Nam, an Ancient Word for Sky

When you hear the word shaman [1] what does it evoke, and [2] where do you think the word came from? Ignoring the first, something only you can answer, and going on to the second, something we are supposed to agree upon by now — it isn’t a borrowing but a local Siberian (Evenki or some other kind of Tungusic) term with one or another internal etymology that makes some kind of sense (this last part of the puzzle not at all settled or solved yet as far as I can tell).

In Fuente’s review of a recent booklet on the subject, he makes a clear plea for the nativist theory of the origins of the word shaman as against the Indological theory, the one that derives it from Sanskrit śramaṇa. To simplify Fuente’s argument, if we discover that Portuguese is employing a Hungarian borrowing in its word for car, then we shouldn’t settle for that, but look into the other languages that would have passed the word along. We should not assume that a Hungarian motorist airdropped directly into Portugal and spread the word around. Fuentes says that those who defend the Indic origins of shaman haven’t done their homework on intermediaries, and since no mediating language terms have stepped forward to help out over the years that’s good reason to drop the whole idea about its Sanskrit derivation. 

Well, okay... If you reflect on it a bit, in long bygone centuries Indian Buddhists and Siberian Tungus were just too far apart to comfortably exchange vocabulary as if they were sharing an apple. The Buddhists in the geographical regions between them, says Fuente, tended to translate Buddhist terms like this into their own languages for the most part (དགེ་སྦྱོང་ / ‘Gejong’ in Tibetan, is an example I could have offered to help his case). I’ll have more to say on that below.

And then, a more convincing argument I think, there is also the uncomfortable fact that — given Indian śramaṇas are, like shamans, human beings of a certain respected status — they are, after all is said and thought about, two quite distinct types of human beings, following professions with scarce similarities. Seeing one doesn’t make you think of the other.  Their ways of acting, their ritual activities, their modes of dress, their aims in life? Finding resemblances is just too tough. In India, the śramaṇas, both the Buddhists and pre-Buddhists who went by that name, renounced home and worldly business to wander and live out their lives as hermits in the wilderness. Tungusic shamans did nothing of the sort. Well, even if their pre-shaman phase known as ‘shaman sickness’ might have meant a temporary (renunciatory ?) isolation, they spent the rest of their careers entangled in village and household life (see for instance Meng), as highly valued lay members of their communities.

I would say that two things unite all eastern Eurasian shamans (and I’ll go on to use that term as if it is a good one). One of these is their veneration of the sacred sky. That sacred sky may be peopled by divinity-like figures, while the sky itself would be the more sacred object. The other is the role of the shamans themselves. Likely elected by the sacred sky, they undergo a crisis period that may include isolation in a wild and remote setting before undertaking their socially significant roles of presiding over healing, divination, crisis management, life-bringing, and funerary rites. Making such generalizations is a danger and difficult, but my aim is just to have a simple staging ground for what I have to say about the sacred sky.

I believe there is an argument to be made for nam (and gnam) being the more ancient Tibetan word for sky. By ancient, we mean the period preceding the early 7th-century (?) introduction of Buddhism and extending into the indefinite past. I mean to say it is more ancient than the bisyllabic nam-mkha’ that over time became the most-used word for both sky and [the more scientific or philosophical] space.  (But not heaven so much, for that we have other words.)

What is more, the same word of same or very nearly identical meaning shows up in other languages outside, even far outside, the Tibeto-sphere as ordinarily conceived. This makes it particularly fascinating to contemplate just how far back the connection might go, along with the related question of how it traveled from one place to the other, if that is indeed what happened. It is here that I think I have something to report that might impress those who are interested.

When we search through the online database of Old Tibetan texts called OTDO, it shows zero results for "nam-mkha’.” The reason is that in those days it was spelled “nam-ka,” with about 30 occurrences including a few instances of “gnam ka.” At the same time there are about a dozen occurrences of “mkha'” (and “mka'”  not even once).

By contrast gnam occurs over 250 times, and occurrences of “nam” seem equally many, just that it frequently forms part of a proper name making it difficult to give an exact count.

