Thank You for the Light, A Turkic Loanword

 

Lcags-mag

The ink is hardly dry on the last blog and the holiday season is bearing down on us. Still, I’d like to add on one more before giving these loanwords a rest. This example does suit my already-described method of identifying words borrowed from Tibet’s northerly and western neighbors. The second syllable in this case is mag, a word with a possible resonance within the Tibetan language, but no meaning that could go together with a first-syllable lcags that looks like nothing so much as the ordinary Tibetan word for iron.*  

(*It would be a tedious exercise to go too much into it at this juncture. Still, the first possibility that presents itself is that mag could, theoretically, be a shortened version of mag-pa, meaning a matrilocal groom, or to put it another way, a son-in-law who is invited to join his bride’s household and, eventually, enjoy inheritance rights. If you can see how 'matrilocal groom of iron' makes sense all power to you. We’ll soon see that it is spelled rmag in some early manuscript testimonies, but this also takes us nowhere.)

I had long ago noticed this word listed in Berthold Laufer’s “Tibetan Loan-Words.” I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for it. We know Laufer is here basing himself on entries in Jäschke’s dictionary (or in some cases Das’s dictionary, often itself based on Jäschke’s).* I had the feeling it wouldn’t carry a lot of weight if it just popped up once in a local market somewhere west of Western Tibet in the 19th century never to be used again. In truth I’m more inclined to deal with words of widespread and enduring currency that date from earlier times. 

(*It may be difficult to locate in Jäschke’s long entry, but look at p. 148, column 2, the 8th line from the bottom, where you can see the Turkish spelled out in Arabic script with the notice [“W.”] that it is a word belonging to Western Tibet.)

Even if I were unable to establish, as I will do in a moment, early usage for this word, we could still find it useful for its help in defending and refining a systematic method for detecting foreign words in Classical Tibetan. I would never claim the method is foolproof. An impressive degree of effectiveness is all I aim for. Now let’s look at some of that early evidence for this word lcags-mag, but first, a passage where it does not appear.

In answer to a question by a woman among his disciples at Tingri, Padampa (d. 1105?) uses a flint as an object lesson. He actually uses the word me-lcags, which would seem on the face of it to mean “fire [starting] iron,” but as I will try to show later on, its older and more original meaning must have been fire striker, and therefore the steel that strikes the flint. Still, in the minds of many, me-lcags seems to cover the entire set of fire-starting items including the pouch it comes in. The same is if anything more true of the word that will be our chief concern.

མ་ཇོ་ཆོས་གསལ་ན་རེ་ ། དམ་པ་ལགས་ ། ཆོས་ཐམས་ཅད་སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་ཡིན་སྐད་ན་  སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་ལ་འཁྲུལ་རྒྱུ་དང་ ། ་སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་གྲོལ་རྱུ་འོང་པ་ཙུག་ལགས་ཟེར་བས་ ། 

དམ་པའི་ཞལ་ནས་ ། དེ་འདུན་ཀྱིད་ཁྱོད་ཀྱི་མེ་ལྕགས་ཤོག་དང་གསུང་ནས་ ། དེ་ལ་མེ་བཏོན་ཅུང་ཟད་བསོས་ཏེ་ཤིར་བཅུག་ནས་ ། ལྟས་ངན་མེ་འདི་རྐྱེན་ལས་བྱུང་ནས་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་ཤི་ ། འདིའི་རྒྱུ་མཚན་ལ་རྗེས་གཅད་དུ་མ་བཏུབ་པ་ངོ་མཚར་ཆེ་ ། ་མེ་ལྕགས་གྲང་མོ་འདི་མེ་ཚན་མོའི་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་ཁོངས་མ་བཅུག་ ། ང་ཅག་གི་རྒྱ་གར་ན་འདི་འདྲ་བ་མྱེད་གསུངས་པས་ ། 

མོས་བརྡའ་དེའི་དོན་གོ་ནས་འཁྲུལ་པ་ཞིག་གོ་།།    །།

Majo Chösel asked, “If it is true, as they say, that all dharmas are Voidness, how is it that in Voidness causes of delusion and causes of liberation come about?” 

Padampa said, “Gendun Kyi, come bring your flint.” He lit a fire with the flint and tended it a bit, but it started to die out. “This poor ill-omened fire,” said Padampa, “It arose through conditions and it dies through conditions. It’s so amazing we cannot follow up on the reasons for this happening. We can’t comprehend how this cold flint could be cause for a warm fire. In our India we don’t have such things (as flints).” 

The woman understood the intentions behind Padampa’s symbolic mode of expression and her delusions dissolved. (Zhijé Collection, vol. 2, pp. 293-294.)

As I said, our word of interest isn’t actually used there, but Padampa could say the flint was unknown in India, and that may mean something. Also it is a beautiful example of how he made use of flints in his spiritual teachings. 

I do know of two usages of lcags-rmag (notice that silent ‘r’) in the Zhijé Collection. Both occur in works belonging to a relatively late level of the ZC, from the time of Tenné or roughly the last half of 12th century. These works do of course include commentaries on the words of Padampa, but also preserve the teachings Tenné received from his teacher Patsab:

Zhijé Collection, vol. 4, p. 109
(click to enlarge)

Number six: The aspiration prayer with interdependent conditions complete. It has been said, ‘You get fire from the lcags-rmag when the full set of causes and conditions are present.’ That means when the root cause, the dried bracken (ngur-mo), has ngar (flammability?); when the contributing cause, the hard stone (mkhregs-rdo, the flint), has corners; and when neither moisture nor mildew (btsa’) have entered in. In a similar manner, when all fifteen dharmas are present, all that you propose in the aspiration prayer comes to fruition.* 

(*The text continues listing all 15 of them. The OCR of the newly edited version of the text mistakenly corrects btsa' to rtswa, or grass, and speaks of five dharmas here rather than the correct fifteen. The meaning of btsa' here is not certain — it could also mean rust or spark — but I'm fairly certain it is the originally intended spelling.)

The second example occurs in the same volume, at p. 269, although it doesn’t help us so much right now. What it does do is verify that the spelling used in this old manuscript source is indeed lcag[s]-rmag. In context it’s telling us that meditative awareness is applied to more and more expansive objects, contrasting the infant prince with the ruling king, the lunar crescent just after the new moon with the full moon, and the fire of the lcags-rmag with a forest fire.

Evening sky

And there is a third example of early usage, this time from a 13th-century work by a follower of Cutting teachings. The following passage comes from the 12-vol. new edition of Zhijé & Cutting teachings, vol. 9, p. no. unknown, but anyway found inside Jamyang Gönpo’s work entitled Bdud Gcod Zab-mo Don-gyi Nying-khu-las/ Zab-don-gyi Spyi-khrid Chen-mo. It seems this text has not been translated, although a related text, the root text of the same, has indeed been published in English (see Sarah Harding’s book in the reading list).

དཔེར་ན་མེ་ཤེལ་ལམ། དུར་ལང་ངམ། ལྕགས་མག་མེ་དང་ལྡན་པ་མེ་ནང་དུ་བཅུག་ན་ཕྱིས་མེ་མི་འབྱུང་བ་བཞིན་ནོ།། 

dper na me shel lam / dur lang ngam / lcags mag me dang ldan pa me nang du bcug na phyis me mi 'byung ba bzhin no // 

It is as if, for example, you were to take a fire glass, or an amber,* or a lcags-mag, objects that possess fire, and place them into the fire. Later on no fire would come from them.  

