My conclusion, since I thought I ought to state one, is this. I think these words for bricks and ovens and the brilliance of flames that so closely resemble each other in Tibetan and Sumerian are all part of one semantic package, one group of conceptually and/or practically inter-related meanings. Perhaps some day someone will find herself ready to speculate in a not-too speculative way about the historical scenario underlying what will remain for the mean time a curious happenstance.
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Babylonian World Map,
2,600 years BP
(see the Horowitz
book) |
Bits of bibliography gleaned from here and there for your amusement —
André Alexander, The Temples of Lhasa: Tibetan Buddhist Architecture from the 7th to the 21st Centuries, Serindia (Chicago 2005), p. 45, for information about the unique use of fired bricks in the Jokhang, with one depicted in an illustration. The same material may be found in the following publication, if you happen to have it instead. Mortar is mentioned on p. 30.
André Alexander, Part 4: The Lhasa Jokhang: An Indian Vihâra in Tibet, contained in: Gyurme Dorje, et al., Jokhang: Tibet's Most Sacred Buddhist Temple, Edition Hansjorg Mayer (London 2010), pp. 201-249, at p. 221. There is also some discussion of the Jokhang's timber and brick construction on p. 157 of this online PDF of an article by the same author (but sadly there is no brick photo; for that you need the print publications).
Charles James Ball, The Relation of Tibetan to Sumerian, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vol. 40 (1918), pp. 95-100. I haven't actually seen this article, and my search of the internet archives failed to find it.
Wolfgang Bertsch, The Use of Tea Bricks as Currency among the Tibetans, The Tibet Journal [Dharamsala], vol. 34, no. 2 (Summer 2009), pp. 35-80.
Karl Bouda, Die Bezeihungen des Sumerischen zum Baskischen, Westkaukasischen und Tibetischen, Harrassowitz (Leipzig 1938). I have seen this, although I don't have it at hand.
Jan Braun, Sumerian and Tibeto-Burman, Agade (Warsaw 2001), in 93 pages. I saw this in a library a few years ago.
James Huston Edgar, Sumerian and Tibetan Equivalents, Journal of the West China Branch of the Royal Society, vol. 5 (1932), pp. 66-68.
R.E. Emmerick, Some Lexical Items from the Siddhasāra, contained in: E. Steinkellner and H. Tauscher, eds., Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1995; reprint of Vienna 1983), pp. 61-68. Footnote 8 on p. 67 has the relevant passage mentioning and dismissing (simultaneously) the connection between Tibetan da-nur and Persian tanūr.
Nathan Hill, Aspirated and Unaspirated Voiceless Consonants in Old Tibetan, Language and Linguistics, vol. 8, no. 2 (2007), pp. 471-493. The PDF is here. On p. 487 is the most reasonable discussion about Tibetan words for ‘brick’ I’ve ever read.
Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, Eisenbrauns (Winona Lake 1998). This is a major study of the world map illustrated above.
Jo-sras Bkra-shis-tshe-ring, Bod dang ja smyags pa dang 'brel ba'i chig lab thung ngu, The Tibet Journal, vol. 34, no. 3 (2009) through vol. 35, no. 2 (2010), special issue, "The Earth Ox Papers: Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Held at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, September 2009 on the Occasion of the ‘Thank You India’ Year," ed. by Roberto Vitali, pp. 263-298. This is a truly significant contribution on Tibetan tea culture’s history, with much information beyond what is found in Bertsch’s very informative paper mentioned before.
R.P. Kulkarni, Specifications for Brick Masonry according to Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 22, no. 4 (1987), pp. 328-331. Download it in PDF here.
Daniel Potts and A. Parpola, et al., Guhlu and Guggulu, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 86 (1996), pp. 291-305. They suggest that the Sanskrit word comes from Akkadian. If this is so, the Tibetan form probably comes from the Sanskrit.
Peter A. Roberts, The Evolution of the Biographies of Milarepa and Rechungpa, contained in: Linda Covill, Ulrike Roesler and Sarah Shaw, eds., Lives Lived, Lives Imagined, Wisdom Publications (Boston 2010), pp. 181-203. In his first pages Roberts gives a very Indic explanation for the Tibetan generic term used for biographies, rnam-thar, one that doesn’t rely in the least on Sumer. He may be right. I don’t know. The book itself is warmly recommended if you are interested in Buddhist biographical literature.