What we can probably conclude from this is that the syllable mkha' that is so familiar to us now is represented by ka in Old Tibetan, and as such it is a borrowing of Sanskrit kha. After Buddhist scriptures entered Tibet, the native syllable [g]nam got transformed into a compound incorporating the Indic word: Tibetan nam meaning sky plus Indic-derived [m]kha[’] meaning sky equals nam-mkha' (a synonym compound) meaning sky. Why not just use one or the other? Why both together? The Tibetan nam was needed, at least at first, for its recognition value even though its non-Buddhist associations were no longer wanted, explaining why it had to be dashed together with the Indic term to make a new hybrid term twice as lengthy as necessary. It was regarded important to dissociate Buddhist sky/space from earlier notions of sky’s meanings, and this because that pre-Buddhist notion must have figured powerfully in Tibet-local ideas, ideas that the Buddhists found to be at variance with or even in opposition with their own.

You may or may not agree with my proposed argument, but please notice that there is another part to it, which is that nam held, and in some degree continued to hold, associations with a religiously significant concept of sky by both Tibetans and their more and less distant neighbors.*

(*See Kvaerne, where early Bon sources inform us that Turco-Mongolic peoples worship the ‘sky’ — gnam is the Tibetan word they choose to translate tengri and the like, including divine appointment of rulers. Look, too, at the Tibetan banknotes from the first half of the 20th century with their inscription that begins with gnam bskos, ‘sky appointed.’)

We ought to say, out of a sense of duty if nothing else, that Tibetan has several terms that might be rendered as ‘sky.’ They are not really synonyms, as their usage can be quite different. To give two examples: I would say that [1] mtho-ris, etymologizable as lofty region, is better translated by heaven (it’s often used to translate Skt. svarga, and both are mostly used for a/the celestial dwelling place of divine beings) and [2] bar-snang as atmosphere (it’s used to translate Skt. antarikṣa, and both mean a middling level of space or sky, evidently a space that lets the light shine through it if we take the syllable snang seriously). I think mtho-ris and bar-snang can be left out of our discussion for the time being. And I’d like to save words like firmament, [expanse of] space, and aether with the idea they might prove useful for one or another word in one context or another. I trust you aren’t looking forward to a quick resolution, since I’m not aiming to bring thinking to an end today. I not only think there were phases in the historical gerrymandering of meanings and definitions, I assume this. The truth is we’re still doing it. Doesn’t it sound a touch more poetic if you say the heavens when you just mean the sky?

One problem is that choosing a word like firmament would immediately implicate strong Judaeo-Christian associations that should not be assumed.  Not everyone agrees that the word used in Genesis ought to be translated as firmament or vault (as a sphere or dome of fixed stars), some preferring to translate it in a manner that emphasizes spatiality rather than solidity: as expanse. And notice that this expanse is, unlike all the other creation events, not blessed by the words “and it was good.” It implicates a division between the upper and lower waters, a strongly Middle Eastern concept since very ancient times. In Mesopotamia the abzu or apsu* is a ritual tank that has to combine the water from the sky with the water from under the ground (from springs or perhaps cisterns). In fact, some are of the belief that the Hebrew word shamayim contains in itself the word for waters, mayim, and this word contains in itself a dual ending implying that at one time two types of waters were being kept in mind. Although hardly the first to have this strange idea, Milton located a watery orb beyond the fixed stars, as if the least crack in heaven’s vault would result in our instant inundation. Well, I guess you get my point that while we may never get to the bottom of all this, let alone to the top, there are good reasons to be cautious about using words like firmament or atmosphere to translate classical Tibetan. The first sounds Biblical, while the second sounds like the nightly weather report.

(*Am I the only one who sees the Sanskrit word ab for 'water' and the Turkish word su for water in it? [The common Tibetan word is chu.] I hope you won't take me too seriously on this point, but I can’t help seeing what I see, can I?)

