Tonyukuk inscription

Two inscribed stone pillars at Bain Tsokto, on the right bank of the upper Tola, between the old post-station of Nalaikh and the river, east of the Orkhon monuments and east of the modern capital of Mongolia. Sixty-two lines of runiform Turkic, in which a man who calls himself Bilge Tonyukuk tells how the Göktürk state was restored after fifty years under China. He also tells how he served its first three khans.^[1] Elisabeth Klementz found the stones in the summer of 1897. Wilhelm Radloff published them two years later, with an afterword by Friedrich Hirth on the Chinese sources.^[2] Another account gives the finder as F. Klementz and the year of the edition as 1899.^[3]

It is the third of the great Göktürk inscriptions, and the odd one out. The Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan monuments are royal. A khan speaks from the Orkhon, in the voice of the dynasty, and the two share their historical section word for word. Tonyukuk’s monument stands elsewhere. Its subject raised it in his own lifetime, and a counsellor wrote it about counsel. It names Ilterish, Kapgan and Bilge Khan. It does not name Kül Tegin, and the Kül Tegin inscription does not name Tonyukuk. Men who had fought on the same side composed the two accounts of the same forty years within a decade or so of each other. Each leaves the other out. For the events of 682 to 716, the Tonyukuk inscription is therefore a witness of its own, independent of the Orkhon stones.

Monument

Klementz’s report, printed by Radloff, describes a stone sarcophagus with carved ornament, the excavated foundation of a building, and the two square inscribed pillars. Around the pillars stood eight stone figures cut by skilled Chinese masons, every one of them with its head struck off. The whole was enclosed by a rectangular earth bank, open to the east. A line of upright stones ran eastward from it for several hundred fathoms.^[2][4][5] Thomsen gives the line of stones as about a hundred and fifty metres and calls the arrangement that of the Orkhon monuments on a smaller scale.^[6] A survey of 1997 measured the line of balbal at the monument as about 1300 metres and two further lines to the north of it as about 125 and 475 metres.^[7] A count made on the ground between 1997 and 1999 found 271 balbal stones outside the fenced area. The line turns north after the 260th.^[8] The two figures for the main line are not reconciled here. The row of stones is the balbal line of the royal tombs, with one stone for each enemy slain. Its length is one measure of how Tonyukuk wished to be remembered.

The first and larger pillar bears the inscription on all four faces: west, seven lines; south, ten; east, seven; north, eleven. The second, more weathered and less carefully cut, continues it: west, nine; south, six; east, eight; north, four.^[1][4][9] The first stone is 243 centimetres high and the second 217.^[4] The lines run vertically, as on the Orkhon, but they are read from left to right, the reverse of the Orkhon order.^[2] Radloff numbered the lines 1 to 62 across both stones. Thomsen used that numbering, and so has everyone since. Turkic Atlas cites the text by it under Tonyukuk and under the khaganate.

The stones stand some forty to fifty kilometres from Ulaanbaatar, in the district of Nalaikh.^[10][5] They are about 360 kilometres from the Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan monuments.^[4] Around the stelae, the survey of 1997 recorded three lines of balbal, a ruin, a second monument group some two and a half kilometres away and many burial mounds. Its table of finds lists six pieces of sarcophagus.^[11] After some 1,270 years in the open, the monument is badly worn. Digs in 1897, 1909, 1925 and 1957 damaged it, and where the finds went is not known.^[12] The east face of the second stone, lines 51 to 58, can be read only by feeling the surface with a finger.^[13] The monuments were placed under state protection in 1971 and fenced. By one account, they have had guards since 1998.^[14]

Speaker and date

The speaker is Tonyukuk himself, in the first person from the first word to the last. Line 58 says so: “For the realm of the Turk Bilge Khan I have had this written. I, Bilge Tonyukuk.”^[2] His full style in line 6 is Bilge Tonyukuk Boyla Baga Tarkan.^[2] Radloff concluded that the monument is not a tomb inscription at all. In his view it is a memorial that Tonyukuk raised for himself in old age, tendentiously, to put on record the deeds of Ilterish and of his counsellor. A quarter-century of Kapgan’s reign had let those deeds fall out of memory.

