Bugut inscription

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Bugut inscription is the oldest monument that the Göktürk state raised. It is written in Sogdian, not in Turkic. In 1996 and 1997 the stone stood in the garden of the museum of Arkhangai province in central Mongolia.^[1] An older statement places it at the entrance of the Zayiin Gegeen monastery at Ikh-Tamir.^[2] It stands on a stone tortoise.^[2] The text is in Sogdian script and language, with Brahmi on the reverse. It is dated to about 584 and was set up, according to one interpretation, for Taspar Khan, a son of Bumin.^[2]

In a later chapter, Klyashtorny dates the stone to 582.^[3] Klyashtorny and Livshits published the first decipherment in 1971 and 1972. They took the stone to have been set up for Mahan Tegin, a younger brother of Mukan. Mahan Tegin acted as the khan’s deputy under Mukan and under Taspar.^[4] The name Mahan Tegin stands five times in the Sogdian text and in no other source.^[4] A later study finds that the words read as Mahan Tegin were read altogether wrongly. They stand in lines B1-3, B2-4 and B2-6.^[1] Much of the text is lost. According to the first decipherment, the text tells of events in the years 572 to 580 and names a Hare year, most likely 571.^[4] The stone therefore has three accounts: it was set up for Mahan Tegin, for Taspar in 582, or for Taspar in 584. It is the earliest inscription commissioned by the Göktürks and the oldest written work attributed to them.^[5]

The site

The enclosure of the monument lies at Ar-Khangay, in Arkhangai province. It measures about 40 metres from north to south and 50 from east to west.^[6] Six balbals lay inside it, and there was no stone figure. Many more balbals lay outside.^[6] Broken Tang pottery was scattered at the centre. Traces of a house in the Chinese manner were found there.^[1]

The wolf relief

The top of the stone carries a relief of a wolf or she-wolf. Under its belly stands the figure of a man.^[7] The image refers to the origin legend of the Göktürks.^[7] The Zhou Shu tells that legend. A neighbouring state destroyed the clan of the Ashina except for a boy of about ten. A she-wolf fed the boy and conceived by him.^[8] The relief is worn. According to one account, the figure can now hardly be made out.

The Chinese histories tell the legend in words. The runiform inscriptions of the eighth century do not tell it at all. The relief at Bugut is the one image of the legend that the Göktürk state set up itself, a generation after Bumin.

Historical content

Sergey G. Klyashtorny and Vladimir A. Livshits published a reading of the Sogdian text. In it, the text gives the Sogdian forms of the khans’ names: bwmyn for Bumin, mwġ’n for Mukan and the form behind Taspar. It also yields the plural tr’wkt, Turkit, for the people.^[9] This plural bears on the form of the ethnonym, when it is set beside the Chinese Tujue and the plural in -t of the Orkhon titles.^[9] The text also names the khan after Taspar as Nivar (nw”r). Its readers equate him with Shabolüe, the Ishbara of the Chinese sources.^[4]

Yutaka Yoshida and Takao Moriyasu read the name of the Ashina in line B1-1. The sentence can be rendered as ‘The Turk Ashina kings made this nom bitig’, the book of the law. From the words nom bitig it is concluded that one face carried Brahmi script.^[1] The same study corrects other words of the first publication. It reads ‘Tatpar Khan’ for Taspar, and ‘erect the nom stone’ for ‘make a new samgha’. In line B2-6 it reads umna qagan, and not bwmyn, ‘Bumin’.^[1] Where the first edition had Bumin and Mahan Tegin, the later one has neither.^[1] The dynastic name therefore occurs in a Sogdian source of the west as well as in the Chinese sources of the east. It cannot be an invention of Chinese scribes.^[5]

In the first edition, the stone mentions the abode of the lord Bumin Khan, most probably a temple dedicated to him. This confirms the cult of the ancestors that the Chinese sources report, in which the khan led the nobles each year to the ancestral cave.^[10] The stone also shows that the Göktürks already knew the twelve-animal cycle in the 580s, and not first in the Orkhon inscriptions of the eighth century. Where the cycle itself came from is obscure.^[7]