I had reasons, not that I think they are 100% solid ones mind you, to choose the word firmament in translating one early Tibetan cosmogony text.  It is part of a very difficult early (at the very least 9th-century) account bearing the title Splitting Off from the Gods of the Firmament,* encased and preserved in a mid-13th-century history. Until near the very end there is no hint of Abhidharma-type Buddhist influence in it, so I presume, given its anchoring in the time of Ralpacan, it's an early post-Buddhist text that preserves a pre-Buddhist narrative on the origins of the Tibetan royal line. That means I’m ready to accept that the lion’s share of it goes back some centuries earlier, even so far as whatever we might mean by ancient times.

(*Based on numerous variants of the title, I reconstructed what I think is the most likely and authentic one Yog-lha Gyes-can, ཡོག་ལྷ་གྱེས་ཅན་. I derive the meaning of yog as being “firmanent” even while being aware of other interpretations, based on my understanding of the context, and for those who require arguments I’ll send you to the book itself.)

Now, to wind this down for now, I think I can say at least one thing I think will be intriguing. The Nenets are a people living close to the arctic circle in Russia. They speak a Uralic, more specifically Samoyedic language. Their word num and Tibetan nam or gnam were and are likely pronounced in an identical manner.* They mean the same thing, sky as part of a larger context that may be defined as shamanic. Not in a philosophical space or religious “heaven” or scientific sense. As to the larger historical picture that could have served as setting for this connection, we can try and hammer this out some time even if we fall short of accomplishing it now. 

(*The medial vowels of both are pronounced “uh” while the ‘g’ in Tibetan gnam is now a silent prescript letter even if it once had a sound.)

I do have a timid suggestion to put forward. It may not finally fly, but it does seem worthwhile to consider it: The shamanic concept of a nam sky-god or sky-as-god, or what I want to call sacred sky, was once so widespread it encompassed both places. The two of them preserved the word with its associated concept while the places in between underwent transformations and substitutions. So one place wouldn’t need to influence the other, nothing had to travel.* Both places stayed right where they were. Or, then again, maybe not. Could it be that one or both peoples migrated (or absorbed migrating populations)?

(*Not to underestimate the distances involved, let’s say about 5000 kms as the crow flies, directly over the skies of Kazakhstan, and landing not all that far to the east of Lapp Land and the shamans of the Saami. Researchers have, based on mitochondrial DNA evidence, postulated that at some undetermined ancient date, Tibetans migrated from northern Asia and Siberia [see Aldenderfer's 2004 essay, p. 20, but there is some more recent literature on this subject that could be taken into account], and in more recent times it is clear that, in around the 4th century CE, the Tuyuhun who would be known as ’A-zha in Tibetan migrated from an area close to the northern borders of North Korea into the heartland of Amdo. The ’A-zha identity eventually faded until they dissolved into the category of Tibetans.)

Our chief alternative is surely the least interesting one, which is to let coincidence be coincidence and regard this fact that a word for ‘sky’ is shared between early Tibetans on one side and the Samoyedic and Ob-Ugric languages on the other as being of no significance at all. That would also be fine with me, the earth is unlikely to shake one way or the other in anticipation of our at-long-last settled thinking. In the meantime, it’s something to think about.

•

Reading list

See also, “The Firmament, Its Opening, & the Milky Way.”

Mark Aldenderfer & Zhang Yinong, “The Prehistory of the Tibetan Plateau to the Seventh Century A.D.: Perspectives and Research from China and the West since 1950,” Journal of World Prehistory, vol. 18, no. 1 (March 2004), pp. 1-55.

James Apple, “The Knot Tied with Space: Notes on a Previously Unidentified Stanza in Buddhist Literature and Its Citation,” Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies, vol. 17 (2016), pp. 167-202.  PDF.  

Well, how *do* you tie space into knots? A question worthy of contemplation. The relevance of this fascinating article right now is in its discussion of Indian and Buddhist usages of space or sky as a philosophical or scientific concept. In all these contexts it is nam-mkha’, not gnam, that is used.