(*I read sbur-long [also spelled spur-len], with meaning of amber in place of dur-lang. Amber holds a prominent place in the history of electricity, with its static variety being what sparks and moves the straw. See Laufer's essay listed below. It is said that heating the steel striker up to the point where it glows will seriously diminish its ability to make sparks.)

Among the ethnographic illustrations at the end of the
Zhang Yisun dictionary is this pouch labelled 'ba'-khug. 
It looks very much like a tinder pouch,
but lacks the steel rim emerging from the bottom.
That’s why I believe it must be a coin purse or sewing kit.

Quite apart from these Zhijé works, we have at least two examples of the use of lcags-mag in Tanjur works, plus another commentarial work on one of the Tanjur works.  One of them, Maitreya’s Bhavasaṅkrāntiṭīkā, a very brief commentary on a work of Nāgārjuna, mentions rtsub-shing and lcags-mag as possible instruments of fire making. It interestingly mentions the rubbing stick (rtsub-shing) in the same breath with the lcags-mag. Its translator was Dawa Zhonnu, although knowing this doesn’t seem to be much help as he is not a well-known figure with a date.

The second Tanjur example is in Dharmottara’s Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā. It has a few difficult points, so I’ll just give you the Tibetan text to read for yourself (see below under Dharmottara) and leave it at that, although in general it agrees with Padampa’s symbolic usage. 

An entry from the Redhouse dictionary,
tashi means “stone”

‘What about the Turkish?’ you might be asking.

I know enough of the modern Anatolian variety to catch a word here and there in Turkish movies. So I wouldn’t expect you to believe me entirely, but the noun çakmak is the modern word for the lighter in use by smokers, campers and the like. It would be pronounced something very like chukmuk, and this is also a good way to represent the sound of the Tibetan version lcags-mag. In my crude understanding of the Turkish word, it is a verbal root çak with a kind of nominalizing (or infinitive forming?) suffix -mak added on. So the meaning of the entire word comes out meaning something like striker.

That means this shared word is necessarily a borrowing from a Turkic language int0 Tibetan rather than the other way around. We know this because the Tibetan preserves the word-final syllable -mag that only bears meaning in Turkic. 

There is another use of lcag, properly spelled without the final “s” in my opinion, in the Tibetan word for horse whip, which is rta-lcag. Reflecting for a moment that a whip is a striking instrument, it appears that the Tibetan word lcag was also borrowed from Turkish.* Of course borrowings can enter into hybrid expressions, but there is no reason to think that is the case with lcag-mag. The whole word and not just part of it is borrowed.

(*All you have to do is leave the ‘s’ off when you put “lcag mag” into the search box at BDRC, and you will come up with several instances of this spelling. Lcag-mag is not a hypothetical, and so does not require an asterisk.)

Another thing that becomes more obvious just by thinking about it is that Tibetans in past centuries, knowing that the fire-striking apparatus they use includes a metal piece for striking the flint, were bound to interpret the syllable, properly spelled lcag, as the word for “iron,” lcags, and go on to spell it that way without much fear of contradiction. Sometimes the truth seems so obvious, and sometimes the obvious fools us.

Of course there are a number of small issues surrounding all of this that require closer study and investigation. We have paid too little attention to phonological changes, local vocabulary variations, dialectology, Tibeto-Burman linguistic issues. Our emphasis has been the earliest known sources. So, as far as a conclusion is concerned, what I’ve written above is about as much as I intended to say. Still, in the spirit of the season I thought I ought to end with a few earnest platitudes and good wishes.

You may think studies of loanwords are a matter for philology of the most piddling sort, all about the words and low on substance and consequence. Basically a waste of time and a tedious one at that. But no, please, loanwords indicate human interactions (I almost said sociality). Their very existence nearly always indicates historical contact of some duration between peoples speaking different languages. This particular loanword is about even more. It indicates a tool, something useful for everyday life, an object shared across ethnic and linguistic boundaries. This tool, or set of tools, receives interesting symbolic meanings, even as a metaphor for interdependent origination, an essential Buddhist idea if there ever was one. And a small word can indicate a larger range of influences, or at least encourage us to look into them more than we have been.

Nowadays in much of the world women keep all their combs, pens, money, cigarette lighters and other assorted items in their purses or backpacks, men in their pockets, briefcases or backpacks. This may seem to go without saying, but it was not always so. Many cultures have made use of what is sometimes known as a chatelaine. That means a chain or belt, likely hanging on their bodies in plain view, with all those useful items suspended from it. Tibetan nomads in particular were likely to have quite a few such items hanging on their waist belts ready for action, rather like modern factory workers’ tool belts. Beautified as they are by finely tooled metalwork inset with corals and turquoise, the Tibetan nomad’s ‘utility belt’ denies us the boundaries we’ve drawn between jewelry and useful items, exemplifying both.

So during this holiday season, whether you are switching on your Christmas tree lights or lighting the Hanukkah or Kwanzaa candles, or the strings of  butterlamps and electric lights all around the temple for Tsongkhapa’s anniversary day, or shooting off firecrackers for Silvester Day, etcetera, stop for a moment. Think of the Tibeto-Turkish chakmak and contemplate the things that join us together as human beings instead of what pulls us apart. Please hold this thought for more than a moment, then let it expand further and further. It’s so important for our future as a species, and not just our single species, but for all living and sentient beings.

§   §   §

Written resources

• Turkish & Mongolian Loanwords, posted on December 10, 2014.

• Two Odd Words that Ought to be Persian, posted on December 12, 2024.

Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish, Clarendon Press (Oxford 1972). See the entry for “çak-” on p. 405 if you require proof the word çakmak was used in Central Asian Turkic languages in early times.  See also p. 591 for an interesting symbolic usage in a Turkish Buddhist text from Turfan. It compares the interdependent workings of the fire-starting kit with the workings of sensory perception.

Dharmottara, Pramāṇaviniścaya-ṭīkā (Tshad-ma Rnam-par Nges-pa’i ’Grel-bshad).  Tôh. no. 4229.  Dergé Tanjur, Tshad-ma section vol. DZE, folios 1v.1-289r.7. Translated by Kashmir Paṇḍita Parahitabhadra (Gzhan-la-phan-pa-bzang-po) and [Rngog] Blo-ldan-shes-rab (1059-1109 CE) at Anupamapura (Grong-khyer Dpe-med), presumably the city by that name in Kashmir.

ས་བོན་གྱི་ཆ་རྣམས་འབྲེལ་པའི་ཕྱོགས་ནས་བཟུང་སྟེ་མེ་ཏོག་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྒྱུ་ཐ་དད་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །དེ་བཞིན་དུ་མེ་རྡོའི་མེའི་སྐྱེ་གནས་ཀྱི་ཟུར་ལྕགས་མག་གིས་བཅག་པ་ན་ཆག་པའི་འཛེལ་མ་ལས་མེ་འབྱུང་བའི་རང་གི་སྐྱེ་གནས་ལྡོག་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །མེ་སྐྱེ་བ་ན་བུད་ཤིང་གི་སྙིང་པོའི་ཆ་འགའ་ཞིག་ནི་མེའི་དངོས་པོར་འགྱུར་ལ། ...

sa bon gyi cha rnams 'brel pa'i phyogs nas bzung ste me tog la sogs pa rgyu tha dad pa yin no // de bzhin du me rdo'i me'i skye gnas kyi zur lcags mag gis bcag pa na chag pa'i 'dzel ma las me 'byung ba'i rang gi skye gnas ldog pa yin no // me skye ba na bud shing gi snying po'i cha 'ga' zhig ni me'i dngos por 'gyur la/ ...

