契丹・女眞文字考

Abstract

Until just half a century ago, while it was known from the Liao shih 遼史 and other writings that the Khitan script had large and small case lettering, it was still unclear what the forms of their written letters had been--they were referred to as "the mysterious script." However, in 1932 the imperial tombstone eulogies in the Khitan language from Ch'ing-ling 慶陵 were excavated and after a certain amount of difficulty their validity was confirmed. Since then a great deal of effort by historians and linguists of various countries with Japan and China leading the way has been devoted to deciphering the written language of the Khitan, but as yet no one has been successful at breaking the code. The Jurchen script also has large and small case lettering；"it was created by copying the pattern of the Khitan script, " as it says in the Chin shih 金史. Thus the Khitan and Jurchen writing systems have a kind of sibling relationship. Fortunately, for the Jurchen script we have the many tomb inscriptions starting with the "Monument in Honor of the Great Khitan Tesheng-t'o 得勝陀, "and the "Monument Engraved with the Names of Jurchen chin-shis 進士." Furthermore, under the category of documents, we have the Ju-chen kuan-i-yu 女眞館譯語. These materials are extremely rich. And with them the deciphering of the Jurchen script has advanced far beyond that of the Khitan script, but even the Jurchen script has not been fully decoded. The author feels that thusfar we understand all of the Jurchen material in small case lettering, while the large case material is not thoroughly understood. Having reviewed the present state of research on the Khitan and Jurchen writing systems, the author hopes to make a modest attempt at decipherment by considering the forms, tone values and structure of both writing systems.