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. For earlier studies not listed here check their bibliographies, 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 during his 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.  D.S. 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.

Bagel, Baklava and Bag-leb

 

I suppose this to be the original bagel,
even if in Turkish it’s called simit.

I won’t waste breath apologizing for the frontispiece. Still, I wish I hadn’t put it up there. It’s making me drool... crunchy, salty yet soft inside, and I can’t have one if only because of the gluten. This is, in case you don’t recognize it, a Turkish-style bagel called simit. You probably won’t find them among the items called bagels in your local convenience store. You might have to ask.

You could have already guessed what we’re aiming for when you first glanced at the title of today’s blog, so I’ll keep it short. A bagel is not a baklava, but they could share some etymological roots, it seems to me. Could this also be true of the Tibetan food term bag-leb?

To begin with, as you may know there are several culinary invention myths associated with the Turkish siege of Vienna. Let’s skip over the milk-coffee, the coffee-house, and the croissant — the croissant is supposedly based on the Turkish/Islamic crescent — and go straight to the matters that interest us right now, the bagel and baklava.  It is usual to find a Germanic root meaning 'round' behind bagel, or just to assume the Yiddish origins of the word, an automatic assumption (likely to be accepted without investigation) just because it is so widely regarded as a Jewish food. But legend says it was invented by a Viennese baker to commemorate victory over the Turkish forces, based on the shape of the stirrups of the Polish cavalry. I’m already confused about what counts as real history or not, and in danger of making matters worse, but I believe the bread item itself, or should I say items, were of Turkish origins, the naming based in confusing which of the newly introduced doughy items was which. Tell me if I’m wrong.

Baklava you must know is made of super-thin pastry layers and filled with nuts and honey. It has a clear Turkish name, first borrowed into European languages in the mid-17th century.  But just remember what a huge territory was ruled by the Ottomans then and since and you will know where to find the places where baklava is well known as part of the national cuisine. They have different styles of making them, of course, and tend to pronounce it with an accent on a different syllable. I like to say it with an initial accent. But if the Ottomans donated it to the Austrians at that point, there is still no telling how much history was already behind it. Most think it is quite ancient, guessing it is Roman or even Babylonian, it is difficult to find agreement.

There are even those who argue that the word, if not the sticky sweet itself, goes back to the time when Turkic speakers neighbored Mongolian speakers in the Orkhon River valley of Mongolia, far before the Turkish migrations. I haven’t found any sense of consensus on this.

Then, during the long centuries of emigration and expansion into Asia Minor, the Turkish people absorbed a tremendous number of words from neighboring languages, particularly Arabic and Persian, so much so that Ottoman Turkish got complicated. So it might not be possible to be sure of the word’s ultimate origins. I know I can’t tell you, even if I’m working on expanding my Turkish vocabulary again these days.

So now that we’ve managed to reach so little certainty on those first two words, let’s see what we can do with the third, the common Tibetan word bag-leb for ‘bread’.

Some people think, mistakenly as we will see in a moment, that bag-le-ba is just another spelling (perhaps the more correct spelling?) for Tibetan bag-leb.

A TBRC search of bag-le-ba reveals that in its 6 occurrences it is 5 times used as a regional or country name with its own peculiar script (or is it the script only that has the name?).  In one instance only is it a type of cloth (perhaps a cloth named after the place?). To be safe, I tried searching for bag-le-pa, and the 4 occurrences there point to it being a fabric. And the most likely solution to this, too, is to see it as meaning Pahlava.*

(*There are some country lists contained in Tibetan translations of scriptures where Pahlava appears in the forms Pa-hu-pa and Ba-hu-ba, both of these I think being based on misreadings of a more exact transcription that also occurs: Pa-hla-ba.) 

But, and this seems like a large but, in those cases where a fabric is concerned, it is possible these are all references to cloth made from bark, and this draws us into an Indic/Sanskritic etymology for bag-le-ba that likely has no connection to Pahlava.

Paul Pelliot, in his legendary Notes on Marco Polo, suggests it may be explained by a Prakrit form similar to Bengali bāklā, 'bark.'  The Sanskrit form is valkala. Emeneau wrote a piece on bark clothing, so you can read about that for yourself in case you have trouble believing in it.

