Begre inscription (E 11)

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 Begre stele stands in north-eastern Tuva and bears one of the Yenisei epitaphs, numbered E 11 in the catalogue. It has no tamga.^[1] The stele commemorates a man named Tör Apa, who holds the rank ičräki.^[1] It stood on the east side of a mound. The archaeological material of the mound dates it to the second half of the ninth century and the tenth.^[2]

The text

At fifteen, the dead man took part in a campaign against the Tabgach khan, the Turkic name for the ruler of China.^[3] He says that he killed seven wolves, and that he did not kill the barïš or the kökmäk.^[4] He died at seventy-seven.^[5]

The last line gives his age in the words yaşım yeti yetmiş, “my age was seven and seventy”.^[6] The word after it is read in two ways. Radloff, Orkun, Malov and Vasilyev read its last sign as a z.^[7] Osman Fikri Sertkaya takes the sign for a ligature, a single sign that joins the letters ñ and y. He reads the word as añydım.^[8] On his reading the verb is añy-, “to die”, and the line closes with the man’s death at that age.^[6] Tekin’s grammar of 1968 gives “to fear” for the same verb.^[6]

Most Turkologists read the animals as hunted game. They take the barïš for a leopard or panther and the kökmäk for a deer or roe. More recently the second has also been taken for a stag or the Siberian panther. One editor leaves the word untranslated, since the animal may have been taboo. A different explanation is that the seven wolves are not game but tribes tied to a wolf cult, and that the barïš and kökmäk are tribal names as well.^[4]

There are three explanations for the names. The first makes the dead man an anonymous ičräki who served a chief called Tör Apa. The second takes Tör Apa as the dead man himself and sees no title in the text. The third reads tör apa ičräki as the name and rank of one person.^[9]

Dating

The stele bears no date. The placements fall into three groups.

The first group goes back to Radloff. It sets the stele in the second half of the seventh century. It reads the campaign as an embassy to China, and the date follows from that.^[2]

The second group sets the stele in the eighth century. It allows that the dead man took part in the suppression of the An Lushan rebellion in 756 to 757.^[2]

The third group sets the stele in the ninth century or later and has four variants. Klyashtorny ties the campaign to 842 to 843. The archaeologist who dated the mound to the second half of the ninth century and the tenth leaned, in earlier work, towards the end of the tenth. A palaeographic study places the text among the latest of the Yenisei runiform epitaphs.^[2] Vladimir Tishin proposes the second half of the ninth century. He also identifies the two persons below.^[1]

The proposed equation

Tishin sets the stele beside two figures of the Chinese reports.

The first is the Kirghiz chancellor Abo (阿播), whose name Tishin reads as Apa. The Xin Tangshu reports that the Shiwei divided the Uyghurs who had taken refuge with them among their seven clans. The Kirghiz were angry. They marched against the Shiwei with their chancellor Abo and 70,000 men, and they brought all the Uyghurs back north of the desert.^[10] The campaign is dated to 848.^[2]

The second is the Kirghiz envoy to the Tang court in 866, a general named Yizhi-lianji (乙支連幾). Tishin reads the first syllables of the name as the title ičräki. He notes that the transcription poses some problems.^[2] The Tang huiyao contains the report of the envoy.^[2]

Suppose the dead man is the envoy, or his chief is the chancellor. Then the stele belongs to the second half of the ninth century. By that reckoning, the man who died at seventy-seven died in the first years of the tenth century.^[5] The wolves would then stand for a struggle of tribal groups in the Yenisei valley in the second half of the ninth century.^[5] The equation fits the stone, but nothing on the stone says it.

References

^ a b c Tishin 2019, p. 200
^ a b c d e f g Tishin 2019, p. 201
^ Tishin 2019, p. 200–201
^ a b Tishin 2019, p. 202
^ a b c Tishin 2019, p. 203
^ a b c Sertkaya 1993, p. 70
^ Sertkaya 1993, p. 69
^ Sertkaya 1993, p. 69–70
^ Tishin 2019, p. 200–202
^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217

Sources

Begre inscription (E 11)
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

V. V. Tishin, K datirovke enisejskoj runičeskoj nadpisi Begre (E 11) [К датировке енисейской рунической надписи Бегре (Е 11)] (2019)
Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Yenisey Yazıtlarının Yayınlarındaki Bazı Okuma ve Anlamlandırmaların Düzeltilmesi, Yeni Okuma ve Anlamlandırma Teklifleri (1993)