The Sogdian text puts the word ‘divine’ before the names of the khagans, as in ‘divine Mukan Khagan’.^[11] The stone is the plainest evidence of what the Sogdians gave the Göktürk state. They gave it writing, and with writing a chancery. The Zhou Shu’s remark that the Göktürk script resembled that of the hu describes Sogdian.^[12]

Brahmi and Buddhism

Modern accounts hold the Brahmi text on the reverse to be Buddhist in content. It fits the Buddhism that Mukan and Taspar fostered. The stone dates from the second generation of Göktürk rulers.^[10] The scribes used Sogdian, not the runiform script. The stone shows the language of the chancery. In the First Khaganate, that language was Sogdian, written in Sogdian script.^[13] How old the runiform letters are is a separate question.^[14]

The Sogdian text is another matter. One word in it was once read as saṃgha, the Buddhist community. That interpretation served in the argument that the Sogdians brought Buddhism to the Göktürks in the sixth century. The word is now taken for the Iranian word for ‘stone’, that is, the stele. The content of the inscription points instead towards a cult of the ancestors.^[15]

The Brahmi text has since become evidence in a different argument. Modern accounts count it, together with the Khüis Tolgoi stone and the Keregentas inscription, as the earliest Mongolic on record. The decipherment of the two more legible of the three is held convincing.^[16] The dating is what makes the text matter here, and what limits it. The Brahmi Bugut text is placed at about 584 to 587. Khüis Tolgoi is placed between 604 and 620, decades after the Rouran khaganate fell. The inscriptions therefore cannot carry conclusions about the language of the Rouran or their elite, whatever they show about Mongolic.^[16] They do show that a Mongolic-speaking group was writing in central Mongolia within a generation of the founding of the khaganate, on the same stone as the khaganate’s own Sogdian.

Reliability

The stone is the one witness to the first khaganate that the khaganate itself produced. It precedes the Kül Tegin inscription by a hundred and fifty years. The text is known through the published editions. These differ in the names they find. The relief is the only picture of the wolf legend from the Göktürks’ own hand. By one assessment, no Turkic etymology is available for any of the titles named in the Sogdian text.^[17]

References

^ a b c d e f Ōsawa 2000, p. 281
^ a b c Bugut inscription
^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 337; 31; Guzev 1993, p. 337; 31
^ a b c d Çağatay 1976, p. 247
^ a b Yavuz 2025
^ a b Ōsawa 2000, p. 280
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 151
^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ a b Golden 1992
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 150
^ Tokyürek 2013, p. 121
^ de la Vaissière 2005a
^ Guzev 1993, p. 31
^ Bugut inscription; Yavuz 2025
^ Erdal 2004, p. 35
^ a b Savelyev 2020
^ Erdal 2004, p. 2

Sources

Bugut inscription
Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50

Literature

Saadet Çağatay; Semih Tezcan, Köktürk tarihinin çok önemli bir belgesi: Sogutça Bugut Yazıtı (1976)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Alexander Savelyev; Choongwon Jeong, Early Nomads of the Eastern Steppe and Their Tentative Connections in the West (2020)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
Takashi Ōsawa, Moğolistan’daki Eski Türk Anıt ve Yazıtlarının 1996–1998 Yılları Arasındaki Yeni İnceleme Sonuçları (Japon–Moğol Ortak Çalışmasının Ön Raporu Olarak) (2000)
Hacer Tokyürek, Runik Türk Yazıtlarında ve Eski Uygur Metinlerinde Kadın Hiyerarşisi (2013)
Viktor G. Guzev; Sergey G. Klyaştornıy, Genel Yazı Nazariyesi Işığında Göktürk Yazısının Menşei Meselesi (Okunuşunun 100. Yıl Dönümü Dolayısıyla) (1993)