In short, we can now forget about bag-le-ba. When you encounter this spelling it never means bread.

So now that we have eliminated this touch of confusion with the Persian realm and its script as well as cloth made of bark, we can settle down to the word bag-leb. Bag-leb is, as we said, the quotidian Tibetan word today for bread. It may be true what Laufer says, I cannot eliminate the possibility that it’s a two-word expression meaning flatbread. Still, I think it could well be another example of what I call a ”Tibetanization,” a borrowing that slowly and unconsciously naturalizes the foreign word by spelling it in a form that lends itself to a Tibetan meaning. And this is especially likely in multisyllabic words in my experience. See our earlier blog about Turkish and Mongolian loans in Tibetan.

Indeed, it is the case that as far as there is such a thing as traditional Central Tibetan bread,* it would to be in the form of approximately three inches in diameter, & maybe 3/4" high, rounds, more along the lines of a thick pancake or flattened roll than a loaf of bread, and usually made with brown wheat flour. In my experience the better ones always were.

(*Not everyone will appreciate the note of skepticism, but I have yet to run into a bona fide pre-20th-century usage of the word bag-leb, and all my searches for early instances have been in vain. You can go to TBRC and try searching for it yourself. But wait,  I spoke too soon. I do seem to find one usage in a medical work preserved for us in the Tanjur written by an Indian physician Raghunātha (Ra-gu-nā-tha/ར་གུ་ནཱ་ཐ་) who visited Tibet sometime after 1656. This is significant! I do wonder if the Indian writer intended an Indian flatbread, roti or chapati or the like, when he used the word. It seems to be difficult to find evidence for these Indian breads in pre-Mughal literature.)

So finally, I ought to be ashamed of myself. After all, I’ve invited you over to visit from a great distance for a much-kneaded discussion over a cup of tea only to offer you an empty, or very nearly empty, plate of answers. So now it’s your turn. Tell me what makes sense to you.

°

Testimonies of some highly reputed scholars of past generations

M.B. Emeneau, “Barkcloth in India—Sanskrit Valkala,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 2 (April 1962), pp. 167-170. I believe this is the single best discussion on this important topic, in case you’re as curious as I think you should be. Surely you are thinking, Is it comfortable? Can it breathe?

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” T'oung Pao, vol. 17, no. 1 (1916), pp. 403-552, at p. 532, footnote 1:  

The Tibetan word pa-le (“bread”), however, which Dalgado (l.c. p. 120) derived from Bell’s Manual of Colloquial Tibetan and with an interrogation-mark placed among the derivatives from Portuguese pão does not belong to the Romance languages. It is written bag-leb, both elements being genuine Tibetan words, bag meaning “flour, pap, porridge” and leb, “flat.”

Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 1, p. 465:

...it shows once more that the translators of the Mahāvyutpatti from Tibetan into Chinese often adopted arbitrary interpretations : hua-mien, ,,cotton”, is given as a translation of Skr. vakkali, Tib. bag-le-ba. But the would-be Skr. vakkali can be nothing else than a Prākrit form of Skr. valkala, ,,bark garment” (cf. Pali vakkala and vakkali), and Tib. bag-le-ba seems to be an adjectival form of bag-le, itself based on a Prākrit form similar to Beng. bāklā, ,,bark” (on which cf. J. Bloch, La formation de la langue marathe, 404; but bag-le-ba may have been contaminated by Bag-le-pa or Bag-le-ba, ,,of Balkh”).  

NOTE of mine: just a comment on those last words, I think Pelliot introduced an unnecessary confusion with Balkh. Balkh is represented in Tibetan sources in the forms Bag-la and Sbal-kha. Heed the metathesis, it happens, especially when liquids are involved.