The date follows from that, and scholars argue over it. The closing lines address Bilge Khan as reigning, so the text is later than 716.^[15] It says nothing of Tonyukuk’s service under Bilge Khan, which the Tang history describes at length. That service includes his recall at over seventy, the Basmïl campaign of 721 and the embassy of 725.^[16] Radloff took that silence to mean that the stone was cut in 716 itself. In that year, Tonyukuk had been spared in the coup that killed Kapgan’s court, because his daughter was the new khan’s katun. He had then been dismissed to his tribe. Radloff described his life there as a kind of exile far from the court, sulking over lost influence. Thomsen put the date at about 720.^[17][18] Tekin puts it five to ten years after 716, most probably between 720 and 725.^[19] A second dating, which Sertkaya has argued, takes the monument for Tonyukuk’s answer to the Kül Tegin inscription. It then falls between that monument and the Bilge Khan monument, in 732 to 734.^[4] The datings stand side by side, and the difference is not decided. The stone is later than 716, and it was cut while its author lived.^[2]

On the language, the stone belongs with the Ongi and Küli Čor stones. These inscriptions nearly always leave the vowel e unwritten, which the Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan stones do not. The Tonyukuk stone has ben as an independent pronoun, where those two have men everywhere.^[20]

Name

The stone writes 𐱃𐰆𐰪𐰸𐰸, which the Turkological literature normalises as Tuñuquq or Toñuquq. Tonyukuk is the common English form. The Tang histories write the name 暾欲谷. They describe the man as an old officer of Kapgan’s court, over seventy in 716, whose daughter was Bilge Khan’s katun.^[16] A separate question is whether he is also the Ashide Yuanzhen of the same histories, the Chinese-trained Göktürk who went over to Ilterish in 682 and commanded his army as Apa Tarkan. Turkic Atlas argues it under Tonyukuk. Hirth said yes. The Tang histories let Yuanzhen die in battle against the Türgesh before Ilterish himself died, which makes the equation hard to hold.

Text

Line numbers follow Radloff. Each passage gives the runes first, then the transcription in italics, then the rendering. The runes are those of the runic text on Turkish Wikisource. They are checked word by word against the runic text and the transcription in Tekin’s edition of 1994, and corrected in the few places where Tekin’s runic print shows a different sign.^[21] The transcription follows Tekin, simplified. The vowels he marks as unwritten are supplied, and his ä is written e. Gaps in the stone are marked … in the runes and in the transcription. A word in square brackets in the transcription, as in line 33, is one that the runic text leaves blank and that a reading of the stone itself supplies. Angle brackets in the transcription enclose words and letters that the carver left out and Tekin supplies, so the runes do not contain them. A passage without runes is one in which the runic text of the Wikisource file and Tekin’s reading do not agree. It stands in the rendering alone. The rendering follows Thomsen’s final translation as Ross gave it in English. It is checked line by line against the runic text, and it departs from Thomsen where the runes support the departure. Thomsen thought Radloff’s edition very unsatisfactory. He worked from a complete copy and photographs that Ramstedt made at two visits to the stone, and his German of 1924, revised against his Danish of 1922, is cited in the readings. Gaps in the stone are marked … in the rendering. Words supplied for the sense stand in square brackets. The translation writes khan where the Turkic has qaġan, and leaves shad, yabgu, tarkan, beg and katun untranslated. It gives the name of the people, türk, as Turk (plural Turks). It would write Göktürk only where the stone has kök türk, which no passage given here does. It keeps Sir where the stone pairs the two names.

