Boyla Kutlug Yargan

Boyla Kutlug Yargan is the man who speaks in the Suji inscription. This runiform text was found in Mongolia by Ramstedt in 1900.^[1] He says that he is a son of the Kirghiz and the commissioned man of the ruler Kutlug Baga Tarkan.^[2] A grammar of Old Turkic quotes the stone and understands the same words as saying that his father was a Kirghiz.^[3]

The man he served

The title Kutlug Baga Tarkan is all the stone gives of his lord.^[2] Kutlug is the adjective formed from Kut, “possessed of Kut”. Tarkan is a rank of the steppe courts, the tarkhan. A Uyghur general whom the Chinese write Julu Mohe, 句錄莫賀, went over to the Kirghiz. In 840 he led them against the Uyghur cities.^[4] His name is understood as Külüg Bagha.^[5] One reconstruction of the Kirghiz state after 840 has a Uyghur called Külüg Baga Tarkan left as the Kirghiz representative on the Orkhon.^[6] The names are close, but the first element differs. No source used here ties the lord of the stone to the general. The general is told in Külüg Bagha.

The life he tells

He was rich, with ten households and horses beyond counting. He had seven younger brothers, three sons and three daughters. He married his sons, gave his daughters away without bride price, and gave his teacher a hundred bay horses. He lived to see his grandchildren. “Now I am dead and have left them.” He tells his sons to be among men as his teacher was, to serve the khan and to be brave. His eldest son went away without warning, and he did not see him again. The last line is “My son, my lion.”^[2]

The teacher is called mar, a Syriac word for “lord”. One account understands it as the title of a Manichaean teacher. Another understands it as the title of a Nestorian teacher. The two interpretations, Manichaeism against the Church of the East, are told with the stone in the Suji inscription.^[7]

The first sentence

The translation of the first sentence runs: “I drove the Yaglakar khans out of the Uyghur land.” The transcription as printed has keltim, “I came”. The printed text does not show what stands behind the translation.^[1] Suppose the verb is “drove out” and the stone is later than 840. Then the speaker took part in the march on the Uyghurs and in the fall of the Yaglakar house.^[2] The stone has no date. One placement puts it at the end of the eighth century, another after 840.^[8]

Gaps

The stone gives no year, no place for the man’s estate and no name for his sons or his teacher.^[2] Whether he lived through the war of 840 depends wholly on the date of the stone.

References

^ a b Butanaev 2015, p. 9
^ a b c d e Butanaev 2015, p. 9–10
^ Erdal 2004, p. 183 n. 317
^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Drompp 2005, p. 37
^ Golden 1992, p. 181
^ Butanaev 2015, p. 10
^ Barthold 1927, p. 15

Sources

Suji inscription
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

V. Ja. Butanaev, Literaturnoe nasledstvo enisejskich kyrgyzov vremën drevnetjurkskich kaganatov [Литературное наследство енисейских кыргызов времён древнетюркских каганатов] (2015)
V. V. Barthold, Kirgizy: istoričeskij očerk [Киргизы: исторический очерк] (1927)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)