THE KHAZAR LANGUAGE Marcel Erdal 1. Introduction All scholars who have voiced an opinion on the language of the Khazars in terms of assigning it to a language family take them to have been a Turkic nation1 speaking a Turkic language.2 Already in their own age, several Muslim geographers made statements to this effect.3 Trying to make sense of what remains of their language is therefore the task of Turkic linguistics. Work carried out during the last decades on this topic started with Golden 1971, an insightful though generally neglected paper. There fol- lowed a burst of activity in the early 1980s, when Golden 1980, Lud- wig 1982 and Golb & Pritsak 1982 brought together practically all of the relevant material; the article Ligeti 19814 is an important review of this latter book. Beside its other assets, Ludwig’s dissertation features 1 I deliberately use this term and not ‘tribe’ because the Khazars do not, even in the earliest stages of their documented history, present themselves as a tribe in the typical early Turkic sense, as were the Chigil, Tuxsï, Yaġma etc. 2 Golden 2005: 206 points out that Abbasid sources often interchange the nisbas at-Turkī and al-Xazarī. Still, there must have been very many different ethnic groups within the Khazar realm, as there are to this day on the territory which that realm cov- ered. These groups spoke different languages, some of them no doubt belonging to the Indo-European or different Caucasian language families. A word documented as having been in use in Khazaria need not, therefore, have belonged to the leading nation, the Khazars. 3 The most recent summary on contemporary Arab statements on this question is Golden 2005: 206 (lower half of the page). If Al-Isṭạ xrī (quoted there) reports conflict- ing notices, one stating that “the language of the Khazars is different from the language of the Turks and the Persians, nor does a tongue of any group of humanity have anything in common with it”, the other that “the language of the Bulġār is like the language of the Khazars”, both cannot be correct if they apply the same criteria of similarity and if they refer to the same language. In principle it might very well be possible that an original Khazar tribe spoke a non-Turkic language and was secondarily Turkified due to its association with the Türk empire in the 6th century; however, I think that Al-Isṭạ xrī (writing in the first half of the 10th century) or his sources are unlikely to have possessed information on such an early process. 4 The journal’s volume was presumably antedated. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 7755 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3377 PPMM 76 marcel erdal an appendix containing a supplement to the list of Khazar words in Golden 1980; Bazin 1981–82 is also relevant for the language question. The years following this intensive activity saw the appearance of numer- ous reviews, some of them quite detailed, and of papers taking up, or arguing against, views expressed in the research mentioned. Golden (2002–3, 2005) has recently revived investigations on the Khazar lan- guage. However, with the scanty material there is, it seems difficult to get much further than what was achieved in the early 1980s. Thus, concerning some of the ʿAbbāsid slaves whose names are dealt with in Golden 2002–3, their being Khazars by birth is merely an assumption; the names of others cannot help us in the present endeavor because they can be connected with anything Turkic or in any other known language only if they undergo heavy ‘emendations’. It should not be too likely that new Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew or Caucasian sources mentioning unknown Khazar language elements turn up at this stage. It now seems that significant progress can be achieved only if some lengthy bilingual inscription in the Khazar lan- guage can be discovered, or perhaps a new Khazar inscription which has enough Eastern Turkic runiform characters to be intelligible.5 The doz- ens of known inscriptions are strings of at present unintelligible signs, concerning which we do not even know whether they fall into synhar- monic sets (as most of the Eastern Turkic runiform script does); none of the attempts at deciphering them seem compelling.6 Under these cir- cumstances, we can only sum up and comment what has