Sarah Harding, tr., “Part 3. Heart Essence of Profound Meaning: The Quintessence of All Source Texts and Esoteric Instructions on Severance, the Perfection of Wisdom,” contained in: Chöd: The Sacred Teachings on Severance, compiled by Jamgön Kongtrul, Snow Lion (Boulder 2016). As Harding points out, this work of Jamyang Gönpo (b. 1208) may be one of the earliest commentarial texts on Chöd practice. This is a translation of the root text, and not of the much longer autocommentary where the word lcags-mag is found. The longer work has sometimes been mistakenly published as a work composed by Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1363/4), with a brief colophon identifying him as the author.

Arthur H. Hayward, Colonial Lighting: A New and Revised Edition, Little, Brown & Co. (Boston 1927), pp. 160-161. Here you can read a humorous story of a back-&-forth about chuck-mucks. The book is old enough it is freely downloadable at archive.org.

Henryk Jankowski, A Historical-Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Russian Habitation Names of the Crimea, Brill (Leiden 2006), pp. 390-391. Although it’s about the place name, this is one of the most useful discussions of the word “caqmaq” I’ve found so far.

Kun Chang, “Sino-Tibetan ‘Iron’: *Qhleks,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 92 (1972), pp. 436-446.

Berthold Laufer, “Historical Jottings on Amber in Asia,” American Anthropological Association Memoirs, vol. 1, no. 3 (1907), pp. 211-244, with thanks to Mike Walter for suggesting it:

The Sanskrit term tṛṇagrāhin (‘attracting grass’) proves the same for India, and in Persian and Arabic we have the word kahrubā with a similar meaning... (note 3 on p. 218).

The usual name for it, spos shel (pronounced pö-shel or pö-she; in Lepcha, po-she), means literally “performed crystal”...  Another, a literary, designation is sbur len, or sbur long, which appears simply as a literal translation from the Sanskrit tṛṇagrāhin (“attracting straw”).  (p. 231)

———, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” contained in: Hartmut Walravens, ed., Sino-Tibetan Studies: Selected Papers on the Art, Folklore History, Linguistics and Prehistory of Sciences in China and Tibet, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-643. I use an old photocopy of the original publication in the journal T'oung Pao, vol. 17 (1916), pp. 403-552 (for the Turkish loans, see pp. 474-483). The Turkish-donated Tibetan terms he discusses I’ll list here (for variant spellings, go to the source publication):  

yam-bu, chu-ba, bol-gar, lcags-mag, lcags-phra, top, tu-pag, pi-chag, u-lag, ar-gon.

 

click to enlarge

Maitreya, Bhavasaṅkrāntiṭīkā (Srid pa ’Pho-ba’i Ṭī-ka).  Tôh. no. 3841.  Dergé Tanjur, Dbu-ma vol. TSA, folios 151v.7-158r.7.  Translated by Paṇḍi-ta Zla-ba-gzhon-nu, or to make an educated guess at the Sanskrit, Paṇḍita Candrakumāra. This commentary on a work by Nāgārjuna contains the relevant passage at fol. 152 recto.  

དེ་ལྟར་མ་ཡིན་པ་འབྱུང་བས་ན་འབྱུང་མི་སྲིད། མེའི་ནང་དུ་ས་བོན་བཏབ་ན་སྐྱེ་མི་སྲིད། དངོས་པོ་མེད་པ་དེ་ལ་ནི། །སྐྱེ་བ་བླངས་པ་སྲིད་པ་བསྟན་པ་ནི། ཇི་ལྟར་ཆུ་དངས་པས་གང་བའི་མཚོ་ལ་ཟིམ་དང་པདྨ་སྐྱེས་པ་བཞིན་ནོ། །གཙུབ་ཤིང་དང་ལྕགས་མག་ལས་མེ་འབྱུང་བ་བཞིན་ནོ།

de ltar ma yin pa 'byung bas na 'byung mi srid / me'i nang du sa bon btab na skye mi srid / dngos po med pa de la ni // skye ba blangs pa srid pa bstan pa ni / ji ltar chu dngas pas gang ba'i mtsho la zim dang padma skyes pa bzhin no // gtsub shing dang lcags mag las me 'byung ba bzhin no //

Pratapaditya Pal et al., Tibet: Tradition & Change, The Albuquerque Museum (Albuquerque 1997), p. 188, has a photo of the single most-marvelous example of a “flint purse” I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet, Morning Glory Publishers (Beijing 2000), vol. 5, pp. 141-5.  Some remarkable examples are illustrated here, called by the odd but oddly suitable name “fire sickles.” Note also the similar-looking sewing kit on p. 145.

John Myrdhin Reynolds, The Oral Tradition from Zhang-zhung, Vajra Publications (Kathmandu 2005). On p. 89 is an interesting reference to the use of flint and steel for starting fires in a Bon biography of a master of the Zhangzhung Oral Transmission. I ought to trace the words used in the Tibetan source text, but haven’t yet.

William Woodville Rockhill, Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet Based on the Collections in the United States National Museum, an extract from Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year 1893, Government Printing Office (Washington 1895), pp. 665-747.  Plate 9 illustrates what he called “tinder and flint pouches,” and “strike-a-lights.”  The text on pp. 695 reads like this:

Another article, frequently most elaborately ornamented and worn by all Tibetans and hanging from the same chatelaine to which the needlecase is attached, is a tinder* and flint pouch on the lower edge of which is a steel. These are called mé-chag (written mé lchags) and are in common use all over Tibet, China, and Mongolia. The Chinese style of tinder pouch shown in Dr. Hooker's work (Himalayan Journals. II, p. 219) as existing in Sikkim, has been found by other travelers in Bhutan and even among the Abors and Mishmis. The Tibetan mé-chag is of two styles, the Dergé and Pomäd forms. The first is always decorated with silver bosses, coral, and turquoise beads, and is of either red cloth or leather (pl. 9, fig. 2). The Pomäd kind, as shown in the specimen in the Museum collection, is a beautiful piece of work in open gold and silver, in which are set 3 large beads, 2 of coral, and 1 of turquoise. The pouch is of red cloth, and is 5 1/2 inches long and 2 1/2 inches broad. An embroidered cloth case fits over it to protect it from the weather (pl. 9. fit. 4). In pl. 8, fig. 3, and another specimen not here illustrated are mé-chag of Mongol manufacture, and were probably made in eastern Mongolia among the Halhas, although the former is Tibetan in its style of decoration.”**  

(*Note: I’ve omitted Rockhill’s interesting footnote on tinder.  **Rockhill understood me-lcags to refer to the entire fire-starting kit, although modern Tibetan tends to call this me-cha. I believe moderns understand me-cha to be a reduced form of me-yi cha-lag, hence meaning fire items or fire tools, although it is also possible to read me-cha as meaning fire piece. Understanding me-lcags presents problems of its own, since its proper spelling is rather likely to be me-lcag, with meaning of fire striker, rather than me-lcags meaning fire iron. The use of syllable-final -s has been a problem with Tibetan spellers throughout history, even though it can completely change the meaning sometimes, like in rig and rigs, or rtog and rtogs. I won’t go further into that. What would be the point here?)

