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0364 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 364 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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538   SING-IRANICA

nian, loan-word from Persian, apri. um); hence Arabic ibarisam or ibrisam; Pamir dialects war. um, war üm, Sugni wreL3m, etc.; Afghan wrésfam.I Certain it is that we have here a type not related to any Chinese word for "silk." In this connection I wish to register my utter disbelief in the traditional opinion, inaugurated by KLAPROTH, that Greek ser (" silk-worm"; hence Seres, Serica) should be connected with Mongol . irgek and Manchu sirge ("silk"), the latter with Chinese se U.2 My reasons for rejecting this theory may be stated as briefly as possible. I do not see how a Greek word can be explained from Mongol or Manchu,— languages which we merely know in their most recent forms, Mongol from the thirteenth and Manchu from the sixteenth century. Neither the Greek nor the Mongol-Manchu word can be correlated with Chinese se. The latter was never provided with a final consonant. Klaproth resorted to the hypothesis that in ancient dialects of China along the borders of the empire a final r might (peut-être) have existed. This, however, was assuredly not the case. We know that the termination 'r 52, so frequently associated with nouns in Pekingese, is of comparatively recent origin, and not older than the Yüan period (thirteenth century) ; the beginnings of this usage may go back to the end of the twelfth or even to the ninth century.3 At any rate, it did not exist in ancient times when the Greek ser came into being. Moreover, this suffix 'r is not used arbitrarily: it joins certain words, while others take the suffix tse , and others again do not allow any suffix. The word se, however, has never been amalgamated with 'r. In all probability, its ancient phonetic value was *si, sa. It is thus phonetically impossible to derive from it the Mongol-Manchu word or Korean sir, added by Abel-Rémusat. I do not deny that this series may have its root in a Chinese word, but its parentage cannot be traced to se. I do

1 HÜBSCHMANN, Arm. Gram., p. 107; HORN, Neupers. Etymologie, No. 65. The derivation from Sanskrit kauma is surely wrong. Bulgar ibriim, Rumanian ibrilin, are likewise connected with the Iranian series.

2 Cf. KLAPROTH, Conjecture sur l'origine du nom de la soie chez les anciens (Journal asiatique, Vol. I, 1822, pp. 243-245, with additions by ABEL-RtMUSAT, 245-247); Asia polyglotta, p. 341; and Mémoires relatifs à l'Asie, Vol. III, p. 264. Klaproth's opinion has been generally, but thoughtlessly, accepted MIRTH, op. cit., p. 217; F. V. RICHTHOFEN, China, Vol. I, p. 443; SCHRADER, Reallexikon, p. 757). PELLIOT (T`oung Pao, 1912, p. 741), I believe, was the first to point out that Chinese se was never possessed of a final consonant.

See my note in Tung Pao, 1916, p. 77; and H. MASPERO, Sur quelques textes anciens de chinois parlé, p. 12. Maspero encountered the word mao'r (" cat ") in a text of the ninth century. It hardly makes any great difference whether we conceive 'r as a diminutive or as a suffix. Originally it may have had the force of a diminutive, and have gradually developed into a pure suffix. Cf. also P. SCHMIDT, K istorii kitaiskago razgovornago yazyka, in Sbornik stat'ei professorov, p. 19 (Vladivostok, 1917).