till now been achieved concerning sources in foreign scripts. A summary taking into account Golden’s work together with the critical reviews dealing with it and, further, the ideas of others such as the proposals of Pritsak, has never been attempted. Determining what the Khazars spoke might tell us a lot also about their identity and about the history and structure of 5 Vasil’ev 2005 is a good summary of current views and opinions concerning this mat- ter. The present author is, together with Irina Nevskaya and Larisa Tybykova, engaged in a survey of the runiform graffiti of the Altay Republic, of which we now have more than 80 (more than half of them discovered during the last 3–4 years). Some of these clearly show hitherto non-deciphered characters also found in Eastern Europe. Progress in the study of this material as well as the whole corpus of Eurasian runiform inscriptions will no doubt serve Khazar studies too. 6 One such instance is discussed in Kljashtornyj, 1991, who also quotes some addi- tional attempts. Much material is brought together in Bajčorov 1989. Kyzlasov 1994 is especially important for placing the Eastern European inscriptions into their general Eurasian context; another important study is Vasary 1998. Tryjarski 2002–4 is an excel- lent survey of this whole area. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 7766 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3388 PPMM the khazar language 77 Turkic settlement in Eastern Europe. A sound basis for our hypotheses is important primarily for the description of the Turkic languages and the historical relationships between them, but also in order to ensure that accounts of the Khazars’ early history will not rest on pseudo-lin- guistic arguments. Among the present-day Turkic languages Chuvash, spoken mostly in the Chuvash republic (situated roughly between Tatarstan and Mos- cow), constitutes a branch in itself. Its closest relative is Volga Bolgarian, a language directly documented only in 13th and 14th century inscrip- tions, found mostly on the territory of Tatarstan.7 This branch appears to have included other, now extinct, dialects, as suggested by words integrated into Hungarian.8 Scholars agree that the Chuvash-Bolgar branch got separated from the rest of Turkic at a quite early stage; cer- tainly earlier than the oldest Turkic texts we have, which are the Orkhon inscriptions of the early 8th century.9 The most discussed question con- cerning the language of the Khazars has been whether it belongs to this aberrant Chuvash-Bolgar branch of Turkic or not. Most Turcologists have thought it did, but Golden 1980, for instance, tended towards the opposite view. Our judgement of ideas concerning Khazar would now be more solid than in the early 1980s, as we now know a lot more about that branch: Several scholars, notably Andras Róna-Tas, have brought their insight into the grammatical and the lexical domain concerning the history of Chuvash, the contacts of the branch with languages sur- rounding it and other matters,10 and new Volga Bolgarian inscriptions appeared in the recent decades. Volga Bolgarian turns out to have been well distinct from Common Turkic but still a rather ‘normal’ Turkic lan- guage. The short Nagyszentmiklós bowl inscription in Greek letters is also in line with what one would expect from a 10th century source of the Chuvash-Bolgar branch of the Turkic languages.11 Nothing in any 7 See Erdal 1993 for the documentation and description of this language and its place among the Turkic languages. 8 Fruitful work in this domain is being carried out by Profs. Róna-Tas and Berta. A dictionary encompassing all Turkic loans in Hungarian is in preparation; one of its preliminary versions was Róna-Tas et al. 1995. A recent important publication in this domain is Berta & Róna-Tas 2002. Prof. Róna-Tas also commented an earlier version of the present paper, enhancing it greatly, as did Claus Schönig and Andreas Waibel. 9 Some scholars assign the earliest of these already to the late 7th century. 10 Róna-Tas 1982 can serve as an initiation to this topic. 11 Erdal 1988 has tried to substantiate the view that it represents Danube Bolgarian, the Turkic language spoken by that part of the Bolgars who moved West to the Danube, but widely different views have also been expressed; see below for one of these. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 7777 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3388 PPMM 78 marcel erdal way supports the view, held by Poppe, Pritsak and some others, that the Bolgar-Chuvash branch was somehow intermediate between the Tur- kic and the Mongolic languages, taken by these scholars to have been genetically related. While the possibility of such genetic relationship can by no means be excluded, I would consider the full appurtenance of the whole of the Chuvash-Bolgar branch to the Turkic languages to be a firm fact. There are some features which Chuvash shares with Mongo- lian, one of these being the loss of stem-final k. One likely explanation for such similarities is that Early Mongolian borrowed its Turkic words from a language of the Bolgar type, when that was still spoken in an area in contiguity with the Mongol homeland.12 The linguistic elements brought by the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century are easy to iden- tify, and there is no reason to believe that any Mongolic language was spoken west of the Urals prior to Chingis Khan. One bit of evidence which has been brought forward in support of the early presence in Eastern Europe of ethnic groups speaking Mongolic is the name of the Avar ruler who conquered Pannonia and fought against Byzantium in the 6th century: His name was Bayan, which means ‘wealthy’ in Mongolic and corresponds to Turkic bay, same meaning.13 I do not think that this evidence is conclusively for Mongolic: bayan may have been the shape of this adjective in Proto-Turkic as well, and could have been retained by the Avars into the 6th century (i.e. preceding the earliest direct evidence from Turkic by more than a century); subse- quently it appears to have stayed in use as a title and a proper name. The word could have been borrowed from Turkic into Proto-Mongolic (and further on into Tungus; cf. Doerfer 1965: 259–260) before the stem final /a/ was dropped (the +n being, in fact, a suffix).14 Helimski has in three 12 This is succinctly formulated in the section ‘Mongolic and Bulghar Turkic’, pp. 407–410 in Schönig 2003. 13 In his entry for this word, Moravcsik 1983: 83–84 mentions the names of, among others, this person and also three 8th to 10th century sons or brothers of Onogur or Danubian Bolgar rulers. A further instance has turned up in a Proto-Bolgarian inscrip- tion in Greek characters (mentioned in the present, as yet unpublished version of the Hungarian-Turkic etymological dictionary in preparation: in the entry bán, a word said to have been borrowed from bayan over South Slavic bān). 14 Schönig 2003: 406 mentions this name and two titles, adding that “none of [this] is diagnostic enough to allow firm conclusions”. According to Róna-Tas 1990: 15 (footn.), Early Western Turkic bayan lives on in Chuvash puyan ‘rich (person)’, which he derives from the “Grundwort” puy- ‘to become rich’. Chuv. puy- is, I think, likelier to be from bay+u- (same meaning, well attested in Old Turkic and elsewhere and clearly derived from the adjective bay) over *puyă-: A verb ‘bay-’ is not attested anywhere else, and ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 7788 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3388 PPMM the khazar language 79 papers published in 2000 (one with very useful bibliography) and 2003 put forward the idea that the Avars spoke a Tungus language and that the Nagyszentmiklós inscription mentioned above is also in this lan- guage. The European term bayan could, in case this hypothesis should prove to be correct, even be Tungus; the hypothesis is, however, arrived at by some arbitrary stretching of Tungus data, is far-fetched by itself and is therefore rather unlikely. Any proposal to explain a Khazar element through a stem or a suffix known only from a language other than Turkic should, we think, be rejected unless at least one such element can be unequivocally identified on the basis of what we know on the history of the Altaic languages. 