Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The Mongolian archaeologist Ts. Dorjsüren found the first piece of the stone in 1957, buried in the valley of the Terkhin river in Arkhangai province, in the north-west of the Khangai.[1] A Mongolian-Soviet expedition took the other pieces out of the ground in 1969 and 1970. The top of the stone was never found.[1] A second account has two archaeologists, N. Ser-Odjav and V. V. Volkov, find the stone in 1970, two kilometres south of the Tarbagatay mountains.[2] The stone carries thirty lines of runiform Turkic on four faces. A stone tortoise carries one further sentence: Böke Tutam made this.[3] The tamga cut on the stone appears again on the Šine-Usu stone. That is how the two monuments were tied to the same man.[2]

The stone speaks in the name of Bayanchur Khan, the second ruler of the Uyghur Khaganate. It often uses the first person.[4] Scholars disagree on who had it set up. One account has the khan himself set it up.[2] The other has his son Bögü set up the main text in his father’s name.[5]

Purpose of the monument

The other two Uyghur stelae do different work. Karabalghasun is a state monument in three languages, cut two generations later. Šine-Usu is the same khan’s longer memoir. Tariat is the tightest of the three. Its account is dated by the animal cycle. It runs from 741 to 753. It covers the years in which the Göktürk state was destroyed and the Uyghur state took its place. The stone may be a boundary stone. After a mythical opening it gives the first years of the Uyghur state, then its borders, tribes and dignitaries.[4]

The text opens by naming earlier rulers of the steppe. Bumin Khan is among them.[3] The founder of the Uyghur order begins his own stone with the founder of the Göktürk order. This is the most-quoted point in the text. It is understood as a claim of succession, not of conquest.[3]

The years 741 to 748

  • Snake year, 741. In his own words, he was appointed commander of a thousand. He then stirred up the Göktürk realm and threw it into disorder.[2] He was acting for his father, who was khan.[6]
  • Monkey year, 744. He marched, fought and speared. He took the khan and captured his katun. The line that follows is the end of the Second Göktürk Khaganate, told by the people who ended it.[7]
  • Cock year, 745. He marched again, against a further claimant.[7]
  • 746 and 747. The Basmıl were subjected. The Three Karluks thought better of it and fled west to the Ten Arrows. The next year they made terms with the Nine Tatars. Nine ministers, a thousand commanders and the common people came to his father the khan and laid a case before him.[8]
  • Mouse year, 748. He was named khagan, with the full title Tengride Bolmış İl Etmiş Bilge Kagan, and his wife was named İl Bilge Katun. He set his camp in the middle of the Ötüken, west of the holy summit of Süngüz Başkan.[9]

The date of the accession

The Chinese histories put Bayanchur’s accession in 747.[10] The inscription’s own animal year gives 748.[8]

The difference is only one year. It is, however, a disagreement between a khan’s own monument and a foreign chancery. Preferring the earlier date does not resolve it. The Chinese date may record when the Tang learned of the accession, or when they recognised it. The inscription records when the assembly acted.

The date of the stone itself is also in dispute. One dating puts it in 750.[2] Others put it in 753, in 752 or 753, between 753 and 756, or in 754 or 755.[11] The last year that the text itself gives is 753.[4]

The assembly of the Mouse year

In the line before the naming of the khagan, the people speak. Editors have read the word that sets the scene in eight ways.[12] A few editors read it as a burial ground, the one of the ancestors.[13] Others take it for an address, “you” or “in your hand”, or read it as “sound”.[12] Since then, a grave, sın, has appeared in a runiform epitaph found at Xi’an in 2012. The word has a back vowel. On that evidence it has been argued that the Tariat word cannot be sinläg, “burial ground”.[14]

The north face

The north face has six lines. Lines 1 and 2 give the order of the khan’s army. His cavalry was made up of the Nine Tatars, the Az and the Tongra.[15] The stone says that three hundred guards raised and set it up.[15] Line 3 divides the realm in sentences that recall a testament. It names the tribes under the yabgu. Line 4 names the tribes under the shad.[15]

Line 5 names Bilge Kutlug Tarkan Sengün as the man who wrote and made the stone.[16] Eight editors have read the rest of the line in nine versions. They disagree on whether Yagma is a tribe or a name. They disagree on the meaning of the next word, and on the word for the two men named at the end.[16] The line may say that two narrators told the events and the tribal names. These narrators were the khan’s uncles, who bore the names Kutlug Bilge Sengün and Kutlug Tarkan Sengün.[17] This rests on a word that stands nowhere else. Its author marks three of its words with a query.[18]

