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0149 Serindia : vol.2
Serindia : vol.2 / Page 149 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000183
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Sec. iv] EARLY SOGDIAN DOCUMENTS FROM T. x11. A AND THEIR PAPER 675

From the outward appearance and material of these strange documents from T. xII. a. ii we may turn now to their script and language. All the letters had been found neatly folded up, and several still tied with string. But some, as seen in Plate CLIII, displayed writing outside, in what obviously were addresses, T. xti. a. ii. 1-3, 5 ; two others (4, 6) among the small rolls I actually managed partially to open out in spite of the very brittle paper. It was thus easy for me to convince myself that the writing was in the same unknown script, resembling early Aramaic, which I had first come across in that single small piece of paper from the Lou-lan Site, L.A. vt. ii. 0104, referred to above and reproduced in Plate CLIII.24 Not being a Semitist, I was not able to make any attempt at decipherment nor do more than conjecture the language.. in which the documents were written. That this Semitic script found on the border of China might have been used for an Iranian language seemed to me a priori probable. The fact of these documents having been discovered at a ruined watch-station, quite close to the ancient route by which the silk trade of China in the centuries immediately before and after Christ passed to the regions on the Yaxartes and Oxus, naturally suggested a connexion of the surmised Iranian language with Sogdiana or Bactria. Not having then discovered the tablet in the same script from T. vt. c,26 I felt at the time tempted to think that these might be letters left behind, perhaps, by some early traders from Sogdiana or still further west, who had come for the silk of the Seres.

It is not at present safe to examine any such questions of detail and to attempt to find the answers. But the researches of two valued scholar friends—one, alas, no more—have produced gratifying proofs that the script and language of those papers are really connected with Eastern Iran, as I first conjectured. As the results obtained by them have been published in easily accessible papers, I may restrict my remarks here to the essential facts. Dr. A. Cowley succeeded at the outset in correctly identifying the majority of the characters.2e To him belongs also the merit of having established that the writing was, indeed, of Aramaic origin, though showing a distinctly individual development, and that the language of the documents was Iranian, with an admixture of Semitic words mostly in the form of ` cryptograms ' similar to, but far less numerous than, those which are found in Pahlavi. Some of these words were definitely deciphered, and, being found both in the introductory formula and in a few short lines on the back of T. x11. a. ii. 4, enabled Dr. Cowley to recognize the document as a letter, and partially to read its address.

Within a couple of months after the publication of Dr. Cowley's article, M. Robert Gauthiot, working solely on the basis of the reproduction of T. xi'. a. ii. 4 and Dr. Cowley's comments, was able to prove in a brilliant paper 27 that the language of the documents was an early form of that Sogdian which Professor F. W. K. Muller's researches had first revealed in Buddhist manuscripts recovered from Turfan. Their writing was shown to represent a cursive Aramaic, intermediate between the Aramaic proper and the Sogdian script from which the Uigur alphabet had been evolved. These identifications were established in a conclusive fashion by a series of characteristic peculiarities, both in language and in script, which the correct decipherment of most words in the address and introduction of the letter permitted M. Gauthiot to determine.

With Dr. Cowley's cordial approval, I lost no time in furnishing M. Gauthiot, even before the publication of his paper, with complete reproductions of all the Early Sogdian documents, as they may now be appropriately designated. Rapid progress was being made by him in the publication and interpretation of the numerous Buddhist texts in later Sogdian which the great hoard of

Script resembling early Aramaic.

Surmise of Iranian language.

Dr. Cowley's tentative decipherment.

M. Gauthiot proves Early Sogdian language.

M. Gauthiot's death stops decipherment.

="4 See above, p. 383.

25 Cf. above, p. 652.

26 See his paper Another unknown language from Eastern Turkestan, J.R.A.S., 1911 (January), pp. 159-66, where the

document T. x11. a. ii. 4 has been reproduced in facsimile.

27 Notes sur la langue et l'écriture inconnues des documents Stein-Cowley, J.R.A.S., 19x s (April), pp. 497-507.

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