2. The Khazar language material The intelligible core of Khazar—not only the titles15 but also denotative nouns such as dog ‘funerary feast’, ït ‘dog’16 or bulan ‘elk’,17 the adjective alp ‘valiant’,18 the words for ‘white’, ‘yellow’ and ‘black’, the agentive suffix +čI used in several Khazar words, the diminutive suffix +Ak,19 the suffix +šIn Proto-Turkic cannot be shown to regularly have used stems as both nouns and verbs; Chuvash final high vowels are, on the other hand, often syncopated (as in śar ‘army’ < čärig). As correctly pointed out by Levitskaja 1976: 92, Chuvash -An no doubt comes from Proto-Turkic *-gAn: The early -gAn derivate of bayu- would therefore have been *bayugan and not bayan; had there been a verb ‘bay-’, its -gAn derivate would have been ‘baygan’. The name of the Uygur khan who reigned between 747 and 759 has also been posited as Bayan čor (though buyan < Skt. punỵ a might be another possible read- ing of the Chinese characters). Bayan cannot have been formed with the formative -Xn described for Old Turkic in Erdal 1991: 300–308, as its second vowel couldn’t have been /a/ if it came from bayu- or indeed from (unattested) ‘bay-’; since this formative appears to have been dominant (cf. uzun < uza-, tükün < tükä-, yarïn < yaru- etc.), it would even be unlikely to come from a putative ‘bay+a-’ (for which cf. Turkish boşa- beside Old Turkic bošo-). 15 Titles often wander from one people to the other and are thus no proof of national identity; Hilitβēr, dealt with below, is one such term. The most comprehensive account of the Khazar titles is Golden 1980. 16 See Erdal 1991a. 17 In Golb & Pritsak 1982 referred to by Golden 1984: 478, Pritsak connected this noun (also the name of a Khazar kagan) with the name Bulčan appearing in Arabic sources, taking it to be its “Hunno-Bolgaric” equivalent. This contradicts historical sound laws, as Common Turkic ‘elk’ is also bulan and not ‘bušan’. Golden 1980: 171–3 correctly discusses Bulčan separately. 18 This element appears as a proper name of two persons, as does Alïp (explicitly spelled thus twice) in three Volga Bolgarian inscriptions. 19 Cf. Erdal 1991: 39–42, where the probable Iranian origin of this suffix is also mentioned. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 7799 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3388 PPMM 80 marcel erdal added to colour terms20—these are definitely and exclusively Turkic.21 A few additional terms not hitherto identified as Turkic could be added, e.g. the one spelt ’l-gˇd ʾdh, quoted by Golden 1980: 247. Among the ele- ments mentioned in that book, this is one of the two22 which is neither a proper name nor a toponym nor a title: It refers to a kind of travelling tent-car. This might just possibly be an attempt to write *čadára, since d and r look similar and can get confused in mss. in Arabic script if the word is unknown to the reader.23 This word would then be an instance of ča:tır (Turkic)/čador (Persian), šātor (pronounced thus in Hungarian) etc., signifying ‘tent’; it is dealt with in detail in Doerfer 1967: 16–22. A further hitherto unidentified term is the title ﺮﻐﻴـﺷوﺎﺟ, by Golden 1980: 191–2 transcribed as *Jāwašīğar. Since this person is, according to Ibn Faḍlān (fol. 212b, Togan 1939: 99), the third in the hierarchy under the Khazar co-ruler in charge of the army, it is fitting for him to be called Čavïš-yïgar; this reading perfectly fits the attested spelling. In the early Turkic administration, the čavïš were those who marshalled the ranks in battle and were in charge of order at court; the term is known since the Orkhon inscriptions and defined by Kāšġarī. This person must have been the official in charge of the Khazar čavïš corps: yïg-ar means ‘one who assembles or convenes’.24 If this idea25 is correct, it must denote an 20 In the name of the town Sarïgšïn which Golden 1980: 237–9 tentatively locates on the lower Volga; see below. 21 I mean that the sum total of these elements—including proper names, toponyms and components of these—gives a Turkic picture. alp was also borrowed into various Uralic languages and +čI into many Asian and South East European ones; such terms could, of course, in principle also have been loans into Khazar. 22 The other one is a kind of woman’s clothing called τζιτζάκιον (two of the thir- teen instances show the variant τζιτζιάκιον), mentioned by the 10th century Byzantine emperor and author Konstantinos Porphyrogennitos. Moravcsik explains it as Turkic čiček ‘flower’, suggesting that this must have been the original Khazar name of the Kha- zar lady known as Eiréne (Greek ‘peace’), who became Byzantine empress in the 8th century. Golden 1980: 175–6 agrees with Moravcsik’s view and lists the word as a per- sonal name. Konstantinos only says that this was the name of the garment the empress wore, not her proper name; I find Moravcsik’s idea far-fetched and would think the name of the garment may e.g. have been due to its colourfulness. One is also reminded of Hebrew cicít, ‘a Jewish ceremonial shawl with fringes’, ciciot ‘fringes’. 