Readings

kanın bolmayın (line 2). The rendering takes the clause as a statement about the Göktürk people, “not having a khan of their own”. Thomsen’s German of 1924 reads it as Tonyukuk’s own words: “I will not be khan of the Türk people (?)”.^[27] A note says that his Danish of 1922 had “if only I might not live to see a khan of the Türk people (?)”. He no longer held that reading.^[27]

ıda tašda kalmıšı (line 4). “In wood and stone”: Thomsen’s German of 1924 gives “independent”, with “in tree and stone” as the literal sense. He explains the words from Chinese usage.^[27]

aygıl tidi ayıgması (line 5). The transcription reads aygıl and ayıgması, from ay-, “to say”. The older reading was yaygıl and yaymışı, “join me”, which rests on a verb yay-, “to join”, that no old or living Turkic language has.^[108][26] Giraud and Tezcan took the words to mean “give counsel” and “the one who gave counsel”. Tekin takes them to mean “speak in my name” and “his spokesman”.^[109][110] The rendering follows Tekin.

toruk bukalı semiz bukalı ırakda bilser (lines 5–6). The transcription reads ırakda bilser, “if one can tell from afar”. The edition renders the proverb so: at a distance one cannot know which bulls are lean and which are fat.^[111] The epigrapher who recorded the stone in 1997 to 1999 reads the second letter of the verb as a sign of the n series and so reads bölser or bülser. Clauson and Sprengling had read the verb with l, and Aalto and Ergin with a nasal. He still renders it “to know”.^[112] The Wikisource rendering has the bulls kicking backward instead. Tekin had read the verb as böösür, with the bulls kicking one another at a distance, in 1968. He gave that reading up in 1994.^[113] The rendering follows the edition. The sense of the passage as the editions give it is the same. Tonyukuk says that he could not know, from where he stood, whether the shad who led the seven hundred was a khan or not, and that he made him one regardless.

yagımız tegre očuk teg erti, biz aš eg ertimiz (line 8). The enemies round about are “like a hearth” (očuk), What the Göktürks were in the middle of it is written with two letters. The first is the sign for aš, which Tekin’s runic text has at this place. In the runic line above, it is the sign that looks like an empty square.^[114] Tekin reads aš eg, “like food”, with the t of teg left out by the carver. The Göktürks were like the food in the middle of the hearth.^[115] Another reading has isig.^[116] Thomsen read birds of prey with a query. The Wikisource rendering reads “we were the fire”, which neither Tekin’s text nor his explanation gives. The sense of a small people ringed by enemies survives every reading.

kürüg (lines 8, 29, 33). The word has been read körüg and rendered “spy”. Orkun renders it “messenger”. Tekin reads kürüg, “fugitive”, from the verb kür-, “to flee”, a reading he credits to Erdal.^[117][118] The translation follows Tekin. With it, the news comes from men who had left the enemy, not from scouts sent out to watch him.

süsi [üç / altı biŋ] ermiş (line 16). The size of the Oguz army stands in a gap at the start of the line and is restored, not read. Thomsen restored three thousand, and Orkun follows him. Radloff restored six thousand, and Tekin follows him.^[48][49] Neither figure is on the stone. The translation gives both, in brackets.

kaganı alp ermiš aygučısı bilge ermiš kač neŋ erser (lines 20–21). The epigrapher who recorded the stone gives the words before kač neŋ, where the transcription leaves a gap after bizni. They are kaganı alp ermiš aygučısı bilge ermiš, “his khan is brave, his counsellor is wise”.^[112] Tezcan corrects kaçan neŋ to kač neŋ, “one way or another”, and finds the same words in Old Uyghur.^[119] The word aygučı, “counsellor”, is the word the stone uses of Tonyukuk many times.^[108]