George Roerich et al., trs., Blue Annals, p. 922, for what would seem to be yet another example of Padampa’s symbolic usage of the tinder bag.  I checked the Tibetan and found that the word pouch (khug-ma) is indeed used, and nearby is the word me-cha (not me-lcag[s]), which in this context I believe could refer to the flint alone and not the tinder bag as a whole (but see the Tshul-khrims-blo-gros book). This wonderfully complex and obscure passage deserves closer study.

Tshul-khrims-blo-gros, ed., Bod-kyi Srol-rgyun Tha-snyad ris-’grel Ming-mdzod, Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 2016). Composed by a committee in Chengdu, this is in effect a visual dictionary of the material culture of traditional Tibetan nomads and farmers (including domestic animals), with 1,212 illustrations.

Its illustration (p. 167) of what it calls me-cha — that means the entire assemblage of fire-starting items including the pouch — comes with labels identifying 13 parts, but concentrating on the decorative aspects. The steel striker is called me-lcags. An interesting item attached to it yet hanging separately is called me-rgyug / me-’then. I’d like to know more about its use. It may be a tiny pouch with an accelerant of some kind. The items that are presumably inside the pouch are neither shown nor identified.

Wikipedia, “Chuckmuck.”  

If you don’t mind the language, the German Wiki has a shorter but more nicely done entry entitled “me-lcags.”

•

• Acknowledgement: Mike Walter helped me out a lot with this as well as the previous blog on Persian loanwords, and much of the discussion here took shape under his emailed instigations, suggestions on what to read, which dictionary entry to look at, and so on. I’d like to dedicate this blog to Sangyela who years ago asked me if I knew of any Turkish words in Tibetan.

• PS: I recognize that this paper neglects to argue historical situations that would help to explain the borrowing of words and objects from the Turkic realm north and northeast of Tibet. Some contact situations have already been demonstrated or indicated by others, a subject for another time.

•

From an email message of Charles Ramble (January 7, 2025), posted here with permission:

I much appreciated your piece on lcags mag! I knew the term only from Nepali, and had no idea either that it had a Turkish origin or that it had found its way into Tibetan. In Nepali, it denotes one of the two little knife-like things that are included in the sheath of the khukri: one is the karda, which I think is used as a sort of penknife, and the other is the cakmak, which is a small file used for sharpening the main blade. Keep up the good work!

•

Try to see this brief video for a khukri sharpening demonstration.

Two Odd Words that Ought to be Persian

Ya-lad

In our last blog, we put forward a method for identifying foreign multisyllabic words in Tibetan. We should try again, just to add a little refinement and state it in a different way. 

To begin with, let’s agree that a person with much experience with Tibetan language will be able to look at any multisyllabic name or term and recognize when its final syllable is not (or not easily, or not sensibly) etymologizable as Tibetan.*

(*Bear in mind that most of the pukkah Tibetan bisyllabics, when they are not etymologizable as compounds, have as second syllable one of those important -pa -po -ba -bo -ma -mo endings that don’t count for anything right now for our present purposes.)

Next, a suspicion forms: The entire word in all its syllables is quite likely to be of foreign origin.* And this holds even if, and I would emphasize this point, the earlier syllables seem to be etymologizable as Tibetan. Those syllables could have undergone a historic process of naturalization, a rather common phenomenon I like to call Tibetanization. This might not involve any great alteration in the sound, but is very likely to evolve spellings that make the syllable look more and more like a normal Tibetan word.

(*A rather subtle point I must inject here: Rightly or wrongly, we have a strong tendency to consider Tibetan syllables individually, but here we need to learn to transcend those syllable boundaries and view the word as a single unit.)

I see this as a workable method for isolating candidates for foreign origins, one that would basically exclude Chinese and Sumerian as donor languages.* So the third step is to look into possible Turkic, Mongolian, Persian (including Sogdian, Khotan Saka, etc.), Aramaic [Hebrew and Arabic], and Greek origins. And yes, you are kidding me, of course, Indian languages. How could we ever neglect Sanskrit? So it is mainly in those just-named languages that these foreign words will be found if at all.

(*In my experience scholars are quite reluctant to accept Tibetan single-syllable words as borrowings. However longer words bear more phonetic data and moreover stand out in a Tibetan sentence, particularly the three-syllable words. We won’t deny single-syllable borrowings, see under Martin in the reading list below.)

Borrowings from one language into another are likely to involve sound shifts at the border crossings, and these are usually believed to work with some regularity, so much so that linguists have traditionally called them ‘laws.’ However, the body of recognized loanwords from Persian (and other Middle Eastern languages) is quite small. So rather than appealing to ‘laws’ already made, we would rather see the loanwords we do find as material useful for future legislative efforts. I don’t make rules here, guidelines and suggestions at best.

In fact I’m still trying to hone the method and I’m likely to tweek it to conform to the results I’ve gotten from it, if that makes sense, and I think it does... Why should I be forcibly circumscribed by rules I made up myself? And haven’t we been making up the rules for ourselves all along?

My strongest argument for the method is in its results, in quite a few cases quite clear, as in the word thu-lum of Turkic origin (see the reading list below). Since ours is a result-driven method, our ways of defining it can be revised to better suit the results it achieves. If that seems circular, does it really matter?

Enough of these methodological ruminations. I have been too heavily imposing on my few but much-appreciated readers, readers I am in constant danger of losing. We should make up for lost time and go swiftly to the two words I want to discuss today and be done with them before you know it. 

I’ve discussed both words in the past, even composed lengthy footnotes about them, all the time never even once considering the possibility of rooting out their origins, despite the suspicions raised by their unusual (and to some degree similar) appearance. Both words were discussed in a single footnote by R.A. Stein 35 years ago, but he, too, never suggested their foreign origins. 

So I feel justified in claiming this blog as the first time they have been publicly recognized. And I am confident that most people, just by having them pointed out to them, will know there is something to be seen there. They can freely go on to support or undermine the possibilities by arguing in a completely different direction.

The first of the two is ya-lad. True, I’ve noticed one late usage of the word, but I see it as a conscious archaism (alphabetic poems called ka-bshad tend to use it). I feel justified in seeing it as having currency before 1300 or so with usage going back several centuries. It is defined in many natively Tibetan glossaries of early vocabulary items (the genre of Brda’-rnying) where it is often defined as “go-cha” or “go-cha generally speaking.” Now this is an interesting point, since the word used in the definition looks etymologizable in Tibetan as roughly something like covering piece. In very common usage from early times, go-cha means military equipment, most often body armor. Nevertheless it very surely is borrowed into Tibetan from Indic kavaca, armor, coat of mail (if in doubt, check your Mahāvyutpatti no. 6072).