Robert Austerlitz, “Num,” an entry in Encyclopedia.com; click here. There is a different Wikipedia entry “Num (god)” that may repay a quick glance, although I wouldn’t rely on it too much.

Brian Baumann, “By the Power of Eternal Heaven: The Meaning of Tenggeri to the Government of the Pre-Buddhist Mongols,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, vol. 35 (2013), pp. 233-284.  Fascinating discussions of Tengri, sky, and heaven, as well as ecumenicalism  Mongol style.

John Bellezza, Zhang Zhung: Foundations of Civilization in Tibet, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 2008), pp. 307-308, note 312.

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 a different 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.

Arthur Bernard Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folklore, vol. 15, no. 3 (September 29, 1904), pp. 264-315.

A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Kha and Other Words Denoting Zero in Connection with the Metaphysics of Space,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 7 (1933/5), pp. 487-497. 

There are newly revived discussions about the history of the “zero” concept we might talk about another time. I do enjoy witnessing the puzzlement on some innocent people’s faces when I tell them there was no year zero, and that the year before 1 CE was 1 BCE. They seem to take it as a kind of Zen koan when they don’t put on a look of total disbelief. This came up a lot during the media hoopla over the boundary-point between the 2nd and 3rd millennia just 22 years ago. It’s known that zero came to Europe via the Islamic world from India. In India it goes back at least to around 300 CE and, as we now believe, the Bakhshali birchbark manuscript. In it zero was represented by a dot rather than a circle. That’s an interesting point.

Ioan Petru Culianu, “Sky: The Heavens as Heirophany.” Written in 1978, this online resource on encyclopedia.com is bursting with thought-provoking generalities from a History of Religions perspective.

Robert B. Ekvall, Religious Observances in Tibet: Patterns and Function, University of Chicago Press (Chicago 1964).  At pp. 36-38 are some interesting comments on sky in Tibetan culture, particularly this quotable quote about oaths: 

Throughout Tibet, but particularly in Amdo and Khams, one oath, gNam (“sky”), or more impressively, gNam sNGon Po (“the blue sky”), or sometimes, gNam rTag Pa (“sky eternal”), outranks all others as being the most frequent and binding. This is not a Buddhist oath and certainly points back to the heavens or sky as the central, or at least, an important, concept of pre-Buddhistic Tibetan religion.

Dmitri Ermakov, Bo and Bon: Ancient Shamanic Traditions of Siberia and Tibet in Relation to the Teachings of a Central Asian Buddha, Vajra Publications (Kathmandu 2008), in 828 pages. 

This fantastic work offers numerous ideas that merit much more research and discussion. For now I will only point to p. 229, where the suggestion is that primordial religions of Buriat Mongolians and Tibetans shared a special focus on the sky, that they were “essentially the same religion in the very remote past.” The author has his own website: http://www.boandbon.com.

Arnaud Fournet, “The Three Skies of the Indo-Europeans,” Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies, vol. 7, no. 2 (2019), pp. 79-92. An interesting argument in favor of a three-level sky cosmology for the early Indo-Europeans, the topmost being the stars, the intermediate the celestial bodies that change positions in our sky, and lowermost the part where lightning rules. Different sets of gods dwell in each level.

José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente, “Flying with the Shaman Once Again [review of Michale Knüppel, Zur Herkunft der Terminus Šamāne — etymologie-historische Betrachtungen],” International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics, vol. 3 (2021), pp. 301-322. 

There is a definite problem with Fuente’s argument, which is that in fact quite a few intermediaries can be found that might be both temporally and spatially relevant for the possible origins of the term in the Indic śramaṇa. These include 3rd Century Shanshan in Central Asia where the Buddhist term appeared in the form ṣamaṃṇa, while there was an early Chinese word for Buddhist monastics in general 沙門 that may have been pronounced *ṣaimən, derived from Gāndhārī *ṣəmən[ə]. All of these just-mentioned seem to approach our form ‘shaman,’ and indeed could have served as intermediaries during its postulated travels from India through Central Asian and Chinese-speaking realms to Manchuria and Siberia.*

(*I derived all of these forms from a presentation by Diego Loukota entitled “Finding the Missing Nuns of Nuava,” presented at the IABS conference in Seoul in 2022. Most of them could be known, too, by reading Berthold Laufer’s 110-year-old article on the subject.)

