were portable, mass-produced, and wide-spread, hence an efficient medium for spreading these materials across regions well beyond China. This study proposes that Buddhist printed images had multiple visual sources including other prints, painting, and bas-relief tiles, many of which were not Buddhist but secular. It also shows that Buddhist illustrated prints were not necessarily related to the accompanying texts; rather, they were composed of motifs adapted from an existing pictorial vocabulary and used in a modular fashion by print artisans. In conclusion, this exploration of media transfer and modular design evident in Buddhist prints sheds light on the active role played by print artisans. Though anonymous, they were decisive in standardizing a repertoire of popular motifs and assembling, selecting, and modifying these stock images to create original and coherent compositions.

In this lecture, art historian Shih-shan Susan Huang will consider major texts and images in Mahayana Buddhism that were popular in pre-modern China.  Highlighting two of the most important Buddhist scriptures, the Diamond Sutra 金剛經 and the Lotus Sutra 妙法蓮華經, she will also discuss imagery associated with two of the most popular Buddhist deities—Guanyin 觀音 (or Avalokiteśvara) Bodhisattva, and Amida 阿彌陀 (or Amitābha) Buddha. The presentation will draw on medieval manuscripts, paintings, and prints from the Dunhuang “library cave”.  Going beyond Dunhuang, she will also discuss relevant later visual materials including Xi Xia 西夏 (1038-1227) paintings excavated in Khara Khoto, Inner Mongolia, and illustrated books printed in Song-Yuan 宋元 (960-1368) Hangzhou and Ming 明 (1368- 1644) Beijing.

Tangut, a mediaeval Qiangic language (Sino-Tibetan family) has a distinction of three grades (děng 等). The traditional Sofronov-Gong reconstruction of this distinction supposes different degrees of medial yod: Grade I {-Ø-}, Grade II {-i-}, Grade III {-j-}. The yods, however, are not supported by the transcriptional evidence.

Based on cognates between Tangut and Rgyalrongic languages, this study proposes the uvularization hypothesis: Tangut syllables have contrastive uvularization. Grade I/II syllables are uvularized, while Grade III syllables are plain. For phonological velars, uvularized syllables trigger a uvular allophone, while plain syllables trigger a velar allophone.

Tangut uvularization is an instance of a common typological feature in Qiangic languages, that of guttural secondary vocalic articulations (GSVA), variously termed uvularization, velarization, tenseness or Retracted Tongue Root (RTR). Recognizing Tangut grades as a case of Qiangic GSVA has far-ranging potential consequences for Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics.

This article examines how dynasties applied the Five Elements theory in their respective legitimation discourses throughout the history of imperial China. Drawing on both documentary and visual sources, I reveal that the Liao, Jin, and Yuan rulers constructed different dynastic lineages that challenged the “orthodox” dynastic succession pattern formulated by Han Chinese dynasties. In particular, I will show that the Yuan tacitly invoked Metal as its dynastic element and white as its imperial color. I argue that the Yuan choice of dynastic element essentially claimed succession to the Jurchen Jin, another non-Han conquest dynasty, rather than to the Song as scholars have previously assumed. However, these constructions were later negated by the Ming dynasty, which restored a purely Han Chinese dynastic lineage that excluded the Liao, Jin, and Yuan. These ideological conflicts, which were ultimately grounded in ethnic tensions between Han and non-Han peoples, eventually led to the disappearance of the Five Element theory in the Qing political rhetoric. This article sheds new light on understanding how a dynasty engaged its cultural heritage and ethnic background in its political ideology and how it perceived its own place in the Chinese dynastic lineage.

This example of the Three Teachings in a Tangut text is exemplary as a case of both inter-and intra-religious discourse played out within the context of the formation of a state and a civilization. Tangut identity can be understood as a tripartitie system, which includes Sinitic, Tibetan and indigenous Tangut elements. These elements were about to develop into a unique amalgamation which we now call " Tangut ideology " , or the " Tangut tradition " , when the Tangut empire fell. All foreign elements within this complex system are traceable to respective sources within these three traditions; it is the combination of these three cultural systems that determine the uniqueness of a separate and distinct Xixia ideological outlook. The process of constructing this Tangut tradition can be viewed diachronically. Although we can be confident that balancing these three cultural traditions fluctuated during specific periods, we cannot be certain about how this balancing took place. We can only use extant texts to produce a synchronous snapshot of Tangut civilization at its height in the mid-12 th century. Comparisons with simultaneous civilizations like the Khitan and Jurchen, where less evidence has survived than for the Tanguts, may address certain lacunae in this research. Uncertainties in this research can be addressed through other traditions that emerged simultaneously to suggest that the Three Traditions probably evolved along similar lines. The research in this paper demonstrates that none of the Three Teachings existed independently in Xixia, but formed an integrated whole, which I provisionally identify as the Tangut ideology.