We do know of some usages of ya-lad in Bon literature, including an important Bon tantra, the Gsang-ba Bsen-thub, revealed by Shenchen Luga in 1017 CE. We know it is a rather archaic word as it is used a few times in Old Tibetan texts from Dunhuang. In general we may say it has two usages (a third usage meaning a very high number will be left aside for now). When we encounter it, it is very likely to mean armor, but could also have an architectural meaning (more on that soon). A quick search of the Old Tibetan texts in OTDO will reveal a couple of examples of usage. These are difficult texts, but in one of them at least it is very clear it means some kind of armor, since it is used in tandem with go-cha (here spelled go-ca). 

Pelliot tibetain 239, click to enlarge.
Can you see the word ya-lad (ཡ་ལད་)
near the end of line 4?

• We have to wonder if this word suits our method, since the 2nd syllable has what might seem to be a valid Tibetan etymology. I’ve considered this possibility and dismissed it in an appendix (see below).

We can be satisfied that it is old and that it means body armor. However, there is one and only one example to the best of my knowledge where it is used with an architectural meaning. We find this in the Statements of Ba, even though the same history book has other examples where it without any doubt refers to armor. 

The early usages in the Dunhuang texts and in the Statements of Ba deserve close study, but for now it would only be a distraction as we are quite sure it means armor, most likely metal armor with elements of chain mail. And it is for now enough to know that it is old without knowing just how old. It was definitely used in the 10th century, and likely in the early 9th, and it kept being used with a degree of regularity up until the age of Mongol conquests, into the 13th century after which it was brought back to life now and then just for fun and poetry.

Now at last I should introduce with a dramatic drum roll the foreign word candidate behind the Tibetan ya-lad. Very ancient Iranian language already has a word zrādha, at some later point borrowed into Arabic in the form zarad, with the meaning of chain mail armour. The r > l shift is the well known lamdacism (occurring, for instance, in Turkic languages, as M.W. tells me). Lallation is another term for it (it obviously means 'L'-ifying what is other than 'L'). The consonantal shift z > y will find an explanation, even if I won’t offer one myself. Time will tell if these terms of identical meaning will fully pass the test and be accepted by the savants as being, ultimately, one and the same. I have confidence.

Dmu-yad

The other word will not require too much discussion. One way it differs from ya-lad is that it is a term exclusively in use in Bon religious contexts as far as I am aware. But it has enough usage in those texts to prove it is of pre-Mongol era currency. Also, while ya-lad is witnessed in a large number of lexical sourcebooks, only a couple of specialized Bon vocabularies list the word dmu-yad.

In Chapter Six of Martin’s book, the most renowned Treasure Revealer (Tertön) of Bon scripture by the name of Shenchen Luga tells his own story. Here dmu-yad was translated as “spiritual power.” Shenchen speaks of the dmu-yad appearing to him, and of it pouring inside of himself when he came face-to-face with a divinity. But the most illuminating passage is this one (my quote is modified for easier reading):

When I reached my thirteenth year, my father said, "You and Gekhö run along and go pick white gentian and tinder." 

So we went. I left Gekhö to pick gentian while I went to find tinder in a further valley, where a voice spoke from the sky saying, "Shen Luga, shall I bestow the spiritual power of Bon?" The place where I stood shook, and a crevice in the rock was filled with liquid. Thinking this to be the spiritual power, I kept it secret even from my parents. (pp. 57-58)

In my present understanding, this experience signaled his attainment of siddhi, of supernatural powers and spiritual illumination. It presaged his future career as a scriptural treasure revealer. An alternative version of the story says the liquid in the rock was ghee, the clarified butter used in Indian kitchens. Regardless of which liquid it might have been it represented elixir, a goal and product of internal alchemy.

Some might need to learn these three Sanskrit words momentarily: sādhana, siddhi, and siddha.* Simply put, sādhana means the Work of progressing in spiritual practice. Siddhi means an ultimate or not-quite-so-ultimate attainment or fulfillment that results from that Work. Siddha means the one who has attained the goal or goals of that Work. All three come from the same Sanskrit verbal root that means to strive for an aim or simply to do the work.

(*Tibetanists may need to see the words in Tibetan: སྒྲུབ་ཐབས་, དངོས་གྲུབ་, and གྲུབ་ཐོབ་.)

Almost all the Bon glossaries basically agree on four meanings of dmu-yad. According to the Pasar dictionary (but simplified for clarity) they are [1] ghee, [2] nutritive essence, [3] nectar (amṛta), and [4] spiritual attainment (siddhi).

The Namdak glossary gives only the last two meanings: ‘siddhi, elixir and so on,’ and I believe these two meanings have to be regarded as the primary ones. 

• Although these glossaries don’t mention it, and it doesn’t lead us anywhere of significance, we have to admit that there are rare instances in which dmu-yad refers to a particularly luxurious type of cushioning material. See Namdak’s history for an instance.

Before going on to name the foreign candidate, I should first eliminate one possibility that is likely to occur to many. But first observe that the yad syllable doesn’t suggest any Tibetan meaning (there is the reduplicative yad-yud, also in the form yad-de-yud-de — it is obviously formed on the basis of yud, not yad, which is why I believe it can be disregarded — but it indicates something of minimalized importance, so no way it fits here). It is rather the first syllable dmu that people are likely to take for Zhangzhung language, although I believe it is in fact a Tibetan word used in Tibetan-language contexts where it is meant to be taken as Tibetan. 

In an earlier blog I’ve argued how the Tibetan dmu (sometimes rmu or just mu) is perhaps the most widely shared Tibeto-Burman word for sky (often with the initial 'd' pronounced), although in Tibetan literary language it has been pushed to one side (often meaning horizon or boundary) replaced in common usage by the words gnam and nam-mkha'. See “Nam, an Ancient Word for Sky.”

It is true that the syllable mu / dmu is very commonly the Zhangzhung word for sky. This we do not deny. However, if we look at it together with the 2nd syllable yad, we are faced with the problem that this syllable is not registered in Zhangzhung language. So we revert back to our initial methodology and conclude that the entire word is an import even though the earlier syllable looks etymologizable, indicating that we are allowed to take this as a Tibetanization (or even, I suppose, Zhangzhungization). This frees us to look for a foreign word that sounds like muyad.

I think I have found a word that fits the bill quite well in its sound, and well enough in  its meaning.  Evidently of Persian origins, it has spread to other languages of the Middle East, particularly Arabic. Although more familiar to the world as a personal name, it is also a word with a meaning.

I’m talking about mu'yad. It is probably best known to the world at large as a proper name Muayad (with many variant spellings). According to one Persian dictionary source: مؤايدة muʼāyadat (v.n. 3 of ايد): ‘Strengthening, infusing fresh vigour, assisting.’  The inner fortification meaning at least suits the primary usages of dmu-yad to some degree.

I won’t say I’m entirely convinced by these suggestions of Persianate origins, and this being so I’d hardly expect conviction from you, my readers. I do think I’ve uncovered some probable connections worthy of discussion. One thing we might notice is that several of our known examples have a final syllable that starts with a single initial consonant followed by -ad. One that I haven’t mentioned is the early term ya-gad, that means step or footstool or, in architectural contexts, something like a plinth. If this is a foreign word as it seems to be, where did it come from? This discussion is by no means over, it’s really just getting started.

Writings on the web

Ya-lad was mentioned in a Tibeto-logic blog of 2017, “Translator Trip-Ups 3 - Words.” 

Note also “Turkish and Mongolian Loanwords.”