Gao Jingyi, “On Etymology of Finnic Term for ‘Sky’,” Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies, vol. 7, no. 2 (2019), pp. 5-10.

This article's thesis, which I wouldn't pretend to judge, is that against all other ideas that have been put forward, the Finnish word for “sky” or taivas, not fitting with other Uralic languages, is best explained as stemming from a quite ancient Sino-Uralic background. The Samoyedic language words for ‘sky’ never even enter into the discussion, so it’s all of questionable relevance. But then again the Samoyedic (etc.) word num doesn’t fit with Uralic languages, either, as far as I’ve been able to learn. You can see some proposed proto-Uralic language reconstructions (like *ilma) with the meaning ‘sky’ HERE. It is of even more interest to see that a more distant language, Khanty, appears to dash a normal Uralic word for ‘sky’ together with the num found in Samoyedic in the name of their sky father (also look here).  If you are feeling adventurous, I could suggest using the search boxes of an online resource for Uralic linguistic data called https://starlingdb.org. It’s especially interesting to search for English “sky” to see what pops up.

Péter Hajdú, The Samoyed Peoples and Languages, Indiana University (Bloomington 1963), at p. 32: 

“According to Nenets concepts, the World was created by the Highest god, Num (Sel'kup: Nom). Num also denotes the concept of ‘sky,’ however, this god rules not only in the sky, but he has also extended his power over the earth. The welfare of men depends on him.”

Jaehee Han, “The Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā and the Sky as a Symbol of Mahāyāna Doctrines and Aspirations,” Religions, vol. 12, article 849 (October 2021), in 19 pages. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100849. 

This article concerns the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā Mahāyānasūtra (འཕགས་པ་ནམ་མཁའ་མཛོད་ཀྱིས་ཞུས་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ། 'Phags pa nam mkha' mdzod kyis zhus pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo).  Tôh. no. 148.  Dergé Kanjur, vol. PA, folios 243r.1-330r.7.  Tr. by Vijayaśīla, Śīlendrabodhi and Ye-shes-sde. Apart from some brief quotations, this text has not survived in an Indic language, but there are two Chinese translations in addition to this Tibetan one.

Per Kvaerne, “Mongols and Khitans in a 14th-Century Tibetan Bonpo Text,” Acta Orientalia Hungarica, vol. 34 (1980), pp. 85-104. This includes much on what I call the sacred sky. For further thinking around the same issues, see Bellezza.

Leonid Lar, “Education of the Shamans of Nenets People: Stages of the Process of Shamanic Initiation at Nenets (Siberia),” posted on January 14, 2004.  www.taraka.pl/education_of_the_shamans. Much recommended.

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), “Splitting Off from the Gods of the Firmament,” on pp. 436-464, and “The Seating Order of Divinities in the Firmament,” on pp. 477-478.

Meng Huiying, et al., “Characteristics of Shamanism of the Tungusic Speaking Peoples,” contained in: Ma Zixia and Meng Huiying, eds., Popular Religion and Shamanism, Brill (Leiden 2011), pp. 374-422, at p. 383:

“Ordinarily, the shaman was the clan doctor, prophet, and conflict manager. The shaman also drove away spirits that sought to menace the lives of individuals and the community. The shaman would indicate the location of good hunting ground. When the available game animals proved scarce it was up to the shaman to find out why. When the clan was faced with a crisis, the shaman would perform ceremonies on behalf of the people.”

A. Perry, “The Myth of the Solid Dome.” An essay in two parts posted on the internet for free download. Reading this discussion might help to convince Tibetanists that a study of sky and space concepts in Tibetan religion is bound to be equally contentious and complex, not intending by this to suggest it would not be worth our while.

