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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021
Since H. Humbach's Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler (Wiesbaden, 1966) the main etymological proposal for Bactrian χϸονο ‘(calendar) year, (regnal) year’ has been A. Thierfelder's suggestion of a loanword from Hellenistic Greek χρόνος ‘time’. In this article the plausibility of this etymology is re-examined, and it is further argued that it should be rejected on the grounds that the formal phonological differences between the potential Hellenistic Greek source form and its presumable loan-adaptation form in Bactrian are inconsistent with what is known of Bactrian diachronic phonology.
In citing individual Bactrian documents in this article, I follow the classification system of N. Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan II: Letters and Buddhist Texts (Oxford, 2007), N. Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan I: Legal and Economic Documents (Oxford, 2012), and N. Sims-Williams and F. de Blois, Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan (Wien, 2017).
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for comments and several constructive criticisms which prompted some improvements to the final text of this article. All remaining errors and infelicities, of course, are my own.
1 BD2, p. 262. For MBact. srdʾnyg see Sims-Williams, N., ‘The Bactrian Fragment in Manichaean Script (M 1224)’, in Literarische Stoffe und ihre Gestaltung in mitteliranischer Zeit: Kolloquium anlässlich des 70. Geburtstages von Werner Sundermann, (eds.) Durkin-Meisterernst, D., Reck, C., Weber, D. (Wiesbaden, 2009) p. 264Google Scholar. PIr. *sardV- continues PIIr. *ćar(a)d- (cf. Ved. śarád- ‘autumn; year’); further connections outside of Indo-Iranic remain speculative, cf. EWAia II: 616, NIL 415n7.
2 Cf. Humbach, H., Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler: Teil I, (Wiesbaden, 1966) pp. 23-24, p. 140Google Scholar, where Bact. χϸονο is simply glossed as ‘Jahr’.
3 For the evidence for the Bactrian calendar and the dating of the Bactrian era, see Sims-Williams, N. and de Blois, F., Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan (Wien, 2017)Google Scholar.
4 Humbach, H., Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler: Teil I, (Wiesbaden, 1966) p. 23Google Scholar. For Khotanese kṣuṇa- see Bailey, H. W., ‘Irano-Indica’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XII (1948), pp. 328–329Google Scholar and Bailey, H. W., A Dictionary of Khotan-Saka (Cambridge, 1979) p. 69Google Scholar; for Prakrit kṣuṇa- ‘time’ see Burrow, T., ‘The Dialectal Position of the Niya Prakrit’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies VIII (1936) p. 425Google Scholar.
5 A. Maricq ‘Inscriptions de Surkh-Kotal (Baglān). Le grande inscription de Kaniska et l’Étéo-Tokharien?’ Journal Asiatique (1958) p. 364, Bailey, H. W. ‘Irano-Indica’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XII (1948), pp. 328–329Google Scholar. The reconstruction of the underlying verbal root is not straightforward because of the existence of long-vowel variants found in Proto-Iranic *xšā- (cf. Cheung, EDIV pp. 451–452, who reconstructs PIr. *xšaH- ‘to rule, be lord over’ = Ved. √kṣā- ‘to rule, have power, own’. Cf. EWAia I: 426, LIV² 619 s.v. 1. *tek- n1 for the difficulties of establishing a proto-form for this root and possible proposed etymologies outside of Indo-Iranic.
6 Humbach, H., Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler: Teil I, (Wiesbaden, 1966) pp. 23–24)Google Scholar. Cf. derivatives known to Humbach Sig 10 ϸαυρο-βο < *xšaθra-pā- ‘satrap’ (ibid. p. 72), MB 5,5 ϸαυρο-στανο ‘country’ (ibid. p. 126).
