Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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The Suji inscription is a runiform text from Mongolia in which a Kirghiz speaks about his life. Ramstedt found it in 1900, on his way from Urga to the monastery of Handu-Wang. He examined it again in 1909 with Sakari Pälsi.[1] He published it. The man who speaks in it lived in the land of the Uyghurs.[2] The stone has eleven lines. The first nine are written from the bottom upwards and the last two from right to left. A tamga stands above them.[3]

The text

The printed transcription begins: Uyğur yirinte Yağlaq qanta keltim, qırğız oğlımen, Boyla qutluğ yarğanmen, Qutluğ bağa tarqan öge buyuruqı men.[4] Klyashtorny translates it: “I drove the Yaglakar khans out of the Uyghur land. I am a son of the Kirghiz. I am Boyla Kutlug Yargan, the commissioned man of the ruler Kutlug Baga Tarkan.”[5]

The rest of the text is a life told at its end. News of the speaker reached the lands of sunrise and sunset. He was rich, with ten households and horses beyond counting. He had seven younger brothers, three sons and three daughters. He married his sons and gave his daughters away without bride price. He 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.[5]

A Turkish translation of the twenty sentences differs at several places. It has ten pens where Klyashtorny’s translation has ten households. It gives the hundred bay horses to the children, in the speaker’s lifetime. It has no teacher.[6]

The first sentence

The first line is read in three ways. The first reading takes Yaglakar Kan Ata for a personal name: “In the land of the Uyghurs I came, Yaglakar Khan Ata.”[7] The second reads Yaglakar Kan, at-a keldim, “I drove the Yaglakar khan out”. It goes with a date after 840.[8] The third reads Yaglakar Kan ta keltim, “I came from the land of the Uyghurs, from Yaglakar Khan”. It takes -ta as the ending “from”, set off from the name by a colon as in other Yenisei texts.[9]

The transcription quoted above has keltim, which belongs to the first and third readings. The translation “I drove out” belongs to the second.[8] The two therefore come from different readings. They do not disagree with each other by a misprint. One reader rejects the first reading because ata, “ancestor”, is not usual as a title. He rejects the second reading for two reasons. The verb at-, “to throw, to drive away”, has no parallel in Turkic in this use. The Uyghurs also sat in the Ötüken for at least seventy years after the end of the Yaglakar house in 780.[9] He follows the third.

The date

Several placements stand against each other. Ramstedt put the inscription at the end of the eighth century.[2] Klyashtorny, and others after him, date it after the fall of the Uyghurs in 840, while Bazin puts it in the middle or the second half of the ninth century.[3] The usual reason is the line “I am a son of the Kirghiz”. This line makes the text a work of the Kirghiz period, and so later than 845 to 850.[3] In that case the officer took part in the march on the Uyghurs and in the overthrow of the Yaglakar dynasty. The stone belongs to the time of Kirghiz expansion.[5]

The Yaglakar were the house from which the Uyghur khans came until 795, and after 795 the khans came from the Ediz.[10] A date after 840 therefore has to read “Yaglakar khans” as the Uyghur khans in general. A date at the end of the eighth century does not have to.

A third dating takes the first line as “I came from the land of the Uyghurs, from Yaglakar Khan”. Three Yaglakar khans ruled between 745 and 780.[9] The text then falls before 780, in the second half of the eighth century. The stone is no work of the Kirghiz period. It belongs with the Uyghur stones of Tes, Tariat and Šine-Usu.[9] By another count, the Yaglakar house ended in 780, not in 795.[9]

The teacher

The teacher is called mar, a Syriac word for “lord”.[2] In the Turkic languages of Central Asia from the ninth to the thirteenth century, the word served for a Christian and for a Manichaean teacher alike.[11]

Ramstedt concluded that the Kirghiz had taken up the faith that was then spreading in the land of the Uyghurs, Manichaeism.[2] A later reading carries this further, to a Manichaean state religion of the Kirghiz that lasted five centuries.[11] Klyashtorny argued the other way. The Kirghiz had defeated the Uyghurs, whose state religion was Manichaeism. They could not have taken over the faith of the beaten enemy. They were allies of the Karluks, and Nestorian teachers came to them with that alliance. Klyashtorny therefore reads mar as a Nestorian teacher of the Church of the East. He finds support in crosses on Kirghiz epitaphs and in rock drawings of priests on the Yenisei.[12]

The stone does not say which faith the teacher taught. The word fits both. Whether the text has a teacher at all depends on how the passage is read. The Turkish translation that has no teacher takes the two words in question as “in my lifetime” and “as I lived”.[6]

References

  1. ^ Butanaev 2015, p. 9; 307; Sertkaya 2000, p. 9; 307
  2. ^ a b c d Barthold 1927, p. 15
  3. ^ a b c Sertkaya 2000, p. 307
  4. ^ Butanaev 2015, p. 9
  5. ^ a b c Butanaev 2015, p. 9–10
  6. ^ a b Sertkaya 2000, p. 311–312
  7. ^ Sertkaya 2000, p. 307–308
  8. ^ a b Sertkaya 2000, p. 308
  9. ^ a b c d e Sertkaya 2000, p. 309
  10. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 158
  11. ^ a b Butanaev 2015, p. 10
  12. ^ Butanaev 2015, p. 10–11

Sources

Literature

  • V. V. Barthold, Kirgizy: istoričeskij očerk [Киргизы: исторический очерк] (1927)
  • V. Ja. Butanaev, Literaturnoe nasledstvo enisejskich kyrgyzov vremën drevnetjurkskich kaganatov [Литературное наследство енисейских кыргызов времён древнетюркских каганатов] (2015)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Suuci < Sugeci / (Bel) Yazıtı Ne Zaman Yazıldı? (2000)

Articles resting on this source 2

Boyla Kutlug Yargan · Külüg Bagha

Related

What links here4

Persons
Boyla Kutlug Yargan · Külüg Bagha
States
Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate
Sources
Yenisei inscriptions

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Suji inscription.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/suji-inscription/

Last revised: 8 November 2026