üč küreg yiyi kelti (line 33). The word after küreg stands in a blank of the runic text. The epigrapher who recorded the stone reads it yiyi, “one after another”. He holds that the plate of the first edition had been retouched so that two of its signs read as k and š; Aalto reads yiyi too. Tekin’s edition has kiši, “three fugitive men”. The rendering takes yiyi.^[120][121]

koop (line 36). The last word of the begs’ answer is koop, “all together”, in the reading of the epigrapher who recorded the stone, and not kopın; the rendering “all the begs said” agrees.^[122]

yeti yegirmi (line 49). The runes 𐰘𐱅𐰃 𐰘𐰏𐰃𐰼𐰢𐰃 read yeti yegirmi, “seven toward twenty”, that is seventeen. Ilterish fought seventeen times with the Chinese. Ross’s English of Thomsen has “seven times”, which the stone does not have. The rendering gives seventeen.^[123] Thomsen’s own German of 1924 has seventeen too, siebzehnmal, with the Chinese, seven times with the Kıtañ and five with the Oguz.^[93] The Kül Tegin inscription’s own count for Ilterish is forty-seven campaigns and twenty pitched battles against all enemies. The two figures are not the same measure.^[124]

türk sir bodun (lines 3, 11, 60–62). The stone pairs the Türk with a people called Sir, four times, and once speaks of “the land of the Türk Sir people”. Thomsen rendered the word as “united (?)”; Radloff already connected the Sir with the Xueyantuo, the Sir Tarduš of the Chinese sources. That identification has been the usual one since. It is an identification, not a reading, and the rendering keeps the name Sir. Thomsen’s German of 1924 has “united (?)” in each of the lines where the word occurs: 3–4, 11 and 60–62.^[125] If the identification holds, the restored state understood itself as the union of the Göktürks with the people who had ruled the Orkhon between 630 and 646. The Xueyantuo article discusses this.

bögü kagan (lines 34, 50) and kapgan kagan (lines 51, 60–61). The same man, Kapgan Khan, is called Bögü Khan twice. The first instance is in line 34, in the passage where he sends Tonyukuk the secret order to do nothing. The second is in the damaged line 50, where the stone names Ilterish, Bögü and Bilge Khan in a row.^[74][75] The Chinese Mochuo 默啜 answers to a form of the same title. Turkic Atlas takes up the names under Kapgan Khan. Sertkaya takes Kapgan for a title that the man won after his raids on China, with Čor and then Bögü as his earlier styles. He argues this from the broken line 51.^[74] Thomsen made Bögü Khan a son of Kapgan Khan, who bore the title of khan in his father’s lifetime and was killed with his father’s whole family in 716. Then Bögü is another man.^[55]

kapgan kagan olurtdum (line 51). In the readings of Tekin, of the epigrapher who recorded the stone, and of Li, the verb ends in the first person singular. Tonyukuk then says he seated Kapgan on the throne.^{[126][127][128]} Radloff, Orkun, Ergin, Giraud and Sertkaya read olurdı or olurtı, “he sat down on the throne”, in the third person.^[129] The rendering follows the first reading. The damaged start of the line gives “twenty-seven” with a gap on either side. It has been taken for Kapgan’s age when he took the throne, for his age when Ilterish died, and for the end of his time as čor. Clauson took it for Tonyukuk’s age when Kapgan took the throne.^[130] One restoration reads the line “Kapgan Khan, at the age of twenty-seven, was shad over the Tölis people when my khan died”.^[131] Another reads it “Kapgan Khan was a Chor until his twenty-seventh year; after that he became khan”.^[132]

tün udımatı küntüz olurmatı (lines 51–52). The two clauses end in the negative converb -matı, so they are not sentences of their own. The rendering reads “not sleeping at night, not resting by day, I shed my red blood and let my black sweat run”. Sertkaya and Tekin read them so.^[133][134]

ilteriš kagan kazganmasar (lines 54–56). Sertkaya’s transcription of the east face and Tekin’s edition give the same sense. Without the toil of Ilterish and of Tonyukuk, there would have been neither realm nor people.^[135][126]

inel kagan (lines 31, 45). Inel Khan is a khan under the khan, sent with the Tardush Shad at the head of the army. The obvious equation is the Tang history’s Lesser Khan, Kapgan’s son, whom it also calls the Tuoxi Khan. Turkic Atlas rests its treatment of Inel Khan on this equation.