23 Golden quotes the single Arabic ms. extant, but mentions that there is an early Persian translation of the source; it would be worth finding out how the word is spelled there. 24 A central Old Turkic meaning of yïg- is ‘convening a number of persons’. Kljash- tornyj 1991: 114 suggests emending yā, the third-last letter of this title, to nūn, and then proposes an interpretation involving the names of two birds (one in truncated form); this seems quite unacceptable to me. Most recently, Golden 2005: 214 proposed deriving the title from *javaš ‘gentle’ by an obscure suffix, but this also demands an ‘emendation’. 25 The interpretation čavïš/čavuš of the first part of this title was already proposed by Frähn and Marquart; cf. Togan 1939: 260. Köprülü’s detailed encyclopaedia entry on ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 8800 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3399 PPMM the khazar language 81 office corresponding to the çavuş-başı in the Ottoman administration (an adjunct of the grand vizier and the head of the çavuş corps in the dīvān). čavïš would here be the object of yïg-: We find the structure ‘object noun’ + ‘governing verb in the aorist form’ also e.g. in the name of the 19th cen- tury Eltüzär khan or in the title orunbasar < orun ‘place’, bas- ‘to tread’: This term signifies ‘deputy’ in Modern Uygur, Kïrghïz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tatar, Bashkir and no doubt elsewhere as well. This means that the čavïšyïgar was the ‘marshal’ bringing together all the čavïš. Most Khazar terms which have been shown to come from specific non-Turkic languages are titles;26 in general, a great number of mostly pre-Turkic titles were passed on from one ancient and medieval Cen- tral Eurasian political entity to another. One such title is the second element in the names of two Khazars referred to in Armenian sources, Ałpʿ iłutʿuēr and Xatʿirlitʿbēr.27 Golden 1980 correctly takes this to be the title which Vilhelm Thomsen in his edition of the Bilgä Qagan inscrip- tion spells as äl[t]äbär (E 37) and äl]täbär (E 40).28 Rásonyi (referred to in Golden 1980: 149–150 and Doerfer 1965: 202) suggested that this title consists of the Turkic noun el signifying, among other things, ‘realm’, followed by the aorist of täp- ‘to kick’. Golden 1980: 150 compares it to Elteriš (Kök Türk ruler), Alp el etmiš (ruler of the Uygur steppe empire) and the Uygur names El Almıš Sängün, El Tutmıš and El Qatmıš. This is highly unlikely, among other reasons because (as Doerfer 1965: 203 points out) the Orkhon Turkic aorist of täp- would be täpär. Much has already been written on this title, referred to by Golden and Doerfer; it appears in different sources, including Chinese, in quite a number of forms: The Arab traveler Ibn Faḍlān has it with a /y/ before the ini- tial vowel, as راﻮﻄﻠﻳ;29 see Doerfer 1965 and Sims-Williams 2002: 235 for other varieties. Four Bactrian instances were recently added to this rich çavuş (1963: 363a) states that the Khazars used the title çavuşyar (thus!) and also men- tions the reading of ‘çaüş’ as a Pecheneg word by Németh 1932: 56 f. 26 The originally Iranian kel ‘house’ is an exception. The patronym Kundājīq discussed as Iranian by Golden 1980 is dealt with differently in Golden 2002–3; for this name and the possibly Mongol title underlying it see also Golden 2005: 214. 27 Alp is, of course, of Turkic origin, as is the first part in the Bactrian sequence referred to below; this might be the case also with the first part of the second name. 28 Thomsen 1896: 182 (note 102) thought he might be seeing traces of an I in the beginning of the E 40 instance, pointing at a reading like eltäbär/eltäbir. There are, all in all, seven or eight instances of this term in runiform inscriptions, none of which have any explicit initial vowel. In view of some of the instances quoted below, the i- might, however, be a possibility. 