Stig Wikander, “A Central Asian Loanword in Arthaśāstra,” contained in: J.C. Heesterman et al., eds., Pratidânam: Indian, Iranian & Indo-European Studies Presented to Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper on his Sixtieth Birthday, Mouton (The Hague 1968), pp. 270-274. I haven’t made reference to this, and in fact added it here only in July of 2023. I’m not sure of its conclusion, and need to think about it some more. Still in the passage he discusses deer, sable and other skins that might be kept in a royal treasury, and all are qualified as bāhlaveya, or having to do with bāhlava, which S.W. takes to mean ‘from Balkh.’ I’m tempted to think it means cloth made of skin or bark, just that I can’t guarantee it. An Indologist could be helpful here.

On the web

For a discussion on the bagel, look here. Search for yourself and find a lot more. I regret that I didn’t read this book before posting my nonsense: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, by Maria Belinska. You can see some of it at Googlebooks if you look for it.

For a recipe with clear directions for making bag-leb (བག་ལེབ་), go to this page at Yolangdu website. You should at the very least go there for its photograph of what ordinary Central Tibetan bread looks like. Yolangdu is a commercial site in the sense that they offer travel services as well as a cookbook that can be purchased. I am not advertising their paid services — you are right now reading a non-commercial blog — just linking this particular page with its recipe generously offered to the world without any price attached.

For a trip around the world showing the many forms that bread can take, I think this page is the greatest: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/gallery/worlds-best-breads-travel-photos/?gallery=38. It has photos of every type mentioned in this blog, including Tibetan baleb and Turkish simit.

Some books about Tibetan food

Rinjing Dorje (Rig-’dzin-rdo-rje), Food in Tibetan Life, with illustrations by the author, Prospect Books (London 1985). 

Not just useful for its recipes, this has impressive cultural information on such matters as table manners, joking and swearing. So I recommend reading it even if you don’t like food. My older brother once borrowed the book, and swore that he did his best to follow its directions for making Tibetan beer and nearly died when he tried it, perhaps because he took seriously the suggestion that eagle shit and aconite might be used in the yeast starter. But my dear brother, rest his soul, always had a flair for the dramatic, knew how to embroider his travel stories to ensure maximum impact. I never had that useful ability myself.

Bod-kyi Nyer-mkho'i Zas-rigs Tshig-mdzod (“Tibetan Traditional Food and Drink Dictionary”), Kokonor People's Printing Press (Xining 2000). 

Perhaps you can view it here (www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W20183). The brief introduction and postscript can be read in English. Each entry gives definitions in Tibetan, Chinese and English, although it is often the case that the Tibetan definitions are much longer and more detailed.  Notice that the late famous Namkhai Norbu was involved in the making of this reference work, but his name is given as Mr. Na Ka Nuo Bu, “the famous Tibetan scholar of Italian Oriental University.” The entry for bag-leb defines it as a name for flat go-re, which is interesting, even if the English translates with the technically incorrect “Baked bread.” Looking at the entry for go-re, it says it is the general word for any kind of bread, and then continues with three pages of entries for different types. I think the basic meaning of go-re is simply round, with extended meaning of completeness, while in the kitchen context the best translation might be bun.

Bod Zas Bdud-rtsi’i Bum-pa (‘The Vase of Ambrosia that is Tibetan Food’), Tibet People’s Printing Press (Lhasa 1993). 

Perhaps you can view it here (https://www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W4CZ309050). I wouldn’t much recommend this recipe book for most people. There is hardly anything in it for me since I’ve reverted to the vegetarianism of my younger years and have discovered a need to stay gluten free. Well, there is one very simple recipe for honey bread (sbrang thud) that is sounding good, although I think I’ll make it with teff. You know, I once enjoyed fresh croissants from the French Bakery in Lhasa, proving true that line of a song, “It’s a whole world after all!”

And a final note for myself (July 29, 2021)

I ought to think more about one occurrence of a region called Bag-le. This is in the discussion of earthquakes found in the omens text by Garga (Derge Tanjur, Toh. no. 4321).  It is mentioned just before Persia, and seems to be described as located in Tokharia (the western one no doubt, not the eastern). It’s part of a longer list of countries, and looks like this with country names turned red:  tho gar gyi yul bag le dang  /    bar sig [~par sig] gi yul dang  /... That means that Bag-le probably means Balkh (Skt. Bāhlika), so I should go back and apologize to Pelliot for doubting him.