7 Humbach, H., Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler: Teil I, (Wiesbaden, 1966) p. 24Google Scholar: “Das Rätsel seiner [viz. χϸονο] Etymologie zu lösen, ist erst meinem Kollegen A. Thierfelder gelungen. Er erklärt χϸονο und mit ihm khot. kṣuṇa-, prakr. kṣuṇa- als Entlehnung aus gr. χρόνος. […] In seleukidischer Zeit hatte griech. χρόνος noch nicht die Bedeutung ‘Jahr’, die andererseits durch die Datierung mit Xšono vorausgesetzt wird. Die Entwicklung dieser speziellen Bedeutung im Baktrischen, aus dem das Khotan-Sakische ohne Zweifel sein kṣuṇa- ‘Jahr’ entlehnt hat, dürfte sicher eine gewisse Zeit benötigt haben.” The original meaning of AGk. χρόνος was ‘(period of) time’ (as opposed to αἰών ‘long period of time, eternity’). While ‘year’ is the normal meaning of χρόνος in Standard Modern Greek, within Ancient Greek the meaning ‘year’ for χρόνος is only very rarely attested, and mostly in late usage. LSJ s.v. χρόνος A.2.c. only lists five examples, all except for one attested in ce attestations. The earliest isolated attestation of Ancient Greek χρόνος in the meaning ‘year’ is found in an inscription of the Attic deme Rhamnous of 83/82 bce (V. Petrakos, Ο Δήμος του Ραμνούντος. ΙΙ. Οι ɛπιγραφές. (Αθήνα, 1999) pp. 141–142, No. 179). The remaining attestations given are a papyrus in the collection of the British Museum dated circa 346 ce (Kenyon, F. G., Greek Papyri in the British Museum. Catalogue, with texts. Vol. II (London, 1898), pp. 299–300, No. 417, l.14–15Google Scholar), an anonymous epigram in the Appendix to the Greek Anthology (cf. Cougny, E. (ed.), Epigrammatum Anthologia Palatina cum Planudeis et appendice nova. Volumen tertium, (Parisiis, 1890), p. 494, No. 154Google Scholar), a section from the treatise ὁ καρπός ascribed to the mathematician Ptolemy, but generally considered Pseudo-Ptolemy (cf. Fr. Lammert and E. Boer (eds.), Ptolemaeus III.2 Πɛρὶ κριτηρίου καὶ ἡγɛμονικοῦ, Καρπός, (Lipsiae, 1961), p. 42, No. 24), and within a gloss attached to one of the explanations the verb δɛκατɛύɛιν in the 12th century CE Byzantine lexicon Etymologicum Magnum (Gaisford, T., Etymologicon magnum; seu verius, Lexicon saepissime vocabulorum origines indagans ex pluribus lexicis scholiastis et grammaticis anonymi cuiusdam opera concinnatum, (Oxonii, 1848), 254.11–13Google Scholar). At present there is no certain attestation of χρόνος used in the meaning ‘year’ in the Greek inscriptions of Iran and Central Asia. The only attestations are in the following phrases: ἐξ ἱκανοῖο χρόνου ‘depuis bien longtemps’ (Rougemont, G. and Bernard, P., Inscriptions grecques d'Iran et d'Asie centrale. Corpus inscriptionum Iranicarum. Part 2, Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian period and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia. Vol. 1, Inscriptions in non-Iranian languages, 1, (London, 2012), pp.48–49Google Scholar, No. 11.10, dated to 417 ce after L. Robert), ɛἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ‘for all time’ (ibid. pp. 102–121, No. 53.55, 92–93, 205 bce; pp. 152–153, 73.16, 88/77 bce), ἀπ’ ἐκɛίνου τοῦ χρόνου ‘from that time’ (ibid. pp.171–73, No. 83.14, Greek translation of Ashokan edicts XII and XIII). Meanwhile, the usual koiné Greek lexeme for ‘year’, ἔτος, is well attested in the same corpus of inscriptions (ibid. p. 294).
8 Similarly lost in clusters in medial position: Bact. νοβιχτο ‘written’ < *nipixšta-, cf. Sims-Williams, N., “Bactrian” in Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, (ed.) Schmitt, R. (Wiesbaden, 1989) p. 234Google Scholar.
9 (5) χαβρωσο ‘(by) night and (by) day’ occurs in za19, one of the four known Bactrian Buddhist fragments, whose literary register may have been more susceptible to dialectal loans. As for (6) χαρο ‘khar, ruler’, as a formal title it belongs to a semantic category that may be more easily borrowed than other vocabulary.
10 BD2 p. 281 only considers “possibly loanword from Gk. χρόνος (A. Thierfelder apud Humbach 1966, p. 24)”. Bailey, H., A Dictionary of Khotan-Saka, (Cambridge, 1979) p. 69Google Scholar later retracted his original etymology for Khotanese kṣuṇa- preferring a secondary formation as though from PIE *ks-en-o- to PIE *sek- ‘cut’, although the assumption of a metathesised variant of the root is ad hoc. No further hypotheses on the etymology of the Khotanese form were advanced in Emmerick, R. and Skjærvø, P. O., Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese I (Wien, 1982)Google Scholar, Emmerick, R. and Skjærvø, P. O., Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese II, (Wien, 1987)Google Scholar, or Emmerick, R. and Skjærvø, P. O., Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese III, (Wien, 1997)Google Scholar.