Line 6 puts one man in charge of affairs of the Bayırku and the Tardush. It puts another in charge of affairs of the Chinese and the Sogdians.[15]

The west face

Line 4 of the west face names the rivers of the khan’s land. In Tekin’s edition the khan says that the Selenga of the eight branches, the Orkhon, the Tuγla, the Sebin, the Teledü, the Karağa and the Burgu are his. He says that he moves camp along this land and water.[19] Tekin queries the names Sebin and Teledü.[19]

Editors have read the word before “my fields” in line 4, and the word before “Ötüken” in line 5, in five ways. A sixth reading takes both as “woodland”. Then the khan names “my woods and my fields” and “my inner woodland, the Ötüken region”.[20]

Two names in the second line

Line two names Bedi Bersil and Kadır Kasar.[2] The north face of the Tes stele has the same passage almost word for word.[4] Both names matter beyond this stone. The Bersil are held to have had a part in the formation of the Bulgar khanate. The Kasar are identified as the ruling house of the Khazars.[3]

Two western peoples therefore stand in an Orkhon monument of the eighth century, in a list of who went where when an older order broke up.

Language

The language is practically that of the Orkhon stones.[21] Two details differ. The stone has ben even after a verb form. It nearly always leaves the vowel e unwritten, like the Tonyukuk stone and unlike the Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan stones.[22]

References

  1. ^ a b Rybatzki 2011, p. 65; 13; Aydın 2013, p. 65; 13
  2. ^ a b c d e f Saadettin 1995, p. 71
  3. ^ a b c d Saadettin 1995, p. 76
  4. ^ a b c d Rybatzki 2011, p. 66
  5. ^ Rybatzki 2011, p. 65
  6. ^ Saadettin 1995, p. 78
  7. ^ a b Saadettin 1995, p. 72
  8. ^ a b Saadettin 1995, p. 73
  9. ^ Saadettin 1995, p. 73; 121; Tokyürek 2013, p. 73; 121
  10. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  11. ^ Rybatzki 2011, p. 65–66; 15; Aydın 2013, p. 65–66; 15
  12. ^ a b Aydın 2013, p. 163
  13. ^ Saadettin 1995, p. 73; 163; Aydın 2013, p. 73; 163
  14. ^ Aydın 2013, p. 163–165
  15. ^ a b c d Aydın 2013, p. 18
  16. ^ a b Aydın 2013, p. 15–17
  17. ^ Aydın 2013, p. 18–21
  18. ^ Aydın 2013, p. 21
  19. ^ a b Şen 2008, p. 102–103
  20. ^ Şen 2008, p. 100–101, 104–106
  21. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 7
  22. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 12

Sources

Literature

  • Gömeç, Saadettin, Terhin Yazıtı'nın Tarihi Açıdan Değerlendirilmesi (1995)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Volker Rybatzki, Taryat, Tes ve Şine Usu Yazıtları Arasındaki Dil Bilimsel ve Tarihî Bağlar Üzerine Bazı Notlar (Some Notes on the Philological and Historical Relations Between the Terx, Tes and Sine Usu Inscriptions) (2011)
  • Erhan Aydın, Tariat ve Xi’an (Karı Çor Tegin) Yazıtları Işığında sın ‘mezar’ Sözcüğü Üzerine (2013)
  • Erhan Aydın, Tariat Yazıtı’nın kuzey yüzünün 5. satırı üzerine yeni okuma ve anlamlandırma önerileri (2013)
  • Serkan Şen, Taryat yazıtının batı yüzünde mGLi ve mGL işaretleriyle yazılan sözcük nasıl okunup anlaşılmalı? (2008)
  • Hacer Tokyürek, Runik Türk Yazıtlarında ve Eski Uygur Metinlerinde Kadın Hiyerarşisi (2013)

Articles resting on this source 10

Ancestor Cult · Az · Bayanchur Khan · Kögmen · Kutlug Bilge Kül Khan · Old Uyghur · Sacred Mountains · Uyghur Khaganate · Water Cult · Yaglakar

Related

What links here19

Persons
Bayanchur Khan · Bumin Khan · Kutlug Bilge Kül Khan
Places
Kögmen · Ötüken · Tola
Peoples
Bayirku · Ediz · Sogdians · Tongra
Lineages
Yaglakar
Institutions and Titles
Katun · Shad · Yabgu
Languages
Old Uyghur
Sources
Epitaph of Qarï Čor Tegin (Xi'an) · Hoyto Tamir inscriptions · Šine-Usu inscription · Tes inscription

Cite this article

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

Last revised: 8 November 2026