Specifically on the Turkic word thu-lum, see “Great Balls of Iron.”

“Bagel, Baklava and Bag-leb.” Bag-leb is another foreign loan that gave us the ordinary Tibetan word for ‘bread’ although this likely happened only a couple of centuries ago, and both syllables do oddly seem capable of Tibetan-internal etymology.

“Book Arts, Consecration and Letters” mentions Tibetan deb-ther, and its deep connections to ancient Greek (even Sumerian), and the disease we know as diphtheria. As far as Tibet is concerned, we only need to go back to the Mongol era. In the shortened form deb, this is now the common Tibetan word for the book format most in use in the modern world until recently, the kind bound in signatures. Traditional Tibetan book formats had, and continue to have, other names.

One Secret of the Seals begins with one of my earlier formations of the method, then finds Aramaic origins for kha-tham, a word for seal that appears in a Zhijé manuscript scribed in mid-13th-century Tibet.

For the Tibetan and Zhangzhung dictionaries that have entries for one or both words, see “Tibetan Vocabulary” and “Zhangzhung Dictionary.”

°

Writings on paper and PDFs

• Note: I tried to include a few of the more recent essays on Tibeto-Iranian relations by way of supplying more general background within which the borrowings would have taken place. Check their bibliographies for earlier studies not listed here, although the fascinating comparative cultural studies of Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (1854-1933) deserve much more attention than they ever have gotten. More on that another time.

Anonymous, Gsar-rnyed Byung-ba’i Spu-rgyal Bod-kyi Dmag-khrims Yi-ge, ed. by Pa-tshab Pa-sangs-dbang-’dus, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 2017).

At p. 20, line no. 86, you can see the word ya-lad. This imperial period military law code was mentioned in a Tibeto-logic blog from five years ago (click here to go there). John Bellezza’s Besting the Best, discusses its provenance (at p. 134) and translates large parts of it, an impressive accomplishment given its high level of difficulty.

H.W. Bailey, Dictionary of Khotan Saka, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 1979), at p. 21, where a number of forms of the Persian word for armor are given, including the loanword srah in Armenian.

Pavel V. Basharin, “Iranian Loanwords for Weapons in Uralic Languages,” contained in: Amin Shayeste Doust, Dādestān ī Dênīg: Festschrift for Mahmoud Jaafari-Dehaghi, Farhang Moaser (Teheran 2022), pp. 37-62. 

On p. 46, we see that Khanti, a language of the Uralic family, borrowed its word tă̹γ̭ər, ‘chain mail’ (< *saγɜrɜ) from Middle Iranian *zγar, ‘armour.’ Here we see an initial consonant shift z > t, and not the z > y shift we might be looking for.

Christopher I. Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, Princeton University Press (Princeton 1987), particularly pp. 109-110 and 185, on use of Tibetan armor (by a Türgesh leader), and Tang Chinese sources on Tibetan chain mail armor in the early 8th century.

John Vincent Bellezza, Besting the Best: Warriors and Warfare in the Cultural and Religious Traditions of Tibet, Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini 2020), with ya-lad mentioned on pp. 117, 146, 163.

Joanna Bialek, “When Mithra Came as Rain on the Tibetan Plateau: A New Interpretation of an Old Tibetan Topos,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. 169, no. 1 (2019), pp. 141-153.  Zoroastrian set phrases detected in the Old Tibetan Chronicles mediated by Sogdian Buddhist literature.

W. South Coblin, “A Note on Tibetan Mu,” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 166-168. 

This is about the ancient Tibetan (and proto-Tibeto-Burman) word for ‘sky’ in the forms of mu, dmu, rmu and more rarely smu. For still more on this widespread Himalayan sky word, see the STEDT database #2473 PTB *r-məw SKY / HEAVENS / CLOUDS. In more recent Tibetan literature, dmu is more likely to mean the furthermost horizons of the sky rather than the sky itself.

Matteo Compareti, “Iranian Elements in Kasmîr and Tibet: Sasanian and Sogdian Borrowings in Kashmiri and Tibetan Art,” Transoxania, vol. 14 (August 2009), in about 18 pages [online publication].

Goutam Das, “Influence of Persian Identity on Tibetan Culture,” contained in: Tseten Namgyal, ed., A Copter Approach: The Trans Himalayan Tibet, History, Language and Literature (Traditional & Contemporary), Manakin Press (New Delhi 2016), vol. 1, pp. 219-235. 

This is an effort to cover the entire field of Tibeto-Persian connections of various types throughout history, with Bon Religion holding a prominent place in the discussion.

A.H. Francke, A Lower Ladakhi Version of the Kesar Saga: Tibetan Text, English Abstract of Contents, Notes and Vocabularies; and Appendices, Asian Educational Services (New Delhi 2000), first published in 1905-1941. See particularly the vocabulary entries for pho-lad with meaning iron on p. 349.

Daniel Haneberg, “Die sinesischen, indischen und tibetischen Gesandtschaften am Hofe Nuschirwans,” Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 1, no. 2 (1837), pp. 185-204.  Tibetan tribute delivered together with a letter to Sassanian Emperor Khosrow I included armor and shields. Amazing to contemplate, since this would have happened in the 6th century CE. I hope someone will delve into this more.

Anton Kogan, “On Possible Dardic and Burushaski Influence on Some Northwestern Tibetan Dialects,” Journal of Language Relationship, vol. 17, no. 4 (2019), pp. 263-284. 

This helps in thinking about possible routes of transmission from Persia to Tibetan realms, although Amdo in Tibet’s northeast is also entirely possible (via Sogdian or Khotan Saka). It also raises the possibility that Iranic language speakers, absorbed into the Tibet of Imperial Era, could have brought vocabulary items along with them.

_____, “Towards the Reconstruction of Language Contact in the Pre-Tibetan Upper Indus Region,” Journal of Language Relationship, vol. 19, no. 3 (2021), pp. 153-165. Around thirty Zhangzhung words are here identified as Indo-Iranian in their origins.

Per Kværne et al., Drenpa’s Proclamation: The Rise and Decline of the Bön Religion in Tibet, Vajra Books (Kathmandu 2023), in 656 pages, but see especially p. 170 note 419. This is a full translation, with text edition and notes, of a never-before-translated 12th-century history of Bön composed by an anonymous Tibetan author.

Per Kværne, “Dualism in Tibetan Cosmogonic Myths and the Question of Iranian Influence,” contained in: Christopher I. Beckwith, ed., Silver on Lapis: Tibetan Literary Culture and History, The Tibet Society (Bloomington 1987), pp. 163-174. Available online.

Donald J. LaRocca, Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York 2006). 

This is of the best book for seeing and knowing more about Tibetan military equipment and its history. There is a vocabulary entry for ya-lad at p. 271. Of particular interest is the concept of four mirrors type of armor known in both Persian- and Tibetan-language expressions (see p. 126).