29 See Togan 1939: 105 for the reading, its interpretation and further evidence. Róna-Tas 1982: 166–7, dealing with this and with other Arab script evidence for this title, already says it “is not necessarily of Turkic origin”. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 8811 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::3399 PPMM 82 marcel erdal documentation: In texts N, N’, P and Q, dealt with in Sims-Williams 2000: 74–89, a certain ruler is referred to as Tapaγlıγ Hilitbēr or Tapaγlıγ Hilitβēr. The first word in this sequence can only be analyzed as Tur- kic tap-Xg+lXg, from tap- ‘to revere’:30 cf. also the person referred to as Tap(a)γl(ı)γ Sangun in the Mahrnamag (l. 56), a Manichæan hymn book written in the 8th century.31 In the glossary to his edition, Sims-Williams points out that the title discussed here is attested as lytβyr in l. 91–92 of the Mahrnamag; this had not previously been noticed. This latter variant reminds us of Xatʿirlitʿbēr (assuming with Golden that Xatʿir is an ele- ment by itself), whereas its labial consonant is more like that of iłutʿuēr. The Sogdian variant δyttpyr / ryttpyr quoted in Sims-Williams 2002: 235 has the labial consonant as a stop.32 The title is only once attested in Turkic in Uygur script, as Uygur iltbär+kä bermiš ‘he gave her to the Uygur I.’;33 all other Turkic examples are in runiform sources, in which there are no explicit vowels. The last vowel of this title is clearly long, as shown by a number of examples. Among the numerous instances, not a single one shows a vowel after the t; on the other hand all instances with explicit non-long vowels have a high vowel after the l. All this should finally put the Turkic etymologies for this title to rest: The reading ‘el- täbär’ (structured as El-tüzär mentioned above) is untenable. According to Sims-Williams 2002: 235, “the initial aspirate of the Bactrian spelling suggests that it may be a Khalach form, since the consistent preservation of [h-] is one of the most notable features distinguishing Khalach from other Turkish dialects”.34 This initial /h/ may indeed explain the y ~ Ø alternation in the evidence. We owe to Ludwig 1982: 356–357 the (quite solid) evidence from Theophanes (mid 8th century) for the word which proves that the Kha- zar language must be an especially archaic variety of Turkic: He shows that dog / δog was also the Khazar variant of Orkhon Turkic yog ‘funerary feast’, beside being that of the 6th century first Türk dynasty as quoted in Greek sources.35 30 The [a] in the second syllable is normal in Old Uygur suffixes with a velar. 31 The ms. must be a later copy; see Müller 1912: 10. 32 In early borrowings into Sogdian, foreign /l/ is rendered as δ, in late borrowings as r; the p can be read as [b]. 33 Ms. U 1a part II v 3, edited by Le Coq 1912: 147. Wilkens 2000: 74 (text 49); clearly readable on the internet. 34 Note, though, that initial /h/ may at this early date still have existed in other Turkic varieties as well. 35 Since the Khazars were in contact with the Western Türk, indeed being their vas- ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 8822 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::4400 PPMM the khazar language 83 3. Phonetic evidence for Khazar classification Balḥī’s statement that lisān bulġār mitḻa lisāni ’l-hạ zar is quoted (among others) by Benzing 1959: 691, though I would not accept his translation “daß die Sprache der Bolgaren dieselbe sei wie die der Chasaren”: ﻞﺜﻣ can also denote ‘similarity’ (in any sense) and not necessarily ‘identity’. To balance this we have, at any rate, the statement of (10th century) Isṭạ xrī (quoted e.g. in Golden 1980: 56 with page reference to the edi- tion) about the Khazars’ language that ‘no distinct tongue of mankind shares any of its characteristics’ (lā yušārikuhu lisān fāriq mina ’l-umam). Golden 1980: 56–7 discusses the question of the classification of Khazar with reference to views expressed by Zajączkowski and Baskakov, which he convincingly refutes. The language being so archaic (as indeed one would expect in view of its early documentation), evidence which might be thought to disqualify a Bolgar-Turkic or a Common Turkic profile for Khazar must be weighed carefully, to see whether some feature charac- teristic of one or of the other language branch may not have come into existence at a stage later