(Images provided further)
The Xi Xia kingdom, extending from the Gansu to the Ordos, was established as an independent regime in 1038 and lasted until 1227. As the great neighbor of the Song Chinese, Tibetan, Liao and Jin kingdoms, Xi Xia played a crucial role in the region and had strong economic and political influence. Yet, few mentioning of Xi Xia is found in historical records, and its existence would have been largely ignored without, among other archeological discoveries, the Russian expedition of 1907-1909. This expedition, led by Captain Kozlov, excavated the city of Khara Khoto. Among the most exciting finds was a stupa containing printed manuscripts, statues and Buddhist paintings.
This thesis focuses on the Buddhist prints excavated by Kozlov as a preliminary attempt to reconstruct the Xi Xia’s religious practices as well as its socio-cultural and political organizations. Because the prints’ style and iconography blend various Chinese, Tibetan, and Central Asian elements, they will also serve as a base to better understand the cultural exchanges and political relations between Xi Xia and its neighbors, and more specifically the Chinese and Tibetans.

Traditional Tibetan histories, later adopted by the Mongols as well, view Tibeto-Mongolian contacts through the lens of Buddhism. This viewpoint was criticized by Turrel Wylie, and others. Here I flesh out how the early contacts of the Mongols with the Tibetans followed the pattern of Mongol contacts with other peoples: refugees from earlier conquests spilling out into as yet untouched areas, casus belli based on harboring of such refugees, Mongol demand for hostages, and resettlement of Mongols of the ruling families in suitable regions of the new territory.

The aim of the present paper is to discuss the differentiation between direct and indirect quotations in Tangut texts. Based on the analysis of Buddhist texts and translations from Chinese classics in the Khara-khoto collection preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, RUS, the quotations in Tangut may be divided into two categories. Direct sp eeches are not marked or attached by a quotative marker jɨ 2 妒. Indirect speeches are composed by using jɨ 2 妒 or a compound marker jɨ 2 djij 2 妒纓 at the end of the quote. Tangut quotation structure is closely related to the verb jɨ 2 妒. It is illustrated in the study of cross-linguistic typology that the semantic verb 'say' may usually evolve to quotative markers. The semantic and grammatical functions of the verb jɨ 2 妒 which the quotation structure used refl ected the grammaticalization from an independent verb to a grammatical marker. This phenomenon can provide a new perspective for the grammatical study of Tibetan-Burman languages.

This paper makes a preliminary effort at tracing the complicated history of the relationship between the category Fan 蕃 (also written 番) and the category Han 漢 during the period ca. 500–1200. The late Northern Wei began using Fan as a generic term for foreign countries and peoples, possibly due to influences from the Zhouli 周禮. The Tang empire later adopted this usage of Fan but also used Fan as an abbreviation of Tufan 吐蕃, the Chinese name for the Tibetan empire. Under the Tang, both these usages of Fan commonly placed it in a dichotomous pair with the category Han, a pairing not seen in Northern Wei. Whereas the Northern Wei used Han as an ethnonym for the indigenous “Chinese” population, the Tang used it as an alternative name for the empire. In Tang (and also Song) usage, therefore, the Fan and Han dichotomy was geopolitical, not ethnic, in orientation. However, the dichotomy eventually became ethnic in the Kitan Liao and Western Xia, where Han reverted to being an ethnonym for the “Chinese.” Our understanding of the word Fan as used in the Kitan empire remains incomplete, but one of its uses was as a synonym for Kitan. Similarly, the primary use of Fan in the Xia was as a synonym for Mi, the ruling Tangut people’s most common self-appellation. Toward the end of the Northern Song, the use of Han as a geopolitical name for the Song state seems to have lost popularity among the Song elite. In the Southern Song, this usage survived only on the northwestern Sichuan-Gansu frontier, a geopolitical Fan and Tang dichotomy having become the norm on the south China coast. Meanwhile, the Jin revived the use of Han as an ethnonym for the Chinese in the North China Plain, but banned the use of Fan as an appellation for the ruling Jurchen and their language in 1191—possibly as a way of asserting the political legitimacy of Jurchen rule over north China.