Ann Macy Roth and Catharine H. Roehrig, Magical Bricks and the Bricks of Birth, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 88 (2002), pp. 121-139. Even if I didn’t manage to find a way to work this into some flimsy argument, as I should have done, the Egyptian use of bricks for birthing practices (then employed symbolically in tomb construction) is wonderfully fascinating. And in Egyptian art you can sometimes see impressively personified bricks, bricks with human faces.
David Templeman, Ensuring Firmness: The Use of Molten Metals in Tibet and Iran, Tibet Journal, vol. 26, nos. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter 2001), pp. 199-205.
Alfréd Tóth, Tibeto-Burman and Hungarian, Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 53, no. 1 (2009), pp. 80-104. The Tibeto-Sumer connections suggested here all seem to be derived from those in Braun's booklet. You can find a different article by the same author here.
E. Jan Wilson, 'Holiness' and 'Purity' in Mesopotamia, Verlag Butzon and Bercker Kevalaer (Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994). See page 36 on juniper burning.
Irene J. Winter, Radiance as an Aesthetic Value in the Art of Mesopotamia (with Some Indian Parallels), contained in: B.N. Saraswati, S.C. Malik and Madhu Khanna, eds., Art: The Integral Vision, A Volume of Essays in Felicitation of Kapila Vatsyayan, D.K. Printworld (N. Delhi 1994), pp. 123-132. I haven’t been able to see this yet, although it sounds very relevant to judge from the title.
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Oh, and if you’re interested to know more about Indian mortar making, see if this link will work for you (I’m not sure if it will, but if it does you might find a recipe for vajralepa). You might have to start from here and then search from there by yourself.
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Addendum (November 20, 2010):
Nathan Hill kindly sent me a copy of his unpublished review of Jan Braun's pamphlet Sumerian and Tibeto-Burman. Even more kindly, he readily granted permission to put it up to be freely downloaded by all who wish. You will find it in the form of an attachment to THIS PAGE at "Tibetological." I think you will find it interesting.
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Why are we here?
To build houses for the gods.
No other reason.
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[With regard to building of Eninnu Temple by King Gudea of Lagash, re. 2144-2124 BCE]
“Now it was time to start preparing for the actual construction of the temple, and this involved as a first step the choosing by appropriate omens of the first symbolic brick and inscribing it with the god’s emblem, a joyous act accompanied by the burning of fragrant incense...
“Gudea himself then kneaded the first brick and placed it in a brickmold, and after removing it from the brickmold, carried it in a basket on his head and placed it in the spot where the temple was to be built—symbolic acts accompanied by sacrifices, prayers, music and jubilation. Now the foundations were laid, ritual supervised and blessed by the en and the lagar, the two highest priestly officials of the temple.”
Source: Samuel Noah Kramer, The Temple in Sumerian Literature, contained in: Michael V. Fox, ed., Temple in Society, Eisenbrauns (Winona Lake 1988), pp. 1-16, at pp. 4, 5.
“There was, furthermore, a warrior. His arm was bent, holding a lapis lazuli tablet in his hand, and he was setting down the plan of the house. The holy basket stood in front of me, the holy brick mould was ready and the fated brick was placed in the mould for me. In a fine ildag tree standing before me tigidlu birds were spending the day twittering. My master's right-side donkey stallion was pawing the ground for me.”
For the source, look here.
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Postscript to end all postscripts:
An interesting thing, I was looking at p. 207 of Guitty Azarpy, W.G. Lambert, W. Heimpel, and Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, Proportional Guidelines in Ancient Near Eastern Art, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 46, no. 3 (July 1987), pp. 183-213, and found to my surprise that the fated brick, the same brick made with the clay in the baskets you see the kings carrying on their heads in the baskets, is called sig4-nam-tar-ra. Now I’m thinking I ought to take the Sumerian nam-tar as corresponding with Tibetan rnam-thar idea more seriously. It fits inside our little semantic circle much better than I had thought. There is much more of interest, not only for bricks, but for ovens as well, to be found in this article. We may read as part of an account of the foundation-laying rituals done by King Gudea (p. 205):
In front of me stood a pure basket.
A pure brick mold had been fitted.
A fated brick was there for me in the brick mold.