than Khazar evidence. This matter has already been pointed out in reviews to Golden 1980. Golden had stated that the title tudun speaks against assignment of the Khazar language to Bolgar- Chuvash, as the sound shift d > r is not found in it; but in fact the pas- sage d > r (or δ > r) should probably be dated later than the end of the 7th century, the time for which the title is attested;36 the earliest evidence for Volga-Bolgarian turun is in 1230.37 We are lucky in being able to divide the typical features of Bolgar-Tur- kic into two groups: The features which elements of this branch of Tur- kic share with Mongolic cognates (A) existed already before its speakers left Eastern Asia; the features which it does not share with Mongolic (B) are innovations which emerged in the west. The B features—the West- ern innovations—could have come up during a Western community phase (B ), in which case they would be shared by Chuvash-Bolgar and 1 Khazar; alternatively (B ), they could have come up after a separation of 2 sals for some time, it would not be surprising if they borrowed some lexemes from them. However, this term clearly denoting a traditional religious practice, it seems an unlikely word to borrow; the relationship between the two states appears to have been political rather than cultural. 36 See Johanson 1983. 37 See Róna-Tas 1982: 158. The d/r question is dealt with also in Erdal 1993: 137–141, and cf. below. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 8833 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::4400 PPMM 84 marcel erdal Khazar and Chuvash-Bolgar, possibly even after Khazar had died out: The replacement of /d/ by /r/ just mentioned is a B feature of Bolgar- 2 Chuvash, since it is not shared by Khazar. If a Western innovation (B) found in Bolgar-Chuvash is shared by Khazar (B ), that indicates prox- 1 imity and would entitle us to consider Khazar to belong to this group; if it does not (B ), this does not prove that Khazar did not belong to this 2 section of Turkic, as the emergence of this feature might postdate the Western community stage. If, however, any A feature—a feature shared by Bolgar-Chuvash and Mongolic—is not found in Khazar, this would be clear proof that Khazar is not part of the Bolgar-Chuvash section of Turkic. Note that both B and B features can in principle be found also 1 2 in languages which we know to be ‘normal’ Turkic, such as the Kipchak languages, which also entered the ‘western’ Turkic contact and sharing area at some stage in history. What, then, are the A features, the ones which can be reconstructed for Proto-Bolgar and Proto-Mongolic in the lexicon they shared and which the Ancient Bolgars brought with them when leaving South Sibe- ria and travelling to the west? a) The shared lexicon of the Bolgar branch and Mongolic have /r/ where all other Turkic languages have /z/ instead. b) The Bolgar branch and Mongolic have /l/, /lč/ or /lj/ where all other Turkic languages have /š/ instead; in Chuvash /lč/ and /lj/ become /ś/.38 c) The Bolgar branch and Mongolic have the voiced palatal affricate [j] in word onset where Old Turkic39 and some other Turkic languages have [y] instead. 38 Much of the evidence for this is brought together in Tekin 1979: 130–132. This correspondence appears in baš ‘head’, or, e.g., in the reciprocal-cooperative suffix -Xš-, as also shown by synonymous Mongolian -(U)lčA-. In both of these cases, Volga-Bolgar- ian retains /lč/ and Chuvash has /ś/, not /l/. Róna-Tas 1999 shows that, in two suffixes, Chuvash /š/ corresponds to the Common Turkic cluster /nč/. 39 We know this thanks to sources in Brāhmī, Tibetan and Arabic script, with reason- able certainty also sources in Manichaean script. The runiform characters y and y may 1 2 conceivably have had the secondary value j as well, in case this was the onset allophone of /y/ there. If this sound existed in Orkhon Turkic at all, it could also have been written with the letter č (e.g. in the name spelled Maqarač, which is written with j and not č in Sanskrit). The Classical Mongolian script, adapted from the Uygur script, used the letter yōd also for representing onset [j] and we don’t know whether the Mongols did not copy this practice from the Turks they were in contact with. ggoollddeenn__ff55__7744--110088..iinndddd 8844 55//1111//22000077 77::5599::4400 PPMM