[Chinese translation published in 2020 as 蕃与汉：帝制中国中期（约500—1200 年）一个概念二分法的起源和使用 (translated by Feng Lijun 冯立君), Ouya yicong 欧亚译丛 vol. 5]

I am trying to compose a Tangut reader, this is a part of the Introdiction with the Tangut grammar. It is half-way through, but i am not sure, if it makes any sense at all. Hope to get some feedback. I am not sure about my interprerations of both Tangut and Tibetan, so any comments will be extremely appreciated

The Tangut case is exemplary from the perspective of the role which both inter-religious and intra-religious intercourses played in the formation of a civilization. Tangut ideological system can be represented as three-partite system, which included Sinitic, Tibetan and the indigenous Tangut elements. These elements were about to develop into a unique amalgamation which we determine as the " Tangut ideology " , or the " Tangut tradition ". All foreign elements of this complex system are traceable to their respective source traditions; however, it was the combination of these otherwise obvious features which determined the uniqueness of Xixia ideological outlook. The process of the Tangut tradition building can be viewed diachronically: one is confident that the balance of its constituents fluctuated in specific periods, but in which manner we are not exactly sure; the diachronic vector can only be reconstructed from the currently available texts, which form a synchronic snapshot of the Tangut civilization at its height in the mid-12 th century. Partially, the uncertainty of the research results is explainable by the fact that other traditions which emerged simultaneously with the Tangut, i.e. these of Kitan and Jurchen, have survived to a much lesser degree than the Tangut one; thus, although we can suggest that the three traditions probably evolved along similar lines, there is too little ground for historical comparison. The balance of this paper is that none of the three teachings existed in Xixia independently, but formed an integrated whole, provisionally identified as the Tangut ideology.

The paper discusses some problems pertaining to the spread of Sinitic Buddhism, especially of the Huayan Chan tradition in Xixia. These include issues of the transmission of the teaching as well as codicological and conceptual problems of the dissemination of the publications of Huayan Chan texts in Xixia. The paper presents evidence that the Chan Buddhist content available to the Tanguts was not limited to Huayan Chan, but included some knowledge of the Song-period Chan Buddhism. The paper introduces the previously unknown Tangut composition Suiyuan ji (NOTES On VARIOUS OCCASIONS) and discusses its structure as well as aspects of its contents.

(This contains only the images from the thesis. See previous download for the text)
The Xi Xia kingdom, extending from the Gansu to the Ordos, was established as an independent regime in 1038 and lasted until 1227. As the great neighbor of the Song Chinese, Tibetan, Liao and Jin kingdoms, Xi Xia played a crucial role in the region and had strong economic and political influence. Yet, few mentioning of Xi Xia is found in historical records, and its existence would have been largely ignored without, among other archeological discoveries, the Russian expedition of 1907-1909. This expedition, led by Captain Kozlov, excavated the city of Khara Khoto. Among the most exciting finds was a stupa containing printed manuscripts, statues and Buddhist paintings.
This thesis focuses on the Buddhist prints excavated by Kozlov as a preliminary attempt to reconstruct the Xi Xia’s religious practices as well as its socio-cultural and political organizations. Because the prints’ style and iconography blend various Chinese, Tibetan, and Central Asian elements, they will also serve as a base to better understand the cultural exchanges and political relations between Xi Xia and its neighbors, and more specifically the Chinese and Tibetans.

Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond: A Study of Manuscripts, Texts, and Contexts in Memory of John R. McRae is dedicated to the memory of the eminent Chán scholar John McRae and investigates the spread of early Chán in a historical, multi-lingual, and interreligious context. Combining the expertise of scholars of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and Tangut Buddhism, the edited volume is based on a thorough study of manuscripts from Dūnhuáng, Turfan, and Karakhoto, tracing the particular features of Chán in the Northwestern and Northern regions of late medieval China.

