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| Shagreen on an 18th-c. Turkish dagger kept at the MET |
Today’s guest blog is by Michael Walter.
Concerning sag ri and sag ti
It may be best to begin this brief analysis with entries from a Syriac dictionary published in 1901, the only source I have found that defines both terms that likely lay behind Tibetan sag ti and sag ri. On pages 224 and 262, respectively, we find:
“sakhtīyān … pers. turk.; pers. also sak, leather; properly a tanned skin not cut with a knife”,
and then,
“ṣŭghrī, ṣŭkhrī … turk. ṣaghrī, m., leather made rough, shagreen.”
The dictionary is one of vernacular Syriac dialects from Kurdestan and surrounding areas; their language displays a strong Persian influence. This explains why sakhtīyān, a term in Persian and Urdu, meaning literally “hardness, stiffness, rigidity”, is a metaphorical expression for a sort of leather.
The question is, exactly what sort of leather? The term sakhtīyān vel sim has been used in both the Persian and Turkish tannery industries for some time, likely centuries. In Persian custom, sakhtiīyān refers to a tough, durable leather made from goatskin, often dyed in a colorful manner, while Turkish tanneries advertise their desired sahtiyan as
“a thin, fine leather made from goat or lamb hide, processed in a specific way, and dyed in a vibrant color.” [Voskanyan.2023]
It is generally understood that Turkish sahtiyan derives from the Persian term, and that both are ultimately based on Persian sakht, ‘hard, strong’.
This sort of variation of product does not seem to arise, as far as the term is used today, with ṣaghrī vel sim, which is understood consistently to refer to the leather product shagreen. However, the origin of ṣaghrī is unclear, as it is not attested in truly ancient documents from the Middle East. (We do not know when shagreen began to be produced, but it asserted to have been used in a 2000-year old tomb in Egypt.) If we view the history of the term ṣaghrī, we also find a broad semantic range in its use. For example, in Clauson’s Dictionary of Pre-13th Century Turkic, p. 815, sağrı is defined as “originally ‘raw hide’; thence ‘leather from the hindquarters of a horse’, and thence ‘the hindquarters of a horse’. Clauson then cites later attestations from several Turkic languages and finds further variations in the use of sağrı related to hostlery
Such changes in meaning of a term to fit different applications is an example of semantic extension. In this process, the meaning of a word varies according to the context of its use. The variety of uses of leather, and its animal sources, have resulted in numerous specialized applications of the term, such as those cited above from Clauson. In Clauson we also find (p. 806) an example of sakht used as a pars pro toto substitute for ‘leather’: “sa:xt (sāxt) lw fr. Persian sāxt ‘stirrup leather, horse armour, saddle and bridle ornaments’.” (The variety of identifications here is an indication of a loanword replacement for an earlier variety of terms.)
Another interesting example of the substitution of sa/ākh for ‘leather’ is found in Gharib’s dictionary of Sogdian (p. 350):
“s’γr = sāγ/xr? saddle”. (The symbol γ represents either g or x in Sogdian.)
Because saddles were made of leather, or leather and wood, this is another example of a pars pro toto usage.) In this example, there is also attested in Sogdian sources an endogenous term for ‘saddle’, i.e., pyrδn (asserted to be < *paridāna), which has a cognate in another Iranian language; cf. Gharib, p. 336 and Bailey, “Ariana”, p. 9. The borrowed term likely carries either a nuanced meaning, or is a term of local or dialectical preference, in Sogdian.
The following examples are more speculative, but rest on the understanding that leather is obtained from a number of animals. In Iran and India today, goat’s hide is considered to provide the highest-quality leather. Peoples living in the Steppe continue to depend more upon the hides of cattle, horses and, in shrubby areas, deer. It may be possible to see in the following further examples of semantic extension, these involving replacement of the identification of the animals involved.
There is attested in Mongolia sigir-a, “shank; leg (of animals); hoof”. It has a variant sigere-e, which may simply be an orthographic error, but if it isn’t, it indicates that this word is not an endogenous Mongolian term. See Lessing, p. 702. We also find in Clauson, on the page preceding the citation of sağrı, the term sığır, “large bovine”.
In the above examples, in both Old Uyghur and Mongolian, terms more directly derived from ṣaghrī remain in use: Old Uyghur preserves the meaning sagrı as Pferdeleder (Wilkens, Handwörterbuch, p. 573) as does Mongolian saġari (Lessing, p. 657). (Mongols today create shagreen and have a term for this process, but the term is nothing like /saghri/.) We can see that, in the East and Steppe regions, ṣaghrī has transited from whatever its original referent may have been to that of horse leather, while variants less similar in pronunciation may have variant meanings.