tinsi oglı aytıgma beŋlig ek tag (line 44). Tekin reads aytıgma, “called”. The rendering has “the mountain called Tinsi Oglı”, with tinsi the Chinese tianzi, Son of Heaven.^[136][137] Ramstedt had read yatıgma, “lying”, and so a mountain “where the Son of the Son of Heaven lies”. Tekin names that reading and does not follow it.^[91] Which mountain, in Sogdiana or beyond it, is not settled.^[138]

teŋri umay ıduk yer sub (line 38). Before Bolchu, Tonyukuk invokes three powers: Heaven, Umay and the holy Earth-and-Water. The Kül Tegin inscription names the same three. The Tonyukuk stone is the second independent witness to them.^[68] Turkic Atlas counts it so under Tengrism.

The old man’s reckoning (lines 57–58). The rendering has him say that a people with a khan, in any land, would suffer a misfortune if it had such worthless men at its head. Others have him speak of himself and ask what trouble a people would have if it “had such a man (like me)”.^[139] The epigrapher who recorded the stone reads the first word as bintegi, from ben and teg, “one like me”, which supports that view.^[140] Tekin keeps bünt(e)gi, “such a one”, and renders “such a statesman”.^[141]

kiši yeme idi yok erteči erti (line 60). Idi may be the noun, which ends the list with “no master at all”. It may also be the adverb that strengthens a negative, which renders the list “neither tribes, nor people, nor human beings at all”.^[142]

Historical content

The inscription is the primary witness on five points.

On the restoration itself, it is the only first-person account. It tells of seven hundred men under a shad, two-thirds of them mounted. It tells of a counsellor who “made him khan” and says so twice. It tells of a first winter at Čogay Kuzı and Kara Kum, north of the Chinese frontier, living on game.^[143] The Kül Tegin inscription’s seventeen, seventy and seven hundred is the royal version of the same beginning. The two agree on the number seven hundred and on nothing else about how it was reached.

On the move to Ötüken, it is explicit where the Orkhon stones are not. The state was refounded north of the Chinese frontier. It was then transferred to the Orkhon country by a march across the Kök Öng and a battle on the Tola against the Nine Oguz. After that battle, “the peoples of the south, the west, the north and the east” came in.^[144] That is the moment the Second Khaganate became a steppe empire rather than a frontier rising. Nothing in the text dates it.

On the three-front coalition, it is the sole source. It tells how the Chinese emperor, the khan of the Ten Arrows and the Kırgız khan agreed to meet on the Altai and destroy the eastern khan. It tells of the pre-emptive winter crossing of the Kögmen with a guide of the Az, who was killed for losing the way, and of the killing of the Kırgız khan. It tells of the disobeyed order, the night march over the Altai and the Irtysh, and the battle at Bolchu against an army said to be a hundred thousand strong. All of this is Tonyukuk’s. The Kül Tegin inscription confirms only the outline: the Kırgız khan and the Türgesh khan were killed in the same year, and Kül Tegin fought at Bolchu.^[68] What the two stones share, they share as two participants, not as one text copied.

On the extent of the state under Kapgan, it gives the western limit. The army crossed the Pearl River, which is the Syr Darya, and reached the Iron Gate south of Samarkand. The Sogdians submitted, and gold, silver and captives were carried home.^[145] The Kül Tegin inscription’s “westward as far as the Iron Gate” is the same campaign seen from the khan’s side.^[124]

On the theory of the state, the inscription gives a counsellor’s version to set beside the khan’s. The Kül Tegin inscription says the realm is lost through disunity and Chinese guile and held from Ötüken. The Tonyukuk inscription says it is held by a khan who is brave and a counsellor who is wise. It repeats the pair, “his khan is brave, his counsellor is wise”, five times, three of them in the mouths of the enemy.^[146] The closing lines make the claim outright: without Ilterish and without Tonyukuk, there would be no realm and no people. The Tang history, which had its own reasons, agrees with the stone about the man. He was over seventy in 716, “deep and full of stratagems, growing wiser with age”, and one of the three on whom the khaganate rested.^[16]