契丹小字解读再探

FURTHER STUDY OF THE DECIPHERING OF QIDAN SMALL SCRIPTS

一、序说我们前几年发表的《契丹小字解读新探》(以下简称《新探》),受到国内外学者的注意。有感于《新探》所释出的契丹小字中汉语借词较多,契丹本民族词汇太少,而解读契丹小字中的契丹本民族的词汇应是契丹文字研究工作中最重要的课题,所以再写此文试图在这方面作些探索,以为引玉之砖。契丹民族曾长期受突厥人和回鹘人控制,与蒙古族的祖先室韦同源于东胡。

In the Paper'A New Approach to the Deciphering of Qidan Small Script'(KAOGUXUEBAO,No.3,1978),the main subject is the borrowed Chinese words in the Qidan scripts.The present article is concentrated on the deciphering of pure Qidan words in Qidan smallscripts by comparing them with words of languages of the same Altaic family,specially theMongolian,Huighur and Nuzhen (Nuchen) languages.For example,we found an originalQidan word pronounced 'da' for the word 'between' in the Qidan script by comparing itwith the Mongolian language,and from this sound 'da',we further found the Qidan word'ka-dan' means 'Qidan' and 'queen'.Making use of the word whose sound value isalready known,we identified Qidan scripts for 'nephew','queen's brother','madame'and the personal name 'dabui'.By comparing with the Mongolian,Huigu and Nuzhenlanguages,we found the Qidan script 'urdo' means 'palace' or 'court',and the Qidanscript 'ecigenurdo' means 'tribe',the 'delasi tribe',and the 'Palace of Great Harmony'.From the antithetical characteristic of the Qidan language we identified the Qidan wordsfor 'clearness' and 'fogginess',and found that the 'gu' (jade) plus 'taulia' (rabbit)mean the 'moon',and 'rulugu' (golden) plus 'haha' (crow) mean the 'sun'.The pro-nounciation of the Qidan script 'snake' was also verified and the pronounciation of theQidan scripts 'benevalence' and 'holiness' were also explored.The above studies showthat the original Qidan words are basically syllabic words,and not phonematic ones,thoughsome of them may give the wrong impression of being such.At the end of the present article,a glossary of newly deciphered Qidan words and terms,and a newly-compiled list of the sound value of some original Qidan words are given.