Old Uyghur language


The Old Uyghur language (traditional Chinese: 回鶻語; simplified Chinese: 回鹘语; pinyin: Huíhú yǔ) was a Turkic language which was spoken in the Kingdom of Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries and in Gansu where it evolved into the Western Yugur language.

The Old Uyghur language evolved from Old Turkic after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated to Kashgar, Gansu and Turfan and Hami in the 9th century. The Uyghurs in Turfan and Hami founded the Kingdom of Qocho and adopted Manichaeism and Buddhism as their religions, while those in Gansu became subjects of the Western Xia.

The Kingdom of Qocho survived as a client state of the Mongol Empire, but was conquered by the Muslim Chagatai Khanatewhich conquered Turfan and Hami and Islamisized the region. The Old Uyghur language then went extinct in Turfan and Hami, but survived in Gansu where it evolved into the modern Western Yugur language.

Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur, rather, it is a descendant of the Karluk language spoken by the Kara-Khanid Khanate.[2] Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is also called “Neo-Uygur”.Modern Uyghur is not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk.[3] Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the southeastern Turkic languages and the northeastern Turkic languages .[4][5]

Old Uyghur had an anticipating counting system and a copula dro, which is passed on to Western Yugur.[6]

Much of Old Uyghur literature is religious texts regarding Manichaeism and Buddhism, with examples found among theDunhuang manuscripts. Multilingual inscriptions including Old Uyghur can be found at the Cloud Platform at Juyongguan and the Stele of Sulaiman.

Old Uyghur was written in the Old Uyghur alphabet which was derived from the Sogdian script.

  1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). “Old Uighur”. Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. Jump up^ Arik 2008, p. 145
  3. Jump up^ Clauson, Gerard (Apr 1965). “Review An Eastern Turki-English Dictionary by Gunnar Jarring”. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland) (No. 1/2): 57. Retrieved 30 March 2014. edit
  4. Jump up^ Coene 2009, p. 75
  5. Jump up^ Coene 2009, p. 75
  6. Jump up^ Chen et al, 1985

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