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The HP'Ags-Pa Alphabet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Gerard Clauson
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Extract

The first publication of an inscription in the alphabet by a European scholar was made about 120 years ago by H. C. von der Gabelentz in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (Halle), n, 1, 1839. Books and articles relating to the subject have been appearing intermittently ever since, but finality has not yet been reached on the exact shape and phonetic value of some letters in the alphabet.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1959 , pp. 300 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1959

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References

1 A re-examination of this alphabet, with the particular purpose of establishing the phonetic value of the letters at the time when it was adopted for Mongolian is much overdue. I hope to produce a paper on this subject shortly.

1 This translation is based on those given in P, p. 14, and has been checked by Professor W. Simon. I take this unduly unobtrusive opportunity to express to him my sincere gratitude for his help in this and many other matters, and in particular for introducing me to the MKTY.

1 Fan is by origin the Chinese transcription of Brahma; it meant rather vaguely India or Indian religion; it would not be positively wrong to translate it here as ‘Tibetan’, but it would be unduly precise.

2 This is the reading of the best texts and is the correct figure.

3 Professor Ligeti (op. cit., p. 37, footnote) has pointed out that the MKTY is in effect a transcription of the Ku chin yün-hui, which is a work of this kind.

1 There is only one exception in the Mongolian texts. There are a few words in Chinese texts in which the lower part of No. 32 is attached to No. 30; in P, XII, 7 the Turki sh (ultimately Sanskrit) loan-word ér-ti-ni is twice written with initial No. 3 0 with the lower part of No. 33 beneath it.

1 The character used is not in OSR nor Giles& dictionary; the transcription is based on the assumption that the ‘mouth’ radical is not part of the charac ter, but a sound modifier, cf. No. 25.

2 A rare word not in GSR.

3 Obviously an error, probably for ts&di tsai, No. 942d in GSR.

4 La lo, as in No. 26, with a ‘mouth’ radical attached, the normal way of representing r-in Chinese transcriptions.

1 In Fa-shu k'ao ‘heavy”, in Shu-shih hui yao ‘light’; the character for ‘expiration’ is miscopied in P, p. 12, but shown correctly in the Yüan-shih lei-pien in the British Museum,

1 Simon, Walter, ‘A hPhags-pa seal of 1295’, Asia Major, NS, vx, 2, 1958, p. 203.Google Scholar

2 See Lewicki, M., La langue mongole des transcriptions chinoises du XIV siécle, Wroclaw, 1949, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

1 Examples are: (a) both terminations P, VIIb, 2; VIIIb, 2; (b) front P, I, 18; II, 18 and 20; back P, I, 8 and 16; IX, 5; (c) front P, I, 8; XIII, 3 and 13; back, P, XII, 1 and 7.

1 If a word contained a post-palatal sound it necessarily contained front vowels, and in such words the -e- was usually omittcd. It was also sometimes omitted in words beginning with labials.

1 The reason for this was probably the difficulty of distinguishing between No. 31 and No. 12.

1 The heading in large characters over the inscription seems to read g¯-nu su-dur‘by the grandeur of the Khan’.