Sağrı, sigir-a, sigere, and sığır do not seem to derive from a common root or stem. However, we can see all four above words, possessing a generally similar morphology, are closely connected with the culture of large, hoofed animals such as horses or cattle.
Because of the variety of spellings involved, these are likely terms from language with the attested form ṣaghrī which eventually arrived in Turkic and Mongolian. An analysis of the movements of such terms is hampered because we do not currently possess attestations of ‘leather’ (or ‘boot’) in Sogdian or Khotanese; cf. Begmatov 2019. To omit a categorical term, while providing numerous specialized derivatives, may be part of a pattern of obscure purpose; cf. Emmerick & Rona-Tas, p. 237.
So, what about the age of sag ri and sag ti?
It is reasonable, though not demonstrable, that the term sag ri was passed to the Tibetans at a time earlier than their contact with Uyghurs. It is certainly intended as a transcription of ṣaghrī, both morphologically and semantically—with regard to leather—but we cannot say that it referred to shagreen until recently. I have not seen any truly ancient Tibetan object described that has shagreen as a component, and sag ri has not to this point been attested in an Old Tibetan passage, according to the present studies.
With regard to sag ti: Its provenance seems not as straightforward as that of sag ri, unless we take it simply as a shortened form of sakhtīyān, abbreviated to provide a euphonic pair of related terms, which may have facilitated either oral communication or brief notation on wood slips, such as used to describe the contents of a package or bag. This euphony is enabled by Tibetan phonetics, which allows only one final gutteral, transcribed -g, so that both -kh and -gh are rendered identically.
As to the antiquity of their use in Tibetan, we are at least able to confirm, through a very old attestation of sag ti on said wood slips, that it was employed at a very early period. In one source, it is an element in the construction and design of a robe. Please consult Amy Heller’s contribution to the upcoming Festschrift for Takeuchi Tsuguhito. In this work, Ms Heller analyzes a difficult text on an ancient wooden slip in a context strongly supporting its use in clothing construction or decoration. On another slip, a pair of black leather boots (sag ti’i nag po yu riṅs) is contained in an inventory (Wang.1991.128). There are two further mentions of sag ti in T. Takeuchi’s Old Tibetan Manuscripts from East Turkestan in the Stein Collection of the British Library. These sources, although few, do demonstrate that sag ti was borrowed early on.
Sources
Bailey, H.W. “Ariana.” 1955.
Begmatov “Commodity terms in the languages of Central Eurasia : new interpretations from Mugh document A-1.” 2019.
Clauson, G. Etymological Dictionary of Pre-13th Century Turkish. 1972.
Emmerick, R. & A. Rona-Tas “The Turkish-Khotanese wordlist revisited.” 1992.
Gharib, B. Sogdian Dictionary : Sogdian-Persian-English. 1995.
Lessing, F. Mongolian-English Dictionary. 1960/1973.
MacLean, J.A. Dictionary of the Dialects of Vernacular Syriac. 1901.
https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetaleppo/ayntab/economy/trades.html
Wang Yao.1991— “Qinghai Tubo jian du kao shi.”
Wilkens, J. Handwörterbuch des Altuigurischen. 2021.
§ § §
A Note by Dan
A Tibetan-Tibetan dictionary entry on sag-ri:
སག་རི། [1] དྲེལ་གྱི་དཔྱི་མགོའི་པགས་པ་མཉེས་ནས་རི་མོ་འབུར་དུ་དོད་ཡོད་པའི་ཀོ་བ་ཞིག [2] ལུས་ཀྱི་དྲེག་པ་མཁྲེགས་པོ་འཁོར་བར་བརྗོད། དཔེར་ན། རྐང་པ་དང་ལག་པ་འཇིང་པ་སོགས་གང་སར་སག་རི་བརྒྱབ་འདུག
The first meaning, the one relevant here, could be translated, “a type of leather made of skin from the haunches of the mule that when cured has raised patterns.” The second meaning appears to be derived from the first, describing a state of grime solidified around the hands, feet, or neck, etc. This is sure to be a secondary usage based on the first.
The source is བོད་ཡིག་ཚིག་གཏེར་རྒྱ་མཚོ་ (Bod yig tshig gter rgya mtsho), compiled by a committee and edited by ཐུབ་བསྟན་ཕུན་ཚོགས་ (Thub-bstan-phun-tshogs, b. 1955), Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 2012), in 3 vols., page nos. continuous, in 4013 pages, at p. 3464. It has no entry for སག་ཏི་ (sag-ti). If you are interested to know more about this dictionary, see “Lexical Euphoria.”
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