Notes on Old Turkic ‘Dongoin Shiree’ Inscriptions Newly Discovered at Mongolia
Mehmet ÖlmezEvery passing year, researchers make important discoveries on the inscriptions written in Old Turkic script both in and out of the borders of Mongolia. Especially in the past 25 years, with an increase in field works, we continue getting some new further information on the inscriptions already known and also hearing about the newly-introduced ones. The subject of this paper is one of the latter, “Dongoin Shiree” an inscription introduced in 2010-2011 and published in 2015. Although there are more than 1100 words written on this inscription, the total vocabulary of it consists of a maximum of 20 words. Among those 20 words, eleŋime is one of the words which are hard to explain. In this short paper, we will suggest an explanation for the word in question.
Moğolistan’da Yeni Bulunan Eski Türkçe ‘Dongoyn Şiree’ Yazıtları Üzerine Notlar
Mehmet ÖlmezEski Türk yazısıyla Moğolistan ve Moğolistan sınırlarının dışında yazılmış yazıtlarla ilgili olarak her geçen yıl yeni keşifler ortaya konmaktadır. Özellikle son 25 yılda konuyla ilgili çalışmalar ve alan araştırmaları artmış, eskiden bulunmuş yazıtlar hakkında ayrıntılı yeni bilgiler öğrenirken yeni yazıtlardan da haberdar olmaya devam etmekteyiz. Bunlardan birisi de 2010 ve 2011 yıllarında varlığından haberdar olunan, 2015’te de ilk metin yayımı yapılan ‘Dongoyn Şiree’ yazıtlarıdır. Söz konusu yazıtta 1100’ün üzerinde kelime yer alsa da toplam söz varlığı 20’yi bulmaz. Bu 20 kelime içerisinden özellikle eleŋime sözünün açıklanması zordur. Bu kısa yazıda söz konusu kelimenin açıklanmasına ilişkin önerimiz yer almaktadır.
In their field work conducted in 2010, 2011 and 2013 on a site in the vicinity of Tüvshinshiree county, Sükhbaatar region, Mongolian archeologists have discovered some stone blocks with inscriptions and tamgas graven on them. Two of these, whose total number is 14, bear inscriptions in runic characters, and remaining 12, tamgas. Although many are relatively small in size, there is also specimens four meters tall. They contain in total 72 lines, 3857 characters, 1193 words and more than 86 tamgas. The number of the characters used is 22. Considering that in the inscriptions of Bilge Kagan and Köl Tekin there are 38 characters, we see that 16 characters, being not needed, have not been used here. As for the tamgas, the one which figures an ibex is the most frequent, followed by another in form of triangle. This last (triangular) tamga, with a long line on the bottom, occurs also on the Tunyukuk inscription. No ligature is used in these inscriptions. Although we can count 1193 words in them, all are not different lexemes. On the whole 19 different words occur in the texts. Three of them are used a great many times, but remaining 16 occur one or a few times. The most frequent is e v i m e “O my house (tent, home)!”. This word occurs 949 times, b e g i m e 117 times, y ė r i m e 39 times. All texts are written in interjectional style like this. Without regard to the contexts in which they are used, here are the words found in these inscriptions:
av “hunt, game”
begime “o my lord!” bėrdime “to the pers. I have given (it)” or “to the thing I have given”
eleŋime “o my calm one!” (?)
er “man, soldier”
evime “o my house (tent, home)!
ėlime “o my country (state)!”
ėtmiş “(he) has done, made”
şig “(his) work”
teŋrime “o my God!”
trtme (?)
ULGKA (?)
UŞGA (?)
üze “on, over, on top”
yaġız “black, dark”
yėrime “o my place (earth, territory)”
yışka “to the forest”
YKA (?)
yok “inexistent, neant”
This site of inscriptions, with its many stones marked by tamgas, the appealing or supplicating style of the texts, could have been a sacred place for the Ancient Turks. Surer knowledge on this subject will come from more detailed studies of ethnologists and archeologists. In this brief note I would rather deal with the form l 2 ŋmA that, in the works of Mönhtulga and Oosava published in 2015, has been read as elaŋıma and glosed as “hunt at state / countrywide”, and compare it with the verb ele - “to be attentive, or quiet, calm” which occurs very rarely in Old Uigur texts and today only in Kazakh (?), and its imperative form having also an interjectional sense. As a first idea, I think the comparison seems to suggest that this word (l 2 ŋmA) can be analysed morphologically as ele- “be attentif or quiet” + ŋ “2. pers. imperative”. The word nominalized and lexicalised thus (as *eleŋ) could have taken later the suffixes +m “1. pers. possessive” and +e “interjection”. As a second and final analyze, I like to take the base as eleŋ ‘liver’ → ‘dear, dearest’, eleŋime ‘o my dear’.