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,’ contained in: Hartmut Walravens, ed., Sino-Tibetan Studies: Selected Papers on the Art, Folklore History, Linguistics and Prehistory of Sciences in China and Tibet, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-643. I use an old photocopy of the original publication in the journal T'oung Pao, vol. 17 (1916), pp. 403-552 (for the Persian loans, see pp. 474-483). This is the classic study on pre-modern Tibetan words of foreign origins. The Persian-donated Tibetan terms he discusses I’ll list here (for variant spellings, go to the source publication):  

gur-gum, zi-ra, ba-dam, se-rag dur-sman, dal-ci-ni, kram, 'a-lu ba-ka-ra, 'a-lu, 'a-lu-ca, cob-ci-ni, zar-babs, sag-lad, kim-khab, tsa-dar, sag-ri, pi-shi, pho-lad, ta-ba, dig, ta-ra-tse, nal, sang-gi-ka, tambu-ra, sur-na, kab-sha, dur-bin, sang-gin, phugs-ta, pe-ban, po-la, pai-kham-ba, deb-ther, phe-rang, phya-ther.

Boris A. Litvinsky, “Armor ii. in Eastern Iran,” Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, entry last updated on August 12, 2000:  

“In the Avesta, the term for armor is zrāδa- (armor, breastplate). The etymology of the word is presumably connected with Old Iranian *zar- “to cover” (cf. modern Ossetic zğær, oesqoer ‘coat of mail,’ ‘chain mail,’‘armor,’ ‘metal’). Similar terms are found in other Middle Iranian languages, such as Sogdian and Khwarazmian, and in modern languages like Pashto and Ormuri.”

Dan Martin, tr., A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet: An Expanded Version of the Dharma’s Origins Made by the Learned Scholar Deyu, The Library of Tibetan Classics series no. 32, Wisdom Publications (Somerville 2022). 

We call this for short the “long Deyu” even though the work is a post-1261 CE anonymous compilation framed as a commentary on a verse work. It was this verse work alone, dating from nearly a century earlier, that was composed by the Zhijé figure named Deyu. We only recently learned of yet a third distinct history written as commentary on those verses. See the blog entry of April 18, 2023: 

“Eye Spoon to Open up Historical Vision.”

Persian language origins are suggested for [1] dom with meaning of tail (or tassel) in both Tibetan and Persian (p. 528 note 1952), [2] zar meaning gold in Persian, so the Tibetan zar likely has the same meaning (p. 536 note 1995), and [3] bi-ci (also bi-ji) in Tibetan deriving from Persian bijishk or some related term in an Iranic language (p. 588 note 2261, with reference to a 1979 essay of Christopher I. Beckwith).

_____, Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, Brill (Leiden 2001), particularly p. 59.

Lopon Tenzin Namdak, Rgyal Gshen Rnam-thar — The Life of Lord Gshen-rab, "excerpted from original texts by Tenzin Namdak," Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre (New Delhi 1971), in 2 volumes, page numbers consecutive. 

The vocabulary in the back of the book, at p. 899, has this entry: dmu yad / dngos grub / bdud rtsi sogs.

_____, Snga-rabs Bod-kyi Byung-ba Brjod-pa’i ’Bel-gtam Lung-gi Snying-po — A Study of Early History of Tibet According to Bon Tradition (New Delhi 1997), p. 51: 

dar dkar gyi yol ba bres / dmu yad kyi gdan bting / gser gur gyi nang du bcug nas.... 

Here in this passage about Gnya’-khri-btsan-po, the dmu-yad appears to be some kind of material used as a cushion (reference thanks to Kalsang N. Gurung).

Pasar Tsultrim Tenzin, Changru Tritsuk Namdak Nyima, Gatsa Lodroe Rabsal, A Lexicon of Zhangzhung and Bonpo Terms, Senri Ethnological Reports no. 76, National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka 2008), with entries for both dmu-yad and ya-lad. The entry for dmu-yad is on p. 194. Other such dictionaries given the same set of four meanings, but without the English translations you see here:

དམུ་ཡད།  1. མར་ཁུ། liquid butter, ghee. 2. ཟས་བཅུད། the essence of food, the excellent taste of food, nourishment, vitamins. 3.  བདུད་རྩི། nectar, ambrosia, amrita. 4. དངོས་གྲུབ། realisation, attainment, spiritual attainment, magicial [!] powers.

Volker Rybatzki, “Turkic Words for Steel and Cast Iron,” Turkic Languages, vol. 3 (1999), pp. 56-86, particularly pp. 60-63. Bolat is one of four distinct Turkic terms for steel, and it seems to have come into use only in the 13th or 14th century, as a borrowing from New Persian. Some believe Persian got it from an Indic language. For Tibetan usages, see the listing of Francke’s book, above, as well as Appendix One, below.

D.D.Y. Shapira, “Irano-Arabica: Contamination and Popular Etymology. Notes on the Persian and Arabic Lexicons (with References to Aramaic, Hebrew and Turkic),” Xristianskij Vostok [Christian East], vol. 5, no. 6 (2009), pp. 151-183, at pp. 151-152. 

It was while reading this that the foreign candidate behind the Tibetan word ya-lad first dawned on me.

R.A. Stein, “Tibetica Antiqua III: A propos du mot gcug-lag et de la religion indigéne,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient, vol. 74 (1985), pp. 83-133, at p. 108 note 58 (English trans., p. 154). 

Stein was probably the first and only person to mention both of our two words together in the same sentence, suggesting that the second syllable of one (yad) is a contracted form of the other (ya-lad). I think it is amazing that he came up with the idea even when I don’t believe it. A one-syllable contraction of ya-lad would be yal rather than yad — compare ra-gan, brass, in compounds reduced to rag, as in rag-dung, trumpet (lit., brass conch).

Heather Stoddard, “The Lexicon of Zhangzhung and Bonpo Terms: Some Aspects of Vocabulary in Relation to Material Culture and the Persian World,” contained in: Donatella Rossi & Samten G. Karmay, eds., Bon, the Everlasting Religion of Tibet: Tibetan Studies in Honour of Professor David L. Snellgrove, special issue of East and West, vol. 59, nos. 1-4 (December 2009), pp. 245-265. 

David Templeman, “Internal Illumination: Possible Iranian Influences on Tibetan Tantric Culture,” conference presentation of 1998. I’m not sure if it was entirely published. 

_____, “Iranian Themes in Tibetan Tantric Culture: The Ḍākinī,” contained in: Henk Blezer, ed., Religion & Secular Culture in Tibet (Tibetan Studies II), Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 113-127.

F.W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part II: Documents, Royal Asiatic Society (London 1951). See pp. 439-440 for a brief Old Tibetan document written on wood listing armor supplied to variously named Tibetan personnel. The word ya-lad is repeated several times.

Giuseppe Tucci, “Iran et Tibet,” Acta Iranica, series 1, vol. 1 (1974), pp. 299-306.  

This early work is significant for us right now because of a paragraph or two on Persian loanwords in Tibetan on p. 301. I believe his chief example, deb-ther, a word for book, was introduced to Tibetan by Mongols while having its ultimate origins more in the Greek speaking world than anywhere else. The only other example he gives is kur-kum,* Tibetan for saffron, but even if Persian may have been the donor, the word has very ancient Assyrian roots. See Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, “Central Asian Mélange: Early Tibetan Medicine from Dunhuang,” contained in: Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, eds., Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, Reichert Verlag (Wiesbaden 2012), pp. 53-60, at p. 57, for a better discussion showing its borrowings into several languages subsequent to its  very probably Akkadian origins.

(*Actually gur-gum is the more usual spelling, although gur-kum does occur and might be earlier.) 