ISSN 0169-8834
ISBN 978-90-04-43191-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43924-5 (e-book)

This paper is a preliminary study an partial translation of a hitherto unidentified Tangut translation of a Chinese tract which consists of Emperor Tang Taizong querying his minister. An attempt is made to connect the content of the text with that of similar known texts.

since the thirteenth century, the “Mongolia-Tibet interface” (bulag and Diemberger 2007) has been a vital factor in shaping inner asian civilization. brought into being by the Mongol extension of their political control and settlement to the Tibetan plateau, and by the Mongolian acceptance of Tibetan buddhism as their dominant religion, this interface created a broad zone of a “greater Tibetan cultural community” (in gray Tuttle’s phrase) and Mongolian khanates (sperling 2012) that stretched from the southern foothills of the himalayas to lake baykal in southern siberia and beyond. needless to say, historians both traditional and modern have paid considerable attention to the origin of the politico-religious interface between the Tibetan and Mongolian people. since the seventeenth century, traditional inner asian historians have envisioned this interface partly in terms of the origin of the Mongol royal family from that of the primal indian buddhist monarch, Mahasammata, via Tibet a...

This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Fr. 3(8), Fr. 9(14), and Fr. 1(6) from инв. 8363 of the Archives of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscript, Russian Academy of Sciences. A detailed sentence-based translation of the Tangut text is provided. The interpretation of these fragments suggests that the Tangut text is an instruction for vase breathing and inner fire meditation, which is also known as “tummo.” This text should relate to the Six Yogas of Nāropa, which was mainly practiced by the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism during the Tangut era. The content of the text should help further
study on the identification of the origin of the text, and on the examination of the date of the fragments, which would be critical in the study of the Tibetan phonetic glosses of the Tangut characters.

Tangut text of " Notes on Various Occasions and the Sinitic Buddhism in Xixia. " The paper discusses the matters of the spread of Sinitic Buddhism in Xixia, the possibility of the direct influences from the Northern Song, and introduces an important text known as the " Notes on Various Occasions, " which confirms the hypothesis of the direct connections between the Xixia and the Northern Song.

Tangut is among a handful of Trans-Himalayan languages with an early date of attestation and a vast literature. First recorded from 1042 C.E., Tangut is younger than Chinese (c. 1200 B.C.E) and Tibetan (650 C.E.), but older than Burmese (1113 C.E.). With the loss of the Tangut polity to the Mongols in 1227 C.E., the language gradually declined, with the most recent known text from 1499 C.E. The decipherment of Tangut became possible after Pyotr Kozlov excavated a sizable number of documents at Khara-Khoto in 1909 and transferred them to St Petersburg. The language and its literature are now reasonably well understood and actively researched. Nonetheless, the diachronic development of the language has garnered scant attention. The work under review treats the phonology and morphology of Tangut in comparative context. Jacques makes particular reference to Japhug Rgyalrong, a spoken language of our day. By any standard the methodological rigor and philological sophistication of this work is outstanding. The author has mastery over Tangut philology and its attendant secondary literature; written in French, the work consults research in Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. Tangut texts are cited at first hand and lucidly presented. In addition, Jacques brings his extensive fieldwork on Japhug Rgyalrong to bear throughout.

Logographic writing systems for morphologically rich languages bring into
sharp relief the inherent tension in all human writing systems between the
lexico-morphemic and the phonetic tendencies. When the same lexical root
has, by allomorphy, several different phonetic forms, the writing system
cannot avoid either different graphemes for the same root or different
readings for the same grapheme.
This essay examines the case of verb stem alternation in Tangut, an extinct
Sino-Tibetan language mainly attested from the 11th to the 13th century,
with a syllabic and logographic writing system modeled after the Chinese. It is
shown that both the form and the distribution of the stems are closely related
to Rgyalrongic languages, especially Zbu Rgyalrong and Gexi Horpa.
This essay proposes a typology of three possible strategies of logographic
writing systems to represent root allomorphy, under which the Tangut case
is analyzed: underdifferentiation, with all phonetic forms represented by the
same grapheme, overdifferentiation, with different phonetic forms represented
by different graphemes as if they are different roots, and categoriography,
with systematic means of distinguishing between different allomorphs of the
same root. Tangut predominantly prefers overdifferentiation, followed by an
incipient form of categoriography. The Tangut orthography stands in stark
contrast to other logographic writing systems (Sumerian, Chinese, Japanese
and Middle Iranian), where underdifferentiation is predominant, followed by
categoriography. The highly deviant nature of Tangut script is hypothesized
as resulting from the imitation of the mature Chinese script, where one
character has ideally one single reading.