G. Prokofjew, “Proto-Asiatic Elements in Ostyak-Samoyed Culture,” American Anthropologist, n.s. vol. 35, no. 1 (January 1933), pp. 131-133. This includes some remarkable photographic documentation.

Hulisani Ramantswana, “Day Two of Creation: Why Is the Rāqīa‘ (Firmament) Not Pronounced Good?” Journal for Semitics, vol. 22, no. 1 (2013), pp. 101-123.

Jean-Paul Roux, “L'Origine céleste de la souveraineté dans les inscriptions paléo-turques des Mongolie et de Sibérie,” contained in: La Regalitá Sacra / The Sacral Kingship, Brill (Leiden 1959), pp. 231-241.

—— “Tängri: Essai sur le ciel-dieu des peuples altaïques,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, vol. 149 (1956), pp. 49-82, 197-230; vol. 150 (1956), pp. 27-54, 173-212.

R.A. Stein, The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought, Stanford University Press (Stanford 1990). The last half of the book is particularly relevant.

Giuseppe Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, p. 719, has a discussion about Tibetan sky terms, but nothing comparable in breadth and depth to Stein’s.

The First King Steps Down from the Sky

A Note to End on for Now

I think it’s worth noticing that the Innermost Treasury (མཛོད་ཕུགས་), the Bon religion’s most primary Abhidharma-like text — the 17-chapter bilingual Tibetan/Zhanghung text dating back more than a millennium at the very least — uses the gnam (གནམ་) form only in its Chapter One.*  The form nam-mkha' (ནམ་མཁའ་) is in fact used once in the opening lines of Chapter One, and twice more later in that chapter. Throughout the later chapters the form nam-mkha'  (ནམ་མཁའ་) is the only one used. I believe this is a further sign, among many, that those later chapters are largely derived from and reproduce Abhidharma (ultimately Indic) rather than natively Tibetan conceptions. Now the Innermost Treasury’s first chapter is taken up by a cosmogony and divine genealogy, both probably genuinely of considerable age, while the remaining chapters 2 through 17 were subsequent additions. There are numerous language clues that something like this is what happened, and these confirm a general impression based on contrasting subject matter.

(*Not all that relevant to our present discussion, still I ought to mention that the corresponding Zhangzhung for gnam is mu-la or dmu [མུ་ལ་ or དམུ་]. Whoever has trouble believing me can go check for themselves by word-searching in the digital version of the text I first made a few decades ago.  The dmu could be one of those Tibetanizing spellings, since prefix letters are rare in real Zhangzhung. Still, it’s interesting that the Tibetan meaning of mu is edge, horizon. Be well advised: it has nothing at all to do with the Lost Continent of Mu.)

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PS (September 24, 2022)

My attention was drawn to a Khanty song Ily Vukhalty Ar about the son of Torum, the god of the sky (num). 

• This forms a bizarre partial parallel up to a point with the Tibetan account of kingship origins, in that the divine son descends to earth from the sky (num) in order to dwell among the dangerous humans and rule them. But instead he takes the form of an awesome bear who is then slain by human hunters.  It starts out similarly, but then takes a very different turn. The myth serves in a different context, instead of dynastic origins, the ritual cult of the bear.

An impressive electric version of the Khanty song, with jawharp accompaniment, by the band H-Ural you can hear here, for the most part in English:  Ily Vukhalty Ar.

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PPS (December 11, 2022) on documentaries

I heartily recommend this short video for some impressions and insights into the Samoyedic (Nganasan) forms of shamanism. Pay close attention, and be assured there are subtitles in English. Go here when you are ready. Tibetans and Tibetanists alike will be shocked or at least surprised by the use of eyeshades in ritual (look here). If the link isn’t working anymore, try doing a video search for “The Shaman (Šamaan).”  For Khanty bear rites, there is this video entitled “The Sons of Torum (Toorumin pojat).” Both of these videos were made by the ethnographic filmmaker Lennart Meri, who took a step down to become president of Estonia.