§   §   §

Appendix One

Showing how the syllable lad in ya-lad doesn’t actually have a workable Tibetan-language etymology (but see no. 3):

I searched various databases and digital lexicons for Tibetan words with second-syllable lad and came up with three varieties:

1. 

Although recent loans, they are both said by Laufer to derive from Persian in the original 1916 publication of his “Loan-Words,” just as they had been already in Jäschke’s dictionary:

PHO LAD — steel. LW, p. 479. Bolad is a proper name in the Turkic-Persian realms (including Mongolia) and it has the meaning of steel. One problem with this and the following is that we are not sure if these terms gained much currency in the Tibetan realm and at what time. This word is actually used in Ladakhi version of the Gesar Epic (see Francke’s book), as the material used for his bow (and also his axe). For numerous examples of borrowings into many languages, including Tibetan, see Rybatzki’s essay listed above.

SAG LAD — broadcloth. LW, p. 477. For offerings from Mike Walter on this word, see Appendix Two.

 

2. 

This example seems weird to me, since it’s in a modern dictionary, and looks so close to Semitic walid/yeled, ‘child.’ It also must be a borrowing, although I suspect it would be a very recent one.

A LAD — phru gu. child.

 

3. 

In the following examples lad appear to be a genuinely Tibetan syllable in word-final position, and this deserves attention. Here it is a Tibetan verb signifying some kind of weakening or deterioration of something that had been in good shape (it is related to another verb slod). Both examples have entries in the Btsan-lha dictionary, although neither one is of common occurrence:

SGRIG LAD — nyams zhan du song ba'am nang rul byung ba.

NYAMS LAD — nyams chag. 

After some consideration, it seems impossible to accommodate this meaning with the known meaning of the entire word ya-lad, so we put the possibility aside without forgetting about it.

§   §   §

Appendix Two

This appendix is entirely from Michael Walter, an unmodified version of his email transmission of December 6, 2024.

I believe I’ve solved sag lad: 

Observations:

Tibetan /g/ must serve to transcribe a number of possible velar sounds, in particular in a coda (a closed syllable, such as VC, CVC, CVCC). These include, depending on the language, /k/, /g/, /kh/, /gh/, /q/, /gh/. 

Tibetan V /a/ may stand for /u/ or /o/, as all three are “back vowels” (pronounced in the back of the throat, with the tongue raised). This is especially likely if the /u/ of the loan word is pronounced in a flat manner, sounding more like “ah” (the schwa), as in but, than the “long” /u/ in cute. Both Indic and Iranian languages have short-a vowels with this general pronunciation.

This is all the almost-linguistic analysis I’m going to do for what follows, because a) I’m not a linguist, and b) We remain ignorant of the donor language for sag lad. In addition, we must not posit a “standard” form of any language when dealing with such old data. That means that we are making assumptions about the values of vowels in languages which have been preserved in scripts ill-fitted to give us detailed data concerning those values. And, dialects and special registers of languages (i.e., Chos Skad) may contain their own vocabulary for certain categories of words. Finally, and most importantly, we don’t yet know how many intermediary languages were involved in transmitting this term, and how this affected both its phonetic and semantic structures. As time went on, as is quite usual, the term came to have several referents. It is interesting to consider that, as with Paisley, Jersey, Denim, etc., the Tibetans may have been told that this material is “Saqlat”, i.e., from the Turkish city 

To pare down possible origins of sag lad, we can remove Sanskrit, Mongolian and Arabic as potential donors. The three following sources provide us with the evidence necessary to put forward a plausible explanation.

1.

Habib.2003 "Textile terms in Medieval Indian Persian texts," 543. (Several diacritics here need to be corrected.)

“90. suqlãt, suqarlãt. Qawwãs, early 14th century, defines suqarlãt, suqlãt and suqlätün, as woollen cloth of Firang (Europe). The Ā’īn, I, 110a, puts suqlãt of Rum (Turkey), Firang (Europe) and Portugal, under woollen stuffs, priced at Rs.lYi to 4 muhrs per yard. In its account of Kashmir, it is stated (ibid., I, 564) that suqlãt (so spelt) was made there "of wool, very soft.”

“Bahãr-i 'Ajam, s.v. suqarlãt, suqlãt, has an interesting notice of it: "well known cloth of wool, which is woven in Firang. In the Qâmus, siqlãt (is cloth that) was thrown over the litter carrying women... It is not known whether it is a Persian word or of some other language. Some say, had it been Persian it should have been with a gh, not q, and that Saqlätün is a city in Turkey (Rūm), where they weave suqlãt and other kinds of cloth. Some say, black and blue cloth comes from that city ... It seems that Saqlātün may in reality be suqlät-gün ["like suqlãt"], since in olden times blue was the colour of suqlãt and, then omitting the g, they have made it suqlätün. This is just speculation; it is not found in [previous] dictionaries …”

2.

Katsikadeli.2017 "Jewish Terminologies for Fabrics and Garments in Late Antiquity : A Linguistic Survey Based on the Mishnah and the Talmuds,"154n.

“Akkadian saqqu ‘sack (cloth)’, ‘cloth of goat-hair, sack’, Hebrew saq ‘sack (cloth)’, Aramaic š-q (~ Gr. sákkos ‘cloth of goat-hair, sack’).”

The etymology of a term which eventually meant ”cloth” or “sackcloth” seems to begin here.

3.

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD.2017. Passage cited is on p. 59 in the entry by Salvatore Gaspa:

“sāgu.  This term has been interpreted as a name for ‘sack’ and for a garment. In Neo-Assyrian texts it probably represents the Assyrian counterpart of the Neo-Babylonian saqqu, a designation for a sack and a garment, and the Aramaic saq, saqqā, analogously meaning ‘sack’ and ‘sack-cloth’.179 In light of the meaning of the word, it is clear that this garment was made with the coarse cloth of sacks. In Assyria, the occupation dealing with the production or trade of these garments was called ša sāgātēšu. In light of a letter dealing with Aramean troops going on a campaign, it seems that sāgus were a component of travel equipment along with leather bags, sandals, food and oil.181 The word has long been considered a 1st-millennium textile term in the Assyrian dialect. However, the fact that the same word also occurs in Middle Assyrian administrative documents from Assur demonstrates that it was already known in the 2nd millennium BC.”

 

•

Postscript (December 12-15, 2024)

Now that I’ve heard back from my good friend David Shulman it seems I will have to change my mind about the Persian origins theory. Looking at it again, I see every reason to regard mu'yad as inherently and natively Arabic and possibly more broadly Semitic.  David wrote:

There is a bona-fide Arabic root, ayyada, which means “to strengthen, to endorse, to corroborate,” and so on. Mu'ayyad is the present passive participle, thus meaning “strengthened” or maybe just “strong” or maybe “supported.” I don’t think it can mean “prosperous.” The name of course is there in Persian as well, but I doubt that it’s of Iranian origin. I am not sure if ayyada has cognate roots in the Semitic languages. There is a verbal noun, ta'yyīd, “strengthening.” that would tend to make me think that the root is good Arabic.

Another thing, I was doing a local word-search through an out-of-print book for the word armor when I uncovered a gem. Who would have thought to find a relevant word in Old Irish?  The word — errad — means armor. A later spelling might be erredh. A quick search of Googlebooks turned up several published sources. Someone should look into this and get back with us. Help us out here.