11 For the pronunciation of Classical (Attic) Greek, cf. Allen, W. S., Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Ancient Greek (3rd ed.), (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar and Threatte, L., Grammar of the Attic Inscriptions. Volume I: Phonology, (Berlin, 1980)Google Scholar. A further change, not likely to be of great relevance for present purposes is the shift of the pitch accent to an expiratory stress accent. For a description of Standard Modern Greek, cf. David Holton, Peter Mackridge, Irene Philippaki-Warburton, and Vassileios Spyros, Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar (2nd ed.), (London, Routledge).
12 For the data and discussion thereof, cf. Gignac, F., A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods. Volume I: Phonology. (Milano, 1976) pp. 98–101Google Scholar, Teodorsson, S.-T., The Phonology of Ptolemaic Koine (Göteborg, 1977)Google Scholar. Note also the Coptic alphabet, adapted from the Greek alphabet, synchronically analyses the Coptic letters <ⲫ> <ⲑ> <ⲭ> diphonemic sequences ⲡϩ /ph/ ⲧϩ /th/ ⲕϩ /kh/ rather than using new letters ϥ [f] ϧ [x] or ϩ [h] (cf. B. Layton, A Coptic Grammar (3rd ed., revised), (Wiesbaden, 2011), p. 16.
13 Schweizer, E., Grammatik der Pergamenischen Inschriften. Beiträge zur Laut- und Flexionslehre der gemeingriechischen Sprache, (Berlin, 1898) pp. 109–115Google Scholar, cf. Schwyzer, E., Griechische Grammatik auf der Grundlage von Karl Brugmanns Griechischer Grammatik. 1. Band: Allgemeiner Teil. Lautlehre. Wortbildung. Flexion. (München, 1939) pp. 201–205Google Scholar.
14 Threatte, L., Grammar of the Attic Inscriptions. Volume I: Phonology, (Berlin, 1980) p. 470Google Scholar.
15 Horrocks, G., Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (Chichester, 2010) pp. 170–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Sims-Williams, N. and de Blois, F., Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, (Wien, 2017)Google Scholar.
17 See also further below.
18 For another early attestation, cf. Rabatak Inscription l.2 χ̣ϸο̣νο in N. Sims-Williams, ‘The Bactrian Inscription of Rabatak: A New Reading’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute XVIII (2004 [2008]).
19 For ce dates, cf. Sims-Williams, N. and de Blois, F., Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan (Wien, 2017) pp. 117–130Google Scholar.
20 For the probable phonetic values of the Bactrian-Greek script, cf. Sims-Williams, N., ‘Bactrian’, in Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, (ed.) Schmitt, R. (Wiesbaden, 1989), pp. 232–33Google Scholar.
21 Morgenstierne, G., ‘Notes on Bactrian Phonology’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXXIII (1970) pp. 125–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Henning, W. B., ‘The Bactrian Inscription’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXIII (1960), p. 50Google Scholar.
23 Morgenstierne, G. ‘Notes on Bactrian Phonology’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXXIII (1970) p. 126Google Scholar.
24 Cf. Sims-Williams, N., ‘Bactrian’, in Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, (ed.) Schmitt, R. (Wiesbaden, 1989) p. 234Google Scholar for further discussion and references.
25 Cf. Skjærvø, P. O., ‘Old Iranian’, in The Iranian Languages, (ed.) Windführ, G., (London, 2009) p. 63Google Scholar, and Cantera, A., ‘The Phonology of Iranian’, in Handbook of Historical and Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (HSK 41.1), (eds.) Klein, J., Joseph, B., and Fritz, M., (Berlin, 2017) p. 491Google Scholar.
26 For this example, BD2 suggests “with initial χιρ- for *χρ- under the influence of the verb χιρ-?”, comparing αβαχρηγο ‘fee, compensation, wages’ < *apa-xraya-ka- (see below).
27 Typologically a sound change strengthening rhotics as voiceless sibilants are not unattested, although typically the conditioning is restricted to when /r/ is immediately preceded or followed by a coronal obstruent (cf. M. Kümmel, Konsonantenwandel: Bausteine zu einer Typologie des Lautwandels und ihre Konsequenzen für die vergleichende Rekonstruktion, (Wiesbaden, 2007) pp. 162–163 for examples). The anonymous reviewer points out to me that such a sound change with /r/ followed by a coronal obstruent actually does occur in Bactrian in the example of Bact. αθϸο ‘(god) Fire’ < PIr. *āθr-, I note however, this is not the same environment as we might have attested via AGk. χρόνος, nor does the phonetic development [kʰr] or [xr] > [xʂ] or [xʃ] appear to be common typologically